Page 52 of No Going Back

“You remember how we used to play, Madeleine?”

“I do, Sire.”

He did, too. “Do you still need what I gave you back then?”

“More than ever.”

“What about Mikhail? Did he give you what you need? Is he connected with the scars on your back?” Tension stilled his hand and gave his tone a harder edge than it might otherwise have had. Though he’d marked many a consenting masochistic sub in his years as a practising sadist, he’d never once left them with any permanent disfigurement.

“He wasn’t a Dom, Sire—and without him, the scars would have been much worse. Without him… I might not have survived.”

Guy closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. He tried not to let his imagination fill his mind with the kind of horrors that might underpin such a statement. The only way to prevent it would be to hear the whole, unvarnished truth, and while she was at his mercy, Maddie might be more amenable to revealing it. “Tell me what happened.”

She turned an incendiary glare on him. “You’re asking me this now?”

“No—I’m ordering you to tell me.” And she’d know he meant it.

A frustrated groan joined the glare. “I’d been there for over two years when my cover was blown. They snatched me off the street and took me to a warehouse. They wanted the names of my contacts, but I wouldn’t tell them. It took Mikhail three days to find me, after I hadn’t checked in with him—”

“Why would you check in with him?”

“He knew I worked for British Intelligence and made it his business to get to know me almost as soon as I arrived. We were working towards the same goal, he said, so it made sense to collaborate.”

“Wait—the same goal? Who is he?” Guy’s inner alarm bells were ringing loud enough to be heard clear across the county.

“Back then, he was assigned to a task force investigating the Bratva.”

“And now?”

“He heads up the federal investigation agency.”

“You mean Mikhail Petrov?” In his previous line of work, Guy had made it his business to keep abreast of developments in the field of international security. That included appointments at the most senior level.

“You know him?”

“By reputation only.”

And that reputation was formidable. When Petrov had initially taken control, his first action had been a purge of every allegedly corrupt officer in the agency. Everything he’d done since pointed to him being a good man.

Partially reassured, partially jealous as hell, Guy weighed up the situation in the light of this new information. There was undoubtedly more to the story, but for now, that was enough.

He finger-fucked her again, taking it easy at first, but soon her pleasure turned to discomfort as he stimulated her clit beyond endurance.

“Please, Sire.”

Her breathless entreaty turned his cock to granite. Guy stripped off his shirt, and when he turned back to his delicious sub, he caught her looking at him with unashamed hunger in her gaze. Maybe all wasn’t lost, after all.

“That’s how you looked the first time I saw you at that club we went to. As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the next Dom I wanted.”

“Next?” She made it sound as if she’d been working her way through all the available Doms in the club. In truth, she’d been highly selective when it came to her play partners. He’d checked.

“And last. I waited to see if you were with anyone special—”

“I wasn’t—until you.” And that was the truth.

In silence, Guy released her bonds and laid a firm hand on her shoulder when she would have sat up. “No. I want you to turn over now. Face down on the table.”

Her look of alarm nearly ripped him apart. She followed it up with an awkward nod and obeyed. With the innate elegance he’d always loved, she draped herself over the foam wedge he’d taken from under the table. With the wedge in place, her bottom was in the perfect position for what he had planned next.