Instead of saying one, he moved into my space and cupped my shoulders. The energy humming through him seemed to seep through my skin and make everything inside me crackle with tension. “Cela.”
“I’m still here,” I said, my voice a tremble of a thing.
“So you are.”
But I couldn’t tell if he was at all happy about that fact. I glanced at his neatly made bed—dark blue striped comforter, pristine white sheets and pillows—the bed he’d fucked other women on. Women I’d heard whimper and mewl from my side of the wall. The thought made my stomach twist, and not in a good way. I closed my eyes and took in a long pull of air. What was wrong with me? Any guy I slept with would’ve screwed other girls in his bed. That’s how beds worked.
Except mine. He’d been the only one in my bed, the only one to leave the faint scent of his cologne on my sheets.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that he’d followed my line of sight to the bed. He looked back to me, and I expected him to lead me there. Instead, his lips curled at the corner. “You wear your thoughts on your face, angel.”
“I—”
He pressed his hand over my mouth. “Enough talking. I think your mouth has gotten you in enough trouble tonight.”
I stared up at him, my words clogging in my throat and my thoughts splintering.
When he was apparently convinced I wasn’t going to say anything else, he dropped his hand from my mouth and tugged at my T-shirt, yanking it over my head. I didn’t have anything sexy beneath. I’d thrown on comfortable things after getting out of the shower and coming back to help Pike with Monty. But it didn’t matter, because Foster clearly wasn’t there to linger over lingerie. He unsnapped my bra and tossed it to the side, leaving me naked from the waist up. He cupped my breast greedily and with his other hand, grabbed my hip to drag me against him. His erection was a hard promise, the straining denim of his jeans brushing my belly.
“It’s not even fair how fucking tempting you are,” he said, his thumb teasing my nipple and making everything in me arch toward him. “Tempting and too damned brave for your own good.”
He gave my nipple a firm pinch, and I gasped. “I’m sorry?”
He smiled but there was a darkness behind it. “Yeah, you may well be when all is said and done.”
His hand slid up from my breast over my collarbone, then curled around my throat, briefly applying pressure there before moving up to grip my jaw. He held me there, his cool blue eyes tracking over my face, the slope of my nose, the curve of my mouth—like he was evaluating an item before purchasing. I didn’t dare move. Then he lowered his head and dragged the tip of his tongue along the seam of my lips. I shuddered at the sensual jolt the simple move sent through my nerve endings. Automatically, I opened to him, and he nipped along my bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth and sucking gently. Every move was methodical, deliberate—like he had all the time in the world.
But I didn’t. My body was screaming already, needing something that only he could give me. I’d gone wet and achy the moment he’d grabbed me and stopped me from leaving the room the first time. Patience was not an option. I pushed up on my toes, trying to go in for a full kiss, but he immediately pulled back and hauled me against his bedroom door. The door rattled against my back, and my breath rushed out from the unexpected move.
“No, angel, that’s now how this works. You’re here for my pleasure tonight. If I want to go slow, we go slow. If I want to tie you to my bed and lick every part of you but not let you come, I’ll do that. Your only decision is whether or not you use your safe word.” He crowded me against the door, his breath hot against my ear. “You understand?”
Every errant thought in my mind seemed to fall away, everything zooming in and focusing on the man in front of me—the rumble of his voice, the night-air scent of his skin, and his firm words falling against my ear. My response came out as a whisper. “Yes, sir.”
“Very good,” he breathed, the heat of his chest brushing against my already sensitive nipples. “Though, hard and fast has its merits, too. Turn around and put your palms against the door.”
“But—”
He grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the door. “Wrong answer. Hands on the door, Cela.”
My palms landed against the wood with a smack, and Foster yanked my scrub pants and panties down and off, leaving me like some criminal preparing for a pat down. My brain was spinning, my anxiety like electrical pulses hopping along my spine. What was he going to do to me with my back turned? My imagination went on a wild ride down way too many paths. I peeked over my shoulder, needing to see what was happening, but a sharp slap to my thigh had me yelping.
