A Worthy Opponent

by Katee Robert

  I want Hook. It’s enough of a reason to take it.

  His free hand catches mine. “Greedy girl. You think I won’t give you exactly what you want and more?”

  “What I want is your cock.” The words burst free, a truth I’ve been actively ignoring for far too long.

  “As always, my offer stands.” His mouth brushes my bare shoulder. “Providing you’re willing to get on your knees and beg.”

  I know I’m going to get to that point. It’s inevitable. I want him inside me. I want him using his body to pound away my worries until we’re sweaty and exhausted and sated. I just plain want him. But I’m a prideful creature, and I can’t make myself beg. Not like this. Not yet.

  I shake my head slowly. “No.”

  Instead of sounding disappointed, his voice is downright delighted. “I thought as much. Don’t worry, beautiful girl. I said I’ll take care of you tonight, and I have every intention of following through on that.” He pauses, the moment filled with anticipation. I can’t help holding my breath as Hook releases my hand, though he keeps the heavy weight of his palm against my neck. He strokes his thumb down the side of my throat. “Since you can’t have my cock, I’ve arranged for several substitutes.”

  A second set of hands land lightly on my hips, calluses pressing against my over-sensitized skin. Even knowing better, I jump. A rough laugh in front of me tells me what I already suspected from the touch. Gaeton. No one has hands quite as large as his. A moment later, his breath ghosts over my stomach, and then his tongue follows. I have to fight back a flinch. I love my body, but I’m not immune to body image issues. My stomach is soft, and there are several other body parts I’d prefer his mouth on if I had a choice.

  Hook’s voice in my ear drags me back to the here and now. “Cross your wrists at the small of your back.”

  I move slowly to obey. Too slowly, because Gaeton snags my wrists and guides them to where Hook wants. He pins them in place with a single hand and Hook tsks. “Are you planning on being difficult, Tink?”

  “I’m always difficult.” My voice is breathy despite my best efforts.

  “That’s the fucking truth,” Gaeton murmurs against my stomach. He bypasses the garter belt, and his tongue dips beneath the band of my panties. Not enough touch to do more than tease with the promise of later.

  “Mmm.” Hook isn’t quite laughing at me, but he sounds like he wants to. I’ve had Doms of every flavor over the years, but he’s one of the few who doesn’t bother with the distant power thing. He’s amused and enjoying the hell out of himself already and isn’t bothering to play games. At least not games of emotional distance. He is playing games, though. “I suppose we’ll have to ensure she keeps her hands where we can see them.”

  Gaeton keeps stroking my hips and pressing lazy kisses along the line of my panties. Despite myself, I relax, letting Hook’s hand on the back of my neck support me a little as I arch my hips against Gaeton’s mouth.

  Then a third set of hands touch me. Soft palms. Long nails. Feminine.

  I freeze, but she doesn’t seem to care if I’m at ease or not. She takes my wrists from Gaeton and presses them into a padded cuff. Every move speaks of a wealth of experience as she tests the tightness to ensure it’s not uncomfortable, and then her touch disappears and reappears on my other side. A cool metal bar replaces Hook’s hand at the base of my neck. I’m left wide open, unable to move my arms.

  They shift around me, and Gaeton drags my panties down my legs. I put them on over the garter belt for exactly this reason, and Hook’s low curse is a reward in and of itself. “What a pretty picture you make.” He smooths his hands through my hair, and as the weight adjusts, I belatedly realize he’s braided it to keep it out of my face. Not that I can see while I’m wearing the blindfold, but Hook has his own reasons. He always has.

  A cool press of a blade at my sternum and the bastard cuts off my bra. I jerk back, but the woman catches me. She’s slight, but she’s strong. Between her hands on my shoulders and Gaeton’s on my hips, they keep me on my feet. “What the fuck, Hook? Do you know how expensive that was?”

  “Hold still.”

  Part of me wants to obey, but I’ve already spent too much of this scene cowed. “Fuck off.”

  I can hear his grin with his next command. “Hold her still.”

