She took it well when I pinched them onto each hard peak.
"Nipple clamps," I explained. "Are they too tight?"
She shook her head, studying them.
They looked perfect on her. In fact, I couldn't decide if I even wanted to pierce her, they looked so right.
Next, I cut off her thong, watching her face to gauge her reaction.
"Climb on the bed," I ordered, voice gone hoarse.
She obeyed.
"Climb over to that ramp until your knees are touching it. Yes, right there."
I climbed up behind her, pushing her face down onto the ramp I'd arranged in the middle of the bed, which pushed her ass up just where I wanted it.
Her cheek was touching the riding crop, and she was trembling. It was almost too much.
"This isn't your knee," she told me.
That surprised a laugh out of me. "It is not. My lap isn't a safe place for you at the moment. We'll get to that, though, I promise."
I slipped a rope over her ankle, then drew it taut.
"The more you struggle, the more these will chafe. Keep that in mind." I secured her other ankle, then moved to her wrists, binding her quickly.
I moved behind her again, leaning over her until I was flush against her back, my erection digging into her ass.
She wiggled, and I swatted one cheek lightly.
"Hold still," I ordered and slid the crop out from under her cheek.
I moved off her.
She moaned in protest, and I lightly spanked her again.
My heart tried to beat its way out of my chest as I just studied her for a long time, almost nervous to start.
She looked so beautiful like that. So perfect, tied up, bound for my use.
This was my poetry, my art, her body my canvas.
I felt giddy for what was to come.
"Do you have anything to say before I begin?" I asked her.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Cavendish," she said, arching her back.
I hummed, deep in my throat, and let the crop fly.
I started lightly, only hitting harder when I saw her reaction.
She moaned and wriggled, and I could see how wet this was making her.
I made myself stop, panting at the effort. I didn't want to overdo it, when I was still so unsure of her limits.
She arched and muttered a protest, rubbing her chest against the ramp.
I felt dizzy. I held my hand out in front of me, and it was shaking.
I'd never jumped into something so fast or carelessly before. My instincts told me she wasn't a liar, but instincts could be wrong, and for all I knew, she wasn't even on the pill.
I'd been scrupulous about protection from the time I'd become sexually active. Getting some random woman pregnant simply wasn't an option for me, as plenty of fortune hunters would have loved nothing more than to take advantage of a careless moment.
None of this had slipped my mind. It wasn't a matter of oversight. Not at all.
It was a change of heart.
My MO was evolving rapidly into something even I didn't recognize or completely understand. But I did understand something. I'd be coming inside of her bare. The thought of getting her pregnant wasn't even that alarming to me. In fact, if I was honest with myself, the idea of tying her to me in such a way was more than a little appealing.
I glanced down at my heavy erection. It was swollen to the point of painful, turning red, thick veins apparent along my shaft. I twitched, pre-cum dribbling out from my tip.
I'd never been so aroused in my life.
"I need to stop there," I told her gruffly. "I don't want you too sore to lie on your back when I take you."
More of that silence from her that I had no notion what to do with.
My attention caught on her creamy white flesh. "Fuck. I can see the liquid running down your legs." I fingered the trail of moisture on her thigh.
"We need to do a few things before I fuck you. I have a health exam on the table over there. I've been tested. All the results are clean. Do you want to see it? It's available for you. I want to bury my cock in you bare, if you'll allow. You said you're on the pill, right?"
She nodded. "I am. I'll take your word for it. If I thought you'd lie about something like that, I wouldn't be letting you tie me up and pound the V-card out of me, now would I?"
I laughed and bent to kiss her cheek.
I pushed the ramp out from under her, letting her fall to the bed.
I freed her ankles. I gripped them, pushing her up higher on the bed. I flipped her over with just that contact, surprising the breath out of her.
This twisted her arms above her head and allowed me to spread her legs wide. I tied them like that, devouring the sight.
She was so lusciously blonde. Everywhere. She was breathtaking, her ripe body with all of its perfect alabaster skin, trembling before me.
Mine.
I claimed her with my mouth first, beginning with a chaste kiss to her lips that was nothing so much as an assertion of my will, then moving south to stake my claim on every inch of her untouched skin.
Next, I took her body with mine. I did it with ruthless skill, and the closest I'd ever come to wild abandon. I broke through her barrier and became frenzied to the point of madness.
I heard my own low, guttural moans as I took her. I'd never been loud, had always controlled my noises, but now, now, I just couldn't hold things like that back.
I never took my gaze off hers. Those pale eyes of hers both devoured me and fed me.
They swallowed me whole and kept me intact.
I felt her around me, felt her tender flesh clench, and I went insane.
I cursed silently, groaned aloud, tensed, then started heaving like a madman, hurting her I was sure, because she wasn't accustomed to an invasion like this.
And thinking of that had me losing my mind even more.
She was sobbing out her pleasure at the end, begging for release.
I kept going, rutting in her uncontrollably, driven like a fiend.
