Agony/Ecstasy: Original Stories of Agonizing Pleasure/Exquisite Pain

by Litte, Jane

  Her fingers flexed, and she realized she wanted to hit him. Hit Vaughn, this complete stranger who made her ache, both physically and emotionally.

  Yes, she would hit him, if only to stop his goading, to wipe that smug look off his compelling face. This isn’t you, her conscience whispered.

  Caro ignored her conscience.

  Letting the broken fan clatter to the floor, she balled her right hand into a fist and drove it into his stomach. His hard, unyielding stomach.

  Pain immediately shot up her forearm, and she hissed, shaking her hand in an effort to hurry the sharp discomfort away. Taking a second to glance up at him, she noted the way his chest rose and fell, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath. She glared at him. “Happy?”

  He shook his head, not releasing his grip on the ropes. “You can hurt me without hurting yourself. Curl your fingers in, and wrap your thumb . . . Yes, just like that.” He sounded eager.

  She was surprised to find herself following his directions, but more intrigued by the way he stood before her, like a top wound too tight. He truly wants me to hit him. It didn’t seem fair, though, that he should receive pain with her feeling nothing.

  “Keep your wrist firm or you’ll break your fingers.”

  All right, so she didn’t want that, but still. “Why won’t you let me hurt?”

  “Because it doesn’t get you hot.” He paused. “Or does it?”

  Why not be honest? “Right now . . . I like my anger. It makes me tingle, feel alive.” And if she stayed angry, she could drown the shame dogging her every step.

  His eyelids drooped until long lashes cast shadows across his high cheekbones. After darting out the tip of his tongue to re-wet his bottom lip, he murmured, “Every time a woman hits me, I get that tingle. I feel alive. And hard.”

  She risked a quick glance at his groin; her thighs clenched when she saw the way his erection pushed greedily against the rough wool of his trousers. “So.” The word was breathy, too breathy, and she cleared her throat before continuing, “You want me to hit you?”

  He nodded, his brown eyes never leaving her face.

  “Where? In the stomach?” To test him, and herself, she let her fisted knuckles gently brush his hard abdomen. When he sucked in a breath but remained silent, she moved her hand upward. “Or maybe the shoulder?”

  The muscles beneath her fingers tightened.

  “No? How about . . .” Slowly, so slowly, she trailed her fist down the taut length of his torso, over one jutting hipbone, until she could press firmly against his upper thigh. “Here?”

  Every part of him trembled, but he didn’t say a word.

  Power, sensual and heady and absolutely exhilarating, coursed through her. Unable to keep a grin off her lips, she smiled at him and moved her fist up and in, placing it on the sensitive tendon below his groin. She kneaded his inner thigh with the backs of her fingers, and he gasped.

  What a delicious sound. “Now?”

  “Y—” He broke off with a groan when she punched him. She imagined the way shocks of pain would zing up and down his leg to curdle in his gut. She imagined the vulnerability of his bruised thigh and how, maybe, if she held her wrist firm, she could deliver a hard enough hit to leave him dangling in the curtain pull.

  And because the thought made her angry, she jammed her fist against the spot again.

  She heard him grit his teeth, heard the moan caught in the back of his mouth. His legs wobbled, and she watched his hands grip the cords over his head. Muscles strained against the slim sleeves of his cotton undershirt as he fought to keep his knees from buckling.

  Still, anger simmered in her chest, making her breathing choppy and uneven. “Did you like that?” she asked, unable to strike the bitterness from her tone.

  “Y-Yes,” he mumbled. His eyes had closed the moment she’d hit him. Now, those warm whiskey-brown irises focused on her, flitting from her breasts to her lips to finally settle on her eyes. “Did you?”

  No! she wanted to shout. No, she didn’t enjoy acting like an animal. Or like a man, for that matter. She didn’t appreciate the fact that she’d felt relief the moment she planted her fist in his leg—a relief from the impotent anger pounding her down tonight.

  No! she wanted to shout, because in the second she’d caused him pain, she felt her own lift and a lightness-of-being flash through her very core.