“Eyes forward,” Foster said, no emotion in his voice.
I snapped my focus back to the door, fighting my knee-jerk instinct to tell him to go to hell, to grab my clothes and walk right through the door I was braced against. He’d warned me. He was trying to scare me. Or piss me off. Break me and my demand to see him this way.
Footsteps sounded on his hardwood floor. His closet door squeaked open. It took every bit of my self-control to not look back at him. A minute or two passed and then his body heat was radiating on my back, his scent filling my nose. “Raise your hands above your head.”
I did as I was told, and he grabbed one of my wrists. I glanced upward to watch him wrap smooth black leather around it. A cuff. He slipped a finger between the leather and my skin, checking how tight it was, then strung a chain into the metal loop on the outside of the cuff. Blood rushed through my ears, the white noise sound pulsing with my frantic heartbeat. Sweat dampened my neck. Foster strung the length of chain through something above the door—a black eyebolt that I hadn’t noticed before. Once he had it threaded, he hooked a matching leather cuff to my other wrist.
When he released my hand, my arms lowered a fraction, the cuffs holding me in place with only a bit of slack. I jerked at them, the metal links rattling, but there was no slipping through the cuffs. I was now chained to the goddamned wall in the bedroom of a guy I thought I knew—but maybe didn’t know at all. The feel and the sight should’ve scared me shitless. But instead of the pure fear of danger, it was like the anxiety of getting on a roller coaster for the first time—adrenaline coalescing with anticipation . . . and trust. Trust that no matter how terrifying the ride, the cart wouldn’t fly off the tracks.
But when Foster squatted down behind me and locked cuffs around my ankles—cuffs that were attached to each other with a metal bar—my this-is-just-a-thrill-ride mentality faltered. Words tumbled out of me. “You don’t have to lock me down. I promise I won’t run.”
“Not now you won’t,” he said, a wicked smile crossing his face as he looked up at me. “And this is the B in BDSM, angel. You don’t know what it does to me to see you like this—all bound and helpless.”
He rose from his crouch, gliding his hand up from my ankle over my calf and thigh, sending hot shivers twining through me. I pressed my forehead to the door as his touch moved higher.
“I like knowing that I can do this to you.” His fingers slid along my folds, revealing just how embarrassingly wet I was, before tucking inside me. I whimpered and, instinctively, I tried to clamp my thighs together—the stimulation after so much waiting almost overwhelming me. But the bar between my ankles didn’t allow me to close them even a little. “And you can’t do a damn thing about it except stay open to me and accept it.”
“Foster,” I whispered, not sure what I was asking him for.
His fingers slipped out of me, and then the length of his body was pressed up against my back. He was still half-dressed, the cool touch of the metal button on his jeans like an ice cube to my overheated skin. His left hand collared my neck, and his right hovered in front of my face, his index and middle fingers shiny with my arousal. “Taste, Cela. Taste how goddamned sexy you are.”
I clo
sed my eyes and shook my head, almost frantically. He wanted me to . . . I couldn’t. Not with him right there, watching.
He kissed the shell of my ear. “Aww, don’t be shy now, angel. You’re telling me in all those nights you’ve touched yourself, you haven’t taken a taste?”
My cheeks went fever hot. Of course I had. And I’d tasted myself on his lips after he’d gone down on me that first night. But somehow, admitting this pressed that shame button inside me, giving me that sick feeling in my stomach.
And that pissed me the hell off. Why? Why couldn’t I push past that part of myself that wanted to label everything dirty and wrong and sinful? Fighting past that instinctual response, I bent my head and sucked his fingers into my mouth, even as the flush of embarrassment burned its way over my chest, and cleaned every bit of them.
