She needed this. Craved it. Her fantasy had it dead-on—she was repressing the part of herself that was too powerful to be hidden away. Inside her veins it was singing, screaming for release.
Ram will give us what we need.
Aziza drew a shaky breath when he took her hand and guided her onto the stage.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he murmured in her ear as the music pulsed around them. “Changing your mind?”
“No, Sir.” She shook her head, skimming the crowd and seeing the three distinctive bouncing girls and, farther away, Greg whispering in Chiye’s ear as she watched Aziza with wide, interested eyes. “Let’s stick to the plan.”
She felt him smile against her temple. “By all means,” he purred. “Remember when I told you how I watched you? Back when I was just your silent guardian, your invisible shadow? When you wanted to try everything and I had the best seat in the house?”
“Yes,” she whispered, allowing him to guide her to the dark-wood cross. It was padded with red vinyl and fitted with leather suspension cuffs for her wrists and ankles. Beside it, a small table held items that instantly made her thighs clench and her breath leave her body in a rush. Two floggers, one leather and one rubber. A dragon tail. One of those slender, tiny, evil sticks topped with an innocent-looking heart. “Oh shit.”
His laugh was devilish. “I paid attention, Aziza. I know how much you can take. How much you need. I know what you never tried and that no one ever came close to giving you enough. We aren’t in private and you don’t belong to me so we can’t use the other toys you enjoy.” She let him raise her arms and attach her wrists to the sturdy cross, wondering what he was planning to do about her clothes as he continued. “The ones you liked to have them put inside you and turn on while you were being played. I promise you won’t need them.”
She shuddered. The front of her body was pressed against the vinyl padding and she was facing the wall on the side of the stage, turned at an angle so everyone could see what he was doing to her. The perfect angle for West to have a view of her backside from his table.
Ram hadn’t attached the ankle cuffs yet, and she felt, more than saw, him kneel behind her, unlacing and removing her boots and socks, until her feet were encased in nothing but her sheer black stockings. With the loss of her tall boots, her arms were pulled tighter by the cuffs and her heels barely touched the floor.
He rose and pressed himself against her, his fingers easily loosening the corset around her waist and dropping it near the table, then reaching for her skirt. Every action was arousing her, making her feel lightheaded. Making her heart race. “Focus on my voice, Aziza. I’m taking off your skirt now and then I’m going to cut the back of your shirt open.”
“Cut?” She was struggling to focus. “With what?”
Ram held up a gleaming single-edge knife in her line of vision and her breath jammed in her throat. She hadn’t seen that on the table.
“The show, love,” he muttered against her hair. She could smell him. Wild winds and spice. Ram. “Are you ready to give them a show?”
Like Lois Lane. The killers with a fondness for knives. The pretense. Only this didn’t feel anything like pretend. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?” he prompted in a silky tone.
She swallowed. “Yes, Sir.”
Her skirt dropped to her ankles and she stepped out of it, turning her head to see bodies pressing closer to the stage. Watching. Everyone was watching. She could feel them. Only now she was choosing it. Wanting it. Letting them all see.
It was exhilarating.
He pulled at the back of her shirt and she felt the cool slide of the blade at the top of her spine. Even over the music, she could hear the fabric rending as he sliced it away and the sound sent a shivering sensation all over her body.
“Aziza, I believe you have lost your faithful companion to young Chiye Wyn. They’ve disappeared into the dungeon…her favorite room. I’m glad. Now that one small part of you that wants to pretend to be a good girl can disappear. There’s no one here who will judge you for letting go. Will you let go for me, Aziza?”
“Yes, Sir.” The cool air hit her back as he undid her bra and spread the fabric apart, baring her skin to his gaze.
When he attached the stiff-leather ankle cuffs, Aziza moaned at the snug restraints. Yes. She needed to be held down so she didn’t float away or burst into a thousand pieces.
It dawned on her then that Ram wasn’t playing to the crowd the way he usually did. He wasn’t doing a demo or performing. He was quiet, intent. She could feel his focus on her, or she imagined she could—his arousal, his restraint…his desire to make her scream.
