RICKI

I landed facedown on something soft and before I could do anything, someone in the back of the van grabbed me. I tried to struggle but he locked my wrists together somehow, sending an instant and involuntary wave of heat through my core and a flashback to being facedown in a limousine and coming harder than I’d ever come in my life. I shook my head trying to dislodge the bag, but he tightened it. Or was it a pillowcase? With my eyes open I could see it was screamingly pink and it smelled faintly of … shampoo? Even through the haze of adrenaline pumping through my veins that struck me as odd. And oddly familiar.

The driver turned on the stereo and settled on a radio station playing modern rock. What kind of kidnappers were these? Who used their actual pillowcase for a blindfold?

I pulled at my wrists again and felt what I could with my fingers. Not metal handcuffs. Not rope.

Leather.

You would have already thought I had reached my peak of adrenaline from being abducted, but no, my heart rate surged as hope, anxiety, fear, mortification, and a hundred other emotions crashed in. Leather had to mean one thing, didn’t it? I swallowed hard, trying to find my voice.

“If … If I say my safeword, will you let me go?”

A few seconds went by and then the driver, who sounded a lot like Chino, answered. “Might depend on what that safeword is.”

I struggled to sit up so I could be sure he heard me through the pillowcase. “It’s a part of a truck.”

“The part that connects the wheels?” he asked.

“Yes.”

A few more moments of silence went by and I got the feeling they were signaling to each other. The man next to me still hadn’t spoken, but then the driver said, “Yeah. If you say it.”

A couple more moments went by. “I don’t hear anything,” he prompted. I kept my mouth firmly shut.

“Well, okay,” he finally said, and then turned the music up again.

I sat there breathing hard for a bit longer, absorbing what had just happened. I had just consented to being kidnapped. The garish pillowcase had to be Sakura’s; that explained not only the color but why it smelled familiar! And the man sitting next to me—was it Axel?

I hoped it was but I wasn’t sure. It might be an accomplice—Mal? One of the other guys in the band? I wondered how much planning this had taken. Sakura was obviously in on it—and Gwen! The whole side trip to the grocery store had been a setup. They were all in on it. Wow. That was serious food for thought. Was my head that far up my ass? Life had been rough and gray ever since I’d decided to cut Axel off, but I had thought I hid it well. I had kept my personal angst from hurting anyone else, even as I was still feeling torn up inside. That the two women I was closest to loved me enough to have me kidnapped sent a pretty strong message.

Well, if I was going to play along, it was time to play along. “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

Axel’s voice was like water pouring down my back, soothing at first, then exhilarating, then raising goose bumps all over my body. “Nowhere, maybe,” he said, and put a rough hand on my knee. “Maybe we should just dump you by the side of the road. Getting dumped hurts like hell, you know. Maybe I’ll show you a pie chart to prove it. Or maybe I should just ignore you.”

Ouch. I deserved that. “I … I’m in your hands.”

“Yes, you are.” The hand on my knee moved to my crotch, cupping my mound through my bunched-up skirt. “Face down, ass up. Move.”

It took me a bit of struggling to turn over again without the use of my arms, but I eventually got myself on my face and knees, my rump in the air, which was exactly what he wanted.

The pencil skirt was too tight to flip over my back so he used a pair of scissors to cut it and then cut away my stockings and panties. Funny how having my clothes cut away gave me a wave of something like nostalgia. I’d missed him! He was the only one who had ever done that to me. I remembered him saying it was one of the hottest things he’d ever done.

He wasn’t saying anything now, but that didn’t bother me. One of his hands caressed my flank while the other one worked the scissors. Just knowing it was him, just being there under his attentions, made it feel like a huge stone had been lifted off my back.

By the time he’d gotten me completely exposed, I was trembling with anticipation. He ran his finger up and down my seam and I wondered what he would do next.

I felt the van come to a stop.

Someone opened the van door, the driver perhaps, and next thing I knew the two of them were carrying me. I felt one of my shoes fall off, then the other.

They brought me into a building. I heard a sound like metal scraping, then a clang. An industrial door being opened and shut? I could no longer make out the pink of the pillowcase. It was dark wherever we were, and they put me down. I was expecting concrete but it felt more like a thick shag carpet beneath me.

“Thanks for the help,” Axel said.

“Anytime, bro,” the one who had driven answered, and then I heard the metal door open and shut again.

Now we were alone, or so I presumed. I decided I could ask, couldn’t I? “Are we alone?”

