Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel (21 page)

Every sense should have been razor sharp, cursing him and fighting a pain that was in no way pleasant. Instead she couldn’t hold on to a single protest or coherent thought. The pain tore her grip from reality and spun her into a place all about the next blow, her need for him to make it better when it was all over. He had to create this pain to open and heal the deeper wounds.
You know you need it.
Her remarkable faith in that astounding statement, her intuitive sense of what he’d meant, became more important than anything, which told her she’d lost her mind, a temporary insanity where she handed it all to him.

Enough, please. For the love of God.
She was begging for mercy against the gag, chewing on that hard rubber, sucking on it, caught in a crazy haze of lust and agony. When the stinging stopped, she had her head to the floor, gasping against the gag. She groaned at the bliss and relief as his mouth came back to her buttocks and thighs, along with the caress of his hands. She was so sensitive, she flinched at his initial touch, but then she pushed into it as much as her bonds allowed. His touch slid over her rib cage, cupping her breasts as he knelt over her.

He released the chains attached to the cuffs on wrists, thighs and ankles, steadied her while he unhooked the chain attached to the collar. He didn’t remove the collar or the gag, a reminder that she still belonged to him right now. He was her Master. He gathered her up and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, cradling her in his arms with a tenderness that made her heart hurt. Everything hurt, inside and out.

He carried her out of that room and into his bedroom, laid her on the bed with its earth-tone pillows. She had a brief impression of a dresser, a closet, a couple pictures. He was prepared here as well, for as she watched him in the semi-darkness, he pulled straps from under the mattress and secured the cuffs on her wrists and ankles to them, keeping her spread on the bed. Not uncomfortably straining, though she could only raise her arms a few inches off the mattress and slightly bend her knees but not close them. The mattress was bliss against her sore ass, but not as much as his hands there had been.

He moved to the end of the bed where she could see him and stripped off his jeans and boxers. He was standing naked before her spread, vulnerable body. The man was solid, the golden skin a terrain of layered, rolling and knotted muscle in all the right places. Hard and seasoned, like firewood. His cock jutted thick and stiff out from a trimmed pelt of pubic hair that let her see the heavy weight of his testicles hanging below. Under her gaze, he rolled on another condom and then straightened, his curled fist stroking himself as he simply stood there.

Her stomach quaked as his eyes slid over her with leisurely pleasure. Possession. All his, to do with as he desired. He owned her, every reaction. He’d said he was in charge of everything. She hadn’t entirely understood that at the beginning, but she did now in a way that normally would terrify her and raise every defensive shield she had. But her mind was as securely under his command as the rest of her.

Her cunt was slick again, inner muscles contracting as she remembered his promise. She’d been good for her Master. Hadn’t she?

“As much as I love fucking a sub, this is always my favorite moment,” he said. “When she realizes she’s mine, her eyes all pleading, mouth soft, her pussy wet. And the longer I stand here, looking like I want to take everything she’s got and then push her twice the distance beyond that, the more she trembles. Afraid and wanting at the same time. There’s some of that inside a Master as well.” His voice was low, conversational, but those golden eyes were alive with fire that was licking over every inch of skin he was studying. “Afraid I’ll want too much, demand too much. It’s like I want to work you so hard I’ll destroy you, even as I want to protect you from the whole damn world.”

She was shaking, more violently with every word. The noises she was making were similar to when he’d been using the dragon tail.
No more. Have mercy.
She was cracking inside, and the poisons deep inside would take her over, overwhelm her. She’d have no defenses left with him. Which she was pretty sure was his intent.

He stretched out over her, settling his body between her spread legs, his bare flesh against hers. Bracing his elbows by her shoulders, he framed her face in his large hands. He was keeping his weight mostly lifted off of her, his cock brushing her pelvis, teasing her clit with the length pressed between them. He was a big man, so his hips forced her thighs out wider, emphasized that she was spread and held down for him. She stared up at him, spoke against the gag. He couldn’t understand the words, but he understood the emotions.

“Ssshh. No, we’re leaving the gag on. I’m not giving you anything to protect yourself, especially that sharp tongue. I’m the one protecting you now.”

