by Callie Hart
“No. Never been in love.”
“But you’re…”
“I’m what?”
“You’re insanely hot! I just…I can’t…”
“Lay back on the bed, Soph.”
“What?”
“But we’re not…you just told me that you’re in love with me. I can’t—” Sophia covers her face in her hands, shaking her head from side to side. She’s not coping well at all with this new piece of information. I stand up, crack my neck, and then I push her onto her back, eliciting a strangled scream from her.
“What the fuck? You—”
“I am your master for the night, remember. It’s time for you to start doing as you’re told.”
She goes still again, staring at me—seems that’s all she’s done the past fifteen minutes, like I’m some strange, alien creature she can’t possibly comprehend—and then she lets her hands fall either side of her on the bed. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, fine. Show me.”
I head for the bureau on the other side of the room, slide open the top left drawer, and take out a pair of scissors. They’re old. Really old. They have Winchester Gun Co. engraved on the handle, and they’re really fucking sharp. Sophia’s face goes blank when she sees them. She doesn’t object, though. She doesn’t get up and make for the door. She remains where I left her on the bed, watching me cautiously.
“What are you going to do with those?” she asks, her voice flat.
“I’ll show you. We’re going to go through some rules, though, sugar. Are you going to obey them?”
“Shouldn’t I probably know what they are first?”
“No, you shouldn’t. That’s the whole point.” I’ve only played this game with three other women, and nearly every single one of them hesitated here. It’s not in a person’s nature to strike bargains or agree to things without prior knowledge of their responsibilities beforehand. However, Sophia shocks me when she doesn’t miss a beat.
“Okay, then. I’ll obey your rules.” Her voice doesn’t waver. She means what she says, that much is clear, and the effect that has on my body is insane. I’ve never been so proud in all my life.
“Good girl. Rule number one: when I tell you to do something, you do it immediately, without question. That one’s simple. Number two: don’t speak until you’re spoken to, or there will be consequences. Number three: you don’t come without my permission. Simple, right? You think you can handle that?”
“Yes. I can.”
“Okay. From here on out, we’re operating under these rules. Shall we begin?”
“Yes.” Her response is barely loud enough for me to hear, but I can see it in her eyes: she’s intrigued. I’m sure Matt-the-boring-ex never did anything even remotely off the wall; this is probably going to be a real education for my poor little Sophia. I make my way back to the bed, scissors in hand, and I climb up onto the mattress on my knees beside her. She lies still, watching the sharp, silver object in my hand with just the right amount of trepidation to tell me she’s concerned about what comes next.
I start at her right ankle, taking hold of the cuff of her jeans and then opening the scissors, sliding the lower blade beneath her clothing. Sophia sucks in a sharp breath but remains still, just like she’s meant to. There’s understanding on her face now—she knows what I’m about to do, and in truth she looks a little relieved.
The scissors cut through the denim material easily; I could probably just run them upward and slice through from her ankle to her waistband in a few short seconds, but where would be the fun in that. This is a sensory experience, after all. The sound of the scissors cutting through one inch at a time is half the fun. And Sophia feeling the cold, hard metal against her warm skin is another very big part, too. She gasps the first time I lay the flat of the lower blade against her calf. I don’t leave it there long. I don’t want the metal to heat up, and besides, too much contact will desensitize her. She’ll become used to the sensation and it won’t be shocking anymore.
When I reach the middle of her thigh, I go even slower. She’s breathing fast, not looking at the piece of metal in my hand or what I’m doing to her clothes. She watches me, her mouth slightly open, the tip of her tongue darting out to wet her lips, a slightly doped up look in her eyes, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from forsaking the scissors and tearing her damn clothes off with my teeth.