“We’re all alone in the universe,” Axel answered. “Every one of us. But if you mean is it just you and me here, yes.” I heard a click and a bright light came on from directly overhead.

I bent my legs and sat up, my feet to one side of me, and then shifted onto my knees, feeling the tatters of my cut skirt brushing my skin. I wondered what he thought of me kneeling like that.

Even through the pillowcase I could feel him coming close, standing directly in front of me. I tried to calm my breathing, but I could imagine him looking down at me, and equal parts excitement and shame coursed through me. Excitement because, well, being kidnapped—even pretend-kidnapped—was supposed to be an edgy thrill, wasn’t it? Trust me, it was. Shame, though, because I knew I’d hurt him. What had I been thinking? Had I really yelled “I love you, get over it”? My father definitely wasn’t the only one who ran hot and cold in our family. I had convinced myself that if I just never spoke to Axel again we would both move on. We’d both get over it.

I was definitely not over him. Even as he said coldly, “Ms. Ricki Hamilton, perhaps you’d like to tell me why you deserved to be brought here,” most of what I felt was pure thrill that it was Axel, that the man I’d completely failed to get out of my mind was right there in front of me.

“I’m waiting,” he prompted.

My mind went blank for a moment in a flash of blind panic. What was the question? Why did I think he had brought me here? What if I gave the wrong answer? But wait, maybe there was no wrong answer. This was like a cue line in improv class. What I said in reply was going to determine the direction of the scene. This was obviously supposed to be an interrogation. I sucked in a breath, trying to feel my way through it. What did I want? How did I want this to go?

He clucked his tongue impatiently.

I swallowed, no time to think of something else, or something better. “Because …” I couldn’t say it. Could I? I hung my head inside the pillowcase. “Because I’ve been a bad girl.”

“Ohhh, have you, now?” He started to walk around me in a circle. I couldn’t hear his footsteps but I could hear his voice and I fought the urge to follow him with my head. “Care to elaborate on that?”

“Will my … punishment be lightened if I confess?”

“No, but your conscience might be,” he said. “Trust me: you will get exactly what you deserve, regardless.”

His words sent a shiver through me. He was going to show me no mercy: he was going to make me surrender.

Like he always did. I suddenly remembered something Sakura had said. Surrender wasn’t something you could do for yourself. Someone else had to do it for you. Maybe I had been thinking about it backward all along. Axel wasn’t going to “force me” to surrender. He was going to make it possible for me to surrender.

My insides were melting suddenly, as all the pent-up desire and need I’d had for him over the past few weeks of isolation broke free.

“I’ve been a bad girl,” I said. “I said some really stupid things. I believed some really stupid things.”

“Stupidity isn’t a crime, exactly …”

“No, but I pushed you away and treated you like you didn’t matter.” He was right: hearing myself say it I felt 100 percent lighter. The elation coursing through me spurred me to confess even more: “And I … I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Ahhh. I wondered if you were hiding something. Which is why I’m going to get the truth out of you even if I have to torture it out of you.”

My heart was hammering as much in anticipation as in fear of what he might do. I bowed my head even more. “Yes, Mr. Hawke.”

“Any questions, then?”

Are you doing this because you still love me or because now you hate me? I thought. But I couldn’t ask that. If he hated you, he wouldn’t be going through this much trouble, I told myself. And Sakura and Gwen would never have gone along with the plan. “If I go through with this, will you forgive me for being jealous about Sun-Lee?”

His chuckle was warm rather than cold. “I’m not angry about you being jealous. It proves you’re human and that you really do want me. But if you want to be forgiven for, oh, cutting me off without so much as a word and making my life a living hell, well, take your punishment. This is going to hurt.”

I sucked in a breath as I realized I’d be disappointed if it didn’t. “I’m ready for it.”

“Good.”

He pulled the pillowcase away and the overhead spotlight made me shut my eyes. He forced me to my feet with one fist in my hair. The cuffs behind my back separated and he took them away, leaving my wrists feeling suddenly much lighter. I shifted from foot to foot on the carpet.

“Strip,” he said, and resumed his circling.

I took off my blazer first and let it fall behind me. My fingers were trembling with excitement, making it difficult to undo the buttons on my blouse. I stole a glance at him standing at the edge of the beam of light.

Axel was wearing artfully faded jeans and nothing else. The dragon tattoo stood out starkly against his chest and his feet were bare. If the situation had been different I would have lingered over looking at him, drinking in the gorgeous sight. Instead, I snuck looks while trying to get my ruined stockings down.

