“I do and I do not,” he admitted. “I miss talking to her because she was smart and curious about the world, a great conversationalist. I think our favorite times together were spent reading the Sunday New York Times together and hashing out the events of the week and doing the crossword puzzle.”
I felt a pang but not a large one. Sinclair and I didn’t read the paper together like that but we would establish our own routines, and we had countless topics to talk about it.
“I do not miss how savage she made me feel for wanting to tug her hair or talk dirty to her. She made me ashamed of an essential part of myself. More than that, I don’t miss the life we lived together, stuck in these strict routines and bound by everyone else’s rules, including my parents. That’s not what any relationship should be about. So, mostly, no, I do not miss her.”
He slid a thumb down the line of my jaw and pinched my chin to tilt it up so I was looking him in the eye. “Do you?”
I shook my head before I could even process his question logically. “No, I never had much of her to miss.”
His lips flattened. “The way she treats you… I knew she was never your biggest advocate but for a sister to treat another sister that way, I think it disgusting.”
“You’re just protective. I’m sure plenty of sister have issues with each other.”
Sin shot me an eloquent look.
“Okay, maybe not issues as deep seated and malicious as ours.”
“It’s good to acknowledge that. And thank you for bringing her up, for sharing with me. I told you that as long as we are open with each other, nothing can harm what you and I have. Do you believe me now?”
He was asking if I believed enough in our love to brave the obstacles in our way together. It was a question that he had proven he had the answer to in innumerable ways, from the moment he declared his love for me after Thanksgiving dinner, through his week of wooing me, and the entire time we had been in Paris together. He had stumbled a little after Elena’s email but that was so understandable that it still broke my heart to think of the self-disgust she had instilled in him after all these years.
There was nothing disgusting about my Frenchman.
With that in mind, I answered his question in a way I knew he would understand. “I know we talked about your willingness to move here for me, especially after the job opportunity at Vogue came up. I hope you know that I love you for supporting me but I think it’s time we went home. I’m ready to face the music and our lives are in New York.”
“Are you sure?” he asked and I knew my potential confirmation meant a lot to him.
France had been both of our homes for a long time but it was in our past, our future was in the States.
“Absolutely,” I said.
He groaned, a sound that seemed to be wrenched from the very soul of him, as he drew me tight against his body and buried his face in my hair.
“Mine,” he claimed on a ragged whisper.
“Yours,” I agreed.
We stood in the middle of the Notre Dame plaza for a long time, holding each other and it felt like its own Christmas miracle, to have my arms around a man so perfect for me I could not have even dreamt of him before meeting him. And yet, there I stood with a man so perfect for me and so perfectly mine as much as I was his.
I stood on my tiptoes to murmur, “I have an early present for you. Let’s go back to the Wilde room.”
“Only if you promise to get wild with me,” he chuckled and then groaned, “That was terrible, I apologize profusely.”
I beamed up at him, arms wrapped around his waist. “No apology necessary, as long as you’re smiling, I can put up with your shitty puns.”
His laughter rang out over the holiday music and made me grin all the way back to our room.
I was folded on my knees beside the bed, a strip of red satin over my eyes with another one binding my hands together in a bow behind my back. I had pre-tied the bow and practiced tightening it around my wrists while they were awkwardly pressed behind me so that I could present myself to Sin exactly like this, as his Christmas present.
Of course, I had also gotten him a real gift, a painting that Odile had done of me before I had left for New York. I had posed in a nude workshop for one of her advanced classes and the painting depicted me from behind, my head tilted so that my riotous curls flooded like a lava spill down one side of my back and a sliver of my profile was revealed to show me biting my lip. My ass was round and pert with shadows and highlights and there was something about the deep line demarcating either side of my back where my spine rested that was unspeakably erotic. I knew he would love it even more than I did.
But for now, I was giving him this, me.
I could feel the still air shift, molecules activating with the power he brought to the room as soon as he entered.
“Look at you all wrapped up prettily for me,” he murmured as he came to a stand still in front of me. “It turns you on to present yourself like this for me. I can see how wet your sweet pussy is between those thighs, how your rosy nipples strain, begging for me to twist them, bite them, mark them with my tongue.”
I began to pant.
“You look pretty as a picture, Elle. I couldn’t have drawn you better myself but I still want to add my mark. You would look magnificent with my come on those flushed cheeks.”
“Yes,” I gasped, because I wanted it.
“I have something else in mind though, to make this even more beautiful. Would you like it?”
“Yes, please sir.”
“So polite,” he crooned as I heard him snap something open.
Then he was wrapping something cool and textured around my throat.
My heart leapt into my mouth and stayed there while he clasped the necklace behind my nape.
“Collared,” he whispered into the profound silence. “Mine.”
I shivered under the power of his ownership. It felt so final to have his brand around my skin. I hoped it was something I could wear everyday so that even if strangers didn’t know its significance, I would.
“It’s a pearl choker, Elle. You never have to take it off if you don’t want,” he said, reading my thoughts again in that way of his that thrilled and terrified me.
