Re/Paired

by Michele Zurlo

  Katrina licked her lips. The rapidity of her breathing had more to do with the things he wanted her to say than the things he was doing to her. When she at last forced it out, she could barely hear what she said. “My cunt is wet, Master.”

  “Is your cunt wet for me?”

  More often than you could possibly know. “Yes, Master.”

  He increased the pressure, which she found amazing. She was sure her nipples were flattened by now. “Say it, slave.”

  “My cunt is wet for you, Master.”

  He eased the pressure until she was free, and she sighed. Some of her energy drained away, yet a new sense of liquidity and acquiescence suffused her limbs. She thought he might explore her pussy next, but he turned her around with a gentle tug on her hip.

  She faced him, and heat crept up her neck. For some reason, she could take his attention when she wasn’t looking at him, but facing him was different. Looking at him forced her to remember that she’d fantasized about this man for years, and he’d never once indicated reciprocal feelings. Even all those years ago when he’d kissed her, she’d been stunned to her toes, but he had only looked amused.

  He drew his fingertips along her cheeks, and then he feathered them into her hair at her temples. The firm set of his lips softened, as did the steel in his eyes. That small evidence of affection did pleasant things to her stomach. “Last chance to back out. Once we start this, it’s not going to be easy to stop.”

  She didn’t want an escape, not after all she’d gone through for this chance. “I’ve been naked for the past hour, Master. We’ve already begun.”

  He closed his eyes. That pleasant feeling turned a little cold. He’d better not be having second thoughts. If he walked out her door, she didn’t know if she would recover.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She half snorted and half laughed at his admission. “Yes, you do. You want to tie me up too. You get off on it.”

  His answering laugh contained no mirth. Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m a bastard, Kat. I’ll ask for everything from you, but I won’t give much in return. I want you to understand that I’ll never be the kind of man you deserve to have. Eyes wide open. You can’t change me.”

  Though he hadn’t instructed her to move, she couldn’t resist cupping his face in her hands. He seemed so lost and vulnerable. It tugged at her heart and brought out her need to provide comfort, to salve the wounds with her embrace, her kisses, and her submission. She’d caught glimpses of this side of him, of his deep unhappiness, and she knew where it originated. He was a better man than he gave himself credit for being.

  “I don’t want to change you.”

  He slid his hands back and tightened them in her hair. At the same time, he captured her lips in a punishing kiss, mashing his mouth against hers. He stabbed his tongue inside, and she was lost. This wasn’t a kiss in which she could participate. He filled her senses, mastering her, turning her into a receptacle for his harsh affection. With a heartfelt moan, she softened into him, accepting what he needed to give.

  She liked this far more than she’d thought she would. Now she knew she wasn’t doing this just to show Keith she could be the woman he wanted. Submission was in her heart where he was concerned. She liked his roughness, and she looked forward to learning all the ways he would introduce her to more wicked and wanton activities.

  Abruptly he broke the kiss and stepped back. She teetered to maintain her balance, groping for the counter to aid her attempt. He steadied her with a quick hand on her rib cage. The heat of his palm left an indelible print on her skin, a promise that warmed her inside and out.

  “Hands and knees. Crawl to the chair across from the sofa.”

  Katrina had never crawled in her life. Even as a child, she’d learned to walk first. Though he’d warned her, she still found his command shocking. Lowering to her knees, she realized exactly how undignified this would appear.

  She wondered if he liked the power inherent in making her do something unseemly, or if he just liked the unobstructed view of her pussy. Either way, the bit of submission he’d coaxed from her with that kiss hadn’t subsided. She felt like she belonged to him, and that acceptance overrode her reservations. Acutely aware of his gaze on her, she sank to all fours and crawled to the chair.

  “Stand up.”

  Facing the empty chair, she stood.

  “Hands behind your neck. Link your fingers together.”

  He paused near her. She felt the magnetism of his proximity and swayed back in response. He halted her movement with a hand on her back. Wordlessly he adjusted her posture, pushing at her shoulders and pulling her elbows until they were at right angles to her head. Then, with the toe of his shoe on her instep, he nudged her feet apart. Moisture rushed to her pussy as she complied.

  The position exposed her like nothing else. With her breasts thrust forward and her legs spread wide, she could think of nothing but belonging to him. At long last, she was his possession.

  “Memorize how this feels, slave. When I tell you to stand, I want you in this exact position. When it’s time to kneel, you’ll put your arms behind your neck like this, and your knees will be spread wider than your shoulders. You are allowed to hide nothing from me. This body belongs to me alone. Say it.”

  “This body belongs to you, Master.” Her voice sounded rusty, as though she hadn’t spoken in a long time. In truth, she hadn’t. The woman standing in her living room was the woman she had hidden away all these years, brought forth now with relative ease by the right man.

  He touched her skin, running his palms over every inch from her ankles to her neck. The caress made her acutely conscious of the wetness soaking the insides of her thighs, the only place he neglected to touch.

  When he rounded her body to stand in front of her, he ended his forays by washing his hands over her face. The experience was different from anything that had come before. There was nothing tentative or reverent in his demeanor. His expression and his rough caress were strictly proprietary.

