REVEAL - Scorpio & Harlan (Fettered Book 2) (5 page)

I
am falling
into this man and all I’m doing is sitting in his lap. I’m pretty sure that’s dangerous, but nothing in me wants to move.

His head slides down by my ear. “Show me.” His voice is full of gravel, and it has my hands jumping to obey.

It doesn’t do shit for steadying them, however. When I picked out the photos I liked from the comfort of my own couch, it felt like a game. This doesn’t feel like a game at all. I’m acutely aware that if I show this man what’s in this envelope, he’s going to do those things to me. Not as his partner, his equal, his sexy playmate.

As his sub.

I know what surrender is—I’ve let myself go into more songs and pounding beats than I can count. And I know that Harlan won’t stand for anything less.

I somehow manage to get the envelope open and dump the photos onto my lap. “I only picked three.” My words sound all wispy and apologetic, and that pisses me off. I lean into his hand on my back. “There’s more I liked, but these are the ones that jumped out at me strongest. I think that’s what you wanted.”

He puts a hand over the pictures, blocking his view. “Tell me what I’m going to see.”

I don’t want to be naked that fast. “You have eyes. Use them.”

“Mouthy sub.” He sounds amused. “Remind me that we need to spend extra time on the punishment clause in the contract.”

I can’t resist. “You could sing to me. That would probably cover it.” Ari brought him to karaoke night once. The man has many talents. Tolerable pitch isn’t one of them.

His hand tangles in my hair and pulls, hard enough to get my attention. “Brat.”

I tip my head back and look straight into his eyes. “If that’s not what you want to sign up for, say so before I totally embarrass myself here. I don’t put myself in the closet of girls with good manners for anyone.”

I love the smile that sneaks onto his face. “Yeah. Got that.”

It sounds like he maybe does. “How does that work with being your sub?”

This smile is long, slow, and deadly. “Only one way to find out, beautiful.”

He’s undoing me, one gravelly word at a time. I sit up straight and look at dark shadows off in the distance. “One of the pictures is a room done in velvet. It’s sexy, but not frilly or soft. Another is the restraints one you already saw. The last one is—” I glare at him. “It would be easier to just get naked.”

His eyes are eating me up. “Welcome to my world. What’s the last photo?”

“He’s undressing her.” I fire the words out, trying to push him back with them. “She’s just standing there.”

He lifts his hand up, and his voice is back to gravel. “Show me.”

I manage to find that image without dropping the others, which, given how badly my hands are shaking, is ridiculously hard.

He wraps his hand around mine, and I can see his eyes studying the picture. I’ve told him the basics, but they’re not what matters. A woman is standing in soft light, her head tipped back on the shoulder of the man behind her. She’s dressed in underwear we can’t really see and what is probably his shirt, and he’s sliding the shirt off one shoulder. All body parts are covered. It’s practically chaste.

Except for the look on her face.

I freaking hope he doesn’t see that part. “I’m assuming he keeps going after the shirt.”

His chest rumbles around me. “Duh.”

I squiggle a little further away on his lap. His hard cock against my leg I can handle. It’s the rest of the intimacy of this that’s freaking me out. “So, I picked. I showed you. What now?”

His fingers are lifting my chin again. “Next is the contract. And know that after you sign it, this avoidance crap stops. You think something, you feel something—you tell me.”

I can feel myself crackling. “You don’t own me.”

“Wrong verb. Right idea.” He’s not backing down an inch. “You’re new, but you’re not that new. You know what a sub is. What she gives.”

Edges. Fuck. “Fine. Let’s do the contract.”

He doesn’t bother hiding his grin at all. “You’re sexy when you’re steamed, do you know that?”

I roll my eyes. “Get used to it. I have a feeling you’re going to piss me off a lot.”

He’s still laughing as he pulls a small tablet out of a pocket in his jacket. “You okay with squinting at a small screen? If not I can email this to you and we can do it in the morning.”

By then I might lose my nerve. “My eyes are young and limber. Is it the newbie contract? I’ve seen that one.”

“Yeah.” He thumbs his tablet a few times and hands it to me, and then slides me off his lap and onto the rock wall.

I know what he’s doing. A different vibe for the contract than for the porn—just like I asked. He listened, and he’s delivering, and that loosens something that’s been tightening in my gut.

