Play Me Right (4 page)

“Sebastian.” She moans my name and I take advantage of her open mouth to lick inside. I slide my tongue against hers, relishing the sweet, honey taste of her. Lick across her full lower lip. Suck her tongue deep into my own mouth. She tastes so good, feels so good, that I want to go on doing this forever. I want to spend the next hundred years kissing her, claiming her, making her mine if she’ll let me.

I want to make her feel as good as she makes me feel just by existing. Just by breathing.

I stroke a finger over her breast, around her nipple, then slide my hand underneath her skirt, relishing the satiny feel of her skin, the soft, lush curve of her ass.

“Wait,” she says, pushing me away just as my fingers slip into her panties.

“I’ve been waiting for four days. I’m done waiting, Aria.”

“I thought you were sorry for pushing me. You just said—”

“For pushing you too far, yes. I am sorry. But this isn’t about pushing you.” I find her clit with my thumb, begin to stroke. “This is about making you feel good.”

She moans, her head falling back against the elevator wall even as the doors glide open. “We need to get off the elevator.”

“Why? No one else has access to it.” I press kisses to her jaw, her throat, her sexy, sexy collarbone even as I slip a finger through her hot, slick folds. She’s already wet and I can’t begin to say what that fact does to me.

“But I need to tell you—” She breaks off on a moan and I lower my head to her breast. Bite her nipple softly through her shirt before sucking it into my mouth. At the same time, I rub her clit hard, while twisting my fingers deep inside of her. It only takes a second to find her G-spot, stroke it. Once, twice, and then she’s going over the edge, crying out my name as she comes and comes and comes.

It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. But it’s a start, and for now, I’ll take what I can get.

For long seconds, I forget how to breathe. How to think. All I can do is feel as Sebastian slams me into first one orgasm and then another. When it’s done, when I can finally string three words together in a barely coherent thought, I know that no matter how much pleasure he just gave me, it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. He’s right. It’s been four days since he’s touched me—four days since I’ve touched him—and right now all I want is to feel him against me. Inside of me. To meld the two of us together so completely that I won’t be able to tell where he ends and I begin. It’s a terrifying thought, considering how many things are still uncertain between us, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Doesn’t make me want it—want all of him—any less.

He starts to pull away, to usher me out of the elevator. But that’s not what I want.

I slip from his grasp, ignoring the questioning look on his face as I drop to my knees in front of him. Whatever happens later, whatever he says—whatever we decide—I want this time with him. Want to make him feel as good as he’s just made me feel.

Maybe if I hadn’t talked to my sister, maybe if he hadn’t just hurtled me into two powerful orgasms without a thought to his own pleasure, maybe if it hadn’t been four days since I felt him inside of me, I would feel differently. But those things did happen and all I want is to wipe the guilty look off of his face and to give him pleasure.

“Aria, you don’t have—”

“Let me,” I plead, looking up at him from beneath my lashes. “I want to.”

He cups my face, tilts my chin up so that I can’t help but look him in the eyes. “We need to talk.”

My heart thuds in my chest. When used in that combination, those are four of the most terrifying words in the English language. And though I know he’s right—we do need to talk—I want this first. “Please.”

“Aria—”

“I need this, Sebastian. I need you.”

For long seconds, I think he’s going to refuse. It’s stupid—I know it’s stupid—to feel like he’s rejecting me when he’s gone through all this trouble just to see me, but the rejection shatters me anyway. Has my head dropping, has the breath catching in my chest, has the hope that’s bloomed inside me since the moment I looked up and saw him watching me across the casino floor slowly leaking away.

I try not to show it, try not to let him see how much he affects me, but I must not do a very good job, because suddenly he drops to his knees in front of me. “Aria, baby, I don’t want you to think your submission is all I want from you. That I’m demanding it—”

“You’re not demanding it if I’m giving it freely.” I pull back from him a little, urge him to his feet. But when he reaches to help me up as well, I shake my head. Clasp my hands behind my back. And wait for him to tell me what he wants.

I’ve never done this before. Never given myself so completely over to the care of another person—esp
ecially not a man. But he’s as shaken up by what happened the other night as I am and I don’t know any other way than this to show him that I’m okay. That I want him.

That I trust him not to hurt me.

We’ve both made mistakes in our time together, but this—making love with Sebastian—
isn’t a mistake. It never could be. But after the way I freaked out last time, I need to prove it to him.

Maybe I need to prove it to myself, too. That I’m not afraid. That I’m not weak. That I’m strong enough to love Sebastian—to let him love me.

His hand is shaking when it reaches out to cup my cheek. “You don’t have to do this.”

I give him the most sultry smile I can muster—which probably isn’t much, considering how afraid I am that he’ll reject me. “You keep assuming I’m doing this for you.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. I’m doing it for us.”