  “Keep your eyes open.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d closed them. She popped them open to find him regarding her fiercely. For the first time, she recognized his fear. He wanted her to enjoy this, and he was afraid she wouldn’t. She’d always known that being dominant was an integral part of who he was. She’d never known how much of his soul he showed with that stoic mask, just as she’d never understood how much of himself he’d hidden from them all.

  “Yes, Master.”

  He disappeared from her field of vision. A thunk sounded on her oak coffee table. Though she didn’t dare turn around to look, she guessed that he’d retrieved the bag she’d noticed next to the stairs earlier. Rummaging sounds set her nerves on edge. She knew he would want to engage in impact play, but she didn’t think he would leap right in and use a crop on a novice. The waiting made her short of breath, as if she’d just finished a punishing workout on her elliptical.

  When he again stood in front of her, he held a small chain that terminated in modified tweezers. Rubber covered the ends. He dipped his head and sucked her left nipple into his mouth. Pain from his sudden, violent onslaught mingled with the inferno of his mouth. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and she cried out. It took all her strength not to pull away.

  After a few moments, the sensation morphed, as it had before, and bloomed. Her cry turned to a moan, and she thrust her breast closer in offering. A sharp crack rent the air, and a hot sting on her backside brought her out of the cloud of ecstasy that had enveloped her mind. He’d smacked her ass. Not hard, just loud enough to get her attention.

  “Don’t move, slave. Breathe through it. Maintain control. I guarantee you won’t like the lessons on controlling your responses.” His hot breath brushed against her wet flesh.

  “I’m sorry, Master.” Not too sorry, though. She heard the pleasure in his voice. He liked her reaction, even if he didn’t approve of the way she expressed her enjoyment.
She was also hyperaware of the warmth spreading through the skin on her ass.

  He pinched her nipple and pulled it until she gasped. Then he slid the tweezer around it. Nipple clamps. She’d heard of them, but she’d never seen them. She hadn’t thought they’d look or feel so benign. As he adjusted a screw and the thing squeezed her tender flesh, she adjusted her opinion.

  She opened her mouth with the intention of telling him that it hurt, but he beat her to the punch. “Breathe. You can take it.”

  It had worked before, so she concentrated on inhaling and exhaling. Simple steps, but it required her full concentration, especially when he subjected her right nipple to the same torture. When he finished, he stepped back.

  She looked down to check out his handiwork, and what she saw definitely made her pause. Her nipples were distended and engorged. They tingled and throbbed. The clamps cut into her flesh, but the pain was receding. Or she was just getting used to the sensation.

  Lust darkened his eyes, and his gaze moved over her body, stopping again and again at her breasts. She thought he might close the short distance between their bodies, drag her to him for a ravaging kiss, but he took a step back and sank into her armchair. She stood before him, panting with desire and fighting the urge to rip his clothes off.

  “Straddle me.” His voice came out strong and steady, almost fierce.

  Katrina did as she was told, but she didn’t get her hopes up. The smooth fabric of his pants skimmed against the sensitive flesh on the insides of her knees and her inner thighs as she positioned herself on top of his fully clothed body.

  Beginning at her bent knees, he slid his hands up her thighs. He altered his angle when he made it to her hips, and he gripped her ass briefly before continuing up her body. Though she enjoyed the sensations evoked by his touch, she watched him. She watched how the steel in his eyes softened as he took in the details of her body seated on his lap. For the first time, she saw flickers of peace and hope replace the perpetual remoteness and the pain he hid from everyone.

  She gasped when his thumbs came into contact with her nipples. Fire flared and singed a path to her core. Molten cream wet her pussy, and she smelled her arousal. Keith’s nostrils flared, and that fragile bit of vulnerability disappeared, supplanted by satisfaction.

  “Nice. Very responsive. Master likes when his slave hides nothing.” He winced at something. It was a slight movement, something she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching him so intently.

  “What else do you like, Master?” She knew the protocol for the third-person formal-communication pattern he was attempting, but she felt it put artificial distance between them, so she opted not to follow that lead. Plus, she was pretty sure Keith didn’t want things that way either. If she let him set that tone now, they’d never get away from it. Though it wasn’t the most submissive thought or reaction, she didn’t temper it or pretend she didn’t know what she was refusing. She would give him her submission, yes, but not at the price of emotional distance.

  He lifted his gaze and studied her for a full minute. The whole time, he moved the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. Finally he dropped his hands and gripped her hips firmly. “I want to see you come. Touch that pretty pussy for me.”

  Given his lack of nakedness, she’d expected something like this. Only she’d hoped he would do the honors. Masturbation wasn’t something she’d ever tried with an audience. She debated asking him to finger her, but then she reasoned that he’d refuse. This was a test of her obedience. He wanted to know that she could follow his directions. Questioning them wouldn’t go over well tonight.

  She started with her breasts, running her hands up her rib cage to barely cup them. She had a little less than a handful, and she wasn’t about to call his attention to her lack by proving she could barely fill her own hands. He’d already figured out she couldn’t fill his.