  But damned if she’d allow Thomas Vaughn, an opera company’s combat master from God knows where, to turn her into a liar.

  “Yes. Yes, I liked it.”

  “Did you—” He broke off when his voice cracked. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  She flexed her fingers, breaking their gaze to eye her wrist. “No.” A burst of pride flooded her, warmed her.

  “You can hit me again. You can hit me anytime you’d like.”

  Scowling, she lightly punched his shoulder. “I don’t like that I enjoyed hitting you.” Again, for a split second, she felt powerful and weightless as her fist connected with his body. He grunted in appreciation, catching his bottom lip between strong, straight teeth.

  “But when you hit me, you stop being angry.” He took a step forward until his arms stretched back to where he still gripped the ropes. Her heart stuttered at his nearness. “Do it again. Do it until you’re not angry anymore.”

  Caro didn’t stop to think—she simply let her hands deliver glancing blows into his torso. Every time she hit him, he moaned; every time he moaned, she grew wetter. With each punch, she inched closer, until her breasts were mashed against his chest and her fists simply pressed into his sides. She gasped as his hips thrust forward into her skirts.

  Light-headedness swept over her, enhancing the soaring emancipation she felt with each press of her body against his. “I c-can’t breathe,” she stuttered out, flattening her palms to run them over his heaving chest. Her fingers traced the grooves of each muscle, his body delighting her even through his clothing.

  His hands slithered down the ropes. “Turn around.” Deft fingers slid the buttons of her gown from their holes and dug into the lacing of her corset. She yanked her arms from the sleeves of her gown as he tugged loose her stays, then tossed the stiff garment aside when it drooped forward.

  She spun to face him, trying not to trip in the massive pool of silk at her feet. His hands dove for her waist, and her crinoline soon joined the skirts it once shaped on the floor. Toughened fingers rid her of the delicate chemisette and pantaloons, until she stood before him in nothing but stockings, garters, and low-heeled evening slippers.

  A burst of air chilled her overheated skin, and she shivered.

  “Caroline,” he murmured, blatant appreciation coloring his voice.

  “Caro,” she corrected with a mumble. She refused to acknowledge the disadvantage at which he had her, clothed modesty to stark nudity. “I—”

  But she didn’t have the chance to say anything more, because his mouth covered hers. Every hint of gentleness was gone as he crushed her to him. She reveled at the steely strength of his arms as they banded around her, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other sliding sinuously down her spine until he reached her buttocks. His fingers delved the cleft until he found her slick entrance. Without warning, he shoved two fingers into her tight channel.

  She writhed.

  “Caro,” he groaned against her mouth. “You’re so wet.”

  His fingers thrust in and out, twining together inside her with each decisive jerk of his wrist. Her sex throbbed around him; she’d never been so close to orgasm with so little effort from her partner. “Mr. Vaughn . . . Thomas . . .” She didn’t know what to call him.

  “Vaughn.”

  Their teeth scraped as he tried to get a deeper taste of her mouth, but she tore her lips from his, leaving him gasping in protest. She needed her tongue on his skin, needed a taste of his body as he repeatedly invaded hers.

  His only exposed skin was at his throat, so she sank her teeth into the tendon connecting his neck and shoulder.
She bit hard, and he groaned, holding her head in place as she laved the sting of her bite with soothing strokes of her tongue. He tasted of salt and sweat; she shuddered with want, feeling herself grow even wetter.

  Vaughn sensed her excitement and withdrew his fingers from her dripping sex. Using the hand at her nape, he pulled her back to meet his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he sucked his glistening fingers into his mouth. She watched him erotically lick his skin clean until she knew her legs wouldn’t hold her upright much longer.

  She yanked his fingers from his mouth and drew them into her own, letting the musky sweetness still lingering on them heighten her arousal. She used one hand to fumble at the waist of his trousers, wanting to see him. Taste him. Impale herself upon him.

  “I’ve got it,” he grunted, brushing her hand away and pulling his fingers from between her lips with an audible popping sound. Most of his actions were hidden in the shadows cast by the solitary sconce, but soon enough his erection slapped against her belly, heavy and burning hot against her soft skin.