He groaned against my ear and pressed his hips harder against my backside, his erection like steel against my softness. He pulled his fingers from my mouth with a pop. “Good girl. Now I won’t have to flog you as hard.”
My eyes snapped open at that. “Flog?”
He ran a hand along my hair in a deceptively gentle gesture. “Yes, angel. Still want to see this part of me?”
I bit my lip. Did I? My body was giving a big Hell, yes! But anxiety was clawing at me. Would it hurt? Would I hate it? God, what if I liked it? That possibility seemed even more disturbing. But I’d fallen too far down the rabbit hole to back off now. “Why do you have to hit me?”
He ran a finger along the notches of my spine, slowly, reverently. “Because it turns me on.”
No other explanation. In this world of his, that was enough. I swallowed hard.
He pinched my hip and I gasped. “And maybe it’ll turn you on, too. Or not. Only one way to find out.”
Before I could even process the dart of pain from the pinch, I heard him walk away again. So this was it. He was going to flog me—whatever that meant. I wasn’t even sure. God, why hadn’t I googled this stuff before goading him into showing me?
Because you were too afraid to look, my mind whispered.
Something soft and a little ticklish brushed over my shoulders. I glanced to the side just in time to see the strips of leather slide over my skin. Goose bumps followed in its wake. “What is that?”
Foster trailed the tails along my shoulder blades, the touch oh-so soft. “It’s a flogger, angel. Strips of elk hide. Worried?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled. “Good, that will make it better.”
Before I could ask another question, delay him further, I heard the swoosh of the flogger cut through the air. The tails of it striped right across my back on the diagonal. I reared up and cried out in surprise, the chains of my cuffs clinking. But instead of the sharp stinging sensation I’d been bracing for, the blow hit like a heavy thud against my back—impactful and breath stealing, but not painful.
I sucked in air, gasping for it, but another hit came down in the opposite direction. The tails wrapped around my hip a bit, leaving little stings where the end of the leather strips landed. And my back went warm and tingly. Foster paused. “Still with me?”
My fists flexed, and I swayed a bit in the cuffs, but the tingling sensation was oddly pleasant—almost calming. “Yes, sir.”
“Beautiful,” he said, his pleased tone doing more to me than it should. “You should see how pretty your skin is as it heats.”
I squirmed a bit, trying to lift my feet, a restlessness growing in me, but the bar restricted my movement too much. I needed . . . I don’t know, something.
“Easy, angel,” he said softly. “I’ll give you more, but if you keep trying to move, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
More? He thought I was asking for more? But even as I thought the question, some part of me knew he was right. My body was humming for more contact, for that rush of tingling that seemed to spread from my back along all my nerve endings.
And I didn’t have to wait long for it. Foster landed blows along my ass this time and on the backs of my thighs. And there was no pause this time. As if he were making figure eights in the air, he rained the leather down on me in a very precise but increasingly intense pattern. The soft thudding from the first few blows morphed into something edgier and more intense. Pain . . . but pain mixed with this electric feeling that had my legs quivering, and my moans turning into some sound I didn’t recognize—desperate, wanton need.
Sweat dripped down my neck, sliding down between my breasts. I was acutely aware of every sensation. The smack of the flogger, the sound of my ragged breathing, the scent of arousal, and Foster’s presence behind me. Even without seeing him, I could feel him there—his intensity a palpable thing. He was in some other zone, and I was quickly tumbling into it with him. Another hit, and my thoughts went hazy. I pressed my damp forehead against the door. “Please, please, please . . .”
I didn’t know if I spoke the words aloud or not, but no other hit came. The flogger clattered against the wood floor. Vaguely, I was aware of the sound of a zipper, rushed movements. Then my ankles were slipping free of the restraints.
Foster adjusted something above me, and then he was turning me, my hands still cuffed but the chains going with me. When I’d made the one-eighty, I managed to open my eyes. Foster’s blue-eyed gaze collided with mine—the ferocity making my stomach flip.