  Gaeton’s grip changes, digging into my hips even as he nuzzles my pussy. The woman must take hold of the spreader bar because I’m forced to bend back until I’m leaning against her. I get a faint whiff of amber, and suddenly I know exactly who she is. Malone. The Golden Queen.

  Holy shit, Hook has pulled out all the stops for this scene.

  I fight because I can’t seem to help myself, because every time they forcibly still me, my desire spikes higher. Through it all, I track Hook’s footsteps as he circles us. He’s stepping heavy on purpose, letting me know exactly where he is, giving me something to ground myself with when the rest of the scene is so out of my control.

  “The nipple clamps.” His voice comes from a short distance, so I know it’s not his hands that cup my breasts. It’s not his mouth that sucks my nipples to stiff peaks.

  There are three other people in the room with us. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it. I know he likes to share, but this feels like something different altogether.

  The third man fastens the nipple clamps and gives my breasts one last squeeze that’s just shy of painful. Gaeton is still teasing me, not quite licking, not giving me the contact I need. Malone has me forcibly immobile.

  I know I can stop this with a word. All of them will respect it. Ultimately, I have the power here, even if it’s only in relinquishing it entirely.

  I don’t want it to stop. I welcome the cascade of sensations as they lift me a little and someone hooks the spreader bar to what sounds like a chain overhead. I’m not quite suspended—my feet can still barely touch the ground—but it’s a precarious balance. As if to prove that truth, Gaeton and Malone release me, and I wobble. Hook catches me instantly, which tells me that he was here all along. That I was never in any danger of falling.

  The thought makes me want to laugh. It’s true. I’ve lost the ability to fall a long time ago. I have no interest in getting it back. Not even for him. Especially not for him.

  “Still with me?” He murmurs. For a second, I can almost imagine his thumbs brushing my cheekbones, but the touch is gone so quickly, I’m sure I imagine it.

  I lick my lips. “Where else would I be?”

  “Good.” Another light touch, this time his lips on mine. “You get your pain before you get your pleasure.”

  It takes my swirling mind a few precious moments to catch up to what he’s talking about, and by then his touch is gone, and he’s just a disembodied voice in the near distance. “Gaeton is going to lick your pretty pussy, but you will not come until I allow it.”

  “Orgasm deprivation. Real original.” I try to smirk, but I can’t quite manage it. It takes everything I have to keep up the attitude, but I don’t have another choice. We’ve barely begun to play, and I’m already teetering on the brink of something unforgivable.

  “Let’s see if you keep that smart mouth through what I have planned, beautiful girl.”

  I open said smart mouth to reply, but Gaeton chooses that moment to grab my thighs and drag me bodily to his mouth, lifting me a bit so my toes barely touch the ground. I’m not small, but he’s built like a brick house and his arms don’t even shake as he drags his tongue over my pussy. “Mmmm.” Gaeton rumbles out a laugh. “Hook, you give the best gifts.”

  “I’m just getting started.” Hook still sounds amused, but his voice is rougher, as if he’s just as affected by this as I am. “Begin.”

  For a second, I think he’s speaking to me, but then the first lash hits my back, and I realize he was talking to the other two. They flog me, strikes landing just so, as if they’re standing at different angles at my back. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but the sting morphs into a hot delicious burn tha
t has me writhing just as much as Gaeton’s mouth does. “Hook,” I gasp.

  “Everything they do to you is an extension of me.” He sounds directly in front of me. He must be standing at Gaeton’s back. “Gaeton’s tongue between your thighs.” The man in question groans against my skin, and then I feel the back of Hook’s hand touching my inner thigh. It takes my pleasure-pain drugged brain a moment to understand that he’s got his fingers in the other man’s hair, that he’s using his touch to guide Gaeton’s mouth, urging him up to my clit.

  I try to roll my hips, but Gaeton’s got me in too tight a grip. Hook’s laugh goes a little mean. “Everything in this room happens at my whim. That includes your orgasms. Not yet, beautiful girl.”

  The strikes against my back pick up, and I can’t hold a whimper down. It feels like my back is on fire. “Please.”

