by Lilia Moon
Her eyes shoot up to mine when I fill my hand with lube and head between her legs. The sound she makes might be words, but it isn’t anything close to lightning, so I keep going, spreading spicy and hot into her folds, over her thighs, down into her ass crack, which makes her gasp in ways that tell me that’s going to be very interesting territory to play in, too.
I push one of the magic buttons on Milo’s bench, lowering part of the bench under her ass and transforming it into a stool that will put me into the kind of cockpit that only a Dom can truly appreciate. I keep sliding my fingers through her folds as I climb in, situating myself between her legs. I run my hands up her thighs and look up, right into her eyes.
I picked this bench for this moment.
Because my sub wants to watch—and when she does, I want her to see me.
Chapter Nineteen
Scorpio
He’s looking at me like he’s a dying man and I’m his last meal.
That’s all I can think, even though I’m spread wide open for him and he’s covered me in some kind of goo that has my parts zinging like they’re wired to an amp and I’m trussed up so thoroughly I can barely move.
His hands are touching me again, that gentle stroking that says I’m his and I’m safe and he’s got me, no matter what just happened and what’s coming next. Magician hands. Hands that know me in ways I can’t even believe are possible.
I expected him to fire me up. I never expected him to know how to gentle me back down.
Not like this. Not this big man with the fierce eyes who won’t let me look away.
His slides his hands back down to my inner thighs, and I know we’re done with the gentle. He runs lube-slicked thumbs up the crack of my ass, and I feel myself tensing. I know I marked this as a soft limit. I hope I can give him that. The edge suddenly feels very sharp.
His eyes are watching mine, and I don’t try to hide it. I don’t think I could—I’m spread wide open to him in more ways than one.
His face shifts, and my Dom is back, voice full of gravel and sternness. “Do you need your safeword, beautiful?”
We didn’t discuss traffic lights. “Yellow.”
His nod is solemn—and his thumbs are still making their circles, over my seat bones and back up my ass crack. Spreading the warm, tingling fire.
I can feel the fight inside me. Wanting to relax. Wanting to snark and push him away and make this so much less about me than it is right now.
His hand reaches for something that looks like a skinny egg with feet. He brings it close to my ass and smears it with lube. I clench as he pushes it against me, seeking entry. My brain is flailing, seeking an exit, running from what he’s asking me to do.
And then the egg starts to vibrate, and every nerve in my ass and everywhere else lights on fire.
I hear his warm, dark chuckle. “Like that, do you?”
He’s totally got the wrong verb. I’m breaking apart, awash in the sensation of snapping from on the brink of using my safeword to wondering exactly how much I have to beg for him to stick this thing in my ass and leave it there forever.
Clearly he knows it. The egg is demanding entry, pushing in ways that aren’t remotely gentle against muscles that aren’t remotely ready for this.
His eyes are telling me I can do it anyhow. That he knows I want this, I need this, and he’s willing to demand things of me that I would never demand of myself. I stop trying to relax my ass and just sink into his eyes instead, into the soft leather that’s holding me and the warm fire all over my skin and the relentless need inside me to be what he’s asking me to be.
The egg stops vibrating, but it doesn’t stop its slow, inexorable invasion of my ass. The fight inside me comes back to life.
“Take all of it.” Harlan’s voice snaps into the sudden silence.
I’m trying. Every cell of my body is trying, but it feels as big as a watermelon, even though my eyes totally know that it isn’t.
He just keeps pushing. And then there’s a pop, and a wild feeling of fullness, and his eyes looking at me with that crazy pride again.
He smiles, and his fingers move into my wet, slick folds. “That was the hard part, beautiful. Now comes the part that’s just for me. I’m going to fuck you with my fingers, and I want you to make all the noise you know how to make.”
I’m already moaning, writhing into the restraints as two fingers plunge into me and his thumb starts doing things to my clit that should be illegal in all fifty states.