“Look at all that glorious bare skin. I’ve seen you naked before, Aziza.” His voice was low as he picked up the flogger, though she knew no one could hear them over the bass. “I’ve been inside you, felt the heat of your thighs as you rode me, had your lips wrapped around my cock.” He traced her spine with the soft, slender leather tails, making her shiver again. “But I have never seen anything more erotic than you bound for me. Under my control.”
She moaned, letting her neck relax until her face pressed against the cross’s small forehead rest. He hadn’t even started yet and she felt like she was going to burn up.
Burn.
“Ram,” she whispered, lifting her head as the thought occurred to her. “What if I lose control?”
“Trust me, Aziza. This is what you need.”
The first thudding lash across her upper back made her gasp, and heat began to build under her skin as he painted a pattern of slow, even strokes over her shoulders and back and the bare cheeks of her ass. She hummed with pleasure as the pattern repeated over and over, and she squirmed with enjoyment as the strokes grew heavier, landing in the same spots with uncanny precision every time.
This was what she needed. This intensity and heat. Reminding her that she was alive. Still Aziza and still alive.
There was a brief pause and then a stingy slash across her shoulders made her shout in surprise and pain. He’d switched to the fucking rubber flogger, something he obviously knew she had turned down before.
He watched you. He promised to give you more.
“Fuck,” she cried as he resumed the same pattern, the stinging strikes adding an entirely new dimension to the warmth under her skin. Aziza writhed in its thrall, her mind processing the bright pain into something darker, something hungrier, while her restrained body instinctively sought an escape it couldn’t have. “Fuck!”
More.
“Yes, Aziza.” Ram’s voice seemed distant, but his need was as clear as if he’d whispered in her ear. “We did fuck. You loved it. And I want to do it again more than I want to be taken out of exile.” He let the flogger’s tails wrap around her hip, and the cruel biting sting made her scream. “But I want this too.”
When he switched to an underhand swing to catch the tender bottom curves of her buttocks, everything pent up inside her pounded to be let out. The pain of her losses. The pressure of what she needed to be for so many people. The power. The desire that was only intensifying with every evil, heavenly stroke of the flogger. The Fireborne.
“Oh God!” she sobbed. “Please, Ram, I can’t take it. Fuck. Please.”
She had thought she’d be able to, but she couldn’t let go. Not of everything. It wasn’t safe. He had to know it wasn’t safe. “Ram, please.”
He set down the flogger and traced her back with his fingertips, his lips. The change sent waves of delicious shivers all over her body. “You can take everything I’m going to give you. This was only the warm-up. Now you’re ready for the dragon tail, my fiery Aziza. Let’s see if it can make you burn hotter.”
She was so wet. She’d never been able to get this aroused during a scene without a plug or a vibrator inside her. But this—nearly naked on a stage with Ram making her skin burn and sting, making her scream—was soaking her thong and making her all too aware of her spread-eagled position on the cross. The em
pty ache between her thighs.
The snap of the dragon tail felt like hot liquid metal dripping on her shoulders and her ass, but it was more than pain. Her vision went hazy and she squeezed her eyes shut, her chest tightening as she gasped for breath. Then the shout inside her filled her throat as she threw back her head and gave herself up to it.
Pleasure. Endorphins and lust and pain so intense it made her want to laugh until she couldn’t stop. Until she cried.
Let go.
Ram. Oh God, what was he doing to her? It was so different. She’d always found pleasure in the forbidden. In whips and handcuffs and playing for fun. This was more. Much more.
You need more. You are more.
Like flying. It felt like she was soaring so high she might never come down.
“Are you still with me, Aziza?” Ram’s voice sounded even farther away. “Stay with me. Experience it all.”
The lash of the deceptively thick, tapered whip had stopped and Ram was rubbing his lips over the tops of her shoulders, nuzzling her hair aside to kiss her neck, anchoring her and yet somehow making her fly higher. “I know what you need. I need it too. If only like this. Give me this.”