  Kneeling in the lake of silk currently crushed beneath their feet, she gripped him hard in one hand, admiring the length and thickness of him. “Beautiful,” she whispered as she brought the head to her lips.

  “You like my cock?” One hand tangled in her loosened coiffure, tightening in the tangled mass to hold her in place; his other hand circled the base of his shaft.

  “Mmm.” She licked him, and here was the saltier tang she’d so desired. Swirling her tongue around the throbbing head, she moaned hungrily. Unable to even contemplate seducing him slowly at this point, she immediately bobbed forward to swallow as much of his length as possible.

  “Caro. Fuck, love, that’s the way.” He rocked his hips until the head of his cock touched her throat. “Take it all.”

  She did. Concentrating on opening to him, she coaxed him in with warm, rhythmic contractions of her throat muscles. Her clit ached to be touched, so she snaked a hand through the curls between her thighs to rub the swollen nub. Whimpers escaped her as she sucked at him, marveling at how this act, with this man, could turn her body completely liquid.

  His hand clenched in her hair, causing her to accidentally scrape his silky shaft with her teeth. He gave a yell, his only warning before hot seed shot down her throat. She drew her lips to the head of his cock, suckling hard as spurt after spurt landed on her tongue, filling her mouth with his come.

  Before he could go completely soft, he dragged her from her knees, hooking his big hands beneath her arms and hauling her against him until they were nose to nose. She worked to swallow the remnants of his seed still lacing her tongue, but he kissed her openmouthed, demanding entry. His tongue lapped at hers, certainly tasting himself there as she arched her body into his. God, she needed release, and she needed it now.

  Recognizing the insistent call of her body, he flipped their positions until it was her back against the system of curtain pulls. “Hold tight.”

  As he cupped her buttocks in both hands, keeping her aloft, she twisted the rope around her wrists as she’d seen him do earlier. The cording abraded her skin, and perhaps Caro understood what Vaughn meant about pain, at least a little bit—the sting did nothing to cool her passion; if anything, her pain was like the oil necessary to turn a bonfire into an inferno.

  The head of his cock, stiff again, teased her entrance. “Vaughn!” She’d never been reduced to this level of uninhibited wanting, never thought it possible.

  “Tell me, Caro, are you angry now?”

  “N-No.” And she wasn’t. Even the shame wasn’t there: just that precious, freeing power she’d tasted while hitting him.

  One sure thrust of his hips had him inside her, filled and stretched. She cried out, squeezing his hips between her thighs as he pounded into her sex. “Such a sweet cunt, Caro,” he ground out, closing his lips over the nipple of one bouncing breast.

  The sound of flesh slapping against wet flesh echoed in the confines of the corner, the curtains doing nothing to dampen the easily recognizable noises. Not that Caro cared whether anyone heard—all that mattered was keeping Vaughn deep inside her, because nothing, nothing, had ever felt this good.

  “A little rough?” he groaned, his tongue stroking her sensitive areola as he spoke. His fingers gripped her hips so fiercely she knew she’d bear bruises in the morning.

  She could do nothing but nod her assent, feeling her body coil in preparation for orgasm. He bit her nipple, those strong teeth of his coming down hard and sending a shock of pain straight through her belly to explode in her clitoris.

  Caro came on a keening wail, trembling, clutching the ropes with all her strength as she clenched around Vaughn. Three more thrusts, and he’d followed her over the blissful precipice. In the midst of her ecstasy, she acknowledged the tenuous connection between them, that this stranger made her believe herself whole. The feel of his second orgasm hitting the walls of her womb sent fireworks of sensation coursing over her skin in the most delightful aftershock of her life.

  When nothing but their harsh breathing filled her ears, Caro released the curtain pulls to link her arms behind his neck, allowing him to lower her to the ground. The slide down his still-clothed muscular body made her tingle, her sex contracting though his cock no longer filled her.

  For a quiet minute, she simply stood in the circle of his arms, her forehead pressed against his heaving chest. His heartbeat thudded steadily, if a little quickly, and she knew her own matched it. “Thank you.” His undershirt muffled her voice.