His other hand holds my folds open. “You’re wet and swollen and gorgeous.” His fingers slide out of me long enough to run up and down the sides of my clit, jacking me up to a totally new level of crazy.
My legs strain against the restraints. He puts a hand on my low belly to hold me down and plunges his fingers into me, hard and fast and insistent.
And then the egg in my ass starts to vibrate again and whatever is left of me shatters all over his hands.
Chapter Twenty
Scorpio
I don’t know when I realize I’m me again.
I’m not in cuffs anymore, not spread open in front of Harlan’s ravening eyes. I’m curled into him, drenched in skin and heartbeat and absolute, tender safety.
“Welcome back.”
I hear the rumbling from beside my ear, feel his big hands shifting me a little.
“I’ve got water for you, beautiful. Drink for me.”
I do, like a baby bird that has no idea it has wings yet. And when my throat is back to feeling like it belongs to me, I bury back into his chest. Into heartbeat. Into the ridiculous bliss of in-between.
He holds me for what feels like forever.
My stomach lets out a growl loud enough to be heard in California.
Harlan chuckles and kisses the top of my head. “Ready for something to eat?”
I stick my head up and discover we’re sprawled in the monster velvet bed—and on the bedside table is a tray full of enough food that there might even be a little left over for the man in bed with me.
A tray of food that wasn’t there before. I feel myself stiffening.
He reaches over and pulls the tray closer. “Ari brought it. I hoped you’d be okay with that. You went deep enough that I didn’t want to leave.”
I open my mouth for the bite he’s bringing my way. “Thank you.”
His hand strokes my cheek. “If I screwed up, you need to tell me. I heard you loud and clear that you don’t want people to see.”
She probably only saw me drooling. I manage to swallow before I talk with my mouth full again. “You did good. Ari’s not people.”
He laughs. “She’ll be happy to hear that.” He keeps feeding me, like he knows that my arms haven’t found their operations manual yet.
I don’t tell him even when they do. I’m finally understanding what I’ve fallen into.
He feeds me, bite by tiny bite, until I groan and turn away. “Done. Full. You can eat the rest.”
“I’ll tell Ari to bring more next time.”
He sounds amused. I push myself back far enough that I can see his face. “You should have seen me after gigs. The guys used to joke that I could consume my body weight in chicken wings.”
He’s full-on grinning at me now. “I’m duly warned.”
I watch as he makes quick work of what’s left on the tray. “I might possibly be a greedy sub.”
“Mmm.” His eyes twinkle at me. “In more ways than one.”
I can feel the embarrassment rising in my cheeks. “Dammit, Emily’s supposed to be the one you guys make blush.”
His fingers stroke the breast he can reach. “Oh, I’ve just started making you all pink and rosy and delectable.”
That doesn’t help the flush go away. “Cut it out. I know how this works. We did the fun stuff and now we have to talk until the kitchen runs out of food and leaves us to crawl begging into the night.”
His eyes shift to serious before I can even blink. “Yes, we talk. And my sub doesn’t
get to use her mouth to push away from whatever she doesn’t want me to know.”
Shit. I freeze, deer in the headlights. “Crap. Sorry.”
He kisses my forehead. “It’s okay. It’s part of how you’re trying to slide back into your skin. I just need you to keep talking to me while you do that. Your poker face didn’t make it past the first orgasm, but this works better if I hear words instead of just reading your mind.”
All that does is plant my brain squarely back in my first orgasm. “I didn’t know I could do that.”
His fingers are twiddling with me, so gently I’m not even sure he knows he’s doing it. “Do what, beautiful?”
“Come just from you playing with my nipples.”
I see it, the streak of pure male pride that has nothing to do with being a Dom and everything to do with being a very self-satisfied caveman. I hide a grin. That guy and I need to get to know each other better.
He shifts us around so we’re lying on our sides, facing each other. His hand kneads my ass gently. “What else did you learn?”