My hard on is digging into my jeans, caught up, beginning to throb like a motherfucker, but this is too delicious to stop. I will wait until the pain reaches unbearable levels before I quit my little game and rearrange so that things are a little more comfortable. Sophia tenses a little when I make the final cut through the right hand side of her jeans, right at the top, through her waistband. Folding the material away from her leg, I see her lacy black underwear for the first time and my blood starts roaring through my body, all chasing through my veins, charging in one direction: to my cock. Before I know it, I’ve reached that unbearable level of pain and I have to adjust my dick. Sophia watches me do it, looking shy yet hungry at the same time. I can’t wait to get through destroying her clothes so I can bury my tongue in her pussy. I can’t wait to taste her come all over my tongue, sweet and delicious and all mine. And I really can’t wait ‘til she’s digging her fingernails in my back, desperately trying not to make a sound, to not displease me while I fuck her so hard her whole body shakes.
I lean down and place a feather-light kiss on her exposed hipbone, warring with myself as I fight not to take things further. To kiss her lower. A little to the left. A little further down again. I know she’s feeling the same anticipation I am when she angles her hips up a few millimetres; she catches herself and freezes almost straight away, but I sit back on my heels, giving her a warning look.
“Careful, sugar. That nearly counted.”
She opens her mouth, wants to say something, but yet again she catches herself. She’s good at this game so far, but things haven’t even begun to get difficult for her yet. Not too long from now, it’s going to take everything she’s got to stay silent, and I am going to relish the moment when she breaks one of my rules. It’s going to be absolutely fucking perfect.
I cut the other leg of her jeans off her body, watching her struggle to keep still the entire time, and then I take the scissors to the flowy shirt she’s wearing. I cut down the arms, and then straight down the middle, biting back a smile every time she twitches when the cold metal makes contact with her belly, her arm, her chest.
“Get up,” I tell her. “Stand here, in front of me.”
She climbs out of the ruins of her clothes, leaving them behind on the bed, and it’s almost like she’s leaving behind the scared, frightened part of her. I gather up the material and dump it on the floor at the end of the bed, and then I sit on the edge of the mattress, surveying her in her underwear.
She doesn’t cover herself or hide. She simply stands there, waiting for my next command. She’s good at this. Perfect, in fact. “Come here,” I say, opening my legs so she can stand between them. She takes two steps forward so she’s right where I want her. There’s only a flicker of doubt in her eyes when I raise the scissors and slowly slide the blade beneath the lacy material of her panties at her left hip. The soft snip of the metal cutting through the lace is the only sound in the room. I cut the material at the other hip, too, and her panties flutter to the floor, nothing to hold them up anymore.
Now she gets antsy. She shifts from one foot to the other, pressing her thighs together, and I tut. “You want me to punish you, don’t you, sugar. You’re asking for trouble.” Again, she wants to speak but she doesn’t. She frowns at me instead, her fingers curling into fists by her sides. She’s self-conscious. God knows why, she has the most incredibly sexy body, but she is, I can tell. She wants to keep me from seeing the one part of her that no one ever sees. But I have seen her. I’ve gone down on her often enough to be on very good terms with that part of her body. I’m willing to put good money on the fact that her ex never went down
on her. Not properly. He should have made her feel comfortable with her body. She doesn’t know that her pussy is beautiful, that I could happily look at it all day long as I made her come, and she would have a fight on her hands if she tried to stop me.
I take the scissors and run the point from a couple of inches below her belly all the way up until I hit the under wiring of her bra. She knows what comes next. Her hands make fists again and this time they don’t uncurl. She looks up, away from me, eyes fixed on a point on the wall straight head. Her shoulders lift up and down rapidly, like she’s afraid I’m going to cut her. She knows I won’t, though. She’s hardly a shy woman. She’d be waling on me in a second flat if she thought I was going to do her any harm. I love that about her.
She’s still focusing on the wall when I cut through the slender strap between the cups of her bra, freeing her breasts. “Take it off, sugar,” I growl. Her eyes meet mine again as she obliges me, sliding the thin straps that I’ve left intact over her shoulders and down her arms. Completely naked, she stands in front of me like a statue, not moving, not saying anything, doing exactly as I told her to. Her obedience is remarkable, given that I know she wants to cover herself up. I place the scissors on the floor and kick them under the bed so they’re out of the way, and then I tell her what I want from her next.
