REVEAL - Scorpio & Harlan (Fettered Book 2) (7 page)

I
have just
enough time to see the thing in his hand. It looks like black spaghetti—or like a flogger someone shrank in the wash.

And then he flicks his wrist and black spaghetti reaches for my skin.

Hot rain.

That’s all I have time to think, and then there’s more of it falling and my skin is on fire with sensation. Tracing the sides of my body, up my outer thighs and over my hips and circling back down again. Each time he makes the trip around, the circle gets wider. Edging toward my breasts, over my belly, raining on the insanely sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

And I can’t freaking move at all. I can feel myself trying to thrash, trying to move out of the hot rain, trying to move into it, desperate for wherever this is trying to take me. It goes on for seconds, for hours, for long enough that time folds and I have no idea where I am anymore.

Sensation. Kissing my skin, lashing it, becoming it.

It’s not orgasm—that isn’t the mountain we’re climbing.

He’s circling my breasts now, in a taunting figure-eight that knows exactly where it’s headed. I close my eyes, unable to watch the craziness of my nipples reaching for the rain.

I hear the sound, the one that I somehow know is the flick of the black spaghetti in his hand, coming for me again. It lashes over my right breast, and for one crazy moment I almost can’t stand it. And then his hand is there. Gentling. Steadying. Reminding me who controls the rain and who can make it go away.

His thumb strokes my cheek. “Open your eyes, beautiful.”

I struggle to make my eyelids work. They feel cast in concrete. The first thing I see when I finally get them open is his face, looking at me like I’m the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen.

He trails the soft strings of leather across my nipples. Stroking this time. “Keep your eyes open for me.”

The almost inaudible snapping sound, and the rain is falling again. On my belly this time, and then a slow, inexorable march up my ribs. It’s not as sharp anymore—more like a heat that’s swelling all over my body.

Harlan reaches for one of my nipples, rolling it in his fingers as he rains down fire on the other.

I’m so far beyond orgasm it’s not even funny. I’m somewhere else, and I’m drinking hot rain with every pore I have.

He growls, a sound full of approval and pride and heat that lands right behind the rain and soaks into every inch of my skin. The lashes are coming faster now, the skin that hasn’t felt them desperate and parched and begging.

If I could move, I’d show him where.

And then it stops, black spaghetti falling silent on my belly. I stare at it, bereft.

The low chuckle beside me yanks my eyes to his face. Harlan stands there, grinning at me like an idiot for a moment that lasts way too long, and then his hands are stroking me. Touching all the places the rain fell and all the places it didn’t. Soothing.

Reminding me that there are things that are even better than hot rain.

I
slide
the baby flogger off of Scorpio’s belly and realize I might have a new favorite toy. Sharpness without pain. Sensation without having to control every damn movement so precisely that I sometimes have to remind myself to breathe. A wave that my sub rode hard and furious and deep for me, and I can barely contain the hot, hard pleasure that she’s mine.

I let my hands travel over her a little longer than absolutely necessary. I’m anchoring her back into me, into touch, checking that she’s not straining hard enough to hurt herself. Her muscles ripple happily under my stroking. She hasn’t nearly hit her limits with the restraints yet.

Good, because I’m not nearly done playing.

And this time I want to play with her head a little more.

I look up and find her watching me, and I give her the gaze touchstone she needs. Subconsciously or not, she nailed her desires in the photos she chose. Face up, all the way. It’s a lot more intense, and most subs instinctively head for the comfort of facedown and the back of their own eyelids.

Not mine. She wants to see her Dom.

She wants to see me.

I reach for the small warmer on the side of the bench and pull out the lube. Time for sensations of a different kind. I squirt out a tiny amount and reach for the nipple closest to me. A test on skin that won’t be as sensitive as where I’m headed next.

She smiles and arches a little into my touch. Her eyes start to haze and then snap open as the particular side effects of this lube kick into gear. I can feel it on my fingers too. Warm, insistent tingling.

I give it long enough to make sure she isn’t going to have any kind of reaction I don’t want and then fill up both my hands with her luscious breasts, working in the lube and enjoying the tingle and the flush it raises in her skin. Her eyes are glued to the motion of my thumbs.

I grin. I won’t pull out the mirrors today, but someday I’m going to let this woman see me touching her every damn where.

Her eyes shoot up to mine when I fill my hand with lube and head between her legs. The sound she makes might be words, but it isn’t anything close to lightning, so I keep going, spreading spicy and hot into her folds, over her thighs, down into her ass crack, which makes her gasp in ways that tell me that’s going to be very interesting territory to play in, too.

