The Professional (35 page)

He was trying to unnerve me. It was working! Did I actually have the mettle to do this?

“Come now, we’ll go home.” He was like a devil on my shoulder, tempting me away from what I needed—from what
we
needed. “All this will be like a dream.”

In my mind, moving forward with this equaled moving forward in our life together. And I yearned for that. When I wanted something badly enough, nothing could stop me.

Not even the leering eyes of thirty strangers.

I refused to drop the chain. I refused to stay on the ground and not climb up to the trestle. Once I broke the surface of this, it would all be worth it.

When I knew my mind was made up, I began to shake—like a fledgling. Like a girl about to free-fall.

Sevastyan’s brows drew together. “You’re trembling?” He laid the backs of his fingers against my cheek, as if to check for a fever. “Drop the chain,
milaya
. That’s all you have to do.”

I gritted my teeth, set my jaw, and turned from him to stare at the glass.
Bring. It. On.

I heard him exhale a stunned breath. He’d never thought I would do it. He’d set me up to take a fall.
Sometimes I’m quite all right with falling, asshole
.

“Very well. They’ll see my woman.” I got the sense that he hated the idea of displaying me. Caught by his own trap?

I had been ogling those in the circus ring; soon they’d return the favor. Tit for tat. I almost laughed hysterically.

“It’s not often that one of these rooms is revealed,” Sevastyan said. “This will be a treat for them, and for the other rooms as well.”

I’d forgotten about the other rooms, with their hidden occupants who would
not
be giving me tat. But there was no going back; he’d pressed the button.

I heard a whirring sound, braced myself for their stares.

As attention fell on me, participants elbowed others, heads craning. Like starving pack animals who’d just scented a meal.

My shaking grew worse.

Still a devil in my ear, Sevastyan murmured, “You know what to do. And then I’ll conceal you once more.”

Partners were turning mid-sex, adjusting positions for better viewing.
Don’t lose your nerve, Nat!

“I told you that you’d feel the bite of leather across your breasts, its sting between your legs.”
Yes, oh, yes.
“You’d let them witness your first descent with me?”

Descent? I refused to look at him, just stared at the frolicking in the ring.

“You must want this very badly indeed.” In a wondering tone, he mused, “For a submissive, you can be extremely aggressive.”

He had no idea.
You
will
be dominating me tonight, Siberian. Why fight it?

“You’ve made your decision.” He strode out of my sight line. Back to the table of tools?

He returned with a large dildo made of steel. I’d seen those on the site that I’d ordered my own arsenal from, but they’d been pricey. “Do you want this, Natalie?”

It was almost as big as his dick. As wet and empty as I felt, I did crave it. But to have everyone out there see my penetration?

His eyes were challenging behind his roguish mask. “Drop the chain if you don’t want me to work this inside you—for their pleasure.”

He began chafing it between his palms, warming it for me. The sight of his dexterous hands and tattooed fingers working that steel phallus made my hips buck.

By the time he ran the head of it down my belly, the metal was hot to the touch, seeming to burn against my skin. He
trailed it lower, past my navel, then through my small thatch of curls.

The tip briefly rolled over my tingling clit. When he fixed the head against my needy entrance, I forgot to breathe. There was no give to this dildo, total rigidity, and it looked as heavy as a hand weight.

Yet he meant for me to take it all?

He twisted the crown right at my soaked opening, as if he were screwing the huge thing into me. “Take this—I’m
giving
it to you.” He positioned himself so everyone could see him wedging the shining cock inside me. “Or drop the chain.”

Embarrassment scalded me, as hot as the thing itself.

But as I scanned the crowd—I saw parted lips, captivated expressions, increased tempos—my shame morphed into . . . stimulation. Yet another stimulation.

Just as it had aroused me to bare myself to the camera in Sevastyan’s bedroom, this was turning me on beyond anything I’d imagined. As he used my wetness to force the dildo inside me, inch by stretching inch, I basked in their stares.

Sevastyan followed my gaze. “My little exhibitionist. They covet my woman almost more than I can bear.” He leaned in until his face was beside mine. “There’s a need in me—to destroy them for desiring what’s mine. Never forget that.”

