by Angel Payne
He pushed her away, gently this time. “I’m lost, dancer. Nothing’s in control.”
A rough sigh escaped him. The wind shooshed past the window. Something with a siren wailed through the streets below.
Chaos and uncertainty outside. Darkness and shadows across the room.
Yet Zoe was suddenly clearer than she’d been in days. More sane. More completely sure of being exactly where she was meant to be.
No. Not exactly.
She slid down until her knees met the carpet. Once there, she leaned forward, tucking her head against his thigh.
“Then control me.”
Now everything was right.
Or so she hoped.
Shay’s silence extended through an interminable minute. Another. In the middle of the first, he lowered a hand to her head, sifting his fingertips through her hair, inch by slow inch. He still made no other movement or sound.
Zoe waited.
She battled not to feel as if she searched for constellations in a starless sky. If the midnight of this moment extended for an hour, she’d wait. She let the promise fill her mind as she desperately, stupidly, pressed tighter to his leg. If anyone kicked in the door and burst into the room right now, they’d get quite a laugh from proud, self-sufficient Zoe Chestain, fawning at the feet of a man. She didn’t care. She belonged here. Simply being here for him. Offering him…
Everything.
The sudden tension of his hand was stunning but thrilling. When he wrapped his fingers into more of her hair then pulled, Zoe whimpered in a fusion of abrupt pain…and mounting arousal. In an instant, her mind spiraled into an ether she couldn’t explain, let alone control. It sucked the breath from her lungs, stopping her heart until it pounded in her chest, begging wildly for air.
She finally pulled in a gasp as Shay rolled his hand to the back of her head, dragging the hair he already had in his fist. He grunted hard as she cried out in full, then again when he pulled her face up against the ridge beneath his jeans zipper.
“Dios.” It was all she had time to gasp before he guided her mouth up and down the flap, the denim stretched taut from the flesh that pounded beneath. Zoe moaned, widening her jaw, letting her mind succumb to her soul’s needs for service and submission.
“Sweet baby girl.” Shay barely added volume to the gruff yet adoring utterance. “You do want this, don’t you?”
“Mmmm.” She sighed in place of a nod since his hold was still deliciously restrictive. “Yes, Sir. Oh…yessss…”
He growled in harsh approval before using his free hand to twist the button of his pants free. Zoe sighed again, inhaling the musk of his arousal and the tang of his skin while he directed her face to the top of his magnificent bulge.
“Unzip it,” he ordered. “Use only your mouth.”
She peered up, rejoicing in the molten light that shined down on her from his gaze. His eyes were the color of new chains, a perfect comparison to the bonds she yearned to form with him. Shay Bommer, in his passion and fire and domination, was rapidly ruining her for any other man. Perhaps ever.
After locking her lips around the zipper pull, she dipped her head, opening every lock of the metal teeth until nothing barred her from his cock except his BVDs. She couldn’t help licking her lips while beholding the strained fabric, already dark with an oval wet spot as evidence of his hot desire. Vaya, how she longed to set his erection free. To lick and nibble every pulsing inch of his huge erection…
“Not until you earn it, baby girl.” As usual, the man seemed to read her damn mind. She was tempted to chuck him a prissy pout in return but instinct stopped her short. She was glad she listened. She couldn’t be wasting time on a pout with Shay’s hands in her hair, yanking her to her feet then angling her for the searing assault of his savage kiss. Only after he twisted her head in six different angles, ensuring his tongue branded every corner of her mouth, did he release her so harshly, it felt like finality. But she knew better, a perception that injected new fear to her blood—which God help her, slammed like a shot of sexual heroin.
She waited, helpless and panting—and praying he’d shoot her up again.
He stared at her, his cuts and abrasions turning him into a foreboding sight, the human version of a storm deciding whether to lay waste to a village. As the village who’d just begged fate for this, Zoe couldn’t decide whether she was the universe’s biggest idiot or most lucky submissive.
He didn’t make her wait long for the answer. Scooping her hand into his, he yanked her along the window, back to the place he’d been occupying when she came in. He whirled her, making her face the black glass. A shiver rippled to her toes when he pressed behind her, flattening one huge hand against her belly while wrapping the other around the base of her neck.
“Take off your clothes,” he dictated into her ear. “But keep facing the glass.” Both of his hands dug into her flesh, emphasizing how firmly he meant the demand…as if the corrugation to his voice didn’t communicate it already.
Her sexual high had officially gotten another kick.
Her hands shook as she shed her sweater then worked the fastenings of her jeans. “Mierda,” she spat after trying to free the button a third time. She could’ve launched an inner tirade, questioning all her nervous virgin behavior, but why? She already knew why everything about this felt like the first time with Shay—the terrifying first time. His defenses were compromised. The guard on his composure? Nearly non-existent. He needed this…the untamed run of his darker, harder Dom. And though it scared the crap out of her, she was pretty sure she needed it, too. The fullness of their connection…
Her romantic pep talk was ripped short. Literally. Just as she succeeded in pushing the jeans down, a loud tear came from the bathroom. Another, then another.
Que pasó? Was he decimating the damn towels?