When I had nothing on, not a stitch, I stood there unsure what to do with my hands.

“Lean forward,” he said. “Spread your feet apart, hands on your thighs.”

I did as he asked and my palms felt hot against my legs.

He stopped directly behind me. I felt very naked then, even though he wasn’t wearing much himself. I shivered, wondering if he was about to caress my buttocks or spank them.

Instead he spoke. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Uh …”

“Take your time. But tell me the truth. You haven’t always been so good at telling me what’s going on inside you, Ricki.”

“I know. I know; I’m sorry about that,” I said, turning my head to look at him.

He made a warning noise, “Uh-uh, hold your position and answer the question. How are you feeling?”

I took a deep breath. “Exposed.”

“Like you want to cover yourself?”

“No. Not in front of you. Just … exposed.”

It sounded a little like he might have been smiling when he said, “Okay. What else?”

What else, indeed. “Shame.”

“Shame, really? Because kink is something shameful?”

“No, just ashamed that I was so stupid. And that … that leads me to feeling like I’m not good enough for you. Like I fail at BDSM.”

“Fail? How so?”

“Everyone’s always going on about how the basis of BDSM is honesty and trust. And I haven’t been honest.”

“Sometimes honesty takes practice,” he said. “Training. If we’re talking dominance and submission, I’d much rather train you to tell me the truth than train you to come on command.” He stepped close and I felt his hand slide down the skin of one butt cheek. “What else are you feeling?”

Things always come in threes, I suppose. So, exposed, shame, and what? “Anticipation.”

“Not fear?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” I was surprised to find it was true, but the longer the scene went on, the less and less afraid I felt. “Or of pain. Not when I know that pain will make us both feel better.”

“Mm-hm. Maybe when I’m done with you, you’ll feel ready to tell the truth.” As if to challenge me, he smacked me hard on one ass cheek. It really stung and then burned as I stood there, waiting for the sensation to fade. Before it did, he smacked the other side and I lurched forward and caught myself with a step.

“Straighten up,” he said. “Put your hands behind your head. Keep your feet apart. Wider.”

If I thought I felt exposed when I was bent over showing him my ass, this was a new level. My breasts were thrust forward and I could feel the open air between my legs.

He stood in front of me and ran his thumbs ever-so-lightly over my nipples, then teased them between his thumb and forefinger, not pinching at all but instead using more of those almost-not-there touches that had me wishing for a pinch. His eyes were so green under that bright light, it felt like he was seeing right through me.

“So. You almost came from me doing this, that time in the limo.”

When had I told him that? Oh, right. “I was very, very aroused that time in the limo.”

“Mm-hm.” He seemed in no hurry, luxuriating in torturing me with caresses. If anything his touch seemed to get lighter and lighter, and I thrust my chest out more and more trying to get more stimulation. The next thing I knew I was all the way up on my tiptoes and it felt like the skin all over my body was alive with electricity. Every breath-light touch to my nipples felt like it was echoed by a throbbing longing between my legs. “And how aroused are you now?”

“V-very,” I said, having trouble catching my breath.

He stepped back and I sank back onto my heels again, panting. He took another appraising walk around me. “If you can, look back at your butt. The handprints are impressive.”

I craned my neck, twisting to look. He was right: a bright red handprint was practically glowing off my skin. I felt a warm wash of pride seeing that, and a feeling I didn’t know how to name. It was like possessiveness, except I was the one being possessed. Having his handprint on me drove my desire to new heights.

“Back to position now,” he prompted, and I put my hands behind my head again.

Now he ran his hands lightly over the spots where he had left his mark and it made me shiver delightfully. “These’ll fade soon enough. Or they’ll be blurred by the other welts I’m going to put on top of them.”

I swallowed, then stumbled forward a little as he urged me to move toward the edge of the room. Until I stepped out from under the bright light I hadn’t been able to make out what else was in there. He steered me in the direction of a large wooden stand in one corner that looked like something you’d see in a historical film: stocks? A pillory? It was T-shaped and there was a large hole in the middle with smaller holes for a person’s wrists on either side. He lifted the top half and I obediently placed my neck in the middle slot. I discovered it was padded and nowhere near as uncomfortable as it had looked like it would be—there was a chin rest I hadn’t noticed at first glance. I was bent over slightly, a position that would get tiring to maintain but for now was fine.

