Those boys. She had been so empty back then, back when she’d played around with those boys. So miserable. Not the misery of sadness she felt now, but an encompassing, smothering misery that had nearly consumed her life. She didn’t want that again. She wanted Ryan. She wanted fun and trust and that closeness he forced on her that scared her and made her feel alive. She thought of crushed cranes and his empty eyes and she knew she’d ruined everything. She’d lost everything. She turned her face to the wall and let the stinging tears come.
She’d lost all the things she never even realized she had.
* * * * *
When she’d left, he’d had the urge to drink more, to really finish the self-destruction he’d started. But then his gaze had fallen on the mass of cranes. He hated those cranes for betraying him, for betraying Kat. For not living up to the magic he believed in. Even half-drunk, he realized his mistake. He realized there was only one way to save the relationship—and it wasn’t folded paper.
He gathered up every crane, one thousand in all, and stuffed them into a trash bag. It felt slightly depraved, slightly murderous, but he did it anyway. He took the bag down to the dumpster and flung it in, bringing the lid down with a bang and then set out to the club district, newly sober.
He knew she had walked and he had a pretty good idea where she would end up. The bouncers greeted him with broad smiles and when he inquired after her, gestured him inside toward the balcony. He navigated the press of bodies with a sense of dread. What would he do if he found the old Kat on the dance floor, gazing up at some asshole with a come-hither glint in her eye?
But no, that wasn’t what he found. Her gaze was destitute, bleak. He hung back a moment, feeling ashamed. He was the one who was supposed to comfort her in her loss and instead he’d completely lost control.
“Poor Kat,” he said softly. He had no words to express how he felt, the depth of his longing for her. The intensity of his desire to save their relationship. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I should have been there for you tonight. I know how much you loved him.”
“Yes, I did love him.” Her voice faltered as she reached out for him. “But I love you too.”
He clasped her close, drank in the feel and smell of her.
“I love you, Ryan. I don’t want to lose you too.”
“You won’t lose me. I’m not giving you up. No matter what. That’s what I came here to tell you.”
They walked out of the smoky, noisy club together, drawing in fresh deep breaths of clear air. He wrapped his coat around her and they made their way back home hand in hand, talking about deep and soulful things like love and loss, luck and misfortune, minds and hearts and connection. All the things they’d been too afraid to talk about before. When they got home it was after two in the morning and still they talked as they took each other’s clothes off, as he led her to bedroom.
She didn’t mention the missing cranes when her glance flitted to the empty corner and he didn’t explain what he’d done with them. He made love to her without any rope, without any collar. He held her down with his hands and his body alone and slid into her, taking on all her shuddering ecstasy and grief. He soothed her and comforted her, reveling in the perfect completion of being inside her. He felt her skin against his like a promise, soft velvet proof that he held her, he had her. She was his.
“I’m yours, I’m yours,” she sighed as he loved her.
“Yes, you are,” he whispered back. At last.
Chapter Twelve
Six Months Later
“Oh my—oh my god—” Kat threw her head back in the dim light of the lazy August morning. She pulled at the knotted rope that bound her hands together and tethered them to the headboard of Ryan’s bed. She spooned back against him, grinding her hips as he reached around to twist her nipples vigorously. “Oh— Oh— Please!”
“Shh.” Ryan chuckled against her ear and placed a hand over her mouth. “The windows are open.”
“Mmph…don’t…care…” she mumbled against his palm. “Don’t care…don’t care…”
“If you don’t quiet down,” he said in a lower voice, “I might have to punish you for it later.” Her pussy clenched on his cock, his softly spoken words settling in her pelvis with a low hum. “And I don’t think you’ll like it.”
Kat wasn’t sure about that, but she was beyond caring anyway. “Oh my god,” she squealed behind his hand as he used the other to reach between her legs and tease her clit in long torturous strokes. Each time he entered her from behind, he hit her spot and made her shudder and tense up at the sheer, singing pleasure. “Oh please, please, please never stop doing that.”
