Approval once again etches Kace’s handsome face while amber heat lights his blue-eyed stare. I am aroused by his demands. I don’t know this part of me, but I do hunger to understand.
He presses my hands over my head. “Don’t move them or I’ll stop what I’m doing and spank you now. Understand?”
My nipples pucker and I give him a breathy, “Yes.”
He studies me, watches me, searches for something, I don’t know what, but seconds tick by eternally until his grip slowly eases. His fingers trail down my arms, a featherlight touch leaving goosebumps skittering about my skin, before falling away. I feel their absence like a punishment, my body aching, my need for his touch already a living, breathing thing. He leans in, hot breath fanning my neck and I am weak, so very weak. I reach for him. He captures my hands and presses them back over my head, his eyes meeting mine. “I don’t think you really understand at all.” His voice is not gentle. It’s a reprimand.
I bristle despite the tingling of my limbs. “I think you’ve made your point quite well.”
He clearly doesn’t concur as he says, “Next time, I’ll turn you around, spank you and not even fuck you after.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His lips, those punishing, delicious lips, quirk ever so slightly. “Try me, baby. Unless you want to quit. Stop. Say no.”
The heady mix of alcohol and man feeds my courage while his hand that grips my wrists remains my shackle. “I don’t want to stop,” I dare.
“No?” he challenges.
My chin lifts defiantly. “No.”
He studies me, long and probing, and I’m quite certain he’s punishing me for touching him, because outside of my shackled wrists, he’s not touching me. Finally, the fingers of his free hand almost lazily tease one nipple, little darts of sensations spiking my nipples until they are hard knots, and tingling, delicious sensations ripple through me. My lashes lower and his hand goes to my jaw, lifting my gaze to his. He kisses me, his teeth scraping my bottom lip, and I can taste his hunger, I can taste his demand. He wants this, too. He needs it and I’m reminded of the reasons he might need control right now, namely Alexander and Gio, who are two of a kind—two men who would break us apart. Two men who would take from him and blame him for their sins.
“I’m not going to make love to you, Aria,” he says. “That’s for later. Now, I’m going to fuck you.” My sex clenches with those bold words. He’s going to fuck me. Yes, please, I think. Fuck me. I never let myself just fuck to fuck.
“Unless I touch you too soon?”
“Exactly. But first,” he promises, “I want you on my tongue, but I’m not going to let you come.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“I didn’t promise to be fair.” His fingers caress my clit and I pant out a breath. Already, he’s exploring the wet heat of my sex, stealing my ability to think.
“You can tell me no at any time, and I won’t spank you. I’ll stop everything I’m doing.”
Don’t stop is all I can think and he doesn’t.
His hand slides away from my wrists, and he seems to wait for me, to gauge my compliance and when he seems certain he has it, at least for now, he rewards me. He slips two fingers inside me, his thumb flicking my clit, and I’m not thinking of the spanking. I’m thinking of him inside me.
He settles on his knee, his teeth scraping my hipbone. Heat burns low in my belly and I swear I am so aroused that I might come the minute his mouth touches me. Just when I’m certain I will defy his vow to deny me, his fingers are gone. His hands are on my hips. His lips curve as he studies me with those blue, blue eyes, and then he kisses my trembling belly. Slowly, his mouth lowers, not to the spot I crave him to be, but to my stomach again. The soft, seductive flick of his tongue undoes me and sends a shiver through my entire body. The tenderness of this seduction, the slow burn, is a contrast with the promise of his hand on my backside and fills me with anticipation.
It’s all I can do not to reach for him, not to touch him. “Kace,” I whisper, my plea radiating in that one word.
His mouth eases lower and his breath is warm on my clit, his tongue doing a slow, barely-there lick. My hands lower but I catch myself, planting them on the railing. Another lick follows and then he’s suckling my swollen nub, and sensations explode inside me. I am so close to coming that I reach for him, afraid he will stop. And that’s exactly what he does.
