Star of Wonder (11 page)

Rose’s face contorted in arousal. Her breaths turned into small sobs as Mark bent his head to softly kiss her abdomen. Hesitantly at first, then encouraged by her man’s moan, Rose lifted her hands and tangled them in his hair.

Mark groaned again, though deeper. He trailed his mouth up her body in a variation of nips and suckles that made Rose grip him tighter, mewling and whimpering. “Please, Master.”

His mouth slid along her collarbone. “What do you need, pet?”

“
More
.”

When he got to her mouth, he gave her just that.

The lovers crashed together, sweeping and devouring each other. Mark hauled her nearly naked form against his big body. Rose fisted one hand in his hair, the other in his shirt. As she watched them, Celina couldn’t move. Her whole body shuddered, surging in awakening as it too confirmed what she was watching. Power exchange. Give and take. Mark took his pet’s obedience and rewarded her for it by lifting her to him, with him, completing him. They weren’t just Dominant and submissive, nor even man and woman. They were simply one.

She’d never seen anything more beautiful.

Nor had she felt anything more magical, when Dante’s fingers slid across her erect nipples.

She clenched her jaw to keep a scream from erupting as his harsh breath fanned her ear. He pinched her harder as Mark and Rose kissed like taking their last taste of each other. She pushed her chest more urgently into his touch, needing more herself, craving the tiny jolts of pain. When he squeezed tighter, she gasped. A river of arousal started in the deepest tunnel of her body.

Dante maintained the pressure as Mark spun Rose around, then jerked her arms over her head. With deft movements, he quickly had his wife latched into the suspension cuffs.

“Comfy, honey?” He gave her the query on a deep drawl.

“Yes.” Rose’s stretched body was a breathtaking portrait of creamy curves. “Yes, Master, thank you.”

“You’ll show me your thanks in a minute or so, pet. Right
here
.” He gave her ass another solid spank, just before pulling out a pair of scissors from a pocket and slicing the leather thong at one hip. She let out what sounded like a sigh. Mark stopped, arching a brow. “Is there another problem, honey?”

“No, Master.” Her voice was edged with resignation. “You did, after all, buy me six pairs of those.”

“Damn right.” He repocketed the scissors and stood behind her, jerking the leather down the rest of the way and letting it puddle at her right ankle. “Because I’ll be waiting right here, ready to cut them and watch them slide off this beautiful ass again.”

While he spoke that, he scraped his fingers across her backside. Another growl rumbled out of him as the skin went pink beneath his assault. Rose answered him this time with a soft moan. Celina heard her teeth grinding together with the tension of keeping her own breath in.

“Don’t.” Dante’s voice vibrated in her ear as his hands fanned her rib cage. “Don’t hold it back, darling. Hearing your pleasure increases hers.”

She wanted to tell him to shut up. She sure as
hell
didn’t want to become sexual modeling clay in his hands again, especially like this, in this place that felt even less like reality than her bedroom on Friday night. She was deep in the abyss now, unable to grab any ledges of logic. And the fall was glorious. She was consumed by the beauty of what she witnessed, longing for more of the sweet cadence in her pussy and the music in her blood.

Dante wouldn’t let her get any further into her head. He nudged the hair from her ear, then bit on it. “Let. It. Out.” His command was a whispered snarl.

As Mark Moore landed a loud spank to his wife’s ass, Celina obeyed.

Her broken cry mixed with Rose’s high keen.

Seconds later, Rose’s scream turned into a long and low groan. Her hips started circling. Her head lolled to the side. She snapped it back up as Mark delivered two more smacks, then repeated the treatment. Celina lost count of how many there were in all, but when he finally came to a pause, Rose sobbed in a mix of pain and ecstasy, her body trembling, her knuckles white against the support rungs of the cuffs. Her ass was a bright bloom that matched her name. Mark ran his hands across those dark pink planes in possessive adoration.

“Fuck, honey. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You’re so hot for me right now, aren’t you?”

As if to prove it to them both, he slipped a hand down and pushed several fingers into her core.

“Yes!” Rose shoved her hips at him. “Yes, Master. Thank you…”

In their corner, Celina couldn’t restrain herself from doing the same thing. Her body moved as if another willed it, thrusting back into Dante, seeking deeper contact. He responded with a coarse grunt of approval, his breath scorching her neck.

