Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel (33 page)

“Don’t need them.” He tipped her chin, met her eyes. “You’ll stay where I put you. Tell me you understand, Celeste.”

“Okay,” she said sullenly.

“Okay?” His tone sharpened and he felt her pulse jump under his grip. The hazel eyes held a flash of resentment, more confusion, and a longing that was stronger than all of it.

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Good girl.” His hand gentled then. “My very, very good girl. Such a good girl.”

§

The words brought a lump to her throat. The way his eyes became kind and his voice lowered, soothing, devastated her. She closed her eyes. “Ben said I needed pain to let go. But you…you do things like that and it’s like I’m falling out of a tree and can’t hold on to the branch anymore.”

“You do need pain. But you need this as much, and sometimes more. It’s all about timing, Celeste. A Master knows what his sub needs, and teaches her to trust him to get there, even if she doesn’t know what she needs.”

“I didn’t want you to know any of that about my family, see any of it. Hell, I don’t want to know it. I try to pretend it doesn’t exist. I imagine I grew up in a happy family, with a picket fence and a dog. That I hung out with my friends at the mall and used my allowance to buy designer jeans.”

He squatted in front of her. “Lift your arms, darlin’.”

When she obeyed, he pulled the T-shirt over her head, set it aside. He caressed her skin, knuckles sliding over her breasts, quivering in the hold of lace cups. Unhooking her jeans, he brought her to her feet, steadying her with one hand. “Take them off.”

She managed to unzip her ankle boots, step out of them with his assistance, then she removed the jeans.

He drew her over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, bringing her to stand between his spread knees. He perused her body, clad only in bra and panties, for another weighted moment. When he brought her closer, she rested her hands on his shoulders as he unclasped the bra in the back and pulled it down her arms. She made an uncertain noise, but he shook his head, keeping her silent as he moved her back again.

Putting his hands on her hips, he slid his thumbs along the elastic of her panties and took the garment off of her, a whisper of silk along her legs. He had her step out of them, then he rose.

“Stay,” he reminded her. She watched him put the other garments on top of their shirts, then he stepped behind her to the dresser. She looked over her shoulder to see him open the top drawer. “Eyes on the wall over the bed, Celeste. You don’t look at what I’m doing.”

She obeyed, though she didn’t want to do so. The glass front of the picture over the bed, a landscape with soothing greens and blues, let her see his reflection, but she couldn’t tell what he removed from the dresser.

He returned, standing behind her. If he’d taken anything from the drawer, he’d tucked it in a pocket or laid it in a guest chair, because he placed empty hands on the crown of her head. Smoothing his hands over her hair, he traced the shell of her ears and stroked the sides of her throat. Once, twice, again, as she swayed under the caresses, her shoulder blades brushing his chest. Sliding one hand down her sternum, between her breasts, he brought her back against him fully. Shoulders against his chest, ass against his groin, an intimate temptation and reassurance at once. The ache returned, growing stronger in her stomach and spreading out beneath her rib cage, traveling upward as he fanned out his fingers, stroked her abdomen, cupped her breast, played with the nipple. Bending, he pressed his mouth to her shoulder.

“Leland…”

“Not my name right now, darlin’. Not to you. Call me what I am.”

She swallowed. She couldn’t. She twitched as blue gauze dropped in her field of vision. A scarf, wide enough to fall to her navel as he held it level with her chest. He passed the fabric over her breasts, over the peaks as they tingled from the stimulation. She arched into it with a sigh, pressing her backside against the hardness under his jeans. She needed it rougher, faster, not this slow seduction that unfurled all these unbearable feelings in the pit of her stomach, that made her legs weak and her mind spin out of control.

Yet she didn’t say anything, couldn’t figure out what to do to make him go faster, not with him teasing her. Slowly, he gathered it up into his hands, turning the wide, translucent cloth into a folded strip in his hands, the tails falling down on either side of her. It was long, the ends tickling her thighs, her knees. When he brought it up to cover her eyes, she drew back, resisting, but he was behind her, so she couldn’t stop his intent. He tied the scarf firmly behind her head and brought the ends forward, putting the fabric in her mouth and tying a knot there, too, before he wrapped the tails around her head again, once over the bridge of her nose, then down a second time over her mouth before he tied it off at her nape. It was similar to what he’d done with the rope, reminding her of that deeply emotional Ichinawa session between them. Despite the freedom of her hands and feet, her face wrapped in gauzy cloth was a powerful restraining effect he emphasized when he curled his fingers in the knot beneath her occipital bone and used his other hand to put her back on her knees again.