I could hear him rummaging around behind me somewhere. Now that I had a chance I could see we were in a playroom of some kind, with a high ceiling and industrial-looking walls. In this corner a coiled whip, a leather blindfold, and a few other BDSM toys hung on the wall, looking more like they were there for decoration than for actual use. They were slightly dusty. Funny what you notice when all your senses are heightened by arousal and endorphins.

His hands slid up my hot butt cheeks again and then he pressed his denim-covered hardness against me with a frustrated-sounding groan.

“Remember what being flogged feels like?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t going to feel like that. But maybe we’ll have some flogging later.” The next thing I felt was something cool caressing my ass. Cool and flat.

The first whack wasn’t that hard but it made me jump in surprise. A matching one on the other cheek followed and I hopped on one foot, trying to make it stop smarting. That was either a paddle or the back of a very big hairbrush.

“One moment,” he said, and I heard him cross the room again. When he came back he put my ankles into heavy leather cuffs lined with thick fur and then attached them to either end of a bar that kept my feet apart. “That’s better. Now you can’t hop around so much.”

And that was all the reprieve I got from the paddling that followed. I already knew how relentless Axel could be—with his kiss, with his cock—and in a way this was no different. His desire demanded that he give and I take, and give he did, in endless rhythmic smacks, all over my buttocks, down my thighs, and even a little bit between my legs, though he didn’t hit as hard there.

And just like he had worn down the fight in me until there was none left that first time in the limousine, he chipped away at my pride and the lies I told myself and the wall I had built up with them. Don’t ask me how he did it, exactly, since he didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell me I was wrong or explain or anything. He just hit me, and hit me, and hit me some more until my armor was completely worn through and everything I had been bottling up came out in a rush of tears.

It’s one thing to tell yourself you feel a certain way: regretful, sad, angry, disappointed. It’s another thing entirely to feel it so strongly you can barely breathe and water pours from your eyes. I don’t think I’d cried so hard in my life. Not as an adult, anyway.

At that point he tossed the paddle away and ran his palm over my reddened flesh so tenderly I cried even harder. “That’s it, let it out,” he said gently.

“It isn’t fair!” I heard myself shout.

“Life isn’t fair,” he said, rubbing harder and then grabbing a handful of ass that hurt but in a deeply delicious way. Even through my tears I could feel that. “But why don’t you tell me what, exactly, isn’t fair?”

“I made a promise. A stupid promise. I’m caught between you and Dad and my boss and Schmitt and every stupid man in my life and there’s no way to make you all happy!”

“Ahhh, okay. So the game you’re trying to play is to make all of us happy and it turns out the rules are rigged against that.” He ran his hand soothingly down my back and somehow that encouraged me to take deep breaths. “What was the promise?”

My resistance was gone. In fact, I couldn’t even remember why I had tried to keep this a secret from him. “I promised my father I wouldn’t … do bondage.”

Axel made a sound of sudden understanding. “And you thought that meant we couldn’t have a relationship?”

“You’d be disappointed! I can’t be what you want! I’m a bad sub!” I suddenly started to cry again.

He stood close behind me, so close I could feel the heat of him in the air on my back. A gentle hand stroked my spine. “We can talk about boundaries later,” he murmured. “For now, try to hear me on this, Ricki. You’ll never disappoint me, in the dungeon or in life, if you’re just trying your best. What I want isn’t for you to become some kind of perfect sub, okay? What I want is you. You being you.”

I was crying so hard now I could barely hear him. When I slowed down again he came around to the front of the stocks and slipped his fingers into my hair. He held on firmly, securely. “Listen. The way to win the game is to play a different one. How about instead of trying to make all the men in your life happy, you work on what makes Ricki happy?”

He pulled gently until my head was turned and he could look into my eyes. He kissed the tracks of the tears at the corner of one eye and then my mouth, bringing me the taste of my own salt and sadness.

He let go and looked at me again. “Can you tell me? Can you tell me what you want, Ricki? What you need?”

None of this was easy to say, but it was easier, somehow, having him draw it out of me like that than it would have been sitting down to tea. I fought down a full-on, chest-heaving sob. “I need you …!”

I had meant to say “I need you to help me surrender” but I never got the end of the sentence to come out and I decided that what I’d said was perfectly true as it was. Terrifying as the thought was, I needed Axel.

“I think I figured that much out,” Axel said. “But I can’t keep doing this, Ricki. I can’t keep chasing you down every time you run. We have to talk about it with all the cards on the table. No hidden agendas. You’re a better actress than you give yourself credit for.”