“I don’t want,” I murmured.
“Good girl.”
He pressed his foot between my spread knees, pushing his calf bone hard against my clit. I groaned at the friction of his crisp hair against my flesh. My hips bucked before I could still them.
“Now, you have a choice here, Elle. It is Christmas and I just collared you so I am feeling generous. I will let you get off on my leg before I do what I want with you or you can wait and see if those plans involve you orgasming.”
I shuddered. I didn’t really think he would leave me hanging. Sinclair wasn’t that kind of man or that kind of Dom, but the thought of getting off on his leg was so dirty, so delicious that I started gyrating back and forth before I had even made a conscious choice.
“That’s right, use my leg to get yourself off,” Sin murmured.
I pressed my face into his upper thigh, discovering that he wasn’t naked and his erection was trapped within the confines of his boxer briefs but angled right at my panting mouth. I moved faster, shamelessly as I tongued his cock through the fabric.
“You want me in your mouth, Elle?”
“Yes, please, sir.” My mouth was already dripping with saliva as I imagined the taste of him exploding across my tongue.
“No, I want you to get off on my leg first.”
I increased the tempo, humping his leg hard, grinding my clit into his shin.
“You’re dripping all over my foot,” Sinclair noted and for some reason his calm observation drew the coil tighter in my belly.
I loved the debasement of being on my knees in front of him, bound and finding pleasure in the simple act of humping his leg like a dog. I was too deep in subspace to find the degradation anything but electrifying.
I started
whimpering, little sounds of pleasure exploding from my mouth as the climax crawled up my back and took hold of my spine before I could even notice its descent.
“Ahhh,” I moaned as I thrashed against his leg, almost losing my balance with my hands clasped behind my back.
My sex was still spasming as he abruptly lifted me to my feet and pushed me over the side of my bed. I shouted hoarsely into the sheets as his fingers drove into my clenching pussy, curling and driving deep to draw the orgasm on and on and on. My legs shuddered, unable to hold me up as his mouth sought my clit and clamped on.
“No,” I screamed as a terrifying orgasm dropped on top of the first one before it had even finished.
I lost control of my body, my muscles snapping like elastic bands as I collapsed on the bed, only my hips still moving, thrusting back against his fingers and tongue. Sinclair growled into my cunt and ate like a mad man, lapping up the juices that flooded from me.
He adjusted me again just as I was regaining any degree of consciousness, pushing my legs up on the bed and under me so that I was in his favorite position, my hands bound behind my back and my ass presented to him high in the air over my steeply curved spine.
Instead of taking his fingers from me, he added a thumb to the tight pucker of my ass. When I lurched forward, he tugged me back with an arm banded under my belly.
“Does my siren like to be filled?” he asked coldly, before biting into the back of my shoulder.
I shuddered against him. “Y-yes, sir.”
“You tied yourself up so nicely for me, does that mean I can take whatever I want?”
“You can always take whatever you want, sir.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you own me,” I breathed, a shiver clutching as me as I spoke my absolute truth.
This man totally and completely owned me but only like this, when I was literally twisting myself into a pretzel to please him, did I really feel alive with his possession.
“Yes, I own this pussy,” he said, sliding a third finger inside and twisting it savagely so that I moaned and hissed at the pleasure pain combination. “I own this pretty pink asshole and I am going to take it as my Christmas present.”
I opened my mouth to say something but only a ragged groan emerged by he landed a hard smack on my ass. He unwrapped his arm from around me and used it to add two fingers to my clutching bottom, twisting and turning them inside me in a sinuous rhythm that had my entire body clenching, quickening again.
“I, oh God,” I blathered incoherently as he worked both my holes.
“Hush,” he murmured and I could feel him staring at our connection, watching how I opened and closed around him. “So pretty.”
“Please, oh, please,” I begged, for what I didn’t really know.
“What do you need, ma jolie fille?” he husked.
“I need to come again,” I panted. “I want to come on you.”
“On me where?” he urged me to say. “You know I like your voice.”
“Please, sir, take my ass and let me come again.”
Before I even had the words out, his fingers were gone and he was surging, sure and steady into my ass. I screamed into the duvet, sweating and moaning and aching as he spread me open over his huge girth.
“Oh God, oh God,” I murmured into the blanket at he seated himself fully inside me and then slowly pulled out.
He continued to fuck me tortuously, so slowly that I could feel every ridge and vein in his cock as it entered me.
“Please,” I begged.
He pulled out, ignoring my murmured protests and ran his finger around my gaping opening. It was such a possessive, intimate touch that I nearly lost it as he ran his thumb around and around my closing muscle, dipping the tip of his digit into me from time to time.
I could feel the puddle of my arousal at the base of my knees, soaking the bed.
“So fucking pretty,” he groaned. “This ass, this pussy, this woman.”
“Yours, all of it,” I gritted out through my teeth.
“Mine,” he agreed, heaving into me again.
This time he set a brutal pace, each time pressing his entire length into me before taking almost the entire thing out again. He pushed and pulled me off of his dick, slamming me back and forth against his hips so that I was rocking like an agitated pendulum.
