But that’s not true. I have my safeword. I’m in control of everything that happens here, of every punishment he can possibly dream up.
I take a deep breath. I hold it for a count of five. And as I exhale, I let my knees fall to the sides.
I’m more exposed than I’ve been to any other man. My scars, yes, and my tattoo. The tender folds he made me taste after I fingered myself in the living room. The back of my throat is still coated with the smell of me—ocean and sun and a hint of something sweet.
My knees fall open further, and I realize the bed is damp beneath me. I’msoaked. My nipples tighten into stone as my cheeks burn in a mixture of excitement and shame.
“Count,” Wolf says.
Before I fully understand the word, he strikes me with the belt. The leather lands squarely across my pussy, just the tip blazing against my clit. The pain is as sharp as my scalpel, but wider, deeper. It wakes a creature inside me, something made of burning ice, something carved from frozen fire.
I’m supposed to say something, do something, and an eternity passes while I’m suspended, trying to remember. But then it comes to me, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside my body. “One,” I say, and my limbs flood with relief that I managed to follow Wolf’s command.
Before I can figure out how he possessed my mind, how he turned me into this needy, obedient creature, the belt whistles through the air again. It lands just as cleanly and twice as hard. The thing inside me spins out a single word: “Two.”
He strikes again. The creature ripples. I tell him, “Three.”
Each blow hurts more than the one before, winding the thing inside me tighter. Every slash reminds me that I am strong, that I am powerful, that I can bear whatever Wolf requires.
Byeightmy world is reduced to a few square inches of pure sensation. BynineI know I’ll come. Atteneverything explodes at once—the thing inside me and the single glowing point of my clit and the ice fire pain heat of my aching pussy.
I’m laughing because I’ve never felt anything so glorious, and I’m crying because I hurt, and I’m panting because I want Wolf to praise me. I want to stay tied up like this forever, and Iwant him to leave me alone because I hate the very fact that he exists.
I wait for him to untie me. I’ve done everything he told me to do. But he has other plans.
He takes his time working the button on his trousers, then the zipper that tents over his cock. He steps out of his clothes. Out of his silky black boxers.
He’s too large. I can’t take him, not now, when I’m still aching from the punishment he just delivered.
But he climbs onto the bed. He settles between my bound limbs. I’m powerless to stop him.
No. Again, I’m not powerless. I have my words—yellowandred.
But I don’t have to choose which to say, not now, not yet, because he lowers his head to my chest. His lips close over my right nipple and he sucks hard, pulling a line that goes straight to the rippling, throbbing heat between my thighs.
I feel his teeth. I feel his tongue. I feel his lips. And I feel another orgasm unfold so deep inside me, it’s like he’s hollowed out my spine. This one is slow and rhythmic, spreading to the tips of my bound fingers and toes.
He shifts his attention to my other tit, and I come even faster, or maybe it’s the same orgasm, circling back to meet itself in the deepest animal parts of my brain.
I can’t move. Every muscle in my body has melted. I’m a perfectly smooth pool, spread thin under a starless sky.
I go away for a while, to somewhere dark, somewhere warm, somewhere safe. When I come back, my wrists and ankles are free.
I’m gone again. This time, I return to someone saying my name, to arms around my arms, to legs around my legs, to a broad, flat chest pressing against my back.
I should reach for Wolf. Find his cock. Finish him with my hand or suck him off. Let him come between my tits. Give as good as I got.
But he traps my grasping fingers. Smooths them against the sheet. Murmurs something, telling me to rest.
I’m gone one last time, but I come back to a dark bedroom, all the lights turned off, here and in the suite’s living room. “Kate,” someone says, and the cool lip of a glass presses against my mouth. I swallow, and part of my brain knows Wolf said my name and Wolf brought me water, and it’s sweet and it’s cool and it’s the most glorious thing I’ve ever tasted.
Most glorious, that is, until something slips past my lips, and it’s chocolate, dark and rich and magic, and I remember that the duvet and the sheet were folded back beneath a foil-wrapped square of candy, and I think turn-down service is the most incredible invention ever made by modern man.
I’ll regret this in the morning. I hate Cole Wolf. He’s bigger than I am. Stronger. He’s the only man I’ve ever met who can code better than I can. This is all a terrible mistake.
But he brushes my hair back from my face. He eases me down beside him. He drags over a pillow to cushion my neck, and he pulls the sheet up to my chin, along with the duvet. When I still start to shiver, he presses his chest against my spine.
“Shh,” he says, his lips close to my ear. “Sleep.”
