Not Until You: Part IV (3 page)

Chapter 18

I couldn’t open my eyes. Couldn’t move, really. Everything in me was in full-fledged panic mode—red lights flashing, sirens sounding.

But I was locked in place. Dying.

Dying for Foster to touch me. Dying to see this secret part of him. And dying to know why, when every part of my good sense said to run, my body had decided to wave the white flag.

“Eyes on me, Cela,” Foster said, his firm voice breaking through the quiet of the room and the sound of my own harsh breathing.

I swallowed past the dryness in my throat and forced my eyes open, finding a shirtless Foster leaning against his dresser, his arms braced on each side of him. The muscles in his shoulders rippled and flexed, as if his hold on the piece of furniture was the only thing restraining him from charging me.

“You have five seconds to walk out if you don’t want to be here. One . . .”

My heart was beating so fast, my chest hurt—like actually
hurt
.

Foster pushed off the dresser and took a step forward. “Two.”

Never had I felt like this. Not even when Dalton Roarke, the hottest guy in my high school, had kissed me with tongue during a skit in drama class. I thought I’d pass out back then, but that light-headedness was nothing compared to being under Foster’s purposeful gaze.

“Three.”

I wasn’t going anywhere. I knew it.
He
knew it. I shook my head.

“Two.”

He was arm’s length away now, and I could see a glimmer of his own trepidation behind the intensity. If I wasn’t scared before, that put me right over the top. On some instinctual level, both of us knew he was opening a door that couldn’t be closed again. This would be the
before
moment in our relationship—if you could even call it a relationship. Once he took that last step, we’d be entering the
after
. But I was mired in the quicksand already. For good or bad, I was a willing victim in whatever tonight brought.

Instead of saying
one,
he moved into my space and cupped my shoulders. The energy humming through him seemed to seep through my skin and make everything inside me crackle with tension. “Cela.”

“I’m still here,” I said, my voice a tremble of a thing.

“So you are.”

But I couldn’t tell if he was at all happy about that fact. I glanced at his neatly made bed—dark blue striped comforter, pristine white sheets and pillows—the bed he’d fucked other women on. Women I’d heard whimper and mewl from my side of the wall. The thought made my stomach twist, and not in a good way. I closed my eyes and took in a long pull of air. What was wrong with me? Any guy I slept with would’ve screwed other girls in his bed. That’s how beds worked.

Except mine. He’d been the only one in
my
bed, the only one to leave the faint scent of his cologne on my sheets.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that he’d followed my line of sight to the bed. He looked back to me, and I expected him to lead me there. Instead, his lips curled at the corner. “You wear your thoughts on your face, angel.”

“I—”

He pressed his hand over my mouth. “Enough talking. I think your mouth has gotten you in enough trouble tonight.”

I stared up at him, my words clogging in my throat and my thoughts splintering.

When he was apparently convinced I wasn’t going to say anything else, he dropped his hand from my mouth and tugged at my T-shirt, yanking it over my head. I didn’t have anything sexy beneath. I’d thrown on comfortable things after getting out of the shower and coming back to help Pike with Monty. But it didn’t matter, because Foster clearly wasn’t there to linger over lingerie. He unsnapped my bra and tossed it to the side, leaving me naked from the waist up. He cupped my breast greedily and with his other hand, grabbed my hip to drag me against him. His erection was a hard promise, the straining denim of his jeans brushing my belly.

“It’s not even fair how fucking tempting you are,” he said, his thumb teasing my nipple and making everything in me arch toward him. “Tempting and too damned brave for your own good.”

He gave my nipple a firm pinch, and I gasped. “I’m sorry?”

He smiled but there was a darkness behind it. “Yeah, you may well be when all is said and done.”

His hand slid up from my breast over my collarbone, then curled around my throat, briefly applying pressure there before moving up to grip my jaw. He held me there, his cool blue eyes tracking over my face, the slope of my nose, the curve of my mouth—like he was evaluating an item before purchasing. I didn’t dare move. Then he lowered his head and dragged the tip of his tongue along the seam of my lips. I shuddered at the sensual jolt the simple move sent through my nerve endings. Automatically, I opened to him, and he nipped along my bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth and sucking gently. Every move was methodical, deliberate—like he had all the time in the world.

