This time she licks over my balls, strokes a spot right behind them that has my eyes crossing and my knees going weak. And then she’s telling me to come, her voice low and breathless as she pulls me deep into her mouth.
It’s too much—her mouth on my cock, her body pressed against my legs, her words in my head as the tables turn abruptly. I try to pull away, try to regain control—and the upper hand—but it’s too late. Aria has me down her throat, her tongue stroking the underside of my cock even as she sucks until control is a distant memory.
And then she hums one final time and the ensuing vibrations send me right over the edge of a very high, very jagged cliff. With a shout that is half-curse, half-prayer, I give myself over to Aria—and to the most amazing orgasm of my life—as I empty myself down her throat in long, pulsing jets.
Chapter Five
Aria
Sebastian slumps forward, rests his head on the wall behind me. For long seconds, the only sound in the room is that of his ragged breathing as he sucks in air through his open mouth. He’s still shaking a little, his body trembling with aftershocks, and I turn my head, rest my cheek against his thigh so I can feel them better. And so that I can kiss him, softly, bring him down the same way he did to me.
This is the first time that I’ve seen him vulnerable when we’ve had sex. The first time I feel like I’ve opened him up the way he so easily does me. Though I enjoy being tied up, I wish my hands were free right now. I’d love to be able to hold him, to stroke and touch and pet him the way he does to me.
The way I so desperately think he needs right now.
I settle for brushing soft kisses against his thighs, his stomach. His cock.
After a minute, his hand comes to rest on my head, his fingers burrowing through my hair. It feels nice, this whole thing feels nice despite the fact that my body is still totally hyped up with the need to come.
But my brain is still ringing with everything he told me earlier, about Dylan and his father and Nico Valducci. Nico Valducci. There’s a name I never thought I’d have to hear again.
Just the thought of him turns my stomach, cools the need still jangling along my nerve endings. At least until Sebastian’s fingers tighten in my hair and yank my head up and back.
He doesn’t say anything, just stares at me out of eyes that are such a dark forest green that they look almost black.
“Sebastian?” I ask, watching his eyes widen at how hoarse I sound. I’m not sure what he expects when he just spent the last twenty minutes giving my tonsils a hell of a polishing. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer, just pulls me against his chest. I go—of course I go—partly because I want to and partly because my hands are still tied behind my back and I can’t do anything else.
He kisses me then, fast and hard and frantic. Lips and teeth and tongue meeting, stroking, melding with mine. Delving deep inside my mouth, sliding over my cheek, my tongue, the roof of my mouth. Like he wants to explore—wants to claim—every single part of me.
With any other guy I’d be running for the hills right now, but with Sebastian it feels right.
Feels right to let him claim me.
Feels right to let him touch me, taste me, take me any way that he wants to.
Already, that sweet lassitude is creeping over me, pulling at me until it’s hard to think. Hard to choose. Hard to do anything but accept what Sebastian wants to give me.
I fought it earlier when I was on my knees because I wanted to give him as much pleasure as I could. I wanted to make him feel half as good as he always makes me feel.
But now, with Sebastian all but plundering my mouth, with thoughts of Nico Valducci and Dylan and the absolute, utter unpredictability of fate racing through my head, I don’t want to be clear. Don’t want to be perfectly lucid. I’d much rather sink into the softness, into the strange, floaty feeling that Sebastian brings out in me with just a kiss, a touch, a look.
Air is becoming a problem, but I don’t care. I keep my head tilted and my mouth open for him so that he can take and take and take.
And he does. Oh, God, he does.
He plunders me. And I love every second of it.
He kisses me until my mouth is sore. Until my lips are swollen. Until my jaw aches and I don’t have the energy to do much more than move my lips gently against his own. And then he kisses me some more.
His hands come up, cup my still naked breasts. He toys with my nipples, pinching them hard enough to get my attention but not hard enough to hurt. I arch my back, push against his hands, trying to get more pressure. Trying to make it hurt, to make it sting just a little.
But he won’t give it to me.
He won’t do anything but rub a gentle finger around my areola.
Flick his thumb softly across my nipple.
Nip lightly at my lower lip.
“Sebastian?” His name is a question on my lips, a plea that I don’t know how to vocalize. He’s not giving me what I want but in this moment, when my brain is sluggish and my body feels like it’s drowning in sweet, sweet syrup, I don’t know how to ask for what I need.
I arch toward him again, push my breasts more firmly into his chest. Rub myself against him. Mutter soft pleas into his ear. And wait for him to understand—for him to give me what I’m dying for.
But the closer I get to him, the more he pulls back until our only point of contact is his mouth on mine and his finger against my breast. He’s stroking me now, his hand gliding softly, sweetly over the underside of my breast.
It’s not what I want, what I need, and I whimper in real distress.
“What’s wrong, baby? Doesn’t that feel good?”
It does, of course it does—everything Sebastian does to me feels good—but it’s not enough. Not close to being enough.
“Please.” I bite at his mouth, suck his lower lip between my teeth. He stiffens, lets me have my way for one brief second, two. And then he pulls away.