Finally, when I reached my limit, I took her to the edge. I started rubbing her clit relentlessly as I pounded in and out. "Come, Bianca," I commanded, my eyes eating up every detail of her passion-slackened face.
Incredibly, she obeyed. Like she was an instrument already tuned to my touch. Like she was made for me.
Because she was.
Mine.
Irreversibly. Irrevocably.
I jarred into her hard with one last brutal thrust and emptied my seed deep inside of her.
I couldn't stop kissing her as I came down from that giddy high. Her lips were lush, but that wasn't why I couldn't stop obsessing about them. It was their softness, their malleable, pulpy, trembling silkiness that had me craving, needing more.
Afterward I drew a bath, my mind reeling, racing, reconfiguring my life as I knew it.
I moved back to the bed when the bath was ready, studying her limp, sated form with vivid pleasure.
I tried to place what I was feeling. It was beyond satisfaction. More like something akin to fierce pride. She couldn't know it yet, but this beautiful creature had sealed her fate in that bed.
I wasn't letting her go. She was skittish, but I wouldn't let that daunt me.
It wasn't a question of if anymore, not after that. I'd be keeping her. Now it was just a question of how.
I carried her to the bath and washed her clean with my dirty hands.
In spite of my thoughts, my desires, I could tell I said something wrong when she tried to leave before dinner and only barely cajoled her into staying for a meal.
I lost all of my usual finesse with this woman; the charm I counted on seemed to have no effect.
She was close-lipped and distant, but I managed to wrestle small bits of information out of her.
She didn't trust me, or expect much from me, but I meant to change that.
I had her again, taking her on the table with dessert.
I shouldn't have. I knew it. I'd u
sed her roughly her first time, but she swore she wasn't too sore, and I didn't have the self-control to keep from slaking my thirst with her luscious body a second time.
I kissed the rope marks on her wrists. "I love seeing this on you," I spoke against her skin, voice thick with something far stronger than mere desire.
I pushed her back flat against the surface of the table, spreading her legs wide.
I moved between her legs, my cock a whisper from her entrance.
"Look at me," I commanded. When her eyes met mine, I continued, "Watch me. I'll punish you every time you look away from me when I'm inside of you."
She nodded, lips trembling, pale eyes steady and relentless, claiming pieces of my soul with but a look.
"Ask me for it," I ordered, stroking myself.
"Please, Mr. Cavendish, fuck me."
I obliged, pushing into her roughly.
I couldn't contain a deep groan as I began to thrust in earnest.
"Does it hurt?" I asked without slowing.
"It's perfect," she moaned.
Even after we'd finished, I stayed inside of her, carrying her up to my room while I bounced her on my insatiable cock.
"Let me know if you reach your limit," I told her roughly when I'd carried her back to my room. I still held her, still buried deep. "You should be sore and tender after your first time. I should be considerate and let your body recover."
"Please, don't."
That nearly undid me, combined with her needy tone.
"You want me to finish you like this, standing up and impaled on my cock?" I asked, anchoring her to me as I worked her up and down my stiff length.
"Y-yes please. Oh, yes."
She was on the edge, and I was right there with her when I clipped, "Come, Bianca."
She fell apart, and I fell with her.
I stayed up all night.
I'd worn her out, and she slept like a baby. I'd worn myself out, and somehow it wasn't enough. I wanted, needed more.
I left the bathroom light on, door open, and left the room illuminated enough to watch her, touch her, and stare at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I was going to do.
This, this was what my agnostic mind pictured the spiritual mind feeling when it attended confession. A leaking out of all that was bad and a flowing back in, a joyful inhalation, of the most substantial life-sustaining nourishment.
So much of this ritual had become a habit; one that I knew was designed in part to avoid intimacy. If our bodies were temples, the things I did to my subs were meant as sacrilege.
This was not that.
This was beyond the ritual, beyond the habit. I had wallowed in her, basking, reveling, and in my revelry, I had slaked beyond my physical thirst and delved into another need entirely.
This was different.
This was intimacy. This was sacred.
I couldn't get enough. I couldn't stop, even when I knew it should be enough, that I was overusing her unused body.
Somehow, I knew, just knew, deep in my gut, where certainties held the most sway, that I would never have enough of her.
I was lost. I was found.
I, James Cavendish, unrepentant dominant, sexual deviant, and prolific slut for more years than I cared to count, was in love.
I'd taken her virgin body, but just as surely, she'd taken my virgin heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
MY DESPAIR
PRESENT
To believe in that perfect love, and your whole life know that it isn't for you, that what you've been shaped into makes it fundamentally impossible, then one day you blink, and there it is, someone so perfectly formed to complement your own complicated needs.
It was heady, a rush like nothing else.
And like all highs, the low was more than its match, a despair so harsh, the teeth it sunk in me so jagged and sharp it had my breath dragging in and out like it was a physical affliction that ailed me.
I bent over her sleeping form, waiting for her to wake up.
Even I couldn't have said at first if I was merely holding vigil or outright praying, but it was a fact that that is exactly what it turned into.