As soon as she said it, he stopped. She let out a strangled moan. “Please, Sir. I said please!”
“If you want it, control yourself. Be quieter. I’ve told you what I want.”
She swallowed another wail, let his words sink into her brain when most of her thought was centered between her thighs.
“Quiet…quiet…” he whispered. “And I’ll make you come. Eventually,” he added. “But you have to be a good little girl.”
Kat clamped her mouth shut and turned her head into the pillow. If he didn’t let her come soon, she would die. She would just literally expire. He’d been teasing her all morning, bringing her to the edge and denying her. “Please let me come,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“Hm. I don’t know. I kind of like you all frustrated like this. I think I’ll enjoy our engagement party more if I know you’re stewing in your juices, edged to within an inch of your horny little life.”
“You’re a fucking sadist,” she bit out before she could stop herself. His only answer was a self-satisfied snicker.
“Language, Ekaterina. That’s no way for my future bride to behave.”
“I’ll do anything…please…just please let me…”
“Okay.” His cool voice rose over her mindless babbling as his cock bumped closer between her legs. “Let’s bargain.”
Kat groaned. His “bargains” generally involved choosing between horrible choice number one and horrible choice number two. He pinched one nipple hard and leaned closer to her ear. She tried to concentrate through the sharp pain and the resulting flare in her aching center. In typical form, he presented her with two equally sadistic options.
“My sweet little doll. You can either go to the party today edged like this, or you can orgasm now and go to the party with welts on your bottom and a plug in your ass.”
Kat tensed and shook her head against the pillow. “You’re mean. So mean! Maybe I shouldn’t marry you after all.”
“Oh,” he laughed, twisting one hand in her hair. “You’re going to marry me. Now stop whining and decide.”
“Well…what kind of welts?”
Ryan laughed harder. “Will that make a difference? Hmm. Cane welts. That’s sure to make you fidget every time you sit down.”
Kat considered, wondering for the millionth time how she could have fallen for such a sadist—and how he managed to always keep her panting after him for more. God, she hated the cane. But the idea of not coming, of having to sit through hours of celebration and family conversation with this dissatisfied ache in her pussy was more than she could bear. She took a breath and threw her head back against him, swiveling her hips, trying to wrench her own orgasm away from him without his help. But with her hands tied she couldn’t touch her clit, couldn’t set that final avalanche in motion. He tsked and withdrew from her, holding her hips still. “Decide, naughty girl, or I’ll make the decision for you.”
“I—I want to come,” she said with a sigh.
He thrust back into her at once, hit her spot again with an accuracy that always amazed her.
“Does that feel good, baby?” he asked.
“Yes. Oh, yes!”
“I guess you really want to come by now. I bet you’re really dying to.”
She sobbed, past words, past pleading.
“I don’t want to hear a sound,�
�� he whispered as his hand snaked down her hip. “Twelve strokes if you make noise when you come. Only eight if you’re quiet as a mouse.”
Kat held her breath as his fingers again slid between her legs, slipping moisture and unbearable sensation across her clit and fanning the stuttering spark to a fire. She ignited into a long-awaited orgasm, the throbbing pleasure licking along every nerve and muscle. She held the cry of relief inside her like a secret and let her convulsing body express to her lover the intensity of her release. He came too, his deep powerful thrusts and masculine grunts only exacerbating the euphoria she felt.
But too soon he pulled away from her, a satisfied smile on his face. “Just eight then, mousie. I see my sub can be motivated by pain.”
“I can be motivated by orgasms too,” Kat grumbled. “But you don’t seem to care about that.”
“Oh, I care.” He slapped her ass lightly as he rolled off the bed and went for his implements of torture. “But sometimes I’d rather make you squirm. Down onto your tummy, Kat.”