  “That’s a start.”

  Pleasure winds and winds, the pain buoying it into something beyond comprehension. My toes curl with it. Each exhale comes out more like a sob. I can’t hold my orgasm back. Fuck, I don’t want to. I’m so close, I can feel myself tipping over the edge…

  Everything stops.

  Gaeton gives my thigh a nip and carefully sets my feet back on the ground. The flogging stops as suddenly as it started. I’m left weaving on my toes, half hanging from the bar shackling my wrists. It’s not comfortable, exactly, but I’m too over sensitized to care. I gasp in a breath, but the oxygen only makes my brain and body meld into a cascade of sparks. “You fucker.”

  “There she is.” Hands unclasp the cuffs around my wrists, and then Hook’s arms are around me. I’m too out of my mind to question that I know it’s him. It simply is. He guides me over his broad thighs and carefully places my hands on the floor. The position leaves my ass in the air, and I already know what’s coming when a paddle descends and pain reverberates through me.

  “Holy shit.” This pain play is still on the light end of the spectrum, but it’s a carefully orchestrated dance Hook’s overseeing to keep me on the edge. It’s working.

  “Does it hurt, beautiful girl?”

  I try to relax into the strikes, but he’s started playing his fingers along my still-smarting back. The sensation is too much. My thoughts scatter like marbles. “Yes. Is that what you want to hear? Yes, you asshole, it hurts.”

  He squeezes my ass, right on the spot where the last strike fell. I cry out and writhe, but I can’t begin to say if it’s to get away from his touch or press closer. “I suppose that’s enough for now.”

  I frown behind the blindfold. Things feel hazy and indistinct, and I can’t quite focus. “That’s enough?”

  “Mmmm.” Another squeeze, and he trails his fingers down to cup my pussy. “Drenched. Tell me a truth, and I’ll reward you.”

  I can’t keep up with his jumps in conversation. I don’t know if I’m supposed to, but it’s impossible to stay focused with him touching me like that while my entire body is lit up with remembered pain and pleasure. “Yes?”

  His clever fingers barely brush my clit. “Did you pick your safe word with me in mind?”

  Some distant part of me demands I lie. I have every intention of following through on it, but when I open my mouth, the truth spills free. “Yes,” I breathe.

  His touch stills and I could almost swear that his hand shakes a little as he guides me carefully back to my feet. His thighs bracket me in, steadying me as much as his hands on my hips. “Scream if you must.”

  It’s the only warning I get before he releases the first nipple clamp. Blood rushes back into the denied space, and the pain bows my back and draws a whimper from my lips. Then Hook’s mouth is there, his tongue soothing and tormenting in turn. The pain barely fades when he repeats the process with my other nipple.

  “One last question before we continue.”

  Each Dom has their own style. I’ve mostly seen Hook work from a distance, have only heard the reports from the other subs he’s scened with after the fact, so I’m honestly a little surprised at how verbal he is. I probably shouldn’t be. He always had a mouth on him, same as me. I lick my lips. “Okay.”

  “How many cocks do you want tonight?”

  One sentence to strip away the last of my barriers. I open my mouth, but a whimper escapes instead of words. Hook strokes my hips, a touch that might soothe if it wasn’t so full of promise. When I don’t immediately answer, he leans in until his breath brushes my lips. “I’ll give you a hint, Tink. The number can be between zero and three.” He chuckles. “If you want more than three, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Three.” The answer bursts forth with all the grace of a belly flop. “I want three.”

  “Greedy girl.” He brushes a kiss across my lips. “Do you trust me?”

  No. Not even nearly out of my mind in the middle of a scene. “With my body.”

  The barest hesitation. “That will have to do.”

  Chapter 10

  Tink

  Several minutes later, Hook moves me to the bed to straddle a man. Gaeton. I’d recognize those thick thighs anywhere. His rumbling laugh only confirms it. “A shame you can’t see the show, Tink.”

  “Another time,” Hook says before I can speak.