Help me, Master.
She couldn’t say it aloud, but it was there in her mind. She couldn’t stop it, any more than her reaction now. She tried to push back up to her feet, to get away. He just put her down on the ground, her body folded over her knees, his weight keeping her in that curled ball as he began to lay kisses on her spine. His gentleness was killing her.

“Stop,” she said through the gag. She bit down on the knot as he ignored her. Sweeping, lingering kisses on her back, the rise of her buttocks, her nape. He turned her head, kissed her mouth around the gag, through the thin cloth, as she wept and cursed him. When he eased his fingers inside her, began to thrust, rotate and play with her clit, there was no urgency to it.

“Please…”
Just fuck me. Use me.
The knot wasn’t large enough to muffle her words entirely, so she might have said it out loud. His response, which came long, eternal moments later, made her think she had. Or that he was inside her mind in a way that was terrifying.

“You’re my sub, darlin’. I cherish you. Worship you, even as I own you. Fight all you like; it’s not me you’re fighting. It’s yourself. I won’t let anyone take away the pleasure you need and deserve. Even if it’s you doing the taking, the denying.”

“No.” She wasn’t disagreeing with the ownership thing, the thing she
should
be protesting. It was the worshipping and cherishing that were going to kill her. Ben was right. She needed pain. Needed it like air. She tried to jerk away from him, force the issue, and all he did was hold her fast. The climax he was inspiring was going to destroy her, but in this position he held all the power.

“You’re going to go over for me. You’re going to say ‘Yes, Master.’”

She shook her head. He put his mouth against her ear. She was curled up on her knees on the ground, his large body arched over her, so he could surround her with his voice, his demand and heat.

“Your tears are making the scarf wet, Celeste. It’s breaking my heart, darlin’. I’m going to keep doing this to you, make you cry even more, until all the tears are gone. Until you know it’s okay again. That I’ve got you, safe and sound, beautiful and whole. All mine.”

He eased another finger in, stretching her, and she gasped at the bolt of pleasure. He worried his finger over her clit. “So swollen, and what’s this? Your pussy, wet as morning dew. We’ll spread some of that over your clit, make it easier for me to stroke and play with it. After you come, I’m going to suck all the juices off it with my mouth, because I love the way a woman squirms and shudders when everything is still so sensitive. If I order you to be still through that, you’ll try so hard. Because you act like a brat, darlin’, but what you want to be is my good girl. You’re just afraid. And you don’t have to be afraid with me. Break, darlin’. I’ve got you.”

She started to come on that note, and the strength of it brought her hips off her heels, pushed her forehead deeper into the carpet. She was glad for the gag as she tried to muffle her response. A cry became a scream as he removed his fingers, shifted around to straddle her head, his thighs against her shoulders, and replaced his fingers with his mouth. Curved over her, he licked her rim and cunt, sucking on her clit as she came so hard, she had to rely on the cage of his body to hold her up.

“No…” The aftershocks came together, like fast ripples of sound. She kept rocking against him, her fingers clawing the carpet. She wanted him inside her. She was so empty. She needed to be filled up. She begged him to fuck her through the gag, a muffled plea he ignored.

Instead he teased and cleaned her with his mouth, little licks and a sweet, long sucking on her clit and labia that had her whimpering, squirming against his face, just as he’d said. He put her down on her side after that, her body still curled up beneath his. He had his knees planted on either side of her head, and she wrapped her hand around his calf, digging her fingers into the denim of his jeans as he kissed the line of her hip, nipped her buttock, massaged her rim and slid his fingers down between her folded legs again, working into the wet petals of flesh to stroke.

He didn’t stop until she was making tiny little moans, her body twitching. Bringing her back onto her elbows and knees, he made sure she was steady before he stepped away from her. It was only a second, a scraping sound suggesting he’d picked something up off the dresser. He passed something cool and hard with uneven ridges against her buttocks.