“On your knees, Soph. Be a good girl now.”
She gives me a sharp look, eyes narrowed, but she only takes a moment’s pause before she’s lowering herself to her knees. I’m thinking she must be pretty pleased with the fact that her pussy isn’t at my eye level now, but little does she know that’s about to change.
“Good. Now, open your legs for me, sugar.”
“But—” She clamps her mouth shut as quickly as she’s opened it, but it’s too late, the damage has already been done.
“Oh dear...” I send her my most fucked up, smug, wicked looking grin. “Looks like someone broke a rule.”
“Oh come on, I didn’t mean to. I—”
“You did it again. And here I was, thinking you were doing so well.” I try my best not to laugh when I catch sight of the mortified expression she’s wearing; she must have been counting on the fact that she wasn’t going to break my rules, and now it looks like she’s done it twice.
She wants to defend herself, to say it wasn’t her fault, I provoked her, but she manages to stop herself from speaking this time. Crying shame, because racking up three individual punishments in under a minute would have been a record.
“You know I have to teach you a lesson now, sweetheart. I can’t let that slide. I would if I could, but…y’know…rules are rules and all. Spread your legs for me, princess and I’ll go easy on you.”
Sophia rolls her eyes and sighs, presumably resigning herself to her fate. Without another word, she does as I’ve told her, opening up for me. She doesn’t just open a little ways either. She pushes her legs out as far as she can do in this position, exposing herself to me.
“Good girl. Now lie back on your heels, so they’re still underneath you but your back is arching away from the floor.” She does as she’s told again. In this position, her breasts are close at hand for me to palm as I sink down to the floor and proceed to go down on her.
Some men like to drive fast cars. Some dudes go fishing. But this, right here, giving head to Sophia, is my favorite pastime. I know she loves it, even though she likes to think it’s embarrassing. It’s fucking hot. She’s fucking hot. I’m painfully aware of the fact that I’m fully dressed as I stroke my tongue slowly across Sophia’s clit. But this is part of her punishment. I’m not going to get naked with her now. I’m not going to fuck her either, no matter how badly my balls are aching. I’m going to tease Sophia, send wave after wave of pleasure shooting through her body. I’m going to make her sweat and writhe and moan, and when she comes it will be the best orgasm of her life. And after, when she’s sated and limbless, sleep rolling over her, I’m going to tell her that next time I’ll stop right before she climaxes if she misbehaves herself. And I will leave her like that without a second thought.
So this is what I do. Soph’s attempt to stay still and keep quiet is a valiant one, but in my head I guestimate it’s a mere four minutes before she completely loses it. She doesn’t even seem aware that she’s bucking and grinding her hips against my mouth—which incidentally drives me fucking insane. She’s so fucking beautiful. I watch the sheer bliss on her face as I continue to use my tongue to bring her closer and closer to coming, and for the first time since I was fourteen years old I nearly end up making a mess of my pants. She’s practically tearing the floorboards up with her bare hands when she finally comes.
It’s the most spectacular, amazing thing to watch. Her back arches off the floor, chest heaving, thighs clamped firmly around my head, and she screams. She screams loud enough that the guys down in the clubhouse must now either assume I’m murdering her or that we’re having ten-out-of-ten, hard core sex.
When her body stops shaking, Sophia looks up at me out of half-closed eyes and scowls. “I’m in serious trouble now, aren’t I?” she says breathlessly.
I laugh, and then I slap her thigh, which doesn’t seem to amuse her as much as it entertains me. “Oh, fuck yeah, girl. You have absolutely no idea what I get to do to you now. The only thing that will save you now is that tattoo we talked about.”
“No way! I am not getting tattooed.”
“We’ll see.” I crawl up her body, placing kisses on her hot, sweet-smelling skin. I’m practically planking over her when I reach her mouth.
