Knowing the Ropes (17 page)

At least no one could tell she wasn’t wearing panties.

Normally, the attention would make her feel like her skin didn’t fit quite right. But today, while it did make her self-conscious, it was in a good way, warming her up for the scrutiny she knew she’d be getting from Nick.

Even with the bit of breeze, she was sweating by the time she arrived at the restaurant, the silk skirt clinging to her legs. A hostess in what she assumed to be traditional Ethiopian clothes smiled graciously and led her down a flight of stairs to a blessedly cool room where Nick was waiting for her.

Oh no. Nick was waiting for her.

He rose when she came in—the seating was low to the ground here, at small round tables made of wicker—buried his hands in her hair and kissed her, heedless of the hostess and the other guests, heedless of the dark lipstick she was wearing, the closest she could get to a Goth look with the makeup she had on hand.

Fever from her lips down to her toes.

And something pressing on the back of her neck, something cold and metallic.

Not sharp, but definitely cold and metallic. Had he gotten those claws already, had them Fed Exed or something? Or did he have something else devious in mind to torture her with?

The mystery, as much as the sensation, made her shiver.

When he pulled away from the kiss, his face was stern, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact he was wearing some of her lipstick, making him look disturbingly pretty.

“You look beautiful,” he said in a voice that rumbled against her clit. “Go into the bathroom and put these on.”

He palmed something to her. She uncurled her hand, glanced down nervously. Nipple clips, or maybe tit-jewelry designed to slip around the nipples, adorned with delicate dangling faux rubies.

She let out a soft meep. “Am I in trouble? I know the train was slow, but I didn’t think I was late enough I needed to call.”

He smiled and brushed his fingers over her curled ones that concealed the clips. “These are just to get you in the right mood for shopping. Don’t make them too tight. I want you hot but not bothered.”

Instead of a dreadful, frightening weight in her hand, they felt like gems. She walked to the bathroom with a spring in her step.

Dinner passed in a blur, a wet, horny, very fun blur. At one point, she found herself asking, “Can we come back here sometime without nipple clips?”

“Don’t like the clips?”

“Love the clips. But I think I’d love the food, too, if I wasn’t so distracted!”

They didn’t linger over coffee.

Thunder still rumbled in the distance but no rain fell, though the air was so moist it might as well. Fully dark now, the night was stagnant, sticky; the pleasant breeze of earlier had died altogether. “It’s only a few blocks,” Nick encouraged, but his sexy voice seemed wilted by the heat.

Every step was a fight between arousal—the nipple clips tugging at her bouncing breasts, the weight of need cupped in her pelvis—and sheer sweaty discomfort.

Selene thought the discomfort had won when they reached Eros boutique a few blocks away. Sweat was pooling between her breasts because the cheap fabric of the bodice didn’t breathe at all, and while she figured the way the silk clung to her legs might look enticing, it felt like she was smothering in a wet parachute. She barely looked at the items in the small, barred display window—a chap-clad mannequin dangling a set of purple leather cuffs from its truncated wrist, a bondage Barbie and Ken set, and an elaborate leather mask. She didn’t even want to go in at this point. She wanted to get back to Nick’s place with its central air…

And take a shower. A nice, long shower, with a shower gel called something along the lines of Cool Peppermint or Ocean Breezes.

After a shower and a few cold drinks, maybe she’d be able to think about sex. Right now, even with over-stimulated nipples and a moist, open pussy taunting her, sex sounded uncomfortably warm and sticky.

She’d opened her mouth to suggest the retreating-back-to-A/C plan when Nick pushed the door open and took her arm. “Let’s go shopping!” he said, childish glee on his face.

The glee was contagious, and she found herself grinning despite her discomfort. “I’ve never heard a guy that excited about shopping before—not even for geeky electronics or tools. Maybe a car. Or where I grew up, a new tractor.”