He dropped kisses down her spine, lower and lower, until he was on his knees behind her. She felt his forearms brush the insides of her thighs and then a light but distinctive thwack against her sex made her inhale sharply. The evil stick. Its little heart-shaped plastic tip left a hot imprint even through her thong. Jesus, had he gotten his powers back? How else could he aim it so accurately from behind her?
“Fuck, fuckfuckfuck,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “Son of a bitch, damn it, Ram.”
He pressed his mouth to one bare cheek of her ass and groaned. “This is all I can have. My reward. Come, Aziza. Like this. In front of everyone. Obey me and come for me.”
Ram was flicking her with the slender, evil stick, again and again, not hard enough to really mark her, just enough to make the lips of her sex heat. Her clit.
If felt like he was inside her. His fingers. His tongue. Her body was on fire but she wasn’t in flames. Just burning with the desire to obey him. To come.
She opened her eyes and shouted Ram’s name again, lust and shock in her voice as she took in the scene around her. A crowded club pulsing with brilliantly colored lights—but not her club. Not her crowd. Or…not only her crowd. The two realities seemed to be overlapping.
She hadn’t felt sick. She hadn’t seen the ripples. How had it happened? She couldn’t think.
Jinn.
She pressed her temple against the cross to see the dance floor, where bodies were wrapped around each other, moving to the music. Was this Qaf, the Jinn world? Was there a version of Underbridge there?
“Oh God.”
“Yes, sweet Aziza,” Ram muttered with raw passion rasping from his throat. “Come for me.”
They were right in front of her. Two Jinn couples were naked right in front of her. On the stage with them. Watching them as they found their own pleasure.
A woman with eyes like blue diamonds sat astride a dark-skinned man in a chair, his hands squeezing her breasts as she rode him and watched Aziza squirm.
Come, the woman mouthed.
Beside them on the floor, two men were on their knees, facing her, a ruby-eyed bald man thrusting into his lover so hard and fast his hips were a blur. Jinn. Oh God.
Come. He smiled.
Ram stopped thumping the stick and pressed his thumb hard against her clit until she cried out in ecstasy. “No rules, Aziza. No limits. Come for me.”
She came. “Ram! Yes, Ram, yes!”
Her neck arched and she saw flashes of light behind her closed lids. She was flying and surrounded by colors. So many colors. So alive.
I’m alive.
So was Aziza.
Chapter Six
What had she done?
Aziza’s legs would barely hold her as she walked down the hall toward the restrooms. Once Ram had undone her restraints and helped her gather her clothes, he’d tried to convince her to go upstairs with him. To talk to him, let him hold her, comfort her and help her come down after the heights she’d reached on the stage. It was the expected thing for him to do, and Aziza knew she needed it, but she couldn’t do it. She was dropping too hard, too fast, and he didn’t need to deal with the thoughts that were coming with the emotions. She’d hugged him quickly, told him she’d be back and escaped the stage, still in nothing but her thong.
She needed to breathe. A part of her wanted to use Mayet’s Witness to stop everything, but she didn’t think she could handle the silence. Not yet. The hum of the crowd and the beat of the music were soothing.
Underbridge was back. Her Underbridge, not the Jinn orgy palace where she’d momentarily been the starring attraction while Ram was playing her.
She passed the locker rooms, where members changed from their street clothes into their costumes, and went straight to the ladies’ bathroom, heading for the sinks. Setting her clothes down in one, she let the cool water in another run over her wrists while she looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was so pale the barely noticeable dash of freckles above her cheekbones stood out beneath her wide, dilated blue eyes.
How was she supposed to process all this? It was too much. The best play experience of her life, the release of something deep inside her that should have scared her, but didn’t. She’d seen Qaf so clearly it was as if she was there for a moment, and she still felt the heat of Ram’s fingers as he made her come.
She should have told Brandon. She was already feeling the guilt she’d known was coming for allowing herself release with Ram…and without him. More than guilt, she needed Brandon. If he’d been here with her, with them, she wouldn’t be dropping at all. She could have flown all night with his strength holding her up.