Mark shifted to Rose’s side, though he still pumped his hand into the cleft between Rose’s thighs. His other hand now bracketed her jaw, leading her gaze toward his. “What do you need now, pet? What can your Master give you? You need to speak it.” He leaned and licked the seam of her slightly parted lips. “You need to beg me for it.”

Rose shuddered like just his command was a gift. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded. She raised her face higher, pushing her lips toward his, totally aglow in the attention he focused on her. “Please, Master…I need more.”

Celina’s lungs pumped. Still, she couldn’t seem to get air. She didn’t care. She couldn’t rip her eyes from the raw beauty of what she beheld. The open, sweet gift of this submissive. The powerful but tender guidance of her Dom. The promise of fulfillment, sexual and emotional and spiritual, that they gave more deeply to each other with each passing second. She wasn’t just transfixed by the sight. She was elevated.

Something sawed into her mental tree house. It was a persistent buzz, vibrating against her shoulder until Dante stopped it. His cell phone? No, it was his watch. Why was his Tag Heuer making like a disgusting fly right
now?

He spoke into her ear again, though now his voice wasn’t sensual. It was laced with sadness.

“That’s the alarm, stellina. Your hour is up. You’re free to go.”

Chapter Eleven

Dante had never been more thrilled to see a woman glare at him.

He had no idea where he got the strength to pull away from her, much less rise to his feet. Or how he extended his hand to help her up. Or kept from grinning like an idiot when she glowered at his fingers. And he
really
didn’t know how he maintained that control as conflict took over her features.

He endured a second of sharp guilt. He’d forced this struggle on her and now watched it twist across her beautiful features. Did she leave now and forget all this, denying everything that was clearly awakened in her because of it? Did she just go to her friend’s party, shoving aside how this experience, sudden and startling as it was, made her see what they could be together? Or did she stay and consort with the enemy? Could she admit the enemy might not be the enemy, that maybe
he
was the universe’s “gotcha” on all that armor around her soul?

Her stare climbed from his hand to his face. He strongly wished he’d had the sense to borrow some of her armor. Her emerald eyes were large, luminous, and lost. He swallowed and locked his body in place. He couldn’t take away her agony. Not this time. He wouldn’t force this decision on her. He’d asked for an hour and gotten it. The rest was up to her.

She took a shuddering breath. Another. For a moment, Dante forgot other people were in the room. He forgot air was in the room.

She reached up a trembling hand and twined it into his.

“Can I stay?”

The words were barely breaths, but they blasted cannon holes into his composure. He rode the explosion, not waiting for Celina to pull him back down. He yanked her up to him, slamming her full against him, waiting for her with the hungry crush of his kiss. Fuck.
Fuck
. She was more soft, fragrant, passionate, and perfect than he remembered. Her mouth was a deeper, more delicious cave. Her hips were a more ideal fit against his. Her ass filled his palms as if made for them, a revelation he took full advantage of, kneading her sweet backside. God, she felt amazing.

She felt right.

Across the room, a sharp rhythm cracked the air. Rose’s high gasps synched to it. From the sound of it, Mark graduated from manual spankings to sensation play of a more creative form. Earlier, Mark told Dante he was likely to honor this special occasion by pulling out Rose’s favorite forms of discipline, which meant the woman’s ass was now getting reacquainted with their crop or their padded paddle. That wasn’t the part that turned Dante on. But Celina’s reaction to it—
merda
, she was obliterating him in chunks with it. Her throaty sigh was hard enough to bear. Her fierce grip into his hair, even harder. But when she started stabbing her tongue against his in time to Mark’s whacks, he was pulverized. The only standing pillar in his body was the one between his thighs, screaming at him in need, engraving his zipper on its throbbing length.

No
. No, damn it. He and Mark had talked about this part as well. The part about wanting to flatten one’s woman to the floor—or the bed, the wall, the table, the chair—and spread her wide for ultimate annihilation. This part, Mark had told him, occurred regularly and had to be trained for behavior just like a good flogging hand.