I push one of the magic buttons on Milo’s bench, lowering part of the bench under her ass and transforming it into a stool that will put me into the kind of cockpit that only a Dom can truly appreciate. I keep sliding my fingers through her folds as I climb in, situating myself between her legs. I run my hands up her thighs and look up, right into her eyes.

I picked this bench for this moment.

Because my sub wants to watch—and when she does, I want her to see me.

H
e’s looking
at me like he’s a dying man and I’m his last meal.

That’s all I can think, even though I’m spread wide open for him and he’s covered me in some kind of goo that has my parts zinging like they’re wired to an amp and I’m trussed up so thoroughly I can barely move.

His hands are touching me again, that gentle stroking that says I’m his and I’m safe and he’s got me, no matter what just happened and what’s coming next. Magician hands. Hands that know me in ways I can’t even believe are possible.

I expected him to fire me up. I never expected him to know how to gentle me back down.

Not like this. Not this big man with the fierce eyes who won’t let me look away.

His slides his hands back down to my inner thighs, and I know we’re done with the gentle. He runs lube-slicked thumbs up the crack of my ass, and I feel myself tensing. I know I marked this as a soft limit. I hope I can give him that. The edge suddenly feels very sharp.

His eyes are watching mine, and I don’t try to hide it. I don’t think I could—I’m spread wide open to him in more ways than one.

His face shifts, and my Dom is back, voice full of gravel and sternness. “Do you need your safeword, beautiful?”

We didn’t discuss traffic lights. “Yellow.”

His nod is solemn—and his thumbs are still making their circles, over my seat bones and back up my ass crack. Spreading the warm, tingling fire.

I can feel the fight inside me. Wanting to relax. Wanting to snark and push him away and make this so much less about me than it is right now.

His hand reaches for something that looks like a skinny egg with feet. He brings it close to my ass and smears it with lube. I clench as he pushes it against me, seeking entry. My brain is flailing, seeking an exit, running from what he’s asking me to do.

And then the egg starts to vibrate, and every nerve in my ass and everywhere else lights on fire.

I hear his warm, dark chuckle. “Like that, do you?”

He’s totally got the wrong verb. I’m breaking apart, awash in the sensation of snapping from on the brink of using my safeword to wondering exactly how much I have to beg for him to stick this thing in my ass and leave it there forever.

Clearly he knows it. The egg is demanding entry, pushing in ways that aren’t remotely gentle against muscles that aren’t remotely ready for this.

His eyes are telling me I can do it anyhow. That he knows I want this, I need this, and he’s willing to demand things of me that I would never demand of myself. I stop trying to relax my ass and just sink into his eyes instead, into the soft leather that’s holding me and the warm fire all over my skin and the relentless need inside me to be what he’s asking me to be.

The egg stops vibrating, but it doesn’t stop its slow, inexorable invasion of my ass. The fight inside me comes back to life.

“Take all of it.” Harlan’s voice snaps into the sudden silence.

I’m trying. Every cell of my body is trying, but it feels as big as a watermelon, even though my eyes totally know that it isn’t.

He just keeps pushing. And then there’s a pop, and a wild feeling of fullness, and his eyes looking at me with that crazy pride again.

He smiles, and his fingers move into my wet, slick folds. “That was the hard part, beautiful. Now comes the part that’s just for me. I’m going to fuck you with my fingers, and I want you to make all the noise you know how to make.”

I’m already moaning, writhing into the restraints as two fingers plunge into me and his thumb starts doing things to my clit that should be illegal in all fifty states.

His other hand holds my folds open. “You’re wet and swollen and gorgeous.” His fingers slide out of me long enough to run up and down the sides of my clit, jacking me up to a totally new level of crazy.

My legs strain against the restraints. He puts a hand on my low belly to hold me down and plunges his fingers into me, hard and fast and insistent.

And then the egg in my ass starts to vibrate again and whatever is left of me shatters all over his hands.

I
don’t know
when I realize I’m me again.

I’m not in cuffs anymore, not spread open in front of Harlan’s ravening eyes. I’m curled into him, drenched in skin and heartbeat and absolute, tender safety.

“Welcome back.”

I hear the rumbling from beside my ear, feel his big hands shifting me a little.

“I’ve got water for you, beautiful. Drink for me.”

I do, like a baby bird that has no idea it has wings yet. And when my throat is back to feeling like it belongs to me, I bury back into his chest. Into heartbeat. Into the ridiculous bliss of in-between.

He holds me for what feels like forever.

My stomach lets out a growl loud enough to be heard in California.

Harlan chuckles and kisses the top of my head. “Ready for something to eat?”

I stick my head up and discover we’re sprawled in the monster velvet bed—and on the bedside table is a tray full of enough food that there might even be a little left over for the man in bed with me.