I feel the first answer that spurts into my head and the instinctive urge to hide it away, shut it down, cover it with snark. I try not to do any of those things. “The flogger. I’ve seen some of the scenes here, and that wasn’t something I liked watching very much.”
His eyes are drinking mine. “Why?”
I grimace. “Pain. I don’t like the idea that people get off on it. That I might.”
“Did you?”
No clues. No body language. No idea what he wants to hear. “It didn’t hurt, exactly. It felt like hot rain, and then it got less pinprick and more like this spreading deal.”
He’s nodding. Listening. “Did you want more?”
I remember the bereft loneliness when he stopped. “I didn’t want it to end.”
He strokes my cheek so fucking softly it makes me want to cry. “Did you want it deeper? Harder? Into pain?”
He’s asked gently enough that I can actually listen for my own answer. “No.”
Only then does he let out the breath I didn’t know he’s been holding. “Good. No judgment from me if that’s what you need, but I don’t like going there.”
I can see that. He’s letting me see that. “Den mother.”
His grin is lopsided. “Yeah. There are lots of edges to ride. Pain’s not mine.”
But he still took me close enough that I could figure out if it was mine. I close my eyes, suddenly realizing exactly how generous he is.
His hand is back on my cheek. “What?”
“You have a very big heart, tough guy.”
He scowls.
I scowl right back. “You asked. If you don’t want my truth, then don’t ask for it.”
He takes a breath that mostly comes out as a growl. “Yeah. Sorry.” He runs an apologetic hand down my side. “So baby floggers and sensation play are fun for you, but we’re not angling for pain. Yellow’s a good word if you need to let me know to back off or slow down a little. We didn’t talk about that before, but you used it just right today.”
I know what I used it on. “Sorry—I know I got kind of wimpy with that egg thing.”
He grins. “Anal plug. No calling my toys any cutesy names.”
This time the snark is rising up from the right place. “If they’re headed inside me, I’ll call them whatever I want to call them.”
He gives my ass an amused swat. “Then you’ll pay for it.”
I reach forward and kiss his cheek, because this tender crap is killing me and I want more of it. “Deal.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Harlan
In fifteen years, I’ve done about every flavor of aftercare there is. This is the really good kind. The kind where a sub can rise up out of where she’s been and meet me on totally level ground and dig into the energy of having just done something fucking amazing together.
Scorpio’s totally sliding back into her skin, but she’s letting me touch it. Staying open. Telling me truth.
I just want to cuddle into her and stay there for about a week. Right after I fuck her silly so that my cock doesn’t die of delayed gratification. Or even without that.
Which is a thought I’ve had in the last fifteen years exactly never.
I stroke her delectable ass again and my hand isn’t totally steady. Fuck. I need to get my head back into my job, because this debrief isn’t nearly over. “The anal play pushed on you.” Harder than I’d expected for a woman who’s done the kind of time she has on Fettered’s couches. No way this is shame for her.
She’s nodding, and I can see the confusion in her eyes. “Yeah. I’m not sure why.”
I let my fingers travel a little closer to the region we’re talking about. My hand is steadier now—it knows how to do this part. “How does it feel when I head in that direction now?”
She’s already shifting, spreading for me—and tensing up. Which tells me plenty, but I want to hear it from her. I take her leg, pull her thigh up over my hip, and keep stroking her ass crack. She’ll learn far more from her body on this than she will from her mind.
She’s quiet for a long time, following my hands from inside her skin. When her eyes finally unhaze, she looks a little sheepish. “I don’t think anal play is the problem. I think it’s a control thing. I didn’t have any, but I had time to think. With the flogger, I got overwhelmed with sensation so fast there wasn’t time for my head to get in the way.”
Smart, intuitive sub. “How close were you to your safeword before I used the vibrator button?”
Her eyes get really serious. “Very. Sorry.”
