“I’m not afraid of you, husband,” I said, attempting a different strategy. “Your scare tactics no longer work on me. Bind me and blind me, but I’ve seen your softer side.” I closed my eyes to him, hoping to annoy him with my indifference.
“I have no softer side.”
“Aye,” I said, opening my eyes. The vivid hue of his eyes disarmed me momentarily with their vibrancy. He looked almost offended by my comment. “You do.”
“Where?”
“Certainly not on the outside,” I said. I was irritated to feel a small smile pull at the corner of my lips, which I made a point to banish. It wouldn’t do to let him know how easy it was for him to get past my defenses without even intending to.
“Nay,” he agreed. “If I get any harder, we’re both in for a bit of trouble.”
“’Tis inside you.” I was disconcerted to find that I wasn’t just teasing him now, or testing him. I found that I meant what I said. “In your heart.”
A sweet-edged silence comforted us and linked us as never before.
It was a few moments before he spoke again. The connective thoughtfulness in his eyes gave way once again to his mischief-laced power. “Tell me,” he repeated.
I paused, waiting. His body was stunningly solid, and heavy. His arousal pressed against a very sensitive place. “Brute,” I whispered.
He smiled, biting not so gently on the lobe of my ear, kissing a line down my neck, licking and nipping at my skin. “That one might not be entirely unwarranted, at times.”
“Ogre.” I could feel his light laughter everywhere. His hands were on my breasts.
“Truly?Ogre?” he said, looking up at me with mock offense. His gaze returned to my breasts, which he kissed and fondled with something akin to wonder. Then he took a nipple into his mouth, sucking strongly and biting with his teeth as he pinched my other nipplebetween two fingers, sending shards of reactive sensation to every inch of my body. “Tell me another.”
“Savage,” I whispered.
“I’m getting harder with each accusation,” he said, lifting me into a sitting position, placing the blindfold over my eyes and tying it securely. This time I offered no protest. The sudden darkness was startling. I was adrift, yet my senses became highly attuned. To him, to his every breath and movement. “Let me see if I can prove you right,” he whispered into my ear. “You will no longer distract me from the task at hand, even if you do happen to be outlandishly, achingly, mind-numbingly lovely to such an extent that I am, right at this moment, questioning my powers of resistance. With still eight days and fourteen hours left to go of my idiotic self-induced sentence. Already you possess my whole heart, wife. All that you are is exactly what I didn’t even realize I needed. I can see now that you want to trust me, and you’re beginning to. I will keep my vow, as I said I would. But I can assure you that doing so is not without intense,ravagingdifficulty.”
He reached for something, then pushed me across his lap so that I lay on my stomach across him. His hands were strong, guiding me, and I didn’t protest, but I was not as agreeable as I could have been.
“Do not fear my punishment, lass. You’re going to enjoy this.”
He positioned me with care, lifting my hips until I was on my knees with my head down, laid against the softness of the furs. Not satisfied, he continued to adjustmy body, until my knees were farther apart. With one hand, he began to caress my back, trailing ever lower. Exploring intimately, he reached between my legs, parting my humid petals, dipping and wetting me with my own desire. With his fingers he squeezed my aching flesh gently, tantalizing the sweetness. As he continued to play me, a soft material was dragged across the skin of my backside.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to turn to him, but he held me in place. My voice sounded muffled and husky.
“A leather strap,” he said, lashing the strap very lightly against me, not enough to hurt—just a light promise of what was to come.
The leather was drawn lower, across my raised buttocks, to fall between my legs, where it brushed against my saturated core, which was so sensitive that the light contact caused me to squirm. I felt a slight slap on my backside. Not a sting, but a caress that warmed me at the place of impact, and deeper. Again, the leather fell with gentle force, spreading the heat, igniting the center of my body with an exquisite, scorching glow. Again. The fluid ecstasy built within me. He lashed me again, at the same time pushing his fingers gently into the tight constriction of my body. This time the lashdidsting—a sharp, painful shock that caused me to gasp. The lash licked me with pain, but it was a pain laced with burning, needy pleasure. I thought I might overflow with it. As soon as the leather left my skin, the pain eased to a radiating warmth, funneling strongly to the place where Kade caressed me with his fingers.
The lash fell again, lower this time, closer to the billowing ache that flared with the echo of his strikes. I was breathless, on the verge of begging him to show me mercy. But the pain had turned, mellowing into a deep, luscious craving. His fingers worked that pleasure, enticing it and energizing it.
“You have no need to favor weakness or mildness any longer, lass. You’re stronger than that, and you’re free now to follow your fiery instincts. To me, and with me. I’m yours and you’re mine, do not forget that. I vowed to give you this time to adjust to me, yet you are still mine to do with what I please.”
He paused, as though waiting for my answer, but I was blind and mute, it seemed. I was too strung-out, waiting for his whip.
“What say you, wife? Do you want me to do with you what I please?” He struck again, lower across my skin.
“Aye,”I cried out, stunned by the blaze of sensation. The glowing burn in the core of my body was feverishly intense, stroked by his fingers and stoked by the sharp sparks of his indulgent punishment. I was moaning—profanities, no less. “Oh, Holy God,” I was saying. “Oh,please.”
“Ichoseyou, Stella. You’re mine.Mine.Do you understand me?”
The delicious contact of the lash struck again.
“Aye.”
And again. The soft pain leached instantly to ecstatic, greedy sweetfire. My body felt alight with the promise of a rapture so extreme I could only lift my hipshigher, pushing against his hand, pleading and squirming with need.