A tray of food that wasn’t there before. I feel myself stiffening.

He reaches over and pulls the tray closer. “Ari brought it. I hoped you’d be okay with that. You went deep enough that I didn’t want to leave.”

I open my mouth for the bite he’s bringing my way. “Thank you.”

His hand strokes my cheek. “If I screwed up, you need to tell me. I heard you loud and clear that you don’t want people to see.”

She probably only saw me drooling. I manage to swallow before I talk with my mouth full again. “You did good. Ari’s not people.”

He laughs. “She’ll be happy to hear that.” He keeps feeding me, like he knows that my arms haven’t found their operations manual yet.

I don’t tell him even when they do. I’m finally understanding what I’ve fallen into.

He feeds me, bite by tiny bite, until I groan and turn away. “Done. Full. You can eat the rest.”

“I’ll tell Ari to bring more next time.”

He sounds amused. I push myself back far enough that I can see his face. “You should have seen me after gigs. The guys used to joke that I could consume my body weight in chicken wings.”

He’s full-on grinning at me now. “I’m duly warned.”

I watch as he makes quick work of what’s left on the tray. “I might possibly be a greedy sub.”

“Mmm.” His eyes twinkle at me. “In more ways than one.”

I can feel the embarrassment rising in my cheeks. “Dammit, Emily’s supposed to be the one you guys make blush.”

His fingers stroke the breast he can reach. “Oh, I’ve just started making you all pink and rosy and delectable.”

That doesn’t help the flush go away. “Cut it out. I know how this works. We did the fun stuff and now we have to talk until the kitchen runs out of food and leaves us to crawl begging into the night.”

His eyes shift to serious before I can even blink. “Yes, we talk. And my sub doesn’t get to use her mouth to push away from whatever she doesn’t want me to know.”

Shit. I freeze, deer in the headlights. “Crap. Sorry.”

He kisses my forehead. “It’s okay. It’s part of how you’re trying to slide back into your skin. I just need you to keep talking to me while you do that. Your poker face didn’t make it past the first orgasm, but this works better if I hear words instead of just reading your mind.”

All that does is plant my brain squarely back in my first orgasm. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

His fingers are twiddling with me, so gently I’m not even sure he knows he’s doing it. “Do what, beautiful?”

“Come just from you playing with my nipples.”

I see it, the streak of pure male pride that has nothing to do with being a Dom and everything to do with being a very self-satisfied caveman. I hide a grin. That guy and I need to get to know each other better.

He shifts us around so we’re lying on our sides, facing each other. His hand kneads my ass gently. “What else did you learn?”

I feel the first answer that spurts into my head and the instinctive urge to hide it away, shut it down, cover it with snark. I try not to do any of those things. “The flogger. I’ve seen some of the scenes here, and that wasn’t something I liked watching very much.”

His eyes are drinking mine. “Why?”

I grimace. “Pain. I don’t like the idea that people get off on it. That I might.”

“Did you?”

No clues. No body language. No idea what he wants to hear. “It didn’t hurt, exactly. It felt like hot rain, and then it got less pinprick and more like this spreading deal.”

He’s nodding. Listening. “Did you want more?”

I remember the bereft loneliness when he stopped. “I didn’t want it to end.”

He strokes my cheek so fucking softly it makes me want to cry. “Did you want it deeper? Harder? Into pain?”

He’s asked gently enough that I can actually listen for my own answer. “No.”

Only then does he let out the breath I didn’t know he’s been holding. “Good. No judgment from me if that’s what you need, but I don’t like going there.”

I can see that. He’s letting me see that. “Den mother.”

His grin is lopsided. “Yeah. There are lots of edges to ride. Pain’s not mine.”

But he still took me close enough that I could figure out if it was mine. I close my eyes, suddenly realizing exactly how generous he is.

His hand is back on my cheek. “What?”

“You have a very big heart, tough guy.”

He scowls.

I scowl right back. “You asked. If you don’t want my truth, then don’t ask for it.”

He takes a breath that mostly comes out as a growl. “Yeah. Sorry.” He runs an apologetic hand down my side. “So baby floggers and sensation play are fun for you, but we’re not angling for pain. Yellow’s a good word if you need to let me know to back off or slow down a little. We didn’t talk about that before, but you used it just right today.”

I know what I used it on. “Sorry—I know I got kind of wimpy with that egg thing.”

He grins. “Anal plug. No calling my toys any cutesy names.”

This time the snark is rising up from the right place. “If they’re headed inside me, I’ll call them whatever I want to call them.”

He gives my ass an amused swat. “Then you’ll pay for it.”

I reach forward and kiss his cheek, because this tender crap is killing me and I want more of it. “Deal.”