“Please,” I say again, so desperate for his touch that I’m begging now. Chanting, “Please, please, please,” in a broken voice I barely recognize as my own.
He laughs a little, then—finally—pinches my nipple. Quick and hard and just a little painful. Exactly as I like it. Fireworks go off behind my eyes, and I sink deeper into the lassitude, deeper into the warm and sticky syrup that pulls at me on a soul-deep level.
“Is this what you want?” he asks, his breath hot against my ear as he finally relinquishes his claim on my mouth.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“This?” he asks again, squeezing my nipple a little harder than he did before.
“Yes.” God, yes. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Or do you want this?” He grabs my nipple, twists it and I scream a little as the pain melts into the most wonderful pleasure.
“Yes,” I breathe, so far gone that I don’t even think to temper my response. This is all new to me—the way he’s touching me, the way I’m responding to the little shocks of pain with overwhelming, awe-inspiring pleasure. I didn’t even know I wanted this before Sebastian, didn’t have a clue what the right touch could do to my body. And now—now I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have this.
Not to have him.
He moves his hand to my other breast, follows the same pattern—pinch, squeeze, twist—with my right nipple that he did with my left. I cry out, call his name again, but he just laughs. Does it again. And when my body sags against his, he takes the weight for several long, delicious seconds before he backs away again.
For the second time tonight, I wish my arms were free. If they were, I’d wrap myself around him, pull him close, touch him anywhere and everywhere. Claim his body the way he’s claimed mine again and again and again.
He drops his mouth to my collarbone then, sucks hard at the delicate skin at the base of my throat. There’s no pain this time, yet when he lifts his head, eyes dark with satisfaction, I know he’s left a bruise right below the hollow of my throat.
&nb
sp; But when I turn my head, bare the other side for him, he moves away again. Spins me around so that I’m facing away from him just as I was the first night he made love to me.
And then his mouth is on my shoulder, sucking another love bite into the skin right over my shoulder blade.
He drops to his knees, leaves another bruise on my rib cage.
My hip.
The soft skin at the inside of my elbow.
Again and again he marks me. Again and again, I let him. Until I’m covered with bruises. With hickeys. With marks of Sebastian’s possession.
And that’s what this is, I realize. Sebastian is marking me. Branding me. Claiming me.
The thought sends heat straight through me in such a rush that my knees buckle and I know I would have fallen if Sebastian hadn’t been there to catch me.
But he is here—of course he is. He steadies me with one hand on my hip and another on my rib cage. And then he begins to stroke me, his long, calloused fingers tracing the line of my hip, the curve of my ass, the slight bumps of each individual rib.
With each touch, I get more turned on. With each touch, I fall more under his spell.
Until all I can see or smell or taste or hear or feel is him.
Until all I want is him.
Until all I know is him.
By the time he’s done, my body is boneless, pliant, completely at his mercy. And he knows it. He takes advantage of it, touching and kissing, biting and licking me everywhere. Everywhere.
My breasts.
My back.
My stomach.
My hips.
My thighs.
My interlocked fingers.
My ass.
And finally, my sex.
He shoves his fingers inside me, pulls them out. Thrusts back in again. Pulls them out. Slides back in. Then out. All the time, he’s circling my clit with his thumb, kissing my lower back, running his tongue along the seam of my ass. Sending me into sensory overload until my body trembles right on the brink.
I’m almost there, moments from tipping over the edge. “Please, Sebastian, please,” I tell him as he strokes my clit once, twice. “I need—”
“What?” he asks, as he slides a finger along my ass before pushing between the cheeks and rubbing gently at my anus.
“You,” I tell him on a broken breath. It’s so close I can taste it, can already feel the pleasure sweeping through my body. “I need you.”
And just that quickly, he’s gone. His mouth. His hands. His body. All removed from me as I stand in the middle of his living room, alone. Shaking with a need I can’t begin to appease. Can’t begin to control.
I turn my head, try to get him to meet my eyes, but he’s up already, walking away. “What’s wrong?” I ask, when I can finally force the words out of my aching throat. “Why’d you stop?”
“I’m thirsty,” he answers and I watch in disbelief as he fills a glass with ice. Then adds water. And finishes with a twist of lime. He takes a long sip, then holds the glass up. “Would you like some?” he offers.
Would I like— “No. I’m fine.” I wait for him to return to me, to pick up where he left off, but he stays where he is. Slowly drains the glass of water. Pours himself a second one.
I don’t understand what’s going on here, but my brain is still too fuzzy for me to think clearly. I try to figure it out anyway, but there’s no viable explanation. Nothing that makes any sense except that maybe he really is thirsty.
And so I wait, head bowed, body trembling, arms still tied behind my back. I wait and I wait and I wait for what feels like hours. For what feels like forever.
Eventually, he finishes the second glass of water. I know because I hear the clink of the glass as he puts it down on the granite. Hear the sound of his feet brushing against the thick carpet. And then, finally, hear his breathing—slow and rich and steady—inches from my left ear.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers to me as he reaches a hand out to caress my cheek. “So goddamn beautiful sometimes it hurts just to look at you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him even as I lean my face into his touch. “It’s all just genetics.”