He stroked her cheek, dipped his head to press warm kisses on everything around the gag. Forehead, eyes, cheekbones. “It’s all right, Celeste. I’ve got you.”

Her right hand flexed, flexed again. Clenched. Suddenly she needed something, one simple thing that held all the importance of life itself to her. The need for it swept through her like a convulsion. She stared at his hand, then turned her head back toward her own. She hit the mattress with her knuckles like a flopping fish, looked at him again. He followed the motion and shifted his gaze back to her. “Ask me, darlin’. You don’t demand anything from your Master.”

She swallowed. In another frame of mind, she would have spit at him like a cat, but that mental state was way beyond her grasp. She verbalized
please
in a questing note against the gag, gazing up at him. Then, thinking it through, hard, she swept her gaze down, a gesture of submission, and let her hand relax on the mattress, palm up, fingers curved.

“Nicely done.” His approval sent a shot of pleasure through her that should have been ridiculous, but it wasn’t. Her eyes closed in blissful relief as he reached out and clasped her hand, his warm fingers closing over hers. It was okay. He was holding her hand. It was uncanny, what it did to her. Miraculous.

“Look at me.”

Lifting her lashes, she was absorbed by those intent golden-brown irises as he adjusted his hips and fitted his cock to her opening. She made another inarticulate sound and his gaze flickered, mouth going taut as he began to push inside her. She lifted her hips the amount her bonds allowed, and his knowledge of a woman’s body did the rest. She arched her throat and back as he slid home. He stretched her, pressed in deep, and it felt so damn good her legs strained against her bonds, wanting to take more.

“Easy, darlin’. Just let me do it all, carry you where we both need to go.”

He ground himself against her, a slow rotation that increased the friction against her clit. Sliding one hand beneath her, he cupped her ass and tilted her up against him further. He released her hand to keep the bulk of his weight off her, but he braced it next to her fingertips, so she could still touch him. He was caring for her as he destroyed her.

“Christ you are a tight fit. Been a while, hasn’t it, darlin’? Your vibrator’s one of those clit stimulators, I’ll bet. Nothing that goes inside.”

She was tight, but he was also good-sized. The combination was excruciatingly pleasurable. Then his grip on her ass constricted. “Answer me. Has it been a while?”

Her gaze flicked up to him, the hard mouth, the piercing eyes. She nodded, a quick jerk, and his look of satisfaction, all territorial male, sent a primal surge through her. He pulled partially out, came back in, rotated his hips, ground deep again, pushing up against her clit. He kept doing that, exploring her with cock and rhythm, finding out what made her writhe and gasp, what made her plead for an orgasm.

In the end, all of it did. He was thrusting with intent at that point, and she was crying out against the gag with every stroke. The climax built to a higher and wider point than before. A focused shot of sensation targeting her clit was certainly nice, but this started to rock her whole body, involving every erogenous point, sweeping through muscles, nerves, organs and taking over mind and heart to plunge deeper. Every time he took her this deep, this high, he left no part of her detached, uninvolved or safe from the demand of his body, his cock, and those penetrating eyes.

“Go over for me, Celeste. Tear it all loose for your Master.”

Her body shuddered, quaked. A howl of protest came from those subterranean parts of her that were deathly afraid of where he was taking her, but they couldn’t hold out against him. The climax grabbed hold, ripped her away from the cliff edge and tossed her into fire, flames dancing over her and through her as she bucked, shrieked her pleasure over and over against the gag. Her tongue slid over and around the phallus, teeth snapping down on it as he took her further, increasing the power of his thrusts. Muscles rippled over his broad shoulders, the veins in his neck pulsing, his eyes fierce and holding hers. His lips stretched back in a snarl as he found his own release, hips rising and falling, slamming against the inside of her thighs. Spread open the way she was, she felt every sensation, could protect herself from none of it, and her screams of pleasure were also screams of deeper, crazier, things. Yearnings and wants as he hammered into her core, breaking down the walls beyond which she’d never let anyone go before.

Help me, Leland. Please…help me.