She didn’t receive her answer for that until she was finished stripping and stood before the glass, listening to her rickety breaths against the whir of the air conditioning, for what felt like a small eternity. The minutes were the longest of her life. Focusing on the schricks Shay made did nothing to brake her heartbeat…or lessen the strange onslaught of self-consciousness about her full nudity.
Or was it strange? Lounging naked in her own bedroom, with nobody around to watch except the Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers prints on her wall, was insanely different than standing in wait for the man who clear intended on dominating every inch of her body…who finally reentered, two long white lengths trailing from his hand.
She dug into her lower lip with her teeth. Her womb clenched. Her pussy seeped.
Caramba. He’d really ripped up the towels.
With the window doubling as a mirror, she watched him walk from the bathroom and drape his new creations on the bed: a pair of white linen ropes, formed of narrow strips that he’d torn then knotted together. Shay, still in his loose T-shirt and jeans with the open fly, looked every inch like Satan’s single-minded henchman. As he turned and draped her in a hard, evaluating stare, Zoe guessed his solitary purpose wasn’t catching up on the TV he’d missed this week. She couldn’t discern anything about his thoughts from the brutal angles of his face. That didn’t stop her lungs from shoving out her breaths in staccato bursts, or her throat from rivalling the Mojave for negative humidity numbers.
He let her squirm in the light that spilled from the bathroom before reaching around the doorway and cutting the illumination with a strangely ominous click.
They were plunged into neon-tinted shadows again.
One word emanated from the depths of Shay’s chest.
“Perfect.”
He scooped up the ropes on his way back over to her. By the time he stood directly behind her, he’d stretched the lengths between his hands, winding his wrists to pull them taut. Zoe shivered anew, though she couldn’t determine whether it was from watching his masculine move or the power of his presence, so close and heated and huge behind her.
He stepped even closer, lifting
the ropes so he could slither them down over her face, into the valley of her neck, then down over her breasts, brushing her nipples with both his thumbs, causing them to tingle with a thousand more electrons of awareness. “Ohhhh,” she moaned. “Vaya. Sí. Me vuelves loca. Quiero más…más…”
He met her request, rolling her sensitive tips between his thumbs and the towel. A combination of sadistic and soft that had her writhing and whining for him.
“Your tits are so beautiful. They love to stand at attention for me.”
She could only nod in response. His words mixed with his touch to flood straight through her body, pooling in a thick, warm cream that lined every tissue in her throbbing sex. She needed him inside her about five minutes ago—though she knew, with dreading surety, the wait for his cock had only just begun. The man hadn’t just destroyed a pair of hundred-dollar towels so he could give her a little sensual tease.
Sure enough, Shay left her breasts behind to slide the ropes lower, though he pulled them apart and let them drop after swiping her mons a single time…making sure both the lengths teased for moments at her pussy as they did.
“Oh!” she cried out. “Bastardo!”
She’d barely unleased the word than Shay pulled on her hair, jerking her head back and plunging his tongue in, punishing her with violent sweeps of his tongue. If that weren’t enough to turn her knees to flan, he finished the assault by raking his teeth along her bottom lip, stripping her mouth of any control it might’ve had on its own.
“The bastard says hold still.” He ordered it before releasing her with another sharp jerk.
“The bastard” was also quite resourceful. Though Zoe’s whole body trembled and swayed with lust, she noticed that Shay had torn holes into alternating corners of the towels, forming surprising fits for her wrists. He tucked the edges of the towels through the holes to fully encase her in bonds that were better than padded cuffs. Nevertheless, he rechecked the fit on both arms, confirming her skin had room for circulation. The brusque expertise in all his movements sent her suspicions rising about his ultimate purpose. He affirmed it by looking up, behind the scrim hiding the tops of the room blinds, to the rod that held them in place.
Ohhhh, shit.
Without speaking, he took the free end of one rope then looped it up and over the rod. Zoe’s arm rose, too. She watched her muscles flex, an involuntary reaction against this very new form of bondage for her. With Bryce, she’d always been strapped down to a piece of equipment, shackled into weak positions. When Shay finished tying off both ends of the linen lines, she gazed up…and saw a bird in flight. Even her tethers were beautiful, their white lengths painted to rainbows by the shifting lights of the fantasy land below.
Shay circled around, fitting himself between her body and the glass. His eyes were dark and unreadable, his jaw still bracketed in tension, though now the essence of that strain seemed changed. In every inch of his stance and long breath from his lungs, Zoe felt him soaking up the potency of their new positions as deeply as she. Cotton and denim next to shivers and nudity. Freedom next to bondage. Power over vulnerability. Dark dominance…utter submission.
Zoe’s eyes slid shut. “Vaya,” she whispered. Just the situation itself jolted her veins with a fresh speedball of fear. She was quivering and didn’t care. The high of his power was worth the price of her lucidity.
Shay brought his hands up to the sides of her neck by way of her hips, her waist, and her breasts. “Where are we at, baby girl?” His growl was a protective caress, modulated for her ears only. “Green light? Yellow light? Red light?”
“Completely green,” she rasped, “but only if you touch me again like that.”
