Page 51 of Bared

“Wh-What is wrong? Are you in pain?”

A subtle chuckle tumbled from him. “Torment, maybe. But not pain. At least not the awful kind.”

She frowned. “Is there any kind of pain that is good?”

His features tightened. “Oh, yes. Sometimes there is.”

The meaning beneath his words had her brain butterflies racing each other now. “Like what we saw back in that dungeon place,” she said. “What those people…”

“They’re called Dominants,” he supplied.

“What those Dominants…were doing to their…”

“Submissives.”

She jerked her head back. Fortunately, she did not go fast, since her crown bopped into a cabinet. “But I am not submissive.”

As she finished that by wrinkling her nose, Brick responded with another laugh. It was warmer this time, making his eyes crinkle and his dimples deeper. “There’s a difference between being submissive as a person and being a submissive for your Dom.”

“Which is what?”

“Sometimes it’s hard to explain.” While his reply was as gentle as a breeze on the Seine, his features began to resemble the river’s concrete walls. The incongruity was fascinating…and alluring. “Might be better just to show you, Pixie.”

“Show me?” Now she was really afraid. But the jolt was also thrilling. It quickened every pulse in her body and ignited new fires in her blood. “You mean…to hurt me?”

“Not anything you don’t want or can’t handle. Just tell me no and everything stops. You still got that part?”

She was conscious of her own breaths, entering and exiting her in fast spurts, before she worked her mouth around words again. “Yes, Sir.”

The fear lingered, but only its most exciting side, as she watched what her acquiescence did to the man. The intense indents on his temples. The hungry parting of his lips. The fresh, firm ropes in his neck—becoming determined curves as he bent in again toward her.

And kissed her twice as hard as before.

By all the saints and sinners!

Because ohhh, this kiss…

Who was behind it? The canonized or the condemned? But did it matter? Why was she taking a pause for divine guidance, when she had Brickham’s bold passion to show her the way?

And dear, beautiful angels, how he did.

She was lost beneath his ferocious, wet assault. A slave to the masterful whip of his tongue. A disciple of his decadent desire, filling her mouth with his taste as he worked his body tighter into the cradle of hers.

“Brickham!” she begged after he dragged free of her bruised and stinging mouth. “By the sweet stars!”

With hungry nips, the man kissed his way around the curve of her chin. “You mean the ones you’re flying me to, sexy Pixie?”

“I—I think I might already be there.”

As he circled his mouth the opposite direction, he openly bit at her skin. “Oh, darling girl,” he growled into the hollow next to her ear. “We’re just getting started.”

“Holy…shit.”

It was sublime to hear the man’s breath catch in tandem with hers. “Well, well, well. My proper girl does like dirty words from time to time.”

The growl with which he finished was an entirely new level of alluring. It fully emboldened her returning quip. “I grew up with three brothers, Sir.”

A new rumble spilled from him. “Not a good time to remind a man of that fact, Pixie.”