Hot for His Hostage (31 page)

“Not until you earn it, baby girl.” As usual, the man seemed to read her damn mind.
She was tempted to chuck him a prissy pout in return but instinct stopped her short.
She was glad she listened. She couldn’t be wasting time on a pout with Shay’s hands
in her hair, yanking her to her feet then angling her for the searing assault of his
savage kiss. Only after he twisted her head in six different angles, ensuring his
tongue branded every corner of her mouth, did he release her so harshly, it felt like
finality. But she knew better, a perception that injected new fear to her blood—which
God help her, slammed like a shot of sexual heroin.

She waited, helpless and panting—and praying he’d shoot her up again.

He stared at her, his cuts and abrasions turning him into a foreboding sight, the
human version of a storm deciding whether to lay waste to a village. As the village
who’d just begged fate for this, Zoe couldn’t decide whether she was the universe’s
biggest idiot or most lucky submissive.

He didn’t make her wait long for the answer. Scooping her hand into his, he yanked
her along the window, back to the place he’d been occupying when she came in. He whirled
her, making her face the black glass. A shiver rippled to her toes when he pressed
behind her, flattening one huge hand against her belly while wrapping the other around
the base of her neck.

“Take off your clothes,” he dictated into her ear. “But keep facing the glass.” Both
of his hands dug into her flesh, emphasizing how firmly he meant the demand…as if
the corrugation to his voice didn’t communicate it already.

Her sexual high had officially gotten another kick.

Her hands shook as she shed her sweater then worked the fastenings of her jeans. “
Mierda
,” she spat after trying to free the button a third time. She could’ve launched an
inner tirade, questioning all her nervous virgin behavior, but why? She already knew
why everything about this felt like the first time with Shay—the terrifying first
time. His defenses were compromised. The guard on his composure? Nearly non-existent.
He needed this…the untamed run of his darker, harder Dom. And though it scared the
crap out of her, she was pretty sure she needed it, too. The fullness of their connection…

Her romantic pep talk was ripped short. Literally. Just as she succeeded in pushing
the jeans down, a loud tear came from the bathroom. Another, then another.

Que pasó
? Was he decimating the damn
towels
?

She didn’t receive her answer for that until she was finished stripping and stood
before the glass, listening to her rickety breaths against the whir of the air conditioning,
for what felt like a small eternity. The minutes were the longest of her life. Focusing
on the
schrick
s Shay made did nothing to brake her heartbeat…or lessen the strange onslaught of
self-consciousness about her full nudity.

Or
was
it strange? Lounging naked in her own bedroom, with nobody around to watch except
the Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers prints on her wall, was insanely different than standing
in wait for the man who clear intended on dominating every inch of her body…who finally
reentered, two long white lengths trailing from his hand.

She dug into her lower lip with her teeth. Her womb clenched. Her pussy seeped.

Caramba
. He’d really ripped up the towels.

With the window doubling as a mirror, she watched him walk from the bathroom and drape
his new creations on the bed: a pair of white linen ropes, formed of narrow strips
that he’d torn then knotted together. Shay, still in his loose T-shirt and jeans with
the open fly, looked every inch like Satan’s single-minded henchman. As he turned
and draped her in a hard, evaluating stare, Zoe guessed his solitary purpose wasn’t
catching up on the TV he’d missed this week. She couldn’t discern anything about his
thoughts from the brutal angles of his face. That didn’t stop her lungs from shoving
out her breaths in staccato bursts, or her throat from rivalling the Mojave for negative
humidity numbers.

He let her squirm in the light that spilled from the bathroom before reaching around
the doorway and cutting the illumination with a strangely ominous
click
.

They were plunged into neon-tinted shadows again.

One word emanated from the depths of Shay’s chest.

“Perfect.”

He scooped up the ropes on his way back over to her. By the time he stood directly
behind her, he’d stretched the lengths between his hands, winding his wrists to pull
them taut. Zoe shivered anew, though she couldn’t determine whether it was from watching
his masculine move or the power of his presence, so close and heated and huge behind
her.

He stepped even closer, lifting the ropes so he could slither them down over her face,
into the valley of her neck, then down over her breasts, brushing her nipples with
both his thumbs, causing them to tingle with a thousand more electrons of awareness.
“Ohhhh,” she moaned. “
Vaya. Sí. Me vuelves loca. Quiero más…más
…”

He met her request, rolling her sensitive tips between his thumbs and the towel. A
combination of sadistic and soft that had her writhing and whining for him.

“Your tits are so beautiful. They love to stand at attention for me.”

She could only nod in response. His words mixed with his touch to flood straight through
her body, pooling in a thick, warm cream that lined every tissue in her throbbing
sex. She needed him inside her about five minutes ago—though she knew, with dreading
surety, the wait for his cock had only just begun. The man hadn’t just destroyed a
pair of hundred-dollar towels so he could give her a little sensual tease.

Sure enough, Shay left her breasts behind to slide the ropes lower, though he pulled
them apart and let them drop after swiping her mons a single time…making sure both
the lengths teased for moments at her pussy as they did.

“Oh!” she cried out. “
Bastardo
!”

She’d barely unleased the word than Shay pulled on her hair, jerking her head back
and plunging his tongue in, punishing her with violent sweeps of his tongue. If that
weren’t enough to turn her knees to flan, he finished the assault by raking his teeth
along her bottom lip, stripping her mouth of any control it might’ve had on its own.

“The bastard says hold still.” He ordered it before releasing her with another sharp
jerk.