His jealous possessiveness only made me wetter.

“I want this deep inside you, Natalya. Open and accept it.” I tried to relax my muscles, taking it, taking it. . . .

When the phallus slid into place, he pumped it a few times until I was nearly drooling around the chain. Then he fitted slim leather straps around my waist to lock the heavy thing within me. Once it was secured, he gave the base a decisive slap that made me—and others—moan. “Do you thank me for it?”

I nodded, adjusting my wrists and ankles in their bindings, readying for whatever was to come next.

I noticed one rangy man near the glass seemed to be riveted to my crotch as he pounded his partner, a voluptuous woman bound atop a silken cushion on the ground.

When I circled my hips a few times to get used to the intrusion inside me, the man shuddered, gave a loud yell, and pulled out. His heavy-lidded gaze met mine as he spurted onto his partner’s mound.

Had he wanted me to see him come? To react? Interact?

“Now, now, Natalya,” Sevastyan chastised. “No need to taunt them with what they will
never
have.”

Had I been? Well, hell. Maybe?

Sevastyan strode away. Seconds later, I felt strands of leather slink down my spine. A flogger. As I’d suggested to him on the drive to Paris.

“Are you ready, pet?”

I’d been ready. I bit down on the chain and nodded—

Leather snapped across the backs of my thighs.

The sting made my eyes water. But when he moved beside me to assess my reaction, I gave him a
that’s-all-you-got?
look.

His brows rose above his mask. His lips curled.

The flogger landed harder. And again. Even as I whimpered around the chain, I found myself jutting my ass for more—which earned me groans from the audience, especially from those who were similarly bound.

What submissive wouldn’t want a man like Sevastyan to dominate her?

A man so dark and dangerous. So compelling and powerful.

And he was mine.

Sevastyan snapped the flogger against my thighs, my ass, even
the top of my back, then repeated the rotation. With each blow, the pain mounted and mounted, until it . . . didn’t.

Instead of twitching agony, all I could feel were areas of heat; my pain receptors were still pinging, but must be confused. I arched for more, shifting the weighty cock inside me.

When Sevastyan’s lashes rained down harder, passions seemed to escalate in the ring. I had to fight the force of the strokes to remain in position. Soon perspiration dotted my skin.

“My lovely Natalya bucks to meet her punishment.” His tone was thrumming with pride.

Every inch of my flesh was growing hypersensitive, as sensitive as my aching clit. When Sevastyan struck me, it became sexual. A sexual stroke. He knew exactly how far he could go to heighten my arousal without dampening it.

He’d wanted me to endure his tools. I wasn’t just enduring, or even accepting; I was
exalting
in them. When he paused to gauge my response, I faced him with widened eyes.
What are you doing to me?

He narrowed his, then seemed to hold his breath as the flogger flashed out to catch my clamped breasts, my trapped nipples.
The bite of leather against your breasts
 . . . I writhed in shocked delight, silently begging him for another.

Was he going to make me come like this?

When his hand descended between my legs, fondling roughly, I undulated to his touch, sending that dildo even deeper inside me. Nearly wild with the need to climax, I didn’t care who saw me wantonly riding his fingers, wetting them.

He groaned with satisfaction to find me soaked around the base of the dildo. “Do you know how hard I’m going to make you come?” He seemed like a boy with a new toy. Excitement sizzled in him. “Ready yourself, beautiful.” His focus was all on me.

I recalled his words from our fight earlier today:
I need to control you, command you, punish you. In order to
madden
you.

Everything he was doing was for the ultimate goal of my pleasure, with his own as secondary.

My reaction was what turned him on most.

And he intended to make me
react
as I never had before.

“I might not recognize everything a young woman needs,” he bit out. “But this I know.
This
I can give you. Of the rest . . . ?”

What was he trying to say? My question was forgotten when he moved in front of me to bring his hot mouth down to one of my pinned nipples. I could feel his rapid breaths against the tip.

When he licked the peak, I thought I would faint with pleasure. Against my flesh, he said, “More lashes, love?” He suckled my other nipple, leaving them both glistening for our audience.