“I need to surrender,” I said then, my heart pounding suddenly in the way it’s supposed to when you say “I love you” for the first time.

“I know,” he said gently, and kissed me one more time. The kiss flooded me with relief, and so did what he said: “The important thing is that you know it.”

Yes, I knew it. Yes, I accepted it at last. “Yes!”

“Good.”

I nodded my head as best I could in the stocks like that, and then a fresh swat from his bare hand fell on my sore flank. We weren’t done? Somehow I had thought that my admission should have ended the scene, but no.

Because admitting I needed to surrender, and actually surrendering were not the same thing. The spanking started gently. Yes, gently, but on my already sore skin it sent shockwaves of sensation through my whole body. His bare hand was so much more intimate than the paddle. He varied the angle, the pressure, the rhythm, as if he were transmitting a message in code right through my skin.

And that message was I want you. I cherish you. I adore you. I love you.

You’re endorphin high and imagining things, said a little voice in my head. But it was being drowned out by my cries, which sounded much less like yelps of pain than like throes of ecstasy.

And to think we weren’t even having sex yet. Well, not in the strict sense.

AXEL

I know BDSM takes people to a lot of places in their heads. There’s no guarantee it’ll go where you want it to, though. It’s like jamming with other musicians. You know basically how the song goes but you get ideas while you’re playing, and you try them out, and if you like how it sounds, then you and the people you’re playing with can chase after it. Sometimes the chase takes you down a rabbit hole and sometimes it takes you right back where you started.

When I spanked Ricki I had meant it to be the next step in punishing her, the next step after the paddle, but as I ramped up the spanking to full-force blows she sounded a lot more to me like she was getting ready to come again rather than confess more secrets to me. Maybe there were no more secrets? Sometimes you have to roll with it. I ramped back down to a light, sensual smacking and she moaned and thrust her ass back into my touch.

I could barely stand it. I grabbed her by the flanks and ground against her. The denim probably felt rough against all that sore skin, but I wanted something else more than I wanted her suffering right then. I pushed my jeans down to the middle of my thighs and rubbed against her again, my cock against her tailbone.

“How do you feel now?” I growled.

I was not expecting the answer to be “Loved.”

I was terrible at keeping up the cold, cruel dom act—especially when I answered “Really?”—but I thought I had at least done a credible job of being a kidnapper/interrogator. “Ricki, I’ve just beat you pretty much to the point of bruises and now I’m menacing you with my cock. You’re not scared?”

“I told you, somehow I lose all fear when I’m with you. That’s the only reason you get through to me.”

I kicked my jeans the rest of the way off and came around the stocks so I could look her in the eye. “I’ve got whips here. Knives. Buttplugs.”

“Those were never what I was afraid of,” she said.

“What were you afraid of?”

“Mmm.” She took a moment to form the words. She was high on endorphins and her inhibitions were down. I wondered what she was going to say. “I was afraid to be myself. Maybe sometimes I still am, but … less and less. I’m learning that with you I don’t have to be afraid of that.”

Wow. That was pretty big. “I want the real Ricki, you know. What else?”

“I … I was afraid of love.”

“Everyone’s afraid of love,” I murmured.

“No, I mean … I had this idea that my dad was a failure because he’d lost the love of his life. Like his tragic story was that after my mom died, his whole life was derailed and went downhill. But now that I know more about it, I realize his life was already a wreck. I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that my success or failure won’t be because of who I love. Or how.”

“Mm. I’m very glad you’re coming to all these deep realizations,” I said. In fact, she was shedding her inhibitions and having epiphanies faster than I could keep up. Which was all good. “But I must be losing my touch if you’re this coherent,” I joked lightly. “You should be incoherent with lust by now.”

What she said was so serious, yet she looked like she was holding back a grin. “You might have to hit me harder if you want me to be incoherent.”

“Are you telling me you want me to get out the whips?”

“Are they much worse than the paddle? I definitely deserved the paddle. I feel so much lighter now.”

I kissed her, hard, a kiss she couldn’t escape, trapped in the stocks like she was. The kiss was supposed to give me some time to think about what to say to that, what to do next, but the next thing I knew I was too absorbed in kissing her to do much thinking.

When I pulled back I was breathless and my lips felt swollen. She looked like she felt the same. And I was the one on the verge of being incoherent with lust. I forced myself to focus on words, on the message I was trying to get to sink in this time.