I opened my mouth to say something, though I wasn’t sure what, but he cut me off instantly with a kiss—his tongue and lips clashing with mine as he wrapped a hand behind each knee and lifted me off my feet. My back hit the door, and he pushed deep inside me, opening me wide and wrapping my legs around his hips. I gasped into the kiss, the feel of him inside me mixing in with the snap of pain from my sensitive back hitting the wood. My head spun, and my sex clenched around him. Everything inside me hummed like live wire, waiting for one more spark of pleasure to burn me to ashes.
Foster’s fingers dug into the backs of my thighs, and he thrust into me harder than he’d ever done before. The door rattled behind me, and my fingers clawed for him, but my hands were still captured above me. The rock of his hips pushed him along my clit with every forward motion, driving me higher and higher until I was writhing against the door like some inhuman thing. I broke from the kiss for air. “Foster.”
His jaw was clenched, his pale eyes wild, and his dark hair clung to his temples, but he didn’t stop fucking me. “Come for me, Cela.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist, holding me in place, then moved his other hand between us. He rubbed my clit, the rough pads of his fingers firm over slippery flesh, and everything went white behind my eyes. I tilted my head back against the door and cried out as my orgasm rocketed through me. My back was banging against the door, the power of Foster’s thrust almost knocking me right through it, and I rode the tide of pleasure as he groaned long and loud and spilled inside me.
When we were both back on Earth, I sagged in the bindings and let my head lower to his shoulder. He whispered soft, soothing words in my ear as he held on to me and uncuffed my wrists with his free hand. My arms circled around his neck, half-numb and near useless. He carried me to the bed and lowered me to it, sliding out of me in the process. My eyes cracked open for a moment as he pulled off the condom and disposed of it. Then he was back at my side again. He brushed my damp hair off my cheek, a reverent expression on his face. “Lie down, angel. I’ll get you some water.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I curled around one of his pillows on top of his comforter, no longer giving a shit who he’d slept with in this bed. It was a bed, and I was exhausted. I wasn’t awake long enough for him to return with the water.
NINETEEN
I rolled over in bed—groggy, achy, and filled with the desperate need to pee. My body bumped into warmth, and it took me a second to remember that I was in Foster’s bed—naked. He mumbled something in his slee
p but didn’t wake up. Trying not to jostle the bed too much, I shifted to the other side and slipped from beneath the covers. The air chilled my bare skin, but it was still pitch-dark in the room, so I had no shot at finding my discarded clothes. It was going to be challenging enough finding my way to the bathroom.
I put a tentative foot in front of the other, trying to make sure not to trip over anything or run into any furniture. His room was the mirror opposite of mine, so I knew where the door to the bathroom should be at least. With a little bit of hands-out-in-front-of-me groping, I eventually found my way there and shut the door behind me. I took care of the necessities, then went to the sink to wash my hands, rinse my face, and swish some mouthwash. No need to have Foster be greeted with the full heinous version of my morning self.
After double-checking to make sure the door was still shut, I turned around and peeked over my shoulder to get a view of my backside in the mirror. Despite the tenderness that still lingered, I didn’t see any obvious marks left from Foster’s flogger—though, if I was going to bruise, that’d probably take a little longer to show up. I frowned at the reflection, unsure whether I was happy or disappointed to see no evidence. I sighed. My brain was like a steaming pile of scrambled eggs over this whole thing.
After flipping off the light and letting my eyes adjust for a moment, I opened the door and headed back toward the general direction of the bed. But apparently I misjudged the distance, because before I knew it, my shin smacked the edge of the wood-framed bed. A harsh curse passed my lips as I grabbed for my throbbing leg. Foster rolled over.
“Cela?”
“Yeah. Sorry,” I said as I braced a hand on the bed and rubbed my shin with the other.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice all slow and sleep-heavy. And sexy. Of course. The man could probably sneeze and I’d find something hot about it. What was wrong with me?