He tore his lips away, punctuating with a determined growl. Celina’s stare threatened to engulf him again, a thousand frightened questions swirling in the dark green depths. Her desire was there too, an entrancing sheen. She was so breathtaking, ready, and open. Her bravery stunned him. Moved him. And holy hell, did it arouse him.

He had to get those eyes off him.

With another grunt, he spun her around. He tugged both hands into the bottom of her turtleneck. “Off,” he ordered into her ear. “Now.”

Celina helped him pull the sweater free. Her hair tumbled down, a sweep of lush sable against her smooth olive skin. The sight stoked his sexual furnace even more when the bra he’d unclasped also fell free. Now she was bare from the waist up, like a gorgeous servant girl offered for his pleasure. And judging from the tight nipples that met his touch,
her
desire too.

That fantasy thickened as he and Celina refocused on Mark and Rose. Sure enough, Mrs. Moore was fully attending the needs of her Master, who paced behind her trembling form as he stroked the tongue of a leather riding crop along her upper thighs. The woman’s ass wasn’t a delicate bridal blush anymore. It bloomed a hot red. There were even a few burgundy marks scattered along her skin. Rose looked far from hating the treatment, however. The woman’s head rolled to the side, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her lips panting in excitement.

Celina let out a gasp. Dante wondered if the reaction stemmed from mortification or arousal. She didn’t make him wait long for the answer. As Mark began another series of crop strokes on his wife, Celina’s nipples hardened to little stones. Dante ran his thumbs across them. She moaned. He enlisted his forefingers in the torment, pulling at those sweet peaks harder than he had before. She bucked against him, ramming their hips together, arching her back and tearing a hand into his hair again. Her nails dug into his scalp, pulling his face into her neck. He took the pain gladly, because it turned into a bolt of pure electricity by the time it shot to his cock.

“I take it you still want to stay, stellina?” He grazed her neck with his teeth, then laved the abrasion with his tongue. Her fervent nod clutched at his chest and filled his soul. It was more than enough for now. Forcing her to form words wasn’t the goal this moment. Forcing her to see a new side of herself, a terrifying discovery in herself—that was the plan and the much harder mission.
Merda
, he’d spearheaded multimillion-dollar mergers with more confidence than his next step.

Luckily, Mark had walked him through a few key points. His friend’s words resonated in his mind.
Listen to what her body tells you. Follow that with what your gut says.

The trouble was, his gut didn’t do the talking right now. The last time he’d endured a more painful erection, he’d been fifteen. Celina’s urgent little hip rolls helped as much as tinfoil in a lightning storm. He clenched his jaw and reset his legs, setting them just inside hers. He put them there to support hers…or at least that was the bullshit he was going with the moment.

Go with his gut. Right, his gut. It was around here somewhere. He hoped.

“What else do you want?” The words felt good. And they did generate from his gut, though this part of his instinct wasn’t so familiar to him. It had only been awakened in full force on Friday, then taken out to examine in curious little chunks throughout the week. Mark had given him a name for it. His hidden Dom. He’d winced when his friend first slapped the term on him, but he now realized the label was fucking perfect. He liked this part of him. And he loved what it did to the woman in his arms.

“What else do you want, cara?” He ground even more command into the repetition, reveling in her deep shiver of reaction. “Do you want more of this?” He gripped her breasts fully, twisting the luscious skin, making her cry out. The sound ripped through him with primal force. “Do you like what the pain does to you?” He bit into her earlobe. “Do you like where it sends your mind, your body?”

She let out a louder shriek as he gave her mounds a pair of light swats. When he thumbed her nipples again, they were hot and pulsing.

“Yes,” he whispered. “You do want it, don’t you?”

She shook again. She was still a mess of deep confusion. He felt it in every undulation of her body, especially when things got more intense on the other side of the room. Mark tossed aside the crop and opted for a pair of long, heavy leather floggers. He gave Rose a kiss on the back of her neck before continuing to her ear, murmuring something that made his wife’s body go limp in the cuffs. Then he backed up from her by three broad steps.

“Shit!”

The scream came from Rose as her Dom landed the flogger falls hard into her back. She gave the word a do-over when he crossed his arms and delivered a second strike, echoing the force of the first.