“Okay. You feel loved, you feel lighter, you’re less afraid … What else are you feeling?” I asked as I moved around to run my nails appreciatively over her glowing butt cheeks.

“Possessed.”

“Like a demon …?”

“I mean, by you. I feel very much yours, Axel.”

I resisted the urge to pump my fist in victory even though she couldn’t see me behind her. And then I had an idea. “Aha, but will you still feel that way when I let you free?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I undid the spreader bar from her ankles, then unlatched the stocks and lifted the top piece. “Stand up.”

She took her hands from the notches and straightened up slowly, looking around nervously. Say what you want about how flattering clothes or sexy lingerie or fetishes are, but she was never more radiantly gorgeous than right now—buck naked, hair loose, and unsure what to do with her hands.

“You feel loved and possessed and mine when I kidnap you,” I said. “But later, when the scene’s over, am I going back to being chopped liver? Am I going back to being a kinky thrill for you? A booty call you can make whenever you’re horny? An orgasm dispenser, a human dildo whose dick works on demand?”

Her face was red as she moved to cross her arms over her chest. I swatted them down, making it clear her body was for my eyes. She put her hands on her hips instead, an intriguing bit of defiance.

I wondered what was behind it. “Because that’s kind of how you’ve treated me,” I went on. “When you called me and said you needed me, I was there. When I tried to call you, you changed your number.”

Her moment of defiance wilted a little, but only a little. She bit her lip and took a deep breath, making her chest rise. I let myself watch her tits instead of her face while she worked up to whatever she was going to say. “Okay, I confess that was unfair. But I had convinced myself you didn’t care that much. That caring for me was an illusion that you only maintained while we were playing. You know why I was able to think that? Because you let me. Because you never told me how you actually felt.”

Oh, nothing hurts as much as the truth. Mal was right, too: I should have told her earlier. I mean, if she hadn’t been so damn skittish to begin with I would have said “I love you” a lot sooner, wouldn’t I? Hindsight’s 20/20. I wasn’t about to make it out as if my not telling her had been her fault.

I nodded to acknowledge her point. “All right, Ricki. You’re right. Just goes to show I’m not perfect, either.”

The look on her face was an excited smile and I knew I’d said the right thing. Now it was time to get to some serious sex, before my balls fell off in protest. But sex unlike any we’d had before.

I moved to the corner of the room with the futon. It was on a platform a few inches high, and made up in bright pink bed sheets. I lay back in the middle of it and tucked the bare pillow under my head. “Let’s find out how you feel when I’m not forcing you, not tying you up. How do you feel when you could just run away?” I bent one leg and my erection bobbed. “When the choice of what to do next is entirely yours?” I had a moment of internal panic: what if she decided to just walk out now after all? What if it was all too late?

She did not walk out. She dropped to her knees and crawled to me. I wasn’t expecting that, and I wasn’t expecting that the sight of her crawling in my direction would practically make me come it was so hot. This wasn’t a sex-kitten kind of crawl, either. It was more of a penitential crawl. I think if she had been all raw-tigress about it I would have grabbed her and just fucked her silly on the spot, and it would have been fun and grand … but it probably wouldn’t have lasted, either. The pattern would just repeat again. It was time to see what would happen when I wasn’t “forcing” her, when I wasn’t teasing her or making her beg.

When she reached the edge of the futon she sat on her heels and put her hands on her thighs. “I’m not running away. I … I shouldn’t have to rely on you to ‘convince’ me I need sex. If … if that’s what I want, I should be responsible for it.”

“Am I what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I thought my outrageous sexuality was a detriment to you.”

“That was one of the dumbest things I ever said. I want you, Axel.”

“Prove it.” I put my hands behind my head and stretched out.

Ricki licked her lips and looked me up and down.

“Prove you’re not a do-me queen,” I continued. “Prove kink isn’t just a handy way to make sure all you have to do is lie there and look pretty while someone else does all the work and takes all the blame.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’ll … you’ll tell me if you like what I do, though?”

“I think you’ll be able to tell.”

“Will I? If I have to tell you what I’m feeling, can’t I ask for the same?”

Oh. “Of course you can. I mean you’ll be able to tell because I won’t be holding anything back.” I reached out a hand toward her. “Come on, Ricki. You broke my heart. See if you can heal it again.”

She grabbed my hand a bit harder than I expected and she started to tear up again, but another deep breath, another bite of her lip, and she had set herself to her task. She started by kissing me.

