“Good girl. So good. So responsive when you allow yourself to be. I need you to allow yourself tonight, Layla. No, look at me.”
She opened her eyes and his dark gaze met hers. There was simmering heat there. Stark command. Gears shifted in her head once more, and a part of her was a little afraid, but it was blanketed deep beneath the absolute need to cross over into complete submission.
Did he really see the struggle she’d been going through with herself? Did he know how quickly she was losing that battle tonight?
Except tonight it doesn’t matter.
As he stared into her eyes a small smile crossed his handsome face—so damn handsome. Jesus God, had there ever been a man who looked like him?
“Yes,” he cooed, “there you are, my lovely. Right there. Right here, with me. Yeah.”
He ran his hands over her shoulders, his touch gentle, then down over her sides, grasping her waist, then grabbing hard, his fingers biting into her flesh until she had to suck a breath in between her teeth.
“Oh, yeah, princess. Lord, I love to see that. Just let it go. You’ll have to, you know. Because I’m going to strap you to that table and there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it. We’re going to play with my wand. It’s going to hurt. This is your last chance to get out of it. Unless you call ‘red,’ of course.”
“I don’t want to, Duff,” she said, with no need to consider it. He was right—she was right there with him, and nothing in her wanted to run anymore. Not now. Now, in this moment, she would be his. And she would glory in it.
With his hands on her shoulders, pressing just hard enough for her to feel his absolute authority over her, he guided her to the padded table, then helped her up onto it, pressing her back until she was lying flat. With his fierce gaze on hers, he drew one arm over her head, leaned in to place a soft kiss on her wrist, then buckled it into the leather cuff. Straightening up, he watched her for what seemed like a long while before he moved around the table, cuffing her other wrist, then drawing her ankles to the edges of the table to fasten them into the leather shackles. She was shaking a little all over, but it was mostly excitement, the keen edge of exquisite desire and the anticipation of what was to come.
Standing over her, he looked down at her once more, and placing his big hand in the center of her chest, he exerted the slightest pressure, his sharp gaze boring into hers. His expression was both shadow and light, meltingly soft and edged in glittering glass, gold and silver and the black of his heavy lashes. She didn’t know what to make of what might be going on in his head. But she felt drawn in, drowning in the unexplained intensity. There was something so primal in his eyes, she should have been afraid. And she was—except that nothing within her wanted to escape. Instead, she wanted the fear, craved it.
“Are you ready, princess? We’ll start out easy, until I have a chance to read how you respond to the wand. I need to make sure I can read you. Then it will be my great pleasure to bring you pain—such beautiful pain. We’ll both love it, won’t we?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. She felt paralyzed, but in the most wonderful, excruciating way.
“I have to turn my back to you to get the equipment going, but I’m right here, lovely girl.”
He moved away then, and she turned her head and saw him fit a slender glass tube with a flat, disk-shaped tip into the end of the violet wand, which really did look a bit wandlike—it was a thick plastic shaft that was perhaps eight or ten inches long, with the cord coming out of one end, and the glass tube protruding from the other. He switched it on, and she heard the low buzz, saw the glass tube gleam with a narrow beam of purple light. As he moved it toward her, she couldn’t help that her breath caught in her throat, tight with nerves.
“Does it scare you? Yes? I like that it does. Here, see how gentle it can be.” He touched the flat end of the glass tube to her arm and she jumped, then realized it only tickled.
“It’s not bad, right? Right. For now. But truthfully, it’s turned down quite low at the moment.” He ran the glass up her arm, then over her stomach, which tickled even more, and she let out a small gasp. “But we have a long way to go tonight. Oh, yes, a very long way.”
Did he know what these subtle threats did to her head? Of course he did. So did she, when she was topping. But she could barely think about that. She had slipped all too easily into bottom mode, and there was no climbing back out of it. Not now. Never with him.
He paused to turn the power up, and she steeled herself, but the tickle only turned into a bright humming against her flesh.
“See? It doesn’t hurt at all, does it? Unless I hold the tube the slightest distance from your skin so the current can arc.”
“Oh!”
“Hurts a bit, yeah? Tell me what it feels like to you.”
“It’s sort of like . . . being flicked with a rubber band.”
He turned up the power a little more before touching the wand to her arm again. “And now?”
“Ah . . . it stings.”
“But you like sting, or so you told me.”
“I do. Oh, I can smell . . . What is it?”
“Ozone. I do love that smell. When we’re done you’ll be able to smell it all over your skin, and so will I. But let’s try something else.”
He switched the wand off and pulled the glass tube out, exchanging it for one with a pointed tip. “This one will focus the sensation over a much smaller area, so the current, and therefore the sting, will be more concentrated.”
He turned the wand on and swept a hand over her stomach, making her shiver. Then he touched the glass tip there, and she yelped.
“Ah!”
He grinned, his dimples flashing, and pleasure washed over her—even more when he bent and kissed the spot where the wand had stung her skin.
“Oh, you like that. Your nipples are hard, and I can see it in your eyes. Let’s see if we can really get you a good rush of endorphins, shall we?”
Before she had a chance to think, he touched the wand to the tip of one nipple, and pain lanced through her.