But I didn’t. My body was screaming already, needing something that only he could give me. I’d gone wet and achy the moment he’d grabbed me and stopped me from leaving the room the first time. Patience was not an option. I pushed up on my toes, trying to go in for a full kiss, but he immediately pulled back and hauled me against his bedroom door. The door rattled against my back, and my breath rushed out from the unexpected move.

“No, angel, that’s now how this works. You’re here for my pleasure tonight. If I want to go slow, we go slow. If I want to tie you to my bed and lick every part of you but not let you come, I’ll do that. Your only decision is whether or not you use your safe word.” He crowded me against the door, his breath hot against my ear. “You understand?”

Every errant thought in my mind seemed to fall away, everything zooming in and focusing on the man in front of me—the rumble of his voice, the night-air scent of his skin, and his firm words falling against my ear. My response came out as a whisper. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good,” he breathed, the heat of his chest brushing against my already sensitive nipples. “Though, hard and fast has its merits, too. Turn around and put your palms against the door.”

“But—”

He grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the door. “Wrong answer. Hands on the door, Cela.”

My palms landed against the wood with a smack, and Foster yanked my scrub pants and panties down and off, leaving me like some criminal preparing for a pat down. My brain was spinning, my anxiety like electrical pulses hopping along my spine. What was he going to do to me with my back turned? My imagination went on a wild ride down way too many paths. I peeked over my shoulder, needing to see what was happening, but a sharp slap to my thigh had me yelping.

“Eyes forward,” Foster said, no emotion in his voice.

I snapped my focus back to the door, fighting my knee-jerk instinct to tell him to go to hell, to grab my clothes and walk right through the door I was braced against. He’d warned me. He was trying to scare me. Or piss me off. Break me and my demand to see him this way.

Footsteps sounded on his hardwood floor. His closet door squeaked open. It took every bit of my self-control to not look back at him. A minute or two passed and then his body heat was radiating on my back, his scent filling my nose. “Raise your hands above your head.”

I did as I was told, and he grabbed one of my wrists. I glanced upward to watch him wrap smooth black leather around it. A cuff. He slipped a finger between the leather and my skin, checking how tight it was, then strung a chain into the metal loop on the outside of the cuff. Blood rushed through my ears, the white noise sound pulsing with my frantic heartbeat. Sweat dampened my neck. Foster strung the length of chain through something above the door—a black eyebolt that I hadn’t noticed before. Once he had it threaded, he hooked a matching leather cuff to my other wrist.

When he released my hand, my arms lowered a fraction, the cuffs holding me in place with only a bit of slack. I jerked at them, the metal links rattling, but there was no slipping through the cuffs. I was now chained to the goddamned wall in the bedroom of a guy I thought I knew—but maybe didn’t know at all. The feel and the sight should’ve scared me spitless. But instead of the pure fear of danger, it was like the anxiety of getting on a roller coaster for the first time—adrenaline coalescing with anticipation . . . and trust. Trust that no matter how terrifying the ride, the cart wouldn’t fly off the tracks.

But when Foster squatted down behind me and locked cuffs around my ankles—cuffs that were attached to each other with a metal bar—my this-is-just-a-thrill-ride mentality faltered. Words tumbled out of me. “You don’t have to lock me down. I promise I won’t run.”

“Not now you won’t,” he said, a wicked smile crossing his face as he looked up at me. “And this is the
B
in BDSM, angel. You don’t know what it does to me to see you like this—all bound and helpless.”

He rose from his crouch, gliding his hand up from my ankle over my calf and thigh, sending hot shivers twining through me. I pressed my forehead to the door as his touch moved higher.

“I like knowing that I can do this to you.” His fingers slid along my folds, revealing just how embarrassingly wet I was, before tucking inside me. I whimpered and instinctively, I tried to clamp my thighs together—the stimulation after so much waiting almost overwhelming me. But the bar between my ankles didn’t allow me to close them even a little. “And you can’t do a damn thing about it except stay open to me and accept it.”

“Foster,” I whispered, not sure what I was asking him for.