  For the first time in a very long time, I don’t know what to say. It’s just as well that I don’t have to say anything. I’m not the one running this show. Hook is. And it’s his hand that brushes my thighs as he fists Gaeton’s cock, as he rolls a condom onto it, and his grip on my hip that guides me down. I know it’s Gaeton filling me almost uncomfortably full, but tonight he’s not in charge any more than the others are. His cock, his mouth, his everything is an extension of Hook’s will.

  Hook’s will includes giving me three cocks on my wedding night.

  I might love him if I didn’t hate him so much.

  I shift, trying to adjust to Gaeton’s size, and Hook’s fingers find my clit. “Relax.”

  Relax. As if that’s even remotely in the cards right now. My earlier denied orgasm teases me in time with the pad of his finger circling. I shift, but that only has Gaeton rubbing deliciously inside me. “Fuck.”

  “Such a mouth on you.” Another chuckle. “Lean forward and brace your hands on Gaeton’s chest.”

  Gaeton helps me along, pressing my hands where Hook instructs. He’s tall enough that the position has me stretched out over him. Hook smooths a hand down my spine, stopping at the small of my back.

  Feminine hands squeeze my ass, spreading me. I tense before I can stop myself. Malone’s low laugh joins Hook’s. “Are you sure this is a present to your wife, rather than us? I’m feeling rather fortunate at the moment.”

  Wife.

  The word brands me more than any action any of the people in this room could take. Nothing they do to me can match that Hook has fundamentally changed my role. That I let him.

  “Malone is eager to take your ass.” Hook’s voice is pure temptation in my ear. “Would you like to guess what color strap-on she chose for tonight?”

  Malone has a whole rainbow of strap-on dildos that she uses at her pleasure. Each has a different size, shape, or feature. The collection is just as notorious as the woman herself.

  I swallow hard. “Purple?” A nice middle-of-the-road size and shape. Nothing too fancy.

  “Close. Blue.” The next size up. He nips my earlobe, making me shiver, which sends a cascade of pleasure through me when the move vibrates Hook’s fingers and Gaeton’s cock.

  Gaeton curses. “Fuck, but your woman feels good, Hook.”

  I’ve fucked Gaeton before. He’s fun, and he’s mean, and after his last relationship went down in flames, he had just as much anger to work out as I did. As I do. It’s never been like this before. I’m a toy to be played with, and they’re all tools used by Hook for my pleasure. Both things are true, and yet I can barely wrap my mind around it.

  “Hold,” Hook murmurs. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Gaeton.

  In the end it doesn’t matter, because M
alone ensures there’s no forgetting about her. She spreads lube over me, and then the dildo is pressing against my ass. Blue isn’t anywhere close to her largest strap-on, but it’s still no joke. I whimper as she breaches my entrance and presses deeper, inch by slow inch.

  Hook stops playing with my clit. His hands seem to be everywhere. Stroking down my spine and back up again. Over my arms. Cupping my breasts briefly before repeating the cycle. Soothing me. “Relax, beautiful girl. You can take it. Don’t fight it. Just breathe.”

  My breath hisses out as Malone sinks the last inch and her narrow hips meet my ass. With Gaeton’s giant cock taking up so much space, I feel impossibly filled. I shift, but there’s no relieving the sensation. “I need …”

  “I know.” Hook’s hand lands on the back of my neck, grounding me even as he guides me up. The new position pushes the other two even deeper, and I can’t help restlessly moving against them.

  “Jameson.” I don’t mean to say his name. I really don’t. It comes out more like pleading than anything that’s crossed my lips thus far.

  “Soon, Tink.” He drags his thumb over my bottom lip. “Will you let Beast in? He’s been rather patient, don’t you think?”

  Oh. My. God.

  I nod slowly. Dazed. Needy. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good girl.” He nudges my mouth open and shifts me slightly to the side, and then Beast’s cock is there. My tongue plays over his piercings as he pushes past my lips. Deeper and deeper, until he nudges the back of my throat and breathing through my nose is something I have to concentrate on to accomplish.

  “If you need to stop for any reason, slap Gaeton’s chest.” He picks up my hand and demonstrates. “Do you understand?”