“Sex toys may be the only thing better than electronics and tools for getting guys to shop. How many times can you give someone a present you’ll enjoy as least as much as she will?”

At that point, curiosity—and the cool though rubber-scented air coming from inside—got the better of her.

Selene had never been in a sex shop before. Sure, she had Good Vibrations and Blowfish.com bookmarked because a girl never knew when the Rabbit Pearl might need company. But being in an actual store was different.

Very different.

Very hot and also a little intimidating, as they climbed narrow stairs lined with posters for various fetish and gay events and entered a store full of leather, rubber, latex and gleaming chrome.

“I’m not even sure what some of this stuff is,” she whispered, brushing her lips deliberately against Nick’s ear to make her embarrassed confession more sensual.

He whispered back, “Honestly? Me neither. That’s either a fucking machine or a really funny-looking ergonomic chair.” He pointed toward a curious black piece of furniture that did seem to have a place to hold a dildo but looked at least as much like some weird office furniture. “And that? I don’t know and I don’t think I want to know.”

Selene stared at the offending item curiously. Rings and metal spikes. “I think it’s a chastity belt for a boy.”

“I said I didn’t want to know!”

She patted him soothingly. “I promise I’m not interested in trying it.”

Not on Nick, certainly. But, she admitted to herself, if not to her lover, that once she figured out what it was, she got the most fascinating image of a faceless but very good-looking guy wearing nothing but one of those and a strained smile, enjoying the torturous yet exciting sensation of needing to come and not being able to.

She didn’t think she wanted to put a guy in that position, but she could see why someone might. She could definitely understand why the guy would go for it. It would feel so good going along with it and feel even better when he finally earned his release from some delightfully evil, elegant domme or burly leather-clad master.

“I’ve never seen so much latex in my life.” She grimaced. “That’s got to be sticky.”

“No trying on latex tonight. Maybe in cooler weather.”

Selene drew a sharp breath.
Cooler weather
implied a future. She’d been trying so hard to enjoy the moment and not think ahead, not assume anything, that Nick’s words set off a jumble of conflicting feelings. Warm pleasure and chilly panic, comfort and fear.

Then she internally mocked herself. She was reading way too much into a few random words.

Nick pulled one dress from a nearby rack and she let the movement distract her from her silly ponderings. It was certainly eye-catching: a full-length cobalt-blue gown with a tulip hem, floor-length in back, slit to well above the knee in front but with a graceful line that made it look elegant as well as dead sexy.

“Oh yes!” She didn’t think latex would ever be her thing—give her silk, velvet and leather any day—but she could see the appeal of being poured into a dress that would mold to her every curve and show them off to best advantage.

She could get lost just in the clothes and lingerie for hours. Not that she could think of many places to wear these clothes, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun to own them. But that wasn’t what they were here to shop for.

They were here to look for toys.

Thinking about that went straight to her clit.

The atmosphere in the shop didn’t help, or maybe it did, depending on the definition of help. Bondage gear everywhere, faceless mannequins in leather masks that made them look like sexy aliens, the pair of attractive young clerks, both with facial piercings and funky haircuts. The guy was eying Nick, and she was pretty sure the girl was too, but was also checking her out. Even the somewhat claustrophobic space with the barred windows and the smell of rubber and leather—it all conspired to make her aware of the clips distending her nipples, drawing them out to tortured, exquisitely sensitive peaks.

Was that why the girl was staring at her? Could she tell that Selene had clips on her nipples and a great well of moisture between her legs, making her move as if she carried a heavy weight with her pelvis?

Without thinking about it, Selene ran one hand lightly over her nipple, shuddered at the sensation. She shuddered in a different way when she realized what she’d done. But they were alone in the store except for the clerks. The male clerk, she suspected, wouldn’t have noticed boobs if they were on fire and waving under his nose, not with Nick and his fine ass in the room anyway, and the female one just gave her a nod and a mischievous grin, as if to say,
Glad you’re having a good night.