It brought to mind something Tristan had said to me once, just after his rehab days, as he'd been coming to terms with the things he'd lost, and I hadn't been able to hide my surprise about his newfound need for spirituality.
'I get that it's not for everybody, but it's helping me,' he'd explained. 'God doesn't need us, James. You don't have to believe in him to keep him relevant. That's not the issue. We need him. Listen, I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I have enough to take it a day at a time.
I have lost so much, and I have only myself to blame for it. I could destroy myself with the guilt of that. Trust me, I have that inside of me. But by some miracle, I did not do that, instead, I opened my heart and my arms and begged for help, and that's when I realized: God doesn't need us, but when we need him, no matter what we've done, how far we've fallen, or how long it takes us to find him, he's still there for us.'
At thirty, bent over with the weight of my heavy burdens, more exhausted and weary than I'd ever been, taking up residence on an uncomfortable chair in a Vegas hospital, for the first time in my life, feeling wretched and despairing, I opened my heart and arms and found some small bit of peace as I waited through the hardest hours of my life.
CHAPTER SIX
MY MADNESS
PAST
I felt so stripped of every normal, rational part of me with her that it was almost unpleasant at first.
Like air on a fresh wound.
I had so little control of myself where she was concerned. It was madness like I'd never known. Trembling urgency. Crippling desperation. Undiluted frenzy. Savage abandon.
It was an alien feeling, and I wondered sometimes why I didn't fight it. Why I didn't withdraw from it, why I never even considered staying away.
I couldn't quite believe how much I'd lost it, couldn't understand this total upheaval of who I was, this assault on my peace of mind, and most of all, couldn't comprehend how I could love it, crave it, need it so.
"Hello," I answered my phone.
"Who's your best friend in the world?" Frankie's voice called out gleefully to me, on the other end of the line.
I smiled. "You are, of course. What's got you sounding so tickled, my dear?"
"If you liked me before, you're going to love me after you meet this new sub I found for you. She's perfect, James. Right up your alley, and you know I know your type."
I stiffened, blinking slowly.
It wasn't so unusual. Frankie had introduced me to girls before. She was more involved in the scene that accompanied our lifestyle than I was. But the timing was off.
In fact, after what had happened last night, it was horrible.
She kept talking, not noticing right away the significance of my utter silence. "Dark hair, gorgeous hazel eyes. Twenty-six and trained by the best. Body to die for. She's smart and sweet, too. It'll be a nice change for you."
She went on about this mystery woman's many apparent virtues, and my mind wandered for a bit, across the country, on a flight with my reticent lover of the night before.
Finally, I interrupted her. "I met someone," I said shortly.
She was quiet for a beat, then, "Oh. Is it . . . serious?"
I could tell from her tone just how unlikely she thought that was. I searched for the words to explain that it was more than serious. It was necessary.
"She's the one."
Heavy silence on the other end let me know that she was processing the information properly.
"Wow," she finally spoke, sounding equal parts elated and disbelieving. "That's wonderful! How is this the first I'm hearing of it, and have you set a date yet?"
"It just happened, and I wouldn't mark your calendar yet. I finally fell for a girl, but, and you're gonna love this, she's not sure she's that into me."
"Huh?"
"I'm not sure yet if she likes me
."
"What?"
"She's doesn't know what to make of me."
"Excuse me?" Her tone was somehow more incredulous with each question.
I sighed. "She thinks I'm an asshole with too much money, and it might take a miracle to get her to come around. Does that clear it up for you?"
Her voice dripped with her utter delight. "I need to meet this girl. I can already tell I'll LOVE her."
She paused for a moment, then delicately, "So, are you going to do some demonstrations with her?"
I blanched. "No. No. No. Never."
"Will you be bringing her to the fetish parties?"
"No. Those days are over for me. What I have with Bianca . . . it's not something I can share. I have to keep it private. Anything else would drive me mad."
"I get it. Totally understandable. I'm so happy for you."
I was smiling when we ended the call.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MY HELPLESSNESS
PRESENT
Finally, after agonizing, waiting, remembering, Bianca came to with a violent jerk, her eyes snapping open.
A great shudder rocked through my body, and I had to look down at our joined hands for a moment to stay composed. It wouldn't do to break down in front of her just then.
A relief like nothing I'd ever known flowed through me, top to bottom, like cold water, raising every hair on my body.
She was awake. She was alive. We were actually going to survive this.
All those hours, and she hadn't even been resting.
She'd been waiting, it seemed, her own bloody visions keeping hold of her, because the second she spoke, she said, "Stephan?" A world of pain and fear in her voice.
I gasped when I finally found the courage, the composure to look at her again. Into those beloved eyes I never thought would look at me again.
She knew. She knew he was grievously injured. That fast, and she remembered.
"He's recovering from surgery."
She processed that for just a moment before asking, "How badly was he hurt?" It sounded like she was talking around a mouth full of marbles. I flinched, imagining the damage that had been done to the inside of her mouth. "Will he be okay? I need to see him now."