I make it through the first pages fast. He’s right—I know what I’m signing up for. I’m a tourist who’s read the guidebooks. I slow down when I get to the possible areas of play. I’ve been involved in enough discussions on the couches at Fettered to have a pretty good idea of what I do and don’t want to do, at least in theory. I mark a bunch off as hard and soft limits, green-light some of the others, and hand him the tablet. “Any questions?”

He glances at me as he takes it. “That’s usually my line.”

I shrug. “I’m not much for paperwork. Words matter.”

He hands it back. “Any of your green-light stuff less than enthusiastic?”

I shake my head. “Nope.” I’ve heard Ari’s speech on that a hundred times, even though it wasn’t ever pointed at me. “Anything at all uncertain I’ve put in soft limits for now. There are a lot of those, but I’m okay with trying them.”

“We will.”

I thumb through to what I know is the hard stuff, and screw up my face at the first lines. “Punishment clause.” I put down the tablet and look at him.

His smile is pure sin. “We’re going to need one.”

I sigh, and then try to stumble through the mess of my own insides. “This is one of those arousing, but also disturbing, areas for me. I know sometimes punishment is mostly a play thing and the subs are angling for it. Emily does that a lot.” Which seems to surprise everyone, including her.

Harlan grins. “Yes, she does.”

“So that kind of stuff, that’s all good. I know I have a mouth, and I suspect we could have fun playing with that.” I pause, but he’s silent, waiting for me to finish. “But I don’t like the idea of you using punishment to shut down who I am.”

He’s quiet, and I can tell he’s really thinking. “That’s not what it’s about, at least not for me. If you’re sassing me to play with me, to bring all of who you are into the scene, then that works. But if it’s getting in the way of your surrender—if you’re using it as cover or as a defense or as a way to try to top from the bottom in a non-playful way—then that’s a problem and I will be shutting that right the fuck down.”

I blink. “Wow. You don’t mince words.”

“Nope. I don’t. Does that work for you?”

He’s telling me he’s going to keep me riding the sharp part of the edges whether I like it or not.

But he’s also said he’ll be there to catch me once we get off. I need to hear him say it again. “If you have to push on me like that, I’m going to be a mess after.”

He reaches forward and strokes his knuckle down my cheek. “That’s part of it too. I won’t drop you. That’s my end of the deal. You don’t have to walk any of this by yourself, and if you can’t stand my face, then Ari or Damon or Emily or Leo or Quint will take care of you.”

I blow out my breath into the cold night, missing his lap and wanting to get this done. “Okay. I can work with that.”

S
he’s running
out of gas. She’s totally shown up for this, and if I were a nice Dom, I’d stop now and let her think about things and get some sleep and talk to me in the morning.

I’m not nice.

I pick up the tablet and scroll back to make sure I have her selections locked in my mind. “There’s one thing I need us to talk about a little more.” I point my finger at a bullet that matters a lot to me. “Public scening. You have it as a soft limit, but I want to dig into some more specifics around that. What are you up for, at least in theory?”

Her face screws up in a way I’m already finding intolerably cute. “You mean public like at the club?”

Time to see just how comfortable with all this she really is. “There too, but also outside.” I trail a finger up the side of her jeans, because I plain can’t keep my hands off her anymore. “Like if I wanted to pull you back into my lap right now and slide my fingers into your jeans and make you come.”

She’s staring at me and her breath is coming in jerking pants. Part of me is freaking turned on, and part of me is scared she’s going to say no to something it would truly hurt me to give up. I try to keep both things dialed down as much as I can. She needs to choose without my reactions leaning all over her.

She’s pulling herself back under control. “I don’t think I want anyone else to see. Not up close, anyhow. That feels like a hard limit.”

I need to know its exact contours, because this is my favorite damn playground, and at least some of it clearly turns her on. “Would it be okay if people were suspicious about what we were doing? Like if somebody came out on that balcony over there and watched you wiggling on my lap while my hand was down your pants?”

If she squirms any harder, she’s going to come right on top of our rock wall. “I think that’s okay.”

Damn, I like her. She’s letting me push, letting herself feel into the pushing and giving me truth. There’s nothing sexier, and my need to bend her over and fuck her in the middle of a Seattle street is getting outrageous.