Emboldened, she grabbed Nick’s arm. “Let’s look at the toys!”

He laughed and said, “Patience, little girl,” and made a show of allowing himself to be dragged to the display case, but from his smile, and more importantly the impressive bulge at the crotch of his khakis, she could tell he was into it. “I’m looking for nipple toys for the lady,” he said grandly.

The female clerk, grinning knowingly, pulled out an array of nipple clips and spread them on the glass countertop. Square ones that operated like a vise. Ones with an elaborately engineered design that, the young woman explained, as casually as if comparing the advantages of two different sets of speakers, allowed a very firm grip so you could hang weights from them or use them as tie-down points for bondage. “And of course there are the alligator clips,” she said, displaying something that looked for all the world like small versions of the toothy clamps on the end of a jumper cable. They looked like they could draw blood.

Selene felt her eyes widening as she stared at them, trying to imagine how that level of pain on her delicate nipples could be pleasurable. Her grip on Nick’s hand tightened. “Not for you.” Nick stroked her bare arm reassuringly, as one would pet a frightened cat. “Not yet, maybe not ever. I wouldn’t want to risk spoiling those lovely nipples. No, what I want for the lady is something lighter. Tweezer clips, or something more like this one…”

He reached inside her bodice, and for a second Selene feared, or hoped, or both—her pussy hoped; the rest of her was fiercely undecided—he was going to pop her breast out of its confinement. It was so close to spilling over the top of the corset anyway…

Instead, he pulled off the earring-like clip to show to the clerk.

She had about a half-second of indignation.

It drowned in a flood of sensation—hot pain as blood rushed where it had long been denied, followed by hotter pleasure as waves of arousal shot from her liberated but still-aching nipple. Sensations flooded her brain as well, threatening to short-circuit it—Nick’s casual possessiveness, the near exposure, the behavior that skirted the line of completely inappropriate, yet seemed all right in a late-night sex shop with the male clerk’s eyes devouring Nick and the woman’s devouring them both.

It was all too much.

Her hips swayed forward, and her pussy clenched around nothing, and Nick’s dangerous fingers found their way back inside her bodice again, to brush the throbbing nipple as he whispered, “It’s all right, Selene. You may come.”

And, face flaming, she did, knowing that both Nick’s eyes and those of the pretty little clerk were devouring her pleasure, and the young guy was probably getting a vicarious kick out of the casual display of dominance and maybe wishing it was him instead of her.

They came away from Eros with a set of delicate tweezer clamps with bells on them and a slightly sturdier set connected with a chain, as well as a new dildo and butt plug for her, and a toy for Nick that made her giggle with nervous glee—a paddle that left an impression of the word NAUGHTY on the spankee’s ass. It looked like it might really sting, but there was something so tongue-in-cheek about it, so playful, that she was more charmed than anxious.

The threatened rains came on the way back to Nick’s car, dancing in to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning. “I love sex during thunderstorms,” she told him as they poured their drenched selves into the car.

“Funny,” Nick said, pulling her almost out of the seat with his kiss. “So do I.”

Chapter Seventeen

Of course there were no parking spaces near Nick’s place. By the time they’d run two blocks, squealing with glee at particularly bright lightning bolts and occasionally stopping to kiss because they were going to get soaked one way or the other anyway, and Nick fumbled with the complicated series of locks on the outside door of his building, Selene was drowning in drenched silk and soggy poly satin, and Nick’s khakis had soaked up enough water to irrigate Arizona. She kicked off her sodden shoes as soon as she walked in the door, felt her slick bare feet squelch against the hardwood floor.

They left streams of water behind them as they ran up the stairs, laughing all the way.

They were still laughing when Nick, neglecting his own clothes for the moment, pulled down her skirt, letting it fall into a puddle on the floor. “I want you naked,” he said, fumbling with the wet lacings of her pseudocorset. “Naked and slick like a water goddess.”