Page 51 of No Going Back

Its job done, he stowed the knife back in the drawer. Only her footwear remained, ridiculously high heels that made him eternally grateful he wasn’t a woman. He moved to the opposite end of the table. This position was a perfect vantage point to enjoy all the soft, sinuous curves of a woman in her prime. The rage to possess her ripped through his body.

“I think these can go now.”

He removed her shoes. Perfectly pedicured toes wiggled in celebration of their freedom. He didn’t miss their owner’s soft sigh of relief, or the purr that followed, when he pressed his thumbs along their arches. Figured. From what he’d seen, she spent a lot of her working day on her feet. He’d always hated her suffering from any pain not inflicted by him.

With a hand under her knee, he bent first one leg, then the other, letting them splay apart. She made such a pretty picture. Guy sat on the edge of the table, and lifted her foot to rest against his shoulder, so he could massage her calf. She purred again, a soft, kitten-like moan of pure pleasure.

His mouth quirked in a small, satisfied grin. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sire.” Her words were barely audible.

Without breaking the rhythm, Guy moved his hands higher, past her knee to her thigh. Lean, yoga-toned muscles tensed beneath his fingers. “Relax, pet. You’re in my hands now.”

To emphasise the point, he slid his hand all the way up to the apex of her thighs. The silken skin quivered beneath his touch. Without warning, he inserted two fingers into her slick core and pushed his thumb against her clit. She cried out, and her inner muscles clamped down hard.

Beneath his free hand, her femoral muscles tensed. She was in good shape, and more than able to withstand what he had planned for her. She’d always been able to take his punishments.

“Don’t.”

He almost snarled the word. She was trying to bring her thighs together, and he wasn’t having any of it. One more twitch, and he’d remind her the hard way.

And there it was. Her shriek, when he administered the slap to her mound, was half indignation, half arousal.

“You know the rules, pet. This body belongs to me.”

“That was then—”

“And this is now. You agreed the terms when you responded to my email, so the rules we played by then apply now, too. Unless you safeword, you belong to me. Understood?”

“Yes, Sire, I understand.”

Her husky acknowledgement sent a stab of pure, lustful need through his body. Or maybe that should be impure, lustful need. He scissored his fingers inside her, and found her even slicker with arousal. He moved them again, and with another whimper, she tilted her hips up, as if trying to get away from him.

“You really think I’d make it easy for you?” His palm on her lower abdomen held her down while he renewed his efforts to stimulate her. For good measure, he added a third finger and applied more pressure to her clit.

Her quiet sob thrilled him. On an instinctive level he remembered that sound, the way it had always affected him. He worked her clit with his thumb some more, and her breathing turned to panting.

“Do you remember how I trained you to take my whole hand, Madeleine? How wet you’d get during our sessions? That’s it,” he crooned when her clit pulsed beneath his thumb. He dragged his nail across the smooth, sensitised button. With each spasmodic jerk of her body, his own pleasure mounted.

“Please, Sire.” Her tone was imploring, intended to appeal to the better nature he’d left outside the playroom.

“Yes, pet, you do please me.” He moved his fingers, parting them so they stretched her a little more. She wasn’t ready to take his last finger yet, but she would be, soon. And if his inner sadist was pleased about that, his inner Neanderthal was even more delighted. It confirmed she hadn’t been with a man who’d tested her—not recently, at any rate.

Her skin glowed, and her head tossed from side to side as she sank more deeply under his control and surrendered to the sensations he was giving her. She was breathing even more heavily now, the rise and fall of her breasts as hypnotic as ever. How could he have forgotten the sheer beauty of her reaction to his control?

“Tell me about your last lover.”

He was a bastard for asking the question while she was at his mercy like this. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked it, when the thought of another man claiming the woman he still saw as exclusively his was anathema to him.

“Mikhail. His name… was Mikhail.”

Guy raised an eyebrow. A Russian? She’d got involved with someone on her mission, then. “You met him in Moscow?”

“He saved my life.”

Guy’s blood ran cold. Was this Mikhail in some way connected with the beating that had put those scars on her back? By what she’d just said, not as the one who administered the strokes, but the one who saved her from facing more of them? He wanted to know, but he had to keep his mind on what he was doing. “Close your eyes.”

To emphasise his point, he pinched her clit. Her folds glistened. He stroked her a few times, until he was satisfied with her increasing arousal, and then he slipped his fingers inside her again. Her core tightened.