The fact that she hasn’t totally ruled that out for someday in the future is driving me even crazier. “How about if people can hear us? Hear you?” I lower my voice. “If they can hear my hand spanking your ass, or if I order you to be as loud as you want to be and people can hear you moan and scream as you come?”

I can see her cheeks going red, even in the dark, and I want to be absolutely sure I know why. “This is one of my favorite kinks, beautiful. If it turns you on that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

She lets out a whoosh of a breath. “I’m not ashamed. A little embarrassed, yeah, and a lot turned on, so I’m not thinking very straight.” She chews her lip. “I was a singer for a long time. A performer. I like having an audience. I can maybe see liking that here too. Not in close, but letting other people connect to that energy, putting it out there in the world instead of hiding it away in a bedroom somewhere.”

She’s just put something into words that I’ve known my whole adult life and never been able to explain. It’s never been about people watching me. It’s been about not hiding. About sharing. About the energies of sex and passion and control and surrender being so wildly messed up in the world and about putting some drops back into that ocean that don’t buy into all the bullshit.

Scorpio’s watching me intently. She holds up a hand. A caution—a gentle one. “I don’t know for sure. This feels like one of those things I could totally change my mind on without a lot of warning.”

If she does, I’ll stop. But I’ve been at this gig long enough that I don’t think she’s going to. Not when she has such a deep connection to why. BDSM is a head game more than anything else. I point my finger at the contract. “Almost done. Open contract or closed?”

She raises an eyebrow, takes the tablet back, and reads the fine print.

I know what it says. I also know what I want this time—and I’m surprising myself.

She looks up. “Okay, so there’s two parts. I’m fine with open time limits. We end it when at least one of us is done.”

That’s the easy part. “Agreed. What about other people? Open or closed?”

She wrinkles her face. “I know what people think about musicians, and they’re not wrong, but I’m pretty much a serial monogamist. One guy at a time. I might be willing to try stretching that if it’s important to you, but that’s my starting place.”

She deserves honesty from her Dom. “I usually do open. It’s not what I want this time.”

I see the surprise flare in her eyes, and it’s beautiful. I plan to keep surprising her. After we make damn sure all the details are clear. “That can only apply to actual scenes and sexual contact with others, though. My job involves lots of watching other people and stepping in when I need to, which can include things like cuddling a half-naked sub in my lap while she cries.”

She smiles and taps her finger on my tablet. “Okay. Closed to other people, with the caveat that Scorpio is a big girl and knows that Harlan has a job to do.”

Damn. My arousal hasn’t gone anywhere, but I’m also discovering layers of this woman I really like that are way beyond than the visceral ones. I reach over and swipe through to the signature page. “You can think about it if you want.”

She’s already working through the electronic signature protocol. “Already did that before I showed up with porn and sat in your lap.”

I grin—she’s pretty damn irresistible. “That was a big highlight in my day.”

She looks up, and all I can see is the flaring desire in her eyes. “Yeah. Mine too.”

H
e has
his hands on me and my ass back in his lap faster than I can take my next breath.

I shiver, and it has nothing to do with being cold. “What are you doing?”

He takes the tablet out of my hands and slides it into his bag. “You signed. You’re mine. Be at the club at noon tomorrow. Don’t touch yourself tonight.”

He has to be freaking kidding me. The heat between my legs is going to turn me into human gelatin soon. “Are you always going to be this mean?”

He tips his head down into my neck and bites. “Yes. But I also have a one-time offer for you.” His hand slides to the waistband of my jeans. “My fingers in your pussy, right now. You come fast and you come hard and you come loud and you don’t give a damn if half the neighborhood leans out their windows to watch.”

It’s three a.m. and they’re all dead asleep, but the idea of them watching floods my panties anyhow. “Yes. Go.”

He bites my neck again, and his fingers are already working my belt loose. “What’s your safeword?”

“Lightning.” I gasp as his hand heads into the back of my jeans, his middle finger running down the cleft of my ass. It’s a tight fit, and every inch he slides further down has my clit sitting up and begging. I squish my face into his chest and moan.

He squeezes my ass, and his finger is so damn close to where I need it to be. “Louder. I want them to hear you.”