The second my fingers tangle in the dark strands of his hair, his mouth and fingers are gone. I pant and his arm is suddenly around me, his fingers I want in the most intimate places now tangled in my hair, his grip a rough erotic tug. “I said no touching.”
My sex clenches painfully. “That’s a difficult order to follow.”
His lips quirk, the dark edge of his command fading into that moment. “And you take others well?” he teases.
“Yes?” I ask, remarkably at ease with Kace in all things, including this. He’s still going to spank me. I feel it in the air.
“No,” he says. “There’s a price for breaking the rules.” His lips linger just above mine, a promise of a kiss he does not give me. He cups my naked backside and lifts me, maneuvering me to the end of a long lounge chair. He lowers me, my front to his front and there is tenderness in his expression now that is as seductive as his commands. “I’m going to spank you now, Aria.”
“I know,” I whisper, my nipples puckering with his promise.
“It’s punishment for not listening to me,” he says, “but it isn’t about pain. It’s about control, about anticipation that becomes pleasure.”
“The anticipation is too much right this minute.”
His lips curve, and he cups my head, leaning in to kiss me, and it’s a drugging, sexy, possessive kiss that I feel in every part of me. And when it ends, I can feel the shift in him, the dominance even before he turns me to face the long end of the chair and orders, “Don’t move.”
For a long few beats, his hands rest on my shoulders, and he seems to just be getting me comfortable with the idea of him behind me. Nerves flutter in my belly and I focus on the window, where the snow is still skating by, zigging and zagging in the wind. And for just a moment I see myself as one of those flakes. All I did for years was skirt and skate in the wind. Control was a façade I clung to desperately and suddenly I know why I am so willing and aroused to allow Kace this kind of adventurous control. I know what Kace has been trying to tell me about myself.
Control is giving and taking. It’s a decision. It’s not an absolute.
He’s taking now.
I’m giving.
Only I think he is, too. Taking and giving.
“I’ll spank you four times, Aria. You’ll know before it happens, and immediately after I’m going to fuck you hard and fast. Understand?”
I like that he asked for my approval. I like that he’s told me what to expect, but I don’t miss the promise to fuck me after he’d sworn that denial and I call him on it. “I thought you weren’t going to fuck me.”
His lips brush my neck. “You’ll need the fuck after the first spanking. Next time, you’ll want it but you won’t need it.”
I’ll need it? I repeat in my mind, not sure what that means but I don’t have time to overthink. He squeezes my backside and then gives me a little smack. I yelp and his hands are on my neck, his cheek by my cheek. “That’s just a tease.”
His hand falls away and he steps back from me. I don’t move. And I don’t move because he’s ordered me not to move. Despite my revelation of liking his control, I’m amazed and confused at how aroused I am by his commands, by the threat of his palm, by this game. But then, this is Kace. He’s a contradiction. A man who is tender, gracious, funny. A man who knows when to give orders and when to ask questions.
I can feel his absence behind me, but the heat of his stare on my naked body is downright feverish. There’s a shuffle of clothing. Thank you, Lord, he’s undressing. I want to turn, I want to see him. I do, but I play the game. I live in the moment with Kace, wanting to know where he will take me. Wanting to know more about him and this is not a part of him that he created for me. It’s a way he copes, he escapes. It’s about his need for control that somehow works for me because I’ve never been as aroused as I am now ever in my life.
Seconds tick by and feel like an eternity.
I listen for his movements.
I await his return.
I can’t take it anymore.
I try to turn and suddenly his hands are on my hips. “I said don’t move.”
“I tried.”
“I know, baby. I know. Hands and knees on the cushion. And remember. Four times. Then we fuck. Now, Aria.”
I have no idea why him saying my name right now jolts me, but it does. Perhaps because it’s me owning me instead of him owning me. Only, I’m pretty sure right now he owns me. He owns me when pain and fear and panic owned me when Gio left. He is taking me to a place where nothing else exists. Where I can just stop thinking.