“It’s an antique hairbrush,” he said. “The back is metal, the surface shaped like a garden of flowers.” He stroked something else over her like a line of felt fingers. “This is a pussy willow branch. Not a real one. It’s designed to look like it’s part of the flower arrangement on the dresser, but it’s a switch. Cass and Lucas have made sure their guestroom has a few improv tools for a visiting Dom, without it being obvious to their more vanilla guests. Makes them pretty damn good hosts, in my opinion. You’ll be sure and thank them for their hospitality, won’t you?”

She was trying to wrap her mind around what he was about to do with those two items, and then he hit her with the switch. The contrast between the fuzzy buds and the sting of the whiplike stem had her jumping. “I asked you a question, Celeste.”

“Yes. Yes, sir.” The damp knot of fabric muffled her words, but the responses he was demanding were simple, easy to understand.

“Good.”

This wasn’t her. She didn’t obey so easily, didn’t capitulate to calling a man Master or sir as if she’d been a sub all her life. But before she could think about pushing up on her knees, renewing her resistance, he’d put the thick tread of his shoe on the back of her neck, his heel braced on the ground next to it. “Stay,” he reminded her.

She couldn’t see anything except blue through the scarf. It, as well as what he was doing to her, kept her in a hazy world as he struck her. It wasn’t as painful as the dragon tail. It merely got her twitching and off-balance before he brought the brush into it. The metal studs were painful, yet she lifted up for more of it. She embraced the agony, needing the punishment for everything…for nothing…for herself. For him to call her a good girl when it was all over.

She was letting out tiny muffled yelps with each strike, especially as he ramped it up, alternating it so she wasn’t sure if she was going to get the stinging slash of the switch or the hard thump and painful pressure of the back of the brush. Then he ran the bristles over her throbbing skin, between her legs, and she jerked at the uncomfortable prickle over her labia.

“Please…”

“Please what?” He paused. Hooking his fingers in the scarf at her nape, he brought her up on her knees, settling her on her heels. When he moved in front of her, she saw his shape through the blue layers. “Tell me, Celeste.”

“Please, Master.”

“Hmm. What do you want, darlin’?”

She couldn’t give voice to it. ‘Please, Master’ covered all of it. It was a plea for anything he could or would do to her, whatever would make her lose control, stop wanting to fight. Otherwise, the tides inside her shifted too suddenly. Like now. She struck out at him with closed fists, hitting his upper thigh, his hip. He caught her wrists. She tried to jerk back but he simply clasped both wrists in one impossibly strong hand and removed the scarf with the other.

“Un-unh. Settle down.” As he pulled the scarf away, she blinked. He was on one knee in front of her, his mouth set and serious eyes seeing everything. He threaded his fingers through her bangs, stroked them back from her eyes and then he rose to his feet, shifting his grip so he had one wrist in either hand. He pulled her arms around his upper thighs so her hands were molded against his muscular buttocks, a pleasing place to pin her palms. Her fingers curled against the pockets.

“Put your mouth on me, Celeste. Occupy those lips of yours with something other than getting you in trouble.”

He hadn’t removed his jeans, so she was frustrated by the barrier, but she gave it full effort, opening her mouth and pressing against the fly, licking the denim, stroking her tongue up the length of the hard shaft beneath. She breathed heat through the jeans, used her teeth on the stiff fabric to increase the pressure. He kept his firm clamp on her wrists, and weirdly, though she was gripping his buttocks as much as the fabric allowed and trying to give him oral sex through it, she kept pulling against him, trying to get away even as she mouthed and tongued his cock and held on to his ass as if she never wanted to let go. Her own bottom hurt from the strikes of the brush and her come was trickling down her thigh. Or maybe that was more arousal, because it didn’t seem that she’d had an ebb period from that last climax. She needed more now.

“More,” she muttered against him. She bit down on the thick denim of his fly harder, trying to inflict pain, an instant before she remembered he’d said he couldn’t yet trust her not to use her teeth. She couldn’t control the surges of anger that hit her at odd points like this one. The truth of it defeated her, filled her with despair, but he wasn’t letting her go there. Instead, he shifted her in one smooth movement, putting her on her back as he straddled her face. He pinned her arms with his knees as he’d done before. With that cue, her lips parted, a savage eagerness rising in her breast. She watched him open his jeans, stretch that beautiful cock out, thick, hard and long. Her lips were already parting as he pushed the smooth broad head into her mouth. As he made her take his full length, even when she choked, he kept his eyes on her face. The golden-brown eyes were brilliant and ruthless now, convincing her he was her Master, whether she said it or not.