For long seconds, he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Hell, I don’t even think he breathes. I’m about to give up—about to push to my feet and try to find another way around the mess I made the last time we were together—when he reaches for his belt.

I nearly sag in relief. Thank God. Maybe we can salvage this yet.

I expect him to rush. It’s been four days and even after two orgasms, I’m so hungry for him that I can barely stay still. But Sebastian seems intent on drawing things out—on torturing me—his fingers slow and deliberate as they unbuckle his belt. Pull the two ends apart. Slide the fine Italian leather through the belt loops.

I watch him, spellbound, my heart beating just a little faster with each belt loop he passes. Finally he’s pulled it all the way out, but instead of dropping it on the floor like I expect him to, he stretches the leather between his two hands. Tugs a few times as if testing the integrity of it.

I don’t know why, but my sex grows wet at the sight. I don’t want him to hit me with it—I’ve had enough pain at the hands of men to last me a lifetime—but something about the way the brown leather looks against his tanned and calloused hands…It gets me hot. Really, really hot.

“Stand up,” he tells me, and I do, pushing eagerly to my feet.

“Take off your clothes.”

I pause for a moment, a little uncertain at the coolness in his voice. I’ve never stripped for a man before, let alone one who sounds so dispassionate, so removed from what’s going on right in front of him. But then I look at his eyes and they’re a hot, laser-bright green and I can see he’s as aroused as I am. Can see that he’s hanging on to his own control by a thread.

Somehow that gives me the impetus I need to lift my hands to the buttons of my blouse. To slip them through the buttonholes, slowly, carefully. When they are all undone, I shrug the shirt off my shoulders, letting it slip down my arms and to the floor behind me.

Sebastian’s eyes follow the movement before coming back to rest on my lace-covered breasts.

If I was a different woman, I’d probably be able to tease him here. To put on a show that would make him burn even hotter. But I’m not that kind of woman, and though I think I’d like to be, for now all I can do is unfasten my bra and let it slip to the thick carpet as well.

He still doesn’t say anything, doesn’t reach for me, though his hands tighten on the belt, drawing it even tauter. My sex clenches at the sight and I want to reach for him, for the belt.

The knowledge throws me off and my hands falter at the waistband of my skirt. Suddenly it’s like my fingers don’t work—like they’ve forgotten how to work a button, how to lower a zipper.

“Leave it,” Sebastian tells me, his voice all smoky gravel and midnight promises.

The tone has my hands dropping instantly to my side, even as I nervously pleat my skirt between my fingers.

And then Sebastian is there, prying my fingers from the material. “You okay, sweetheart?” he asks, leaning down so his breath is hot against my cheek.

It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to moan at the contact. And when his hand—with the belt still wrapped around it—skims lightly over my breast, my knees actually tremble.

He smiles at me, then, a deliciously dark thing that lights me up from the inside and has every one of my nerve endings sizzling with want. With need.

Slowly, so slowly, he slides the cool leather down my arm, across my stomach, over my breasts. For a second, just a second, he brushes the belt against my throat and a frisson of fear runs through me. It’s the good kind of fear, though, the kind that has my skin stretching tight and my every sense on hyper-alert.

And then the leather is gone just as quickly and I’m left to relax—or maybe just sag with disappoint
ment. Right now, with a million different sensations running through me, it’s so hard to tell.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

My mouth runs dry at the order, and at the tone it’s delivered in. But I do as Sebastian says, sliding my arms behind my back and loosely clasping my right wrist with my left hand.

Once I do that, Sebastian walks behind me and gently pries my grip loose. And then he winds the belt around first one wrist and then the other, again and again, until the belt is wrapped completely around me. Then he re-fastens the buckle.

Instinctively, I try to get my hands apart, but I’m fastened tightly. A shiver of fear slinks through me, but it’s overshadowed by the desire that’s burning inside of me. It’s a startling realization, because no matter what I said earlier, I thought I was doing this for him. To show Sebastian that I’m not afraid of him, that I want what he wants. Which is the truth.

But it’s more than that. Being tied up by Sebastian excites me.

Wondering what he’s going to do next excites me.

Turning my body over to him to do with it what he wants excites me.

Honestly, it turns me on more than anything ever has. More than—

He tugs on the belt, hard, pulling my shoulder blades down and dragging my attention back to the present. Back to him. As if I could ever ignore him for more than few seconds.

“Comfortable?” he asks, after he’s sure my attention is back on him.

I’m not exactly sure comfortable is the word to describe the need clawing at my insides. But all I say is “Yes.”

“Good.”

And then he’s pressing his hands down on my shoulders, not hard enough to hurt but with enough purpose that I get the message. Bending my already shaky knees, I lower myself slowly, clumsily, to the ground.

And wait for whatever instruction Sebastian wants to give me next.