“Work yourself against my cock,” he ordered and I threw myself back against him with an athleticism that I hadn’t known I possessed.
“Are you going to come with me in your ass, Elle?” he asked me, his cool voice cracking like breaks in the ice at the end of his question.
It spurned me on. “Yes, sir, if you will allow it.”
He fucked me harder, slapping my ass with each cruel thrust. The pain gathered at the base of my spine and spooled into golden pleasure.
“I’ll allow it. Come then.”
A hoarse shout ripped from my lugs as I went completely rigid, the orgasm tearing through me, paralyzing me from the inside out for one shocking moment before it electrified me, shaking and rolling every single molecule in my body together until I was only a churning mass of matter, not even human any more.
Vaguely, I heard his gruff shout of triumph before he released warm and deep inside me.
After a few moments, he gently left me and smoothed me out on the bed so that I was laying straight and tied on the mattress. He unbound my hands and pressed a kiss to each wrist before he undid my blindfold. His hands ran down my back, rubbing and soothing my back, bum and thighs for a few moments before I was a complete puddle of melted woman against the bed. Only then did he go to the bathroom to clean up.
When he returned, he pushed a button for the AC and I sighed softly as it stirred beautifully over my sweat soaked skin.
“Thank you,” I murmured as he got into bed beside me.
“No, Elle, thank you for trusting me with yourself. Best Christmas present ever.”
I grinned at him even as I fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter Eleven.
It was on New Years Eve when I got the call.
We were at Cage’s massive apartment where he was throwing a 1920s themed party. It had been an amazing night even though my stomach was a little off so I wasn’t drinking. Sinclair looked absolutely dashing in a traditional black tuxedo and his eyes flashed every time he took in the four rows of perfect blush pearls that lined by throat. I had only been collared for six days and it was still thrilling to both of us.
We were also just straight up happy. We had found a harmony together, living side by side, that I never could have guessed would be so easy or so blissful. I knew we would go back to New York soon, we had talked about going at the end of January, but for now, we were finding our way in our new relationship without the strain of outside judgment.
So, happy.
Then I got the call.
“What?” I yelled into the phone, pressing a hand to my other ear to block out the sounds of revelry.
It was long after the countdown and the party, unsurprisingly as it was populated with musicians and BDSM worshippers, had slipped into loud, jovial debauchery.
“Cosima,” Mama cried, “She’s in the hospital. They have her in surgery right now but, bambina, it does not look good.”
My phone clattered to the ground as I stared off into the partygoers thrashing on the dance floor.
Cosima was in the hospital.
It was not looking good.
God, what could have happened?
Sinclair swooped down to pick up my phone, appearing beside me even though I had left him in the kitchen to take the call. He watched me as he spoke into the phone but I didn’t look at him. I was paralyzed with fear and pretty certain that I was going to throw up.
“Sebastian?” Sinclair was saying, “Yes, expect us soon. We’ll catch the next flight out.”
I didn’t remember much of what happened after that except for a vague recollection of returning to the hotel to change and pack our bag
s before catching a taxi to the airport at some time just before dawn. I didn’t even remember enough to say a proper goodbye to Paris. When I woodenly mentioned this to Sinclair, he had kissed my hair and promised that we would go back.
Now, I was so afraid that I was physically sick with it. Sinclair had held my hair as I vomited repeatedly on the plane back to New York. I would have been embarrassed but he sweetly reminded me of how he had fallen under my spell when I was sick on the plane to Mexico and that this was nostalgic somehow, instead of gross. It was pure lies, but I appreciated his efforts too much to say anything. Besides, I was too busy making use of the toilet to talk back anyway.
By the time we landed and dragged ourselves into the waiting town car, my body felt weak and saturated with grime, like a wrung out dishtowel. Sinclair held me tightly against his side as he responded feverishly to emails on his phone. We had to leave in such a rush that he had left a mess of things back in Paris. A part of me was grateful for his distraction, both because it took his mind of Cosima’s dire situation but also because it gave me room to think things through unobserved. If he hadn’t been preoccupied, he would have easily picked up on the rod of discomfort in my spine that kept me from sinking into his warmth.
My anxiety only increased as we entered the city and headed straight to the trauma ward at St Vincent’s Hospital. I hated that my overwhelming fear for my sister was undermined by the drama that had become the cornerstone of my life. Elena didn’t know about Sin and me, which meant that as soon as we entered those sliding glass doors, we would effectively cease to exist as a unit at exactly the moment we needed each other the most. I tried to give myself a stern talking to, like a tough coach before a big game, but no matter how much I berated myself for being selfish, reminded myself that this was the least I deserved, told myself that I was a strong, independent woman capable of handling emotional distress without someone else’s help, I kept coming back to the desire to whimper like a freaking baby.
Sin pressed his lips to my hair and breathed deeply. “Visiting hours are almost over but the family will still be there with her. As soon as we are finished here, I booked rooms at the St. Regis.”
The Consequence Page 11