“I think you should be inside me now,” she pants through our kisses.
The way she says it, the way those words sound coming from her full, biteable lips, almost makes me cave. I stay strong, though. “Sorry, sugar. You were a bad girl. Only good girls get what they want.”
I leave her there on the floor, naked and still panting.
FOURTEEN
REBEL
Cade’s not in the clubhouse. Normally after taking a girl up to my cabin for a couple of hours and then reappearing looking frustrated as fuck, I’d garner a few catcalls from the other Widow Makers, but tonight the mood is overly drunk and sombre. After Bron’s short and simple funeral, no one’s in the mood for jokes. They’re in the mood to get fucked up and fight.
Three chairs and one table have been smashed by the time I manage to make it across the clubhouse bar and up the back stairs to the handful of bedrooms we have set up there. No one lives here permanently. The Widow Makers have either chosen to live in town with their families, or they have rooms in the many outhouses that make up the compound. That’s probably why people think we’re some sort of fucking sex cult. Cade has a place above Dead Man’s Ink in town, but he won’t have gone back there tonight. Not without speaking to me first. He’ll be holed up in the one room that’s permanently reserved for him on the top floor, waiting to spill whatever bullshit lies Maria Rosa told him when I left the two of them alone.
I lay my fist against the last door on the right, not surprised when Cade opens it right away. He must have heard my boots coming down the corridor. A gift from the U.S. Marine Corp: the ability to hear a man sneaking up on you from a mile away.
Semper Fi.
My brother in arms looks absolutely exhausted. He steps back so I can enter the room, which is sparse and OCD neat. He claps me on the back, giving me a tired smile. “You look much better than you did before, man. I think you got out of there at the right time.”
“Did she say anything else?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. She did try and convince me to fuck her, though.”
“What is wrong with that woman? She gets shot and waterboarded, and in the next breath she’s trying to get you to stick your dick in her?” Cade gives me a rueful look that tells me it might have been worse than that. “Jesus. I don’t think I want to know,” I tell him.
“I’m sure you don’t. Come on. Let’s do this.” Cade knows where we have to go next. He knows w
hat has to be done next, too. Raphael Dela Vega has polluted Widow Makers ground for too long already. I won’t have him here, freaking Sophia out, causing trouble amongst the club members. They know Hector Ramirez’s right hand man is in one of the holding cells underneath the barn. It won’t be long before someone’s suggesting we chop the motherfucker’s extremities off and send them back to Ramirez in ziplock baggies.
The guy has got to go. No way are we sending him back to his employer, though. No. No fucking way is that happening. If I’m honest, I’m all for the chopping off extremities and leaving them for Ramirez to find, the same way he did with poor Bronwyn, but we don’t have time for that. Gunshots fired? A convoy of strange, unlicensed, shot-to-hell black cars burning out of town, headed straight for us? It’s a goddamn miracle that Lowell woman isn’t hammering down the gates already. There was nothing to be done about him until dark, though. With a long range scope—paranoid perhaps, but a possibility—it would have been all too easy to spot a couple of guys wrestling with a noncompliant Mexican guy in broad daylight. Now we just have to hope that if Lowell is out there and she’s got people watching us, they don’t have heat imaging or night vision. If they do, we’re gonna be fucked.
There’s a goddamn riot unfolding in the bar downstairs as Cade and me sneak out the back. Normally I’d start knocking heads together, but it’s better for everyone involved if the guys continue raising hell here instead of following us. Outside, the desert air is cold and the sky is an explosion of stars.
Cade jogs across the courtyard—there’s still blood everywhere. I should make Maria Rosa come clean up her fucking mess before I even consider setting her free—and opens the barn door, slipping inside. He holds the door open for me, and then we’re shrouded in pitch-blackness. A pale yellow flame is struck into existence, which sends long fingers of narrow shadows stretching up to the barn rafters. Cade looks like some sort of horror movie character as he holds the tarnished zippo he’s lit up to his face.