It was a cry from her past, she knew, but it twined with the present. The climax was over, and her breathing was still shallow, fast, fingers curling and uncurling in her bonds. She needed him to let her go. She needed to curl up around that center which was ugly and exposed, shield it with her body.

Instead, he put his mouth against her ear, her neck, nuzzled and kissed his way to the point of her shoulder. He then followed a track across her breastbone to the other shoulder, neck and ear before he lifted his head. As he touched her, she was torn between two states. One that wanted his mouth on her like this, his arms around her. One that was like a wild animal, feeling cornered. He saw both things.

“I’m going to remove the gag, and then I’ll remove the cuffs. You’re not leaving this bed, Celeste. Not until I’m good and ready to let you go. And you’re staying here tonight.” He curled his fingers in the ring at the front of the collar and gave it a sharp little jerk, making her chin snap up and wary eyes meet his. “You understand?”

She nodded.

“
Yes, sir
would be the proper response.”

She said it against the gag. It could be any two syllables, since it came out as a hum of sound, but it was clear she’d responded as required. It did unexpected things to her, settling down that weird panic, the need to flee. Unfortunately not enough.

He removed and disposed of the condom, then he unbuckled the gag, slid it from her mouth. She sucked on the phallus as he pulled it free, trying to get rid of any unsightly saliva. A smile touched his mouth as he noted her self-consciousness about that. His fingers traced the impression the rectangle had left on her skin, then he turned his attention to the cuffs. All she had to do was give in to the way she was feeling, let him hold her, care for her. That naked, vulnerable soul trembling deep inside her longed for that like nothing else. Why couldn’t she give herself over to it, the relief of subspace where the Dom would cuddle the sub and there was nothing but a drifting haze, no worries or thoughts? She’d briefly experienced it, seen it done. But Leland had gone below that layer. She couldn’t give herself to that. As soon as he released the fourth cuff, she didn’t think about how irrational her reaction was. She wasn’t built that way, not when it came to relating to another person. Not this deeply.

She made it barely halfway off the bed before he had his arm around her waist and brought her back against him. She kicked into the air, tried to get away, and found herself put down with a decisiveness that told her she was fighting a male used to subduing suspects. He’d put her on her back though, so she clawed at him. An instant later, her arms were neutralized as he adjusted to a high straddle on her, sitting his fine ass just beneath her breasts, his knees and shins holding her arms at the biceps. Which put his cock up close and personal. She rocked against his hold, but the man was just too heavy and had her pinned too firmly. Her biceps were pressed into the bed, but she had mobility past her elbows. She slapped at his hips, clawed ineffectually at his buttocks and thighs. He just gazed down at her meditatively while he gripped himself over her quivering breasts and began to stroke.

He’d just come, so he wasn’t erect yet, but he was an impressive length even in that state. She lifted her head, tried to snap, and couldn’t quite get there. “You want me to put the gag back on?” he warned.

She shook her head, though she wasn’t talking as if she was still wearing it. She didn’t want to talk, and didn’t really know why. She preferred this purely physical response. She also couldn’t seem to stop looking at his hand, the way he held himself, stroking, gripping, and fondling. She could smell the heavy musk of their combined climaxes. Before she could stop herself, she licked her lips.

“We’re only a third of the way there,” he remarked. “I’ve fucked your ass once, your pussy once. Once more of each to go before this night is done. Plus you have to suck me off twice. I expect you could get me hard now, couldn’t you, with that dangerous mouth?”

She lifted her gaze to him and curled her lip. A shadow passed through his gaze, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Yeah, it’s like that right now. You make this real difficult on yourself, darlin’. I’ve got a ring gag that will take care of those teeth. As embarrassed as you were about a little saliva, you’ll be blushing like a girl with her panties around her ankles in front of her daddy when that ring gag’s making you drool all over my cock. That what you want?”

She shook her head, and he pursed his full lips. “Even so, I think I’ll just take care of getting myself hard right now.”

“Let me go.” Her voice had a horror movie rasp, and she cleared her throat. “I need to get free. I need to…please, Leland. It hurts. Inside. I hurt inside.”