He said all she had to do was call him, but he would have stopped it. She hadn’t wanted anything to stop what happened with Ram tonight. Which didn’t make her feel any better about herself.
The bathroom door opened, and three women came in and closed the door behind themselves before Aziza could turn around. At least she wasn’t the only one in her underwear anymore.
Up close and in the brighter light of the ladies’ room, the colorful electrical tape crossing their nipples, matching red boy shorts and wholesome, open expressions made them look like identical kinky Kewpie dolls. The two brunettes beside the woman with wild, red hair actually could be twins.
The redhead started clapping when Aziza turned toward them. “Seriously. You’re brilliant. That was the hottest scene we have ever seen that luscious morsel do with anyone. For a moment we thought it was one of those dark parties and he was going to bang you right there and then—he was that mesmerized. And I can see why. I was right. You are even more of a knockout without clothes.”
“Thank you.”
“I told you we’d find you after.” The woman took a small step closer. “Must have been one hell of a session. Looked like it,” she said softly, as if not to scare Aziza off. “You’re a tad shaky, dear. I don’t think we’d be very responsible if we let you wander off without a cuddle. Really, it’s the least we can do.”
“I could use a hug,” she admitted.
The three women didn’t hesitate, wrapping their warm, mostly bare bodies around her in an affectionate embrace, as if she were an old friend.
“That’s it, dear.” The ringleader of the Kewpies rocked them all slowly back and forth. “Just let it go. No worries. We’re right here. Nothing more important than this, love. Just being here. Feeling whatever you feel.”
What Aziza felt were emotions choking her that she had to hold back. She couldn’t let them out right now. She didn’t dare.
Don’t think, remember? At least about yourself. Remember why you are here.
She gently ducked out of the comforting embrace, trying to focus. “I really needed that. I am still shaky. We talked about the cross and floggers, but I wasn’t expecting the kn
ife.”
She hadn’t been expecting any of it. But they didn’t have to know that.
“Oh now, but that was my favorite part.” The redhead chuckled. “Though he was only teasing us with it this time. Our Prince is skilled, so much so I’m tempted to request his services. I suppose that’s why they call me Blade, yeah?”
“Blade?”
She nodded. “Did we go and forget introductions again? I always think everyone knows us. I’m Blade, and this is Foreplay and Tabitha.”
Aziza smiled. “Tabitha?”
The dark-haired girl beside Blade blushed. “I haven’t found the right name yet.”
“You will,” Blade assured her kindly. “We just need to keep experimenting until you find something here you love enough to name yourself after.”
Shrugging helplessly, Tabitha said, “I love it all.”
Foreplay snickered. “Which is why I still vote for Greedy.”
The women laughed and Aziza joined them, but she felt for Tabitha. She was greedy too. “So, Blade. That’s your favorite scene? One with knives? Even after…”
Aziza let the sentence drop away as their expressions sobered, feeling bad for reminding them, but needing to know whatever they did.
“Especially after.” Blade lifted her chin defiantly. “I know enough not to play a rough scene with a stranger, and I learned years ago not to let anyone make me feel ashamed because I wanted something they couldn’t understand. People in this lifestyle always have to fight against misconceptions and prejudice. Those Yard boys who interviewed us told us Paige and Charity were asking for some Ripper to come and cut them up. Can you imagine? As if anyone would want to die that way.”
“The tall detective was nice,” Tabitha reminded her.
“The Amazon?” Blade laughed. “Yeah, she got it. Told us she understood different, and it didn’t mean our friends were to blame. She promised she would find the guy who did it, and didn’t she look like she could do it too.”
Foreplay nodded. “She did. Detective Stanton, wasn’t that her name? She wasn’t even wearing heels but she was that tall. Never seen a detective with such beautiful bone structure. She came back a few days ago, just to have a drink. I think she likes it here.”
Make Me Burn: Fireborne, Book 2 Page 11
