He turned his head to look back at her and lifted one gloved finger against his mask.
She swallowed the rest of her questions and looked around her, feeling both underdressed and overdressed at the same time, if that were possible. Her combination and corset were too demure in contrast to the leather all around, and too modest in comparison to the casual nudity of the other club patrons.
The stranger took her down a side hall with doors at regular intervals. From within his coat he produced a ring laden down with keys, selected one seemingly at random, and unlocked a door on their right. “After you.”
With no light in the room, she couldn’t see well enough to know what awaited her. That made it somehow more exciting, though she knew it made her actions far more reckless. What was she doing, going into some dark, locked room with a man she hadn’t even been introduced to properly?
You’re taking control of your destiny, she reminded herself, standing just a tad straighter. With a deep breath, she strode through the door.
The second it was closed, the gas lamps lit the interior and she wished she had thought things through a bit more clearly. There were manacles on the wall! Honest to goodness manacles!
“Do you need help taking off the rest?” the stranger asked, looping the chain to her collar over a hook near the door. Tethering her.
Music box! Music box! her brain screamed, but she shoved her fear down. Something about this stranger seemed trustworthy. Perhaps it was the easy way he took control that reassured her. There hadn’t been anything particularly dangerous going on in the club. At least, not physically dangerous. Certainly a danger to her reputation. But she doubted that a masked man would spread lies about anyone. That was what the mask was for, wasn’t it? To cover up doings you didn’t want anyone else to know about?
She watched as he removed his coat, revealing perfectly normal gentleman’s clothing beneath. Permilia laughed, then instantly chastened herself. “Sorry. I was expecting something…”
“More exotic?” he asked, slowly unbuttoning his vest and shedding it.
She nodded, her mouth going dry. He was going to disrobe, right here in front of her. Until five minutes ago, she hadn’t seen a man completely naked. Now, she was about to be in a room alone with one. And he expected her to be naked, as well. She gripped the front of her corset and slowly pulled it open, letting each hook separate from its eye individually. He didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even look at her, too caught up in fastidiously undoing his shirt cuffs.
“Ahem,” she cleared her throat, and tapped her booted foot for emphasis.
“I asked if you needed help. You didn’t respond.” He seemed to concentrate his efforts on the buttons of his shirt, rather than the practically naked girl in front of him. That seemed insulting.
“Are you even interested in what I’m doing here?” she asked, letting the corset fall to the floor.
“You need an audience?” he asked, pulling his shirt off. The light and shadow sculpted dark ridges and smooth rises over his chest and abdomen. He looked like a drawing from an anatomy manual. The shape of a single, dark spade branded his hip, and two silver hoops gleamed in contrast against his brown nipples. Permilia’s knees went weak.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked, and there was a distinct note of amusement in his voice.
“Fine. Just a bit lightheaded. It happens every time I take this blasted thing off.” She kicked the corset aside, praying her face did not look as hot as she felt. “That is very interesting jewelry.”
“Thank you.” He leaned against the wall and set to work on his boots.
“Didn’t it hurt?” she asked as one of his boots fell to the floor.
He finished with the other and came to stand closer to her. So close, she had to crane her head back to look up at the green-tinted lenses of his goggles. She thought she might be able to see his eyes behind them, then realized she saw only the reflection of her own. If she wanted to, she could take a step forward and bring their bodies into contact. And she wanted to, very much, so badly that her skin fairly tingled with wanting to be touched. He leaned down, so their noses almost touched through his mask. “Of course it hurt. That was the point.”
He straightened and took the front of her combination in his hands. “I asked you to undress. That’s the second rule you’ve broken.”
“What was the first?” she asked breathlessly.
“Talking out of turn.” He ripped the fabric apart, exposing her heated skin to the chill of the room. She gasped and reached for the edges of the torn garment, but he gripped her wrists with his leather-gloved hands and forced them behind her back. Her breasts jutted forward, grazing his chest, and she couldn’t help the moan that escaped her. She’d never felt a man’s bare skin against hers, never imagined that the sensation would set off so many explosions of feeling in her body and her mind. She clenched her thighs together, hoping to ease the straining pressure between them. It only made things worse.
“You’re not a very obedient girl, are you?” He took a step forward, and Permilia took a step back. He took another, then she took another, again and again until her heels hit the wall. He raised her arms over her head, leaned his face close to her ear and said, “Remember…music box.”
As he finished speaking, the touch of something cold brushed her wrist, then an audible click made her stomach drop. He had shackled her. He had shackled her to the wall!
While she still stood, frozen with shock, he clamped the other manacle closed on her opposite wrist. She wanted to shout “Music box! Music box!” so loudly that the entire club would hear her. She wanted to be sure that he would keep his word, but at the same time, she didn’t want to bring this to an end. Completely helpless to a stranger…when she’d thought of it in the context of her wedding night, the idea had been appalling. Of course, when she’d thought of it in the context of her wedding night, it had been Wallace Sterling she’d been imagining, not a mysterious stranger with pierced nipples and a predilection for shackles.
