Page 101 of What We Become

He tilts the candle.

The next drop hits my collarbone. Then the slope of my breast. Each one is a small detonation—white-hot for a heartbeat, then a slow, spreading warmth that sinks through skin into muscle into bone. I hiss through my teeth and Micah groans against me like he felt it too, his hands tightening on my thighs, his tongue never stopping its slow, devastating work.

“They say wax play is about trust,” Eli murmurs, hovering the flame over my nipple. Waiting. Letting me feel the heat of it before a single drop falls. “I think it’s about attention. One second of looking away and someone gets hurt.”

“Eli—”

“Watch.”

The wax falls directly onto my nipple and the sound that tears out of me is raw and cracked and honest. My hips buck so hard Micah has to wrap an arm across my pelvis to pin me down. The pain is perfect.

“Again,” I gasp.

“Greedy.”

“You knew what you were signing up for.”

Eli laughs—low and dark, the sound of a man whose compartments are burning down right along with the candle—and drips a line across my other breast. Slow. Deliberate. Painting me. I watch the wax land and splinter into crimson petals across my skin. I watch myself take it. Every drop is proof that I’m here. I’m feeling this. Nobody took this from me, because I’m the one who asked for it.

Micah chooses that moment to slide two fingers inside me and curl them.

“Don’t stop,” I manage. “Either of you. Don’t you dare stop.”

“Never,” Eli says, and tilts the candle again.

This time the wax lands as Micah’s tongue ruins me.

“I can’t—fuck—Micah, right there⁠—”

“Come on my face, baby girl.” Micah’s voice is muffled against my skin, his breath hot, and then his mouth seals over my clit and sucks and the world whites out at the edges.

The sensations collide—fire on my chest, his mouth between my thighs, rope at my wrists—and I come apart so violently that the bench creaks under me.

Eli’s hand wraps around my jaw. “Eyes up. Look at me.”

I force my eyes open. He’s looking down at me with that amber gaze, and the combination of his control and Micah’s mouth is a kind of sensory annihilation I will never get used to.

My back arches.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” Eli says, and his voice cracks on beautiful, just barely, just enough to hear the man behind the discipline. “Taking everything we give you. You know that?”

“Yes,” I breathe, and then, because his voice cracked and I want to hear it break completely, I add, “More.”

Something moves behind Eli’s eyes. The teacher and the executioner, finally standing in the same room.

He sets the candle in its holder. The loss of the flame should disappoint me, but then his hands are on me—both of them, free for the first time—and I understand he’s done playing at a distance. He peels a cooled wax petal from my breast with his thumbnail, slow enough that I feel every edge lift, and then his mouth replaces it. Hot. Wet. Sucking the sensitive skin where the wax burned.

“Oh—fuck⁠—”

“Micah.” Eli’s voice against my chest. “Move.”

They rearrange me like a shared project. Micah slides out from between my thighs, mouth shining, eyes dark, and kisses his way up my stomach while Eli pulls the cushion from beneath me and lays me flat. My wrists stay bound. My ribs don’t even twinge—they’ve thought of everything.

Eli strips his shirt over his head. Then his pants. He climbs onto the bench between my spread knees and the look on his face is not controlled at all anymore. It’s hunger wearing the costume of control, and the costume is in tatters.

“Hold on to the rope,” he says.

I wrap my fingers around the silk at my wrists.