I have her chin in my hand so fast neither of us knows what’s landed. “Don’t ever apologize for that. Ever. You need your safeword, you even think you need it, you use it. You went to lots of edges for me today, and you’ll go to lots more, and you never need to feel weak or sorry or like you failed me in any way if we find one you don’t want to touch. Got it?”
She’s staring at me, eyes huge. And then this totally soft, fragile smile sneaks onto her face. “Yeah.”
Every Dom instinct I have jumps to attention. The ones that heard her words about surrender that isn’t weak. The ones that saw her lean into a flogger and draw her lines on pain with easy bravery, and then nearly safeword on a kind of play that’s all about vulnerability. The ones that have heard her apologize more in this bed in an hour than she should in a year.
She’s just handed me the keys to something huge, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
Her sharpest edge isn’t pain or owning her needs or surrendering control.
It’s fear of being weak.
I cuddle her in closer to me, because I know the stark intimacy of this moment, even if she won’t for a while. I know there’s no rush. She’s mine now, and I’m not letting her go. Not until we unlock the cage she’s just let me glimpse.
I stroke her from shoulder to hip, loving the curves of her. “We can stay here as long as you want. More food? Nap? Wild, crazy sex?”
She grins at me. “Why do I think you’re not serious about that last one?”
I swat her ass again, just because I can. “Topping from the bottom already?”
She sticks out her tongue. “Am not. You brought it up.”
I did and she’s right and while we’d clearly both be pretty damn happy if I took her up on the easy invitation she’s exuding, I know better. We need to have the lines clear and straight and true between us before we blur them like that, or we aren’t going to get to the edges she needs.
The ones I can smell.
She traces a finger over my tats, as if she’s reading the writing on my wall as easily as I read hers. “I’m actually coming back here tonight.”
That wasn’t what I expected to hear. I pull up the club schedule in my mental calendar, wondering what the heck she’s coming back for—and roll my eyes when I find the answer. “Charades night?”
She grins. “Yup. Ari invited me ages ago.”
T
hat’s interesting. Charades might sound mellow, but it’s generally not an event where non-members get invited, even really easygoing, accepting ones. I might have the best nose in the business, but Ari’s not far behind. I’m not the only one who smelled this sub on her way.
I tug Scorpio into my chest. If I’m suddenly attending charades night, I need some sleep first. “Nap. Food. Then you can go home and put on something sexy to wear while you sit in my lap tonight.”
I can feel her eyebrows winging up. “I’m not playing charades from your lap.”
I laugh, and I can feel it vibrating both of us. “Want to bet on that?”
She doesn’t answer. I grin. Smart sub.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Scorpio
“Settle down, people.”
I haven’t moved since Ari plunked me down on a stool at the bar beside Marla and told me to stay there, but her clarion command has the rest of the crowd finding a perch and mostly getting quiet. I know about half the people in the lounge, and the other half seem to know me. But I’m acutely aware I’m the newbie in the room. Nobody’s said a thing—but it’s obvious in the way they touch each other, know each other, crack up laughing with nothing more than a wink or a growl.
I see Harlan sliding in from the dungeon and let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. He leans against the door and looks me up and down, and that fast, my skin remembers what it is to be touched by him.
Marla chuckles quietly beside me. “Ooh, you picked a good one for your first ride.”
I’ve sat in this lounge and heard that kind of teasing for years now—but this is the first time it’s personal. “I think he mostly chose me.”
That gets another laugh, and then we’re all turning our focus to the woman running the show. Ari’s dressed in a red silk teddy, tight black latex leggings, and enough personal charm to run the known world without even having to work hard.
She winks at me, and I feel pretty damn happy to be part of that world.
“Okay, people. Basic charades rules, and if you don’t know what those are, someone will be happy to spank you if you goof up. It’s musical tonight—song titles and lyrics, and some of you are probably old enough that you’re going to hate me by the end of the night. No serious scening while we play, and the winning team gets to name the song the losing team has to dance to.”