“I’ve got something to help with that.” He leaned over her, pulled the strap at the corner back across the mattress. He knotted it in the ring of her collar and then eased off her, but only to flip her to her stomach, hold her there with a knee in her back as he retrieved a coil of rope from the nightstand drawer. A blink later, he’d turned her onto her hip and wrapped her wrists in the rope, brought her legs up and tied the slack around her thighs, cinching them snug against her wrists so she was curled on her side in a fetal position. She pulled against the bindings, found them fast.

She wasn’t free, but the position curled her around that empty, throbbing pain, eased it some.

“Better?” he asked quietly.

She wasn’t going to ask how he understood or knew what she’d meant. It didn’t seem to matter how he did that; just that he did. She nodded and he rose, moving away from her and into the hallway. She watched the fine flex of his ass, the roll of muscle across the wide back and shoulders before he turned the corner and disappeared. She felt an unreasonable panic about his absence, but he wasn’t far. He was in the bathroom, and her Master wanted to be sure she knew it. She heard running water and his voice. He was humming that Toby Keith ballad with a few random notes thrown in, maybe playing with the rhythm as his mind considered various possibilities concerning her. The thought made her swallow and tremble some more.

He returned with two washcloths. When he slid onto the bed behind her, he laid one against her pussy. The cloth was blissfully hot. Her fingers curled against her thighs as he rubbed her tenderly, splitting her labia to clean the damp crevices. He did the same around her rim, pressing that soothing touch against her there.

The other cloth was for her face. He stretched out on his hip behind her, leaning over her to wipe the area the gag had covered; under her nose, around her eyes, wherever stress and emotion had coaxed forth a visceral human response of tears, mucus, saliva. “This shouldn’t embarrass you,” he said. “If your Master intends you to lose control of everything, including bodily functions, that’s his will.”

It was like she was a baby again in his hands, trusting him with all of it. As he took the cloth away, she shut her eyes, hunching into a deeper ball. He passed his hand over her nape, along her spine. “I can’t go to the wedding with you,” she said.

“Why not?” His tone was reasonable, as if they’d been having this normal conversation all along, instead of a mind-shattering BDSM session.

“I have a wedding to attend that weekend myself.”

“Well, if they’re different times, we could go to both. Unless you don’t want me to go with you to yours. Baton Rouge and New Orleans aren’t all that far from each other.”

“The one I’m attending is in New Orleans, too.”

“All the better. We could drive up together.” He cupped her face, made her look up at him, his body against the back of hers. “Don’t lie to me, girl.”

“I’m not.” She tried to jerk her face away and had no luck in that at all. “I really do have a wedding that weekend. It’s mid-afternoon. It’s outside the city, at this big plantation house.”

His brow lifted. “Ben O’Callahan and Marcie Moira’s wedding?”

She blinked at him, and his lips curved. “Sounds like fate to me, darlin’.”

Leland settled in behind her, his hand resting on her hip, fingers stroking over her buttock as he nuzzled the back of her neck. Her feet pressed against his shins when he brought his legs up enough to cradle her in the curve of his body. Him carrying on a conversation while she was tied helplessly was disconcerting. But he’d somehow known tying her in this curl would be easier, suiting both their purposes.

He rolled away from her to open a drawer, then came back to her. He shifted behind her, but the strap tied to her collar didn’t give her enough slack to lift her head and look over her shoulder. When he parted her buttocks and the tip of an applicator pushed into her rectum, the question of what he was doing was answered. She twitched at the lube being squirted inside her, and his fingers replaced the applicator, spreading oil over her rim and then dipping inside with casual familiarity.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting you slick for my cock. Once I’m hard, which shouldn’t be too long from now, I’m fucking your ass again. Maybe once I’ve fucked you enough, you’ll behave enough to be released.”

“It’s not because of that. I’m not doing it because—”

“I know why you’re doing it, Celeste.” He threaded his arm beneath her head so it was pillowed on his biceps, giving her comfort while he worked his fingers in deeper. Remarkably, a tendril of arousal unfurled from that point, teasing and tickling her clit and deeper inside her pussy as well. Her nipples tingled against her bound arms.

