She nodded.
“If anywhere hurts or goes numb, tell me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The words came easier each time she said them. She looked up, found herself entranced by this large, forceful, yet tender man. Then he picked her up, put her over his shoulder, and took her into his bedroom through an adjoining door.
Chapter Twenty-one
For an old airship, the Final Rebuttal had some extraordinary design features. Draped over Theo’s shoulder, naked, with her hands fastened behind her back and a bobbing upside down view of the room, Claire barely had time to look. Assassin training meant she could have still sketched the room in detail—though it might have come out upside down.
In the center of the bedroom, twin padded beams, joined in an X shape, with another strut sticking straight up from the middle, towered next to a pair of steel shutters in the floor. The shutters had been rolled back to reveal an oval bathtub-like window of armored glass. The green glass was cross-hatched with wire reinforcing. Clouds feathered past below, and condensed moisture dribbled across the large pane that formed the bottom. The air around this feature of the room was cooler. She shivered, though not entirely from the cold.
“A St. Andrew’s cross,” said Theo. “Or crux decussate. I haven’t had occasion to use it for some time.” He smacked her bottom as he swung around, and she jumped at the flare of sensation vibrating into her *. He deposited her standing up in front of the cross.
“There.” He pushed until her back and tied wrists touched the cool padded leather. “Stay.”
She looked at the strong features of his face, the heavy lips, iron-hard cheekbones and jaw, the stark black eyebrows above those compelling eyes, and sucked in a breath for strength before nodding.
He bent and kissed her, one hand at the side of her neck, thumbing her jugular furrow, toying with her skin. His mouth squashed down just enough to trap her against the leather. She melted into the cross, and only the knee he placed between her legs kept her upright. He took her mouth, as brutal and methodical as an army taking a fortress.
When he moved his hands behind her and released her wrists from the lace, she did nothing. Only waited to see what he was planning. When he pulled her cuffed wrists up to clip them to chains on the beams above, she let him, trembling as her arms were stretched up high. He slipped his hand between her legs, slid fingers along her cleft, then around her clit, leaving a cooling trail of her moisture.
“I think you like my cross.”
With him inches away, doing that, no wonder she was aroused. She squeezed her thighs together.
He kissed her again, before buckling a leather strap across her hips and below her breasts and then kneeling to fasten her ankles to leather cuffs at the base to the cross. His light yellow shirt stretched tight across his back while he worked there. If her arms were free, she might have run her hands over him. The chains above gave very little when she tugged. He’d pulled everything snug, shortened the chains just right to make her feel totally restrained, unable to do what she wanted. Her clit felt swollen and hot, as if her body centered there. She shivered at the building tension.
Theo ran his hands up her thighs as he slowly stood. He kissed either side of her mound and belly button, then rose to his full height and went around behind, where she couldn’t see. A double bed covered with a royal blue quilt was to her left against the outer bulkhead. The bathtub glass area dropped away a foot to her right.
The wind howled for a few seconds as it swept past the airship’s hull, and the recessed glass hummed.
“Don’t be scared. You’ll be moving in a second.”
She tensed as something clicked rapidly and the cross tilted back and swung out across the glass. When it stopped with a clung, she lay on her back, spread-eagled above the window, the padded limbs of the cross and the strut behind her head supporting her. It took her heart a while to slow.
Theo appeared at her side, gazed down at her while caressing her forehead. He’s standing on the glass. He trusts it not to break. She tried to see past him. A long crank handle stuck out just beyond his shoulder.
“This used to be a gun platform. I had it adapted.” Crow’s feet crinkled at his eyes. He walked around her, out of the window tub, past her head, and as he went he slid fingers under the restraints, checking the cuffs and chains. “Wouldn’t want you to fall off this,” he muttered.
She closed her eyes a moment, striving for calm. This position on the cross rang alarms. She could barely move a muscle. When she opened her eyes, Theo was there, and he stroked his thumb across her lower lip.
“Are you okay, Claire? Take a breath. I won’t do anything you don’t want.”