She was squirming all right. Her insides had that funny feeling they always had when she knew he was going to hurt her. A dread and yet a longing for the pain because it came at his hands. He laid the cane beside her on the bed as she settled on her stomach. She turned her head the other way.
“Spread your legs.” His sharp voice had her parting her legs without a second thought. “All the way.”
She spread them wider. When he caned her he always tied her hand and foot. He used rope to circle her ankles and draw each leg taut toward its respective bedpost. When he was finished, she was stretched and spread wide open. Vulnerable. Trembling. And wet. God, she was still horny. Ryan’s extended edging session had left her so keyed-up that even her massive orgasm hadn’t completely assuaged the ache. As he pressed a lubed anal toy to her asshole, she found herself grinding her clit against the sheets beneath her. Her breath was coming in short, panting gasps. The plug stretched her, filling her with the familiar sensation of impalement. It was a smooth stainless plug, the one he put in her for extended wear. She thought of the party, the way her family’s celebrations tended to last long past early afternoon into nightfall. She buried her face in the covers and groaned.
Ryan ignored her, standing beside the bed and taking up the cane. “Ready?”
She let out a whimper. Ryan paused, then crossed to shut the window first. He returned and Kat braced. The first cane stroke fell across her ass like fire, a different type of fire than the conflagration of orgasm. This was fire that hurt. The second stroke fell and she cried, pleading. She always broke right away, started begging and crying. She never used the safeword though. She didn’t really need it. She’d learned by now to breathe through each blow, to subdue the rising panic that made the pain more difficult to bear. He laid each stroke in a precise lattice that she could feel on her ass cheeks. The cumulative effect was a cluster of stunning pain that made her ass feel swollen to twice its usual size.
“Oww! Please,” she cried in desperation.
“Nearly done. Two more strokes. Be brave.”
The next one was the hardest and Kat screamed, tears squeezing from her tightly shut eyes. Just one more, just one more. And then the agony of sitting and shifting on the welted tracks all through the engagement party. You get engaged to a sadist, you pay the price. Kat gazed up at her trapped fists, at the round, glittering diamond on her ring finger. In her heart, Kat knew it was a price she was only too eager to pay.
The last stroke made her whole body jerk, made her clench on the hard metal plug inside her. The aching fire penetrated, spread and then converted into the same dull throbbing that covered the rest of her bottom. She felt her muscles relax as he put the cane away and then returned to her. He knelt next to her on the bed and slid his hands up her parted thighs, then over the welts on her bottom. He licked and kissed each cheek, but she was too drained to react now.
“Not so horny anymore, little girl?”
“Just relieved it’s over.”
He chuckled softly and moved over her, straddling her back, reaching up to the rope around her wrists. Lazily he undid the knots, flipping over the ends and unraveling rope until she was untied. He leaned to push her hair away and lick the back of her neck.
“I think I might try something new today.”
Oh. Wonderful, Kat thought with equal parts curiosity and dread.
He drew the rope down over her shoulders, down her back and across her hips. His fingers began to work at it again, securing it around her waist. Her legs were still parted wide and held fast, so he had no problem reaching under her hips and pulling the tails between her legs. It finally dawned on her that he was tying her into some kind of crotch harness. She moaned as he worked a knot into the tails, positioning it on her clit and pulling the rest up and over the flange of the plug lodged in her ass. He tied it off in the back.
“Wow. I really like that. What do you think, Kat?”
She moaned into her arm.
“After you shower, before you get dressed for the party, I want you to report back to me so I can tie you up like this. Can’t have you forgetting who you belong to at your own engagement party.”
As if, Kat thought as he started to undo the ankle ties. Rope or not, he had her tied up tight.
* * * * *
Ryan watched her circulate around the party, his face composed in an affectionate, bemused expression. He had to hand it to her, she managed to move around pretty smoothly considering the cane tracks on her ass and the rope on her clit. Not to mention the plug jammed in her backside. Can’t have you forgetting who you belong to…
It had taken him too much time and effort to make her understand who she belonged to, to ever let her forget. Not that he was worried. Not anymore.