Still, she felt some caution was in order. Ignoring his talking rule, she blurted, “I’m a virgin.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “You won’t be for much longer, so I won’t hold it against you.”
Oh God. Music box. She closed her eyes as he ripped the front of her combination further, exposing her stomach and thighs, then turned his attention to the shoulder seams and ripped them, as well. The top of the garment fluttered to her waist. With her arms held high over her head, her breasts were lifted, bare and waiting for his attention.
“Very nice,” he said, capturing one already hard nipple between his gloved fingers.
“T-thank you,” she stammered, unable to pull her gaze from the sight of his hand on her. Its twin joined it, the soft leather of his gloves teasing her until she swore she would burst out of her skin.
“Have you ever had a man touch you like this?” he asked, rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.
“I told you, I’m a virgin,” she snapped, and his hand snaked behind her to pat her bottom. He wasn’t gentle or teasing about that, and the touch of his leather-clad hand against her skin made her jump. He was warning her to be obedient.
“That just means that a man has never put his cock in you,” he stated, and there was nothing of a reprimand in his statement.
She surreptitiously pressed her bottom against the cool stone of the wall.
“I would love to taste you,” he groaned, pressing his leather-masked face between her breasts. “Another time, perhaps.”
He ran a finger down her belly, over the soft slope to her mound. “You didn’t answer my question.”
She couldn’t believe she was letting him touch her like this, talk to her like this. Maybe there was something truly defective about her, that she would let a stranger take such sinful liberties with her. “No. I’ve never…you’re the first. And I don’t even know your name.”
“You know my name, Ophelia,” he said with a chuck
le. He dipped one finger into her cleft, and she blushed at how wet she was. Certainly, nice young ladies did not become so…moist. His gloved finger brushed a spot that made her cry out, then abruptly ceased to move. She rolled her hips, her lip caught between her teeth, and he pulled his hand away. “You know my name. Say it.”
“Please,” she begged, arching her hips toward him. He responded only by kneeling and hooking yet another set of manacles around her ankles.
“Please, who?” he straightened and slowly peeled the gloves from his large hands, then placed them on her hips, his thumbs barely brushing the curls that covered her mound.
A serpent of apprehension and desire coiled in her belly, she whispered, “Please, master.”
But he did not touch her the way she wanted him to. Instead, he turned and walked to the covered table and pulled the linen sheet from it. Permilia’s eyes widened at the assortment of what looked like torture implements on the table. A leather scourge, a blindfold, clips and clamps of various sizes and materials, what appeared to be small, lead weights, and strange rods and phallic objects that left absolutely no doubt in her mind where they were meant to go. The stranger lifted one of these rods, a thick, brass contraption with a gleaming, polished globe on one end.
“You wanted to see the machines,” he began, reaching for a smooth glass and metal canister that had lain beside the globe. The canister fit easily into his palm. “This is one of them.”
She cleared her throat. “What does it do?”
He tilted his head. “I thought I made it abundantly clear that you were not to speak until spoken to.”
Her eyes flicked from the object in his hands to his disguised face. “Forgive me, Master.”
If her apology pleased him, she couldn’t tell, but he continued to fiddle with the device in his hands, snapping the canister into the handle. “It brings women to climax. I’m going to use it on you, making you come over and over again, until you beg me to fuck you.”
Chapter Four
At his words, Permilia’s body tightened. She knew what he was talking about. She’d read it so often in books she oughtn't have been reading. But they’d always called it a crisis, and ladies had them from the mere touch of a gentleman’s hand against their own or a carriage hitting a rut. If he was talking about what she thought he was talking about, he meant that he would touch her between the legs like she did late at night, and he would make her feel what she always felt at the culmination of such touching. But he wouldn’t use his hands, he would use the device he held, and he wouldn’t stop after just once.
She shivered.
“This ingenious little friend operates on a chemical reaction. The aether energy stored inside of it reacts with the brass, causing it to hum and vibrate. Now, if left unchecked, a large amount of aether would shake the whole thing apart. That is what this toggle is for,” he explained, flipping the switch on the side. “This regulates the amount of energy that is released. This is the first setting.”
Without warning, he slid the head of the device between her legs, stroking it over her cleft. It began to buzz, tickling her deliciously. Gently, he parted her with his fingers, bringing the rapidly warming brass to her clit. She gasped as darts of sensation shot through her, and she tried to pull away from the device. The shackles at her ankles inhibited her movement, and she squirmed on her tormenter, a long, pitiable moan wrenching from her throat.
“Oh, you don’t like it?” he asked, sounding truly disappointed. “Answer me.”
“No!” she gasped. Had she given the right answer? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t want him to stop, but she didn’t want him to keep going. She stood practically on her toes, her calves cramping as her body reached for something intangible.
“Perhaps you would like it more if I turned it to the next setting?” He pulled the device away and fingered the toggle.
“No! No!” she begged, not certain if she wanted him to desist entirely or continue even more mercilessly.
“No? You don’t want to come?” he asked, feigning surprise.
“No, I do!” She rocked her hips, her face burning with shame. What kind of a man enjoyed torturing a woman so?