Louder isn’t hard. I have singer lungs, and I’ve never been quiet. This time I moan out into the night, and I can feel how hard it makes him under my leg.

Then his other hand reaches to undo the snap and zipper of my jeans. He lifts me up a couple of inches like I weigh absolutely nothing, and then he’s got both hands down my pants, one holding my ass and the other sliding fingers into my hot, wet, begging pussy.

“Fuck.” He makes the word sound sacred. “You’re soaked.”

I sink into his fingers. Way too many guys treat my parts like fine china. “Don’t be gentle.”

His back hand clamps on my ass and he’s got two fingers up inside me before I can even suck in a breath.

This time the sound I make is a lot closer to a whimper. “God. Please.”

He curls his fingers against my G-spot and starts a fast, hard drumbeat. He’s lit a fire, and his fingers are the fuel and the oxygen and I’m about to be engulfed by the flames that are already starting to ripple.

My thighs fight for micro-movements, rocking in his hands, begging for the explosion that’s so close I can feel it threatening in every cell.

His head is back in the crook of my neck. “I want to feel you come in my hand, beautiful.”

I tilt my head back and let loose a single, guttural cry and squirt wet, messy, desperate release all over his fingers, and then I keep rocking, because one wasn’t nearly enough to shut down this wildfire he’s lit inside me.

He growls into the top of my head. “Stop. I didn’t say you could have more than one.” His fingers slide out of me, but he cups my pussy as his other hand strokes up my back and cuddles me into his chest. “I want you lying in bed tonight, thinking of my hands on you and making frustrated noises as you lie there and can’t sleep.”

His fingers are still playing with my pussy in a way that’s making me crazy but isn’t going to make me come. “I hate you.”

His laughter rumbles against my ear. “I kind of hate me right now too.”

Given the rod of iron I can feel against my leg, I can only imagine. “Please tell me there are stupid rules for you too and you don’t get to go home and jerk off in the shower.”

“I get to do whatever I need to do to have my head screwed on straight as your Dom.”

I blink. I’m already figuring out that he can snap into that arrogant Dom space fast enough to give me whiplash.

He slides his wet hand out of my pants and runs it slowly up my belly and cups my breast. The hand on my back is still gently stroking. Petting. It feels totally cuddly, with undemanding, erotic low notes. I curl in closer. “So, I’m pretty touchy-feely. Especially after. Is that the kind of thing I should be telling you?”

“Yes.” I can feel him smiling into the top of my head. “Even when it’s really obvious.”

He doesn’t seem at all upset, but it’s been a thing a few times in my past. “That a problem?”

His hands go still on me, as if he can see the tricky spot I’m trying to go around. “You know what aftercare is?”

“I’ve seen it in action at the club, but it always seems kind of perfunctory. A hug, a bottle of water, and everyone’s good.” I know I’m needier than that.

He’s quiet. “That’s good to know, actually. You’ve mostly seen scenes at our open nights, and those are usually pretty tame and done by really experienced members.”

The lightbulb is going off. “So they don’t need much in the way of aftercare.”

“Yeah, exactly.” He’s stroking my hair now. “For private or more intense scenes, the aftercare piece can easily stretch into hours. It usually does with me anyhow. I’m a big fan of an armful of naked woman.”

He’s soothing something in me that I didn’t even expect him to understand.

He pulls me in closer, like we have all the time in the world to cuddle on a rock wall in the middle of a cold fall night. “Plan to stay most of tomorrow. The room we’ll be using has a really big, squishy bed. I’ll hold you after we scene for as long as you want, including sleep if you like.”

I raise an eyebrow, because I can still feel his erection pulsing against me. “Hold me, huh? You must have some pretty fancy self-control.”

I can hear his amusement again. “I haven’t bent you over this wall and fucked you until neither of us can stand, so yeah, my self-control is pretty good.”

I groan as the sticky mess between my legs gets wet and slick again.

He runs a hand down my belly and into my heat and starts to chuckle. “I like the way you think, beautiful.” His other hand pats my ass. “Stand up. Let’s get you home.”

I stand where he puts me, legs quaking as he zips up my jeans and does up my belt, and I wonder what the heck I’ve gotten myself into.

Because whatever I might have imagined over the years?

It wasn’t this.