He leans in close, his lips at my ear, breath a warm fan on my hypersensitive skin. “We don’t have to do this.”
I wet my dry lips. “I want to do this,” I say, and my knees go down on the cushion.
My hands follow, planting in the cushion as well, and adrenaline surges. And Kace lifts my backside, his hand on my belly, caressing my cheek, touching me, warming my skin. I’m a rage of sensation and emotions, jittery with nerves, but his hands on my body seduce, tease. His fingers slide between my legs and I’m hot and wet, a soft moan escaping my lips. But now his hand is back on my backside and my heart is racing, anticipation burning through me. He begins to pat my backside, and I know he’s getting me used to his hand. I’m all but squirming with his touch, ready to beg him to just to do it when he says, “Now.”
His palm comes down on my cheek, a sting radiating through me, sharp enough that I arch my back and gasp, but already the next blow is there, and so is the next. I am reeling when I realize it’s over and Kace is pressing inside me, his thick erection thrusting deep. And then he’s doing just what he promised, fucking me, pumping hard, over and over. I can’t explain it but every sense I have is more alive. This is why he didn’t want me to come before the spanking. I feel each thrust with an explosion of sensations and I push into him, against him, wanting more, needing more. I lose all sense of anything but the wild need for more and more until I’m moaning and I pant with the release, my sex spasming around him. Sensation after sensation spirals through me and with low guttural sounds, Kace is shuddering. I don’t even know how much time passes before the room returns to me, snow before my eyes, the man who just owned me at my rear.
He rolls with me, taking us to our sides, my back to his front, our bodies intimately tucked together, his cock still buried inside me. He nuzzles my neck, his scent earthy and male, his touch possessive and yet tender and protective. I feel safe—vulnerable yet still safe. I feel the intensity of our intimacy, our trust, our bond, but unbidden, there is a weird pinch in my chest and then my eyes prickle. My hand goes to my face and I will them away. “Oh God, I’m about to cry and it’s not the spanking. I swear it’s not the spanking. I liked it, I did, I just—” Appalled, I burst into tears, horrible, gut-wrenching tears.
Kace curls tighter around me, stroking my hair. “It’s the adrenaline baby. Ride it out.”
And I do because it’s not like I can stop the emotion that all but bleeds from me. It’s intense, quaking, but it’s fast and hard and gone. Somehow Kace has tissue, and he hands it to me, helping me clean up. I sit up and he wraps a blanket around me. “Better?” he asks going down on a knee in front of me, still naked and so beautifully male. He spanked me. I liked it. There is an intimacy to such a thing that I can’t explain.
“I can’t believe that just happened. It wasn’t the spanking,” I repeat, needing him to know. “I was, I—it was—”
He strokes a thumb under my eye, wiping away a wayward tear. “Yes,” he says softly. “It was. The whole idea of the spanking is to center you. The pleasure is intense. The release is intense.”
“And then I cried,” I say, still unnerved by how completely out of my control I was when those tears overtook me, and they did overtake me.
“Sometimes when you have a lot of emotion pent up, and you experience an adrenaline rush, it triggers an emotional release as well. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a release you needed.” He strokes hair behind my ear. “It might not ever happen again.”
“And if it does?”
His lips curve. “We have tissues.”
“How do you know this, Kace? How is this so familiar to you?”
“When I was eighteen, I had a fling with an older woman who had a taste for the BDSM world. It wasn’t for me and neither was she, but like everyone that crosses our paths, I believe there is a reason. She taught me a lot about control.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirty-five.”
I’m stunned about this new revelation. “How long did you see her?”
“A year in which I became a man.” He leans in and kisses my hands. “We’d better get dressed before Blake gets here.” He stands up, offering me a delicious view of his backside, and I’m struck by how raw and real he has become with me. Except for one thing: he won’t tell me how he’s dealing with Alexander. He doesn’t believe I can handle it, and therefore, he doesn’t believe I can handle every part of him.
He still thinks I’ll run.