“Then say, ‘Please make me come, Master.’”
“Please,” she moaned.
“Please what?”
“Please make me come, Master.” She was rewarded with the return of the device, pressing hard against her clit. He flipped the toggle to next setting, and the device hummed at a higher pitch. Permilia’s keening wail rose in pitch, as well, as she teetered on the brink of her climax. With bone-shaking suddenness, her hips bucked and her cunt spasmed, an arc of lightning bouncing through her veins. The manacles bit her wrists and ankles as she thrashed, the pain bringing her slowly back to awareness.
The stranger flipped the toggle down, quieting the machine but not moving it away from her throbbing flesh. “Thank you, Master.”
“Thank you, Master.” She panted, as though she’d run up a steep hill.
He braced himself against the wall with one hand high above her head, bringing his masked face close to hers. Though the green lenses of his goggles obscured his eyes, she was sure he was staring right into hers. She stared back, her chest heaving with exertion, acutely aware that he had not withdrawn the device. “Do you remember what I said I would do?”
She nodded, desire curling her belly at the memory of his words, even though she had just climaxed.
“What did I say I would do?” he asked, brushing his masked jaw against her cheek.
The closeness of his bare throat proved too much of a temptation. She craned her neck forward and ran her tongue up the column of muscle that stretched to his ear. He hissed and bent his head toward her, allowing her to bite his earlobe, run her tongue along the curve of his ear. He tossed the machine aside carelessly and brought his other hand to grasp her wrist over the manacle. His chest pressed against hers, and he ground his hips against her. Even through his trousers she could feel how hard he was, and how big. She’d known the mechanical details of coupling since she and Cecilia had sniggered about them behind the pages of a book in Cecilia’s father’s library. The male inserted his organ into the female’s organ. Medically boring. Permilia had never given any thought, however, to the dimensions of said organs. In fact, the extensive sniggering that she and Cecilia had done at art exhibitions and at sculpture gardens had lead her to believe that the male organ would be very small, perhaps the size of her thumb.
Clearly, this stranger was a freak of nature, judging by the hard length that dug into her stomach.
“I asked you a question,” he whispered, his tone full of warning.
Though she wouldn’t have been adverse to another smack on the bottom, she answered, her voice quavering. “You said you would make me come until I begged you to…fuck me.”
He chuckled, and she imagined a slow smile spreading beneath his mask. “I won’t be able to do that if your legs are chained.”
The stranger dropped to one knee and quickly unlocked the shackles at her ankles. Then, standing, he began to unfasten his trousers. “Or if I’m still dressed.”
“Dressed” was not exactly the word Permilia would have used to describe him at that moment. She thought it might be rude to stare, but she couldn’t help it. Her gaze remained riveted to his hands as he unbuttoned, then slowly parted the fabric and pushed the trousers over his hips. When he straightened, her gaze directed itself elsewhere. His erection stood proudly straight out from his body, a silver ring exiting the small slit at the tip and looping back, over the top of the head.
“Before you ask, yes, this one hurt as well.” He stroked his hand up and down the wide length a few times, and she realized that he smoothed down the thin barrier of a male shield over his flesh. “Do you think you can take me?”
Unsure of what he asked, she merely chewed her lip.
“In you?” he clarified, cupping her mound in his hand so suddenly it drove a startled gasp from her. A finger prob
ed at her entrance and slipped in. “You’re awfully tight.”
“Is that bad?” she whispered, suddenly wanting to curl up and hide away from embarrassment over this obvious defect he’d pointed out.
“Not at all.” His finger pumped into her a few times, curling as he pulled it out. Permilia’s knees went weak. It was such a strange feeling, to be touched in a place that had never been touched before. Permilia had tried, once, to touch herself in that way, but her own fear had held her back. Nothing would hold the stranger back, and that both frightened and aroused her. She would let him do anything to her, as long as he kept touching her, kept talking to her in that deep, muffled voice. She spread her thighs farther apart, her eyes drifting closed, only to fly open again when he stopped, abruptly.
“Why did you stop?” she demanded sullenly, pressing her legs tight together as though she could capture the feeling of his finger inside of her and hold it there.
He pressed one finger against his mask, where his mouth would be, and retrieved the device he’d used on her previously. “You haven’t begged yet.”
She licked her lips nervously. Was this the moment, then? She wasn’t officially deflowered, not yet, but maidenly virtue was a ship that had sailed away the moment her dress had hit the floor. Still, the gulf between what she had done and what she would do seemed vast. Did she truly want this to be her first experience with a man? Shackled to a wall in some disreputable club, at the mercy of some man she would never see again?
Did she want her first experience to be with Wallace Sterling?
Just the thought of pale, boring Wallace, with his face like the underbelly of a fish who died of terminal boredom, bungling his way through their boring wedding night, made up her mind. “I am! I’m begging you! I am begging you to fuck me!”
The stranger’s eyebrow shot up over the top of his goggles. He took a moment to compose himself, staring down at the device in his hands. Slowly, he said, “Yes, well…I rather liked my imagining of things better.”
Infernal Devices (All Steamed Up) Page 2