His fingers slipped out of me, and then the length of his body was pressed up against my back. He was still half-dressed, the cool touch of the metal button on his jeans like an ice cube to my overheated skin. His left hand collared my neck, and his right hovered in front of my face, his index and middle fingers shiny with my arousal. “Taste, Cela. Taste how goddamned sexy you are.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head, almost frantically. He wanted me to . . . I couldn’t. Not with him right there, watching.

He kissed the shell of my ear. “Aww, don’t be shy now, angel. You’re telling me in all those nights you’ve touched yourself, you haven’t taken a taste?”

My cheeks went fever hot. Of course I had. And I’d tasted myself on his lips after he’d gone down on me that first night. But somehow, admitting this pressed that shame button inside me, giving me that sick feeling in my stomach.

And that pissed me the hell off. Why? Why couldn’t I push past that part of myself that wanted to label everything
dirty
and
wrong
and
sinful
? Fighting past that instinctual response, I bent my head and sucked his fingers into my mouth, even as the flush of embarrassment burned its way over my chest, and cleaned every bit of them.

He groaned against my ear and pressed his hips harder against my backside, his erection like steel against my softness. He pulled his fingers from my mouth with a
pop
. “Good girl. Now I won’t have to flog you as hard.”

My eyes snapped open at that. “Flog?”

He ran a hand along my hair in a deceptively gentle gesture. “Yes, angel. Still want to see this part of me?”

I bit my lip. Did I? My body was giving a big
Hell, yes!
But anxiety was clawing at me. Would it hurt? Would I hate it? God, what if I
liked
it? That possibility seemed even more disturbing. But I’d fallen too far down the rabbit hole to back off now. “Why do you have to hit me?”

He ran a finger along the notches of my spine, slowly, reverently. “Because it turns me on.”

No other explanation. In this world of his, that was enough. I swallowed hard.

He pinched my hip and I gasped. “And maybe it’ll turn you on, too. Or not. Only one way to find out.”

Before I could even process the dart of pain from the pinch, I heard him walk away again. So this was it. He was going to flog me—whatever that meant. I wasn’t even sure. God, why hadn’t I googled this stuff before goading him into showing me?

Because you were too afraid to look
, my mind whispered.

Something soft and a little ticklish brushed over my shoulders. I glanced to the side just in time to see the strips of leather slide over my skin. Goose bumps followed in its wake. “What is that?”

Foster trailed the tails along my shoulder blades, the touch oh-so soft. “It’s a flogger, angel. Strips of elk hide. Worried?”

“Yes.”

He chuckled. “Good, that will make it better.”

Before I could ask another question, delay him further, I heard the swoosh of the flogger cut through the air. The tails of it striped right across my back on the diagonal. I reared up and cried out in surprise, the chains of my cuffs clinking. But instead of the sharp stinging sensation I’d been bracing for, the blow hit like a heavy thud against my back—impactful and breath stealing, but not painful.

I sucked in air, gasping for it, but another hit came down in the opposite direction. The tails wrapped around my hip a bit, leaving little stings where the end of the leather strips landed. And my back went warm and tingly. Foster paused. “Still with me?”

My fists flexed, and I swayed a bit in the cuffs, but the tingling sensation was oddly pleasant—almost calming. “Yes, sir.”

“Beautiful,” he said, his pleased tone doing more to me than it should. “You should see how pretty your skin is as it heats.”

I squirmed a bit, trying to lift my feet, a restlessness growing in me, but the bar restricted my movement too much. I needed . . . I don’t know, something.

“Easy, angel,” he said softly. “I’ll give you more, but if you keep trying to move, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

More? He thought I was asking for
more
? But even as I thought the question, some part of me knew he was right. My body was humming for more contact, for that rush of tingling that seemed to spread from my back along all my nerve endings.

And I didn’t have to wait long for it. Foster landed blows along my ass this time and on the backs of my thighs. And there was no pause this time. As if he were making figure eights in the air, he rained the leather down on me in a very precise but increasingly intense pattern. The soft thudding from the first few blows morphed into something edgier and more intense. Pain . . . but pain mixed with this electric feeling that had my legs quivering, and my moans turning into some sound I didn’t recognize—desperate, wanton need.