I nodded eagerly as dual needs welled up inside me, like lava about to erupt: my crazed urge to come—and my desperate hunger for more of the flogger.

He returned to his task, singling out my ass for his attention, his blows forcing me up on the balls of my feet. When I jerked back to meet the flogger, the dildo lurched, propelling me even closer to orgasm.

The frequency of the lashes had been scattered, but now the speed increased to nearly constant. Sweat dampened my hair and slicked my skin. The moistened flogger tails laid fire across my nerve endings, sending my mind into turmoil.

What should have been pain morphed into delirium and then into euphoria—and Sevastyan was fueling it with each stroke.

My vision blurred. No longer could I see the orgy. No longer could I hear anything but his choked groans that accompanied each thwack of leather. It was as if all my senses had receded so I
could better perceive each individual flogger strand—and the kiss of breeze preceding a lash.

To better appreciate the steel cock he’d had the foresight to give me.

To float higher and higher until I was flying.

High. I was . . . high. My eyes rolled back in my head, my lips curling with delight, my teeth gritted on the chain so he wouldn’t take this feeling away.

Never take this away.
Boneless, hanging from my restraints, I
soared
—just as my release ripped through me in raw, shattering shock waves. Through clenched teeth, I keened my pleasure.

Tears streaked from my eyes as my sheath milked the dildo again and again. . . .

“Natalya?” I dimly heard Sevastyan calling. “Natalya!”

Calling for me? Where have I gone? Want to go there again.

Once the last of those shock waves had passed, I blinked, turning to him with a dreamy smile.

For some reason, my response made his eyes glint.

Then he rested his forehead on my shoulder, as if overwhelmed by what he’d discovered, as if this was more than he could believe.
“Ty sozdana dlya menya.”
 You were made for me. He licked sweat from my neck, nipping my skin as he ground his erection against me. At my ear, he said, “You were right—I’ve never seen anything more glorious.”

He tossed the flogger aside and began running his hands all over me. The roughness of his calloused palms over my abused flesh made my toes curl.

When he unfastened the strap around my waist to remove the dildo, my inner muscles tightened around it, didn’t seem to want to let go. He insistently tugged until it slipped out. Behind me, it too vanished.

“You like to display yourself,
moya plohaya devchonka.
” My wicked girl. “Do you want to reveal more to them?”

I frowned—how much more could I possibly show them?—but nodded anyway.

I heard him rustling through items on the tool table. When he returned, he unfastened my left ankle restraint.

Had our audience eased the pace of their pleasures? Wondering what he had in store for me next?

Around my free leg, he wrapped a leather strap, using it like a sling to hoist my knee, until it was level with my waist. He fastened the strap to the same chain that secured my wrists above.

I was balanced on one foot, even more exposed and vulnerable to him, to others.

I heard his zipper descending. Now would he fuck me? Against the fiery skin of my thighs, I felt his length pulsing.

“Do you want them to see you?” He ran the damp head against the cleft of my battered ass. “Really see you. Inside?”

He reached around me to spread my lips. Even after all that had happened, blushes painted my skin. I could feel cool air on my entrance—could feel their desirous eyes centering on me there.

That didn’t stop me from growing even wetter, from my lips swelling against his fingers.

He cupped me wholly. “Offer this to me,” he commanded. “Present it.”

I arched back as far as I could, jutting my ass against him.

“Very good.” He pinched the tips of my nipples in reward, making me light-headed. “Do you want them to see you come again?” Before I could answer, he’d grabbed me, one hand below my raised knee, the other clutching my hip. With one sure thrust, he entered me from behind.

I moaned around the chain, already on the verge. I felt as if I’d never come at all, as if my arousal had been stoked for days with no release.

He gave me long, hard plunges that jostled my body. My breasts bounced, my trapped nipples screaming each time the chain tightened.

As he drove into me, he grated, “You thought I was going out to find another woman that day you spurned me.” He moved in closer, tongue flicking out to taste my sweat. “How could I replace you? Even then I knew it was impossible.”