Good place to start. She kissed almost chastely, exploring my lips with hers, parting them tentatively with her tongue, and then darting in to draw my own tongue into the dance. Every inch of me wanted to grab her by the hair and flip her over and take control again, but I held myself to a needy groan and kept my hands to myself.

She pulled back with a glazed look in her eye and then proceeded to kiss her way down my body, pausing at my left nipple, and again at my left hip, until she had worked her way all the way down to the inside of my ankle. She cradled my foot and kissed it up and down the arch and across the tops of my toes. I’ve never had a foot fetish but I suddenly understood part of the appeal. She was abasing herself and yet she wasn’t—it was too loving and joyful to be abasement.

She changed from kisses to licks on her way back up, licking the ticklish spot on the inside of my knee and then licking, licking, licking up the inside of my thigh. My breath caught in anticipation as I found myself suddenly hoping that the next thing in her mind was to suck my cock. The urge to just grab her by the ears, paint her lips with pre-come, and see how deep I could thrust was very strong. But I resisted. This was about seeing what she could and would do, about letting her have the lead and seeing what she did with it.

She started with my balls and I let out a long purr as she discovered that if she mouthed them just the right way it sent me into an erotic haze. Nerves rooted deep in my system were firing and the tip of my cock leaked freely.

Next she began to nibble along the shaft, cradling my balls in one hand and steadying my cock with the other while her mouth worked gradually upward. A string of expletives issued from my mouth without me even realizing it at first.

When I did realize it she was nearing the crown, but then she began working her way down the other side and I switched to just repeating her name a million different ways. Fast, slow, breathless, rising in pitch, dropping in pitch, hopeful, like a growl …

She moved to giving butterfly licks all over the head of my prick, as if cleaning it of the entire coating of pre-come, making me repeat her name faster and faster, and then essentially screaming it as she closed her delightfully wet, hot mouth over the whole thing.

Oh fuck!

I was coming before I could stop it, before I could say anything. She clamped on and took the first couple of spurts directly into her mouth before it became too much and she pulled off with a cough, but her hand kept pumping me and milking me until I had ceased shuddering and mewling like a cat. When I was done I yawned and stretched like one, too.

Ricki wiped her mouth on the loose pillowcase and then settled on her knees near my head.

“That was a good start,” I said, and I think that caught her off guard. I grinned wickedly. “A very, very good start. Now climb up here and keep me busy until I can get it up again.”

RICKI

I climbed astride Axel, wondering what I was going to do next. He shifted position, bending one leg and seating my sopping pussy against his thigh while sucking one of my nipples into his mouth.

He let it go long enough to say, “I want you to rub one out on my leg.”

“You mean come?”

“Or fake it so well I can’t tell the difference,” he said with an evil grin.

“What did you mean earlier when you said I was a better actress than I thought?”

He toyed with my wet nipple with his fingers. “You really had me convinced you were an ice queen. That that was the real Ricki.”

“It’s not,” I said. “But I can’t let the world see the real me.”

“I don’t care what you show the world, Ricki Hamilton, so long as I’m the one who gets to see the real you. In fact, I like that thought. I’m the only one who gets to do this.” He wiggled a knuckle against my clit and jiggled his leg.

“Oh fuck,” I said, vibrating with the motion. “How do you think of these things?”

He turned his attention to my other nipple then, licking it and nuzzling. “I’m going to make this hurt a little, Ricki.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

“The closer you come to coming, though, the less it’ll hurt. You know that, right?”

“I believe you,” I said, rubbing myself a little harder against his leg. I don’t think I’d ever been that wet before.

“So if you don’t like the pain, you’ve got the antidote.”

“Am I allowed to come?” I asked.

He grinned as if the question itself pleased him. “Yes. In fact, we might not stop until you do.”

“Might?”

“I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.”

“Of cour—” I yelped as he latched onto my nipple like a lamprey, suckling so hard that I could feel his teeth.

Those wicked teeth. I rubbed against him, trying to soothe the ache he was making. He switched to trapping my nipple between his teeth and torturing the nub with the tip of his tongue. And he would vary the pressure, ramping it up until it felt like it was going to be too much and then backing off. All the while I bucked and ground against him.

He switched to the other breast, this time biting the side. He had his lips over his teeth but it still hurt like a motherfucker and I snaked my own hand between my legs, desperate to sweeten the sensation.