“I should have figured out we were going to the same wedding,” he continued. “When I was looking at the articles you wrote for the business social columns, I remembered Jon talking about the snarky reporter who gave them the Knights of the Board Room name. You didn’t like them much early on, did you?”

“No. But the later articles…”

“Yeah. Something happened to change your mind about them, didn’t it?” He stopped, two fingers inside her. He was stretching her, scissoring, so her mind was fragmenting between the stimulation and the faint burning she was sure he was doing on purpose. “Your earlier articles had that sneer most reporters take toward anyone rich. Then, after that point, the tone was gone. But what’s interesting to me is how your writing started to change then, too. You had more confidence, a better voice. That was about the time you moved over to the crime section.”

“Have you put in for your detective’s badge, Sergeant? Or stalker membership card?”

“As if you haven’t looked me up on the police blotters to see what busts I’ve been on, how long I’ve been with the Baton Rouge PD, and everything else you could find, down to my scores at the academy.”

She sniffed then let out a strangled sound as he did something…interesting. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Don’t give me attitude, darlin’. I’ll make you suffer for it.”

“Are you there as a friend of the bride or groom?” she asked, her breath short.

“Groom, though I know them both. Well enough to know he's getting far better than he deserves. He wouldn't disagree. You?”

He set his teeth to her shoulder, nipped a bit more sharply than was comfortable and sent electricity running down her spine. His fingers were still working in her ass, a slow thrust and retreat that had her thighs moving restlessly. Thinking was getting more difficult, not that she’d had a lot of brain cells to scrape together after the last orgasm.

“Uh…Marcie and I did MMA class at the same gym when I was in New Orleans. But um, the way we met… Well, Ben's boss, Matt, helped me get the NOLA crime beat job.”

He lifted his head. She felt his gaze sliding along her profile. She was usually much better at obscuring the truth without lying. To say she was off her game was a massive understatement. She was hell and gone from the stadium and off in the weeds somewhere. Regardless, she wondered if he’d ever done interrogation, because that stare could peel every layer back to find the truth. He’d already proven that earlier, and she was still feeling way too exposed.

“Celeste. I know they didn’t buy your good graces with a job.”

“No.”

“That night that was too good to be true. Who was the Dom?”

Damn. Bull’s-eye.
She couldn’t stop herself from stiffening and he added a third finger, thrust firmly. When she whimpered, her pussy creaming anew, he curved his hand over the collar, tangling his fingers in the tether. “I know what they are, darlin’. Every one of Matt’s executive team is a Dom. I’ve played with them on rare occasions. You aren’t betraying their trust if it’s one of them.”

“Ben. It was Ben. Please…”

“I like hearing you beg. It’s getting me worked up again. Gotta make sure I’m just as big as last time, because I want you to feel every thrust. Knowing what I know about Ben, I may be the only one with a dick big enough to compete with that freaking circus act he carries around in his pants.”

Startled by the dry humor, she strangled on a laugh against his grip. He kissed her temple. “Tell me how it happened.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Else I’ll go get that dragon tail.”

“You wouldn’t.” But she knew he would. He was teasing her, yet there was an edge to his tone that said he was still very much her Master right now. He was coaxing things out of her she inexplicably did want to say to him, though she knew she shouldn’t tell him so much, give him so much. Yet her lips parted, and she started to speak. Finding her throat dry, she cleared her throat, but he stopped her before she could start.

“Wait.”

He withdrew his hand, the mattress dipping as he left the bed. Again that mouthwatering view of him going out the bedroom door. She heard him go into the kitchen, open the fridge. As he came back with a cold bottle of water, she saw he had no self-consciousness about his nudity, showing no shame at his erection, which was recovering just as he’d promised and threatened. A twinge between her legs told her she was anticipating it, a senseless reaction given her body was already being wrung out to its last drop of energy. But that wouldn’t matter to him. Or rather, it would, because that was the point. Unlike his body, which required a certain state to perform, hers was a receptacle for the desires of his, and he would take her until he used her all six times.