  Lifting them jiggled the clamps a bit. Without touching them directly—that area seemed to belong strictly to Keith—she experimented with the way the movement sent a bit of pain through her system. There was definitely a fine line between pain and pleasure. The heated expression on Keith’s face tipped the scales toward pleasure.

  Then he reached forward and tugged the chain linking the clamps together. For a second as the sharpness knifed through her system, she forgot how to breathe. Tears wet her eyes, but she fought them. She was afraid he’d change his mind if she cried. She grappled for control and won.

  “Don’t stop.”

  Until he spoke up, she hadn’t been aware she’d frozen in place. She met his gaze, noted the cocky tilt to his lips, and slid one hand between her legs. A few tears, shed or unshed, wouldn’t be enough to end the fun. As long as she didn’t use her safe word, he wouldn’t halt the scene.

  Her pussy was sopping wet. She slid her fingers easily between her labia to find her clit. Keith’s hands tightened on her hips, so she used her free hand to open her lips a little more. He wanted her to hide nothing, and so she exposed herself that way.

  With a groan, he took over, pulling her wide open. The move decreased the sensitivity in her clit, so she deserted the little nub. She leaned back, bracing one hand on his knee behind her, and worked two of her fingers into her opening. Abandoning any kind of seductive intent, she threw her head back, closed her eyes, and fucked herself hard and fast.

  That sweet tension built inside. She felt his touch on her clit and on her breasts. Seconds before the wave crashed over her, he loosened the clamps on her nipples. The heated pain of them being put on had nothing on the fire that rocked her when he removed them. She cried out, and the orgasm ricocheted through her body. Pins and needles poked at her toes, fingers, and her breasts, and her vision grayed out for a moment.

  When the sensory overload lessened and she could once again feel her extremities, she found her head on his shoulder and his arms around her. Keith feathered caresses at the base of her spine. His clean, masculine scent filled her consciousness. She took a deep breath, basking in it. She’d always loved the way he smelled.

  Her small movement must have cued him to her returned consciousness. He tilted her head back and kissed her, his lips gliding soothingly over hers. “That was a wonderful effort, slave, but we’re just getting started. Sit up.”

  Pushing against his chest, she struggled to right herself. Because he’d pulled her closer to his torso, she felt rocklike evidence of his arousal beneath the juncture of her thighs. She reached for his belt, but he clamped his hand over hers before she could loosen it.

  “Never undress your Master without his permission.”

  In all the times she’d reached for a man’s belt, not once had she met with resistance. She froze in place, stunned that he would deny access. Then she recovered her wits. “Master, may I undress you?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, my sweet slave.”

  She struggled to hide her disappointment. Here she was, naked on the lap of the man of her dreams, and he’d really only taken things to second base. She’d masturbated in front of him, but he hadn’t participated. Doubts plagued her. What if he was doing this to prove a point, not because he actually wanted to train her?

  “Don’t do that.” He gripped her arms loosely and ran a rough caress up and down them. “Don’t hide your feelings from me.”

  “I’m sorry, Master.” Those reservations wouldn’t subside. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

  He grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She decided to be blunt. “I don’t want you doing this because you feel obligated. If you don’t want me, then I wish you’d just tell me.”

  By way of responding, he took her hand and put it on his cock. The hard length stirred, throbbing through the layers of fabric separating their skin. “I want you. I will have you, but I refuse to rush things. We do this on my schedule. I’m in charge, remember?”

  She flexed her fingers in anticipation, involuntarily squeezing his cock. He closed his eyes for a
moment. When he opened them again, he removed her hand and set it on her thigh. Their eyes met, and she realized just how close he was to throwing her to the floor and fucking her senseless. She marveled at how quickly he vacillated between seeming to have no passion and appearing to be barely in control.

  “Crawl to the bedroom. Bow your back to lift your ass high. Hide nothing that belongs to me.”

  Scrambling from his lap, she tried to land on the floor with as much grace as she could manage, but on her best day, she wasn’t all that graceful. Add the semidegrading nature of the position into the situation, and she wasn’t sure she could even manage sexy.

  KEITH KEPT HIS gaze on Kat’s naked ass. He’d made women crawl before, but his goal had always been to subjugate them. While his original intention with Kat had been the same, the move had backfired. One glimpse of her sculpted little ass and those glistening nether lips and he’d been tempted to jump on her and rut like a tiger in heat.

  Before he caught up to her in the hall, he snagged his bag of tricks from where he’d stashed it next to the front door. If she had been a little more used to him, he would have extracted a crop from it and peppered her ass and cunt with taps and pokes as she crawled.

  He shouldn’t be here with her, not like this. Screw the promise he’d made all those years ago to Malcolm to keep his hands off Katrina. Keith knew full well why he had no business touching her the way he’d only ever dreamed about. It’s just training, he reminded himself. He could justify training her. After all, this was really his one talent where women were concerned. He knew how to blow their minds with sex. It was afterward, when they wanted to do relationship-type things, that it all went to hell.

  But Kat didn’t want that. She wanted to maintain their friendship, and she wanted him to train her. They were two completely separate things. He’d just make damn sure this fantasy went on for as long as he could drag it out, and then he’d live on these blissful memories for the rest of his life. It would have to be enough, and it was far more than he deserved.