He yanked her head close and bit into her lips again. “That’s not how things work with me, little bottom topper—and you know it.”
“Y-yes, Sir.” The syllables spilled out as he tunneled his hands back into her hair, streaming his fingers out to the ends, pulling hard every inch of the way. As he did, he pressed closer, his chest absorbing the rave club pounds of her heart, his legs cushioning every new shudder that claimed her. With every motion or sound she gave him, he returned the energy with another bite or recession of pain, seeming to know just when she did and didn’t need it.
It was magical as dancing.
Though the metaphor fit, Shay left no doubt about who dictated every step they made. Zoe was more than happy with that. She sagged, letting the pressure of the ropes and the strength of his body support every inch of her…and letting her senses fall farther over the side of coherency.
“My good girl,” he said, continuing the Caligula advance of his fingers, clawing them down her back and over both swells of her ass. When he scraped them back up, she hissed from the pain but swallowed back a shriek. “You take it so well, dancer. Every bite I give…every blow I deal.”
She rolled her head up, breathing him in. Smelled like Ghid had managed to help him clean up, though the unfamiliar soap didn’t totally drown the perfect pine spice of his normal scent. “Because I belong to you,” she professed. “I take it because you’re the one giving it.”
A husky groan tore from his throat as he pulled back enough to meet her stare with the potent gold power of his. “That’s damn good to hear, because I want to fill this room with the smacks I give your sweet ass.”
He soaked up the wide pop of her eyes with a look of dark, feral satisfaction before circling his body behind hers again. He stayed close, sweeping her hair to one side so his lips trailed along her nape, sending even more shivers through her body from the contact.
“Look up, baby girl,” he finally ordered into her ear, meeting her eyes through their reflection in the window. “Watch yourself. Gaze at how beautiful you are when you give yourself to my hands…transformed into your freedom.”
His words were like classic poetry. Zoe trembled and sighed again, swept in the splendor of them.
Right before he shattered them with his first spank.
“Ayyyy!”
She’d expected a brief swat. Maybe even some warm-up taps…though those did come after he rained fire through her entire backside with that initial blow. Okay, she was officially awake now. And after settling her heart rate into something do-able, she actually relaxed a little, settling herself into the pattern of the little raps he sprinkled across both her cheeks and the tops of her thighs…
Thwack.
“Mierda! Cabrón!” The smack hurt worse than before. And the brutally hard blow after that, too. Only able to react to that with a choke, Zoe slammed her eyes shut and sagged her head.
“The correct response is ‘Thank you, Sir’,” Shay directed. “And you’ll raise your head to submit it to me.”
She snapped her head up, teeth bared and glare ablaze, but taking in his face, its perfection enhanced by all the nicks, dissolved her resistance into a new puddle. He was so achingly gorgeous all the time, but never more than when he was given permission to let his Dominant run completely free. In every intense spark of his gaze and every proud angle of his posture, she witnessed what she gave to him right now…and what she had to trust he’d give her in return.
Swallowing back her anger, she instead stated with meaningful softness, “Thank you, Sir.”
He returned a nod of assertive approval—right before dealing another strict slap to her buttocks.
Ow, ow, owwwww.
“Thank you, Sir.”
Another, twice as hard. At least it felt like it.
“Th-thank you, Sir.”
Three in a row this time. She couldn’t hold back her scream or the jerk of her hips, trying to get away from him, but he held on with a grip like steel. One rigid arm circled her waist while he spanked again—smack, smack, smack—sending even more ribbons of fire across her tender globes.
“Ahhhhh!”
She had some choice nouns in her alternate vernacular that were set to be added whether he liked it or not, but they fled her mind as he abruptly switched up the intent of his touch.
Instead of pain, he took the fire he’d just wielded, instead spreading it into trails of tingling warmth. Back and forth he stroked, the swaths of his care becoming the most enticing massage she’d ever received—
Especially when he tucked his fingers inward.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The word resounded through her senses as he glided over the soaked folds that begged for him the most.
New rivers flowed up through her body as he openly bit at her shoulder. The stab extended all the way to her sex, clenching toward his fingers. Needing more of him to fill her up.
“What do you say, baby girl?”
“Ohhh…Dios…thank you, Sir.”
He pulled his fingers back out. Smacked her again with hard purpose. “And now?”
“Th-thank you, Sir.” It tumbled from her on a gasp as he drove his fingers back to her intimate core—this time, twisting one up inside her. Two. She gasped and shifted. Her body was more than ready, clenching on him as he drove up with fierce thrusts. She began to grind deeper, reveling in his invasion, until he suddenly left, returning to his rain of sharp fire over her backside.
“Again, baby girl.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
The rhythm continued, a heated tease followed by an assault of hard pain, until Zoe could barely tell the difference anymore. Shay yanked her back and forth between such extremes of sensation that her mind shut down, turning her into a being only capable of one purpose—to feel.
Through it all, she never disobeyed him. As commanded, she watched every moment through her languid lashes. The effort became easier. She no longer recognized the woman in the glass, anyway. She’d become a shameless slave, a naked offering to a dark god who catapulted her body between pleasure and pain like his private plaything.