“The bastard” was also quite resourceful. Though Zoe’s whole body trembled and swayed
with lust, she noticed that Shay had torn holes into alternating corners of the towels,
forming surprising fits for her wrists. He tucked the edges of the towels through
the holes to fully encase her in bonds that were better than padded cuffs. Nevertheless,
he rechecked the fit on both arms, confirming her skin had room for circulation. The
brusque expertise in all his movements sent her suspicions rising about his ultimate
purpose. He affirmed it by looking up, behind the scrim hiding the tops of the room
blinds, to the rod that held them in place.

Ohhhh, shit.

Without speaking, he took the free end of one rope then looped it up and over the
rod. Zoe’s arm rose, too. She watched her muscles flex, an involuntary reaction against
this very new form of bondage for her. With Bryce, she’d always been strapped down
to a piece of equipment, shackled into weak positions. When Shay finished tying off
both ends of the linen lines, she gazed up…and saw a bird in flight. Even her tethers
were beautiful, their white lengths painted to rainbows by the shifting lights of
the fantasy land below.

Shay circled around, fitting himself between her body and the glass. His eyes were
dark and unreadable, his jaw still bracketed in tension, though now the essence of
that strain seemed changed. In every inch of his stance and long breath from his lungs,
Zoe felt him soaking up the potency of their new positions as deeply as she. Cotton
and denim next to shivers and nudity. Freedom next to bondage. Power over vulnerability.
Dark dominance…utter submission.

Zoe’s eyes slid shut. “
Vaya
,” she whispered. Just the situation itself jolted her veins with a fresh speedball
of fear. She was quivering and didn’t care. The high of his power was worth the price
of her lucidity.

Shay brought his hands up to the sides of her neck by way of her hips, her waist,
and her breasts. “Where are we at, baby girl?” His growl was a protective caress,
modulated for her ears only. “Green light? Yellow light? Red light?”

“Completely green,” she rasped, “but only if you touch me again like that.”

He yanked her head close and bit into her lips again. “That’s
not
how things work with me, little bottom topper—and you know it.”

“Y-yes, Sir.” The syllables spilled out as he tunneled his hands back into her hair,
streaming his fingers out to the ends, pulling hard every inch of the way. As he did,
he pressed closer, his chest absorbing the rave club pounds of her heart, his legs
cushioning every new shudder that claimed her. With every motion or sound she gave
him, he returned the energy with another bite or recession of pain, seeming to know
just when she did and didn’t need it.

It was magical as dancing.

Though the metaphor fit, Shay left no doubt about who dictated every step they made.
Zoe was more than happy with that. She sagged, letting the pressure of the ropes and
the strength of his body support every inch of her…and letting her senses fall farther
over the side of coherency.

“My good girl,” he said, continuing the Caligula advance of his fingers, clawing them
down her back and over both swells of her ass. When he scraped them back up, she hissed
from the pain but swallowed back a shriek. “You take it so well, dancer. Every bite
I give…every blow I deal.”

She rolled her head up, breathing him in. Smelled like Ghid had managed to help him
clean up, though the unfamiliar soap didn’t totally drown the perfect pine spice of
his normal scent. “Because I belong to you,” she professed. “I take it because
you’re
the one giving it.”

A husky groan tore from his throat as he pulled back enough to meet her stare with
the potent gold power of his. “That’s damn good to hear, because I want to fill this
room with the smacks I give your sweet ass.”

He soaked up the wide pop of her eyes with a look of dark, feral satisfaction before
circling his body behind hers again. He stayed close, sweeping her hair to one side
so his lips trailed along her nape, sending even more shivers through her body from
the contact.

“Look up, baby girl,” he finally ordered into her ear, meeting her eyes through their
reflection in the window. “Watch yourself. Gaze at how beautiful you are when you
give yourself to my hands…transformed into your freedom.”

His words were like classic poetry. Zoe trembled and sighed again, swept in the splendor
of them.

Right before he shattered them with his first spank.

“
Ayyyy
!”

She’d expected a brief swat. Maybe even some warm-up taps…though those did come after
he rained fire through her entire backside with that initial blow. Okay, she was officially
awake now. And after settling her heart rate into something do-able, she actually
relaxed a little, settling herself into the pattern of the little raps he sprinkled
across both her cheeks and the tops of her thighs…

Thwack
.

“
Mierda! Cabrón
!” The smack hurt worse than before. And the brutally hard blow after that, too. Only
able to react to that with a choke, Zoe slammed her eyes shut and sagged her head.

“The correct response is ‘Thank you, Sir’,” Shay directed. “And you’ll raise your
head to submit it to me.”

She snapped her head up, teeth bared and glare ablaze, but taking in his face, its
perfection enhanced by all the nicks, dissolved her resistance into a new puddle.
He was so achingly gorgeous all the time, but never more than when he was given permission
to let his Dominant run completely free. In every intense spark of his gaze and every
proud angle of his posture, she witnessed what she gave to him right now…and what
she had to trust he’d give her in return.

Swallowing back her anger, she instead stated with meaningful softness, “Thank you,
Sir.”

He returned a nod of assertive approval—right before dealing another strict slap to
her buttocks.

Ow, ow, owwwww
.

“Thank you, Sir.”

Another, twice as hard. At least it felt like it.

“Th-thank you, Sir.”

Three in a row this time. She couldn’t hold back her scream or the jerk of her hips,
trying to get away from him, but he held on with a grip like steel. One rigid arm
circled her waist while he spanked again—
smack, smack, smack
—sending even more ribbons of fire across her tender globes.

“Ahhhhh!”

She had some choice nouns in her alternate vernacular that were set to be added whether
he liked it or not, but they fled her mind as he abruptly switched up the intent of
his touch. Instead of pain, he took the fire he’d just wielded, instead spreading
it into trails of tingling warmth. Back and forth he stroked, the swaths of his care
becoming the most enticing massage she’d ever received—