Elena swept up beside him and gave him the thirtieth hug of the day. She followed his gaze to where Kat stood in her cream-colored floral dress, gossiping with her sisters. “You know,” Elena said. “I knew this secret of yours. I knew it all along.”
He looked over at her in alarm until he realized she wasn’t referring to the secret torment he was visiting on her daughter. “Of course you knew,” he said with the teasing cheek of a soon-to-be son-in-law. “Any fortune-teller worth her salt would have seen it coming a mile away.”
“Oh, you.” She swatted him. “You joke, but I tell you I knew. When I saw you at the hospital, when she fall down the stairs and bust her silly head. I knew then. You stood there in your fancy white coat and talk about tests and stare at her charts. I knew.” Elena gave him a coquettish smile. “I knew very well.”
Ryan returned a sly grin. “Okay. Maybe. But I knew too. Before Kat did, anyway.”
“Oh, Dr. Ryan, you listen and I tell you. My daughter is sometimes a scatterhead.”
“You mean scatterbrain?”
“Head, brain. Whatever,” she said, waving her hand at him. “But you love her. This is a good thing. You see she needs something extra to be happy. She needs…how do you say it in English? A firm hand.”
Ryan choked on the olive he’d just swallowed, prompting Elena to pound him on the back. “Um…okay. I’m fine, Mama.” He said it Mama, the way the others said it. She beamed and then regarded him with a more sober expression.
“Now, you see, you are part of our family. We watch out for each other. We watch out for you. You become part of our family at the wedding, but really it is long before that. You understand?”
“Yes, I think I do understand,” Ryan said, touched by her words.
“You become my family when you try so hard to save Dmitri. Dmitri told me many times what a special and good man you are. And he was right.” Elena’s eyes welled up a little, the way they still did whenever she talked about her late husband. But she pressed on through the mist, her voice effusive as ever. “I know you try. You know none of us ever blame you, ever be mad at you. You know this. For what you did, you stay forever in my heart.”
Ryan squeezed her arm softly. He had known
that all along, but to hear it out loud silenced some part of the niggling guilt that still haunted him sometimes. “You’ve done so much for me too,” he replied in a soft voice, remembering her long-ago trip to the gift shop. Her “Yes. And Yes.”
“But this is enough emotional talk,” said Elena. “We are here to celebrate, yes? Go on. Go and be with your bride.”
Ryan was sent off with another smothering hug. He sidled up to Kat and slipped his arm around her waist, feeling for the harness. He had taken mercy on her and used his thinnest rope, almost a twine, so her secret wouldn’t be detectable. The less-bulky rope had ended up suiting his purposes. He’d made a wicked large knot out of another, scratchier natural rope, and the thinner twine made it possible to pull the knot right up against her clit. She shifted as his hand moved down over her sore ass cheeks and he saw the telltale shiver that let him know the knot was doing its job.
“How are you holding up?” he asked as he drew her out of earshot of the other party guests.
“I’m…barely surviving.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” he said with a grin. “I know I’m having a really fun time watching you suffer.”
“I think at our wedding ceremony you should have to wear weights on your balls,” she snapped back.
Ryan laughed. “Careful, or I may reconsider that orgasm I’m thinking of giving you later. You’re going to be pretty wrought-up by the time we get home. Aren’t you, doll?”
She looked up at him, the wonderfully precious look of a tormented subby.
“I can’t wait to go home with you later,” she whispered.
“Aren’t you enjoying your party?”
“I am… But there are other things I enjoy more.”
“Lucky for me.” He leaned down to kiss her, using his body as a shield to reach down and press against the knot. She moaned into his mouth. He let go, deepened the kiss and assailed her lips with all the elemental passion he felt. She went soft and loose against him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her closer.
Fortune Page 18