  “For?”

  Honesty, she reminded herself. “I don’t always like who I am, but this, with you . . . It made me forget.” A rush of tenderness had her nuzzling his chest.

  Shockingly, his arms tightened around her, turning their embrace from intimate to genuinely affectionate. “Before I became the fight choreographer here, I was a bruiser, for entertainment and for hire. The man who gave me this job found me in a pub after a fight and said something I’ll never forget.” He paused, his heart slowing beneath her cheek as she contemplated snuggling deeper into his hold. “‘Man can endure pain, but shame? Shame will break him.’”

  With a sigh, Caro extricated herself from the warmth of his strong arms. “Wise words.”

  He shrugged. “It’s the truth. If you’re ashamed, Caro, you’ll break.”

  “Is that what I did tonight? Break?”

  “No,” he murmured, his gaze warm as it met hers. “You endured.”

  As she stood there, breathing in the scents of their passion, she searched her soul for shame . . . and found none.

  Endure? “Yes.” She smiled up at him. “Yes, I did.”

  Edie Harris studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She is a professionally produced playwright, a private voice instructor, and an avid reader/ tweeter/blogger. Living and working in the Midwest, she is a member of Romance Writers of America. Stop by her website, www.edieharris.com.

  TAKEN

  REBECCA LANGE

  Myriam had not felt a man’s hands on her since her husband died. Not from hostility but lack of interest and interesting opportunity. Even after she moved in with her brother and his wife, the glancing, respectful touches and groomed reserve of her nephews left her barely able to remember the last time she felt the weight of a man’s body pressed against her. She chose not to count the randy attempts several of the older men in the village had made—a few well-placed gropes and some not so coincidental body brushes—because she had not really been tempted to anything more since Tobias’s death.

  Until now. Until this man with his bronze skin gleaming in the firelight and black eyes glowing with an almost demonic brightness. It was perverse, even cruel, this wanting to reach out and touch his long, thick hair. Would it be coarse, like a horse’s tail, or smooth, like her own dark locks? Would his muscles feel as hard as they looked? She let herself imagine, just for a moment, reaching out to touch the skin of his thigh visible between breechcloth and leggings, the
sinews there that helped him to move so quietly and gracefully. She knew his skin would taste salty, from the way the fire drew its moisture to the surface, and as her tongue reflexively ventured out past her own lips, he lifted his head, sensing, somehow, where her thoughts were at that moment. It was another one of those cues that he was different, strange even, in ways that both drew in her curiosity in and frightened away her sense.

  Something was going to happen; she could feel it gather in her throat like a cough, a thickening of the air around her, and a terrible, terrible waiting.

  Hiro knew that if he did not act now, he would not have another chance. The past days had not seemed to reassure her, and he knew her anxiety was about to surface again. She was not like most of her people. Her skin, while much lighter than his, was not that sickly pale of an unhealthy woman, but a light golden color, a perfect complement to her dark hair and eyes that changed color depending on the light—sometimes brown, sometimes gray, and, when she seemed to go away in her mind, blue like the sky right before a thunderstorm. Not small-boned or breasted, she would bear children well, and the way she tossed back the long, heavy shanks of her hair, long-ago loosed from its fastenings, told him she was experienced with a man. He knew she wanted him. At least, she wanted his body. And he had wanted her, all of her, the moment he laid eyes on her in the settlement.

  Few words might have passed between them over the past five days, but their bodies, finally, were in complete harmony. Not the melancholy wanting of the flute’s song, but rather the darker, more complex rhythm of the war drum—the steady percussion of blood seeking its destiny in either life or death. Tonight it was going to be life.

  With the echo of that drum propelling from his squat on the ground, Hiro started to draw around the fire toward her. The fineness of her skin, the slenderness of her wrists, the trembling beneath her skin all beat in his blood and his cock, and as her tumultuous gaze moved across his own rough, sweaty skin, he knew himself captivated. If the touching was as powerful as the looking, he could finally be certain of his choice to take her as his wife. And then she could finally feel safe, as well, her own blood bound to his, her security better assured with him than her own people.