“You’re right,” he tells me, his thumb sweeping over my lips once, twice, before pushing gently inside my mouth. I suck him deep, taste myself on him as I swirl my tongue around and around his thumb. “I’m my father’s son. And a bigger bastard never walked the face of the earth.”
He pulls his thumb out and I whimper at the loss. At least until he skates it over the slight bump of my chin to my neck. Down my neck to the center of my chest. Down my chest to my belly button. Over my belly button to my abdomen. Down my abdomen to my mons. Down my mons to—yes, finally, my sex.
He thrusts inside roughly, no warning, no prelude, nothing but his thumb thick and strong inside me.
I gasp at the feel of him, spread my legs to give him better access. And then nearly cry in relief when he bends and sucks one of my nipples deep into his mouth. I’m still so aroused that it doesn’t take long to get me right back where I was before he stopped, nerve endings screaming in agony, brain drowning in a thick, warm lassitude, body all but begging for relief.
Sebastian stokes the fire with his mouth, his hands, his voice. He whispers to me as he runs his lips over my abdomen, as he presses kisses to my inner thighs, as he licks at the drenched folds of my sex. Dirty, filthy things that make me tremble. That make me ache.
I’ve been so aroused for so long now that my whole body hurts. My every muscle is tense, my every nerve ending crying out for relief. And still Sebastian takes his sweet time. Still he pushes me to the brink of climax, the brink of madness.
I’m reaching for it, my whole body straining for an orgasm that I feel like I’ll die without. I’m close, so close. So, so close.
And then Sebastian’s gone again. And I’m alone.
“Please,” I beg as tears well up in my eyes, as sobs rip from my chest. “I need—”
“I know what you need,” he tells me and I nearly collapse in relief. He isn’t touching me but he hasn’t left me, either. He’s right behind me, so close that I can feel the vibration of his voice against my too-sensitive skin.
And still he doesn’t touch me. Still, he doesn’t comfort me.
The pain of it is almost too much to bear and I nearly fall to my knees with it. Nearly bend—nearly break—under the weight of my own desire.
But in the middle of it all, in the middle of the agony and the lassitude and the dark, dark confusion, I have a moment of absolute clarity. And that’s when it hits me.
This is about more than getting off. About more than keeping me on the edge. This is about tonight and how out of control Sebastian feels. It’s about Dylan and Janet and his father. It’s about the helplessness he felt when his best friend died, the helplessness he still feels.
This is Sebastian controlling me because he can’t control what happened. About hurting me because he’s hurting. About using me to stave off the pain of everything that came before.
Knowing that, understanding that, I wouldn’t have this any other way.
From the moment we met, Sebastian has taken care of me even when I didn’t know I needed to be taken care of. Here, tonight, it’s my turn to take care of him. My turn to give him what he needs. And if he needs this, the pleasure and the pain, the control and the cruelty, then I’m willing to give it to him.
It’s a little bit of a shock to realize there isn’t much I’m not willing to give him.
And then he’s touching me again, taking me back up to the edge and leaving me there.
Again and again he does it. Again and again I let him. Until his every touch is a razor blade against my nerves, his every kiss salt rubbed into a raw and aching wound. Until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t be without pain. Without wanting him and being denied.
The eighth time he goes to step away—maybe it’s the seventh, maybe the ninth, I’m so lost in the maelstrom of my own suffering tha
t I’ve lost count—I break. My knees go out from under me and I hit the floor hard as sobs—deep and raw and ugly—rip through me.
“Aria?” It’s the first time he’s said my name in a long, long time and the fact that he’s doing it now, when it doesn’t matter anymore, only makes me cry harder.
“Baby, please.” He drops to the ground beside me, tries to pull me into his arms.
But it’s too late. I fight him like a wild thing now, kicking and biting and writhing beneath him. I yank at my bonds, desperate to get my arms free. Desperate to get as far away from Sebastian and his fucked up lovemaking as I possibly can.
He pulls me into his lap anyway, his arm a manacle around my waist, holding me to him no matter how hard or how long I fight.
In the end, it isn’t long at all. I’m too exhausted, too hurt, too sad, to put up much of a fight. And so I just stop. Stop fighting. Stop trying to get away. It doesn’t matter anyway. Sebastian is going to do whatever he’s going to do. And though he’d never force me, never rape me, I can’t say anymore that he won’t hurt me. That he won’t tear me apart emotionally, won’t ravage me until there’s nothing left of the woman I’ve worked so hard to build.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me as he reaches behind me. I feel his fingers on mine, feel a tug on the knot holding my arms behind my back. And just that easily, my hands are free.
If only I could say the same about me.
“I’m so sorry.” He whispers the words against my skin and I feel the hot burn of his own tears against my neck.
It touches me though I don’t want it to, has me struggling to raise my arms so that I can soothe him even as I feel myself spin completely out of control.
But my arms have been behind my back for a couple hours and now that the blood is rushing back into them, the pain is excruciating. I can barely breathe through it, let alone convince my limbs to obey any order my strung out brain tries to give them.