But he was right: the closer to orgasm I got, the less like pain it felt, or the less I minded it. Eventually I was moving so much, bucking so hard as I got close, he couldn’t keep his mouth on me and he switched to pinching my nipples with his fingers.

“Come on, Ricki. Come for me now, darling.”

“Trying,” I gasped out. So close, so close! But it was like now that the pressure was on, it was hard to get all the way there.

“You know me,” he said, increasing the pressure on my nipples, then backing off again and pulling on them in time with my bucking. “I don’t give up. Well, unless you say you really really mean ‘no,’ of course.”

“No,” I said, “I mean, yes, I don’t mean no. I’ll get there, oh God, Axel … yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Something finally flipped in Axel when I came, I think. He had been holding himself back the whole time, keeping something in reserve maybe, but when I came, he held me against him and kept rubbing me even after I’d pulled my own hand away.

“Again, Ricki, again. Come on.”

All I could do was moan. His bent knuckle fit perfectly against my clit and I screamed into the pillow next to his head as he set me off again.

Before that one had even faded he had flipped me onto my back, grinding his thigh against me and then sliding downward until he had planted his face firmly between my legs. One finger was immediately tugging the swollen pleasure spot inside me while his tongue attacked my clit relentlessly.

I screamed again, utterly ecstatic but utterly spent as the third orgasm in as many minutes exploded outward like a supernova of heat.

I was limp and panting and his finger was still inside me, moving slowly now, I thought, because he was milking the last of the orgasm from me. But no, he was only waiting until I caught my breath.

“Those orgasms were for you,” he said, as he raised his head and looked up my body. “These next three are for me.”

“Three!”

He nodded with evil glee on his face. “It’s only fair.”

“I’m not even sure I can come again.”

“It just might take a while,” he said, and buried his tongue in my folds once more.

It did not take long at all for the next one. With two fingers in me now, he amazed me by finding tight spots that still needed release. His fingers and his tongue worked in time to coax another one out of me.

But then I hit a plateau where that combination of fingers and tongue was no longer working. He folded me in half then, pushing my knees up to my shoulders and holding them there while his tongue dug around for another angle.

My cries sounded loud in my ears even though I couldn’t breathe well in that position. My thighs echoed the sound back to me.

His tongue felt like a nail file now—rough, stabbing at my clit. And yet my arousal continued to rise despite the torture. Or maybe because of it. Maybe that was the point. My cries turned to screams of desperation as I hovered on the edge of being able to come, as if I was stretched on a medieval torture rack, strung out with no relief.

But I wanted to come. For him. Not because I needed to. Because he wanted me to. Because it was for his pleasure.

My screams had turned to the word “please” over and over. Not “please stop” but more like a general plea to God or the universe to make it happen. I’d given everything I could and if another orgasm was going to happen it was going to have to come from somewhere else. A miracle.

And then Axel slipped a completely slick finger into my ass and I suddenly felt the quickening, the tightening, the rising that meant I was going to peak again.

I screamed so hard that when it stopped—when the orgasm faded enough for me to feel the rest of my body—I could tell I’d made my throat sore.

Axel loomed above me, licking his lips, backlit by the bright overhead light in the middle of the room. “One more, Ricki. One more.”

I reached up and put a hand over the one of his that was still holding my leg in place. “Please …?” I tried.

“Please what, love?” He leaned over and planted one tender kiss on my mouth. “You’re allowed to beg, you know.”

“Please, this time, when I come for you, can you …” It made no sense that I was blushing now and embarrassed to say this, given all we’d done and all he’d seen. Yet somehow that didn’t matter: asking for his cock had suddenly made me selfconscious. “I … I need you inside me,” I whispered.

“Because I’m your human dildo?” he asked.

“No! No. Because … if I’m yours … I just …” I tried to catch my breath but in this position that was impossible. “I can’t explain it.”

“It’s all right, Ricki. I can.” He shifted us onto our sides so that my bent leg was hooked over his hip. “You want me to take you.”

“I want to give you what’s yours,” I said, looking into his eyes. “Inside and out. Maybe it sounds stupid—”

“It doesn’t.”

“But you’re … you’re right. I need you to take me. I need you to possess me—yes, like a demon! Controlling my fears, making me lust, taking away my inhibitions. I … I don’t know why I can’t do it myself. I need you.”

He nuzzled my ear. “Stop worrying about why. Just accept that it is.”

“I haven’t been the same since the night of the awards,” I said. “Something broke loose that can’t be put back.”

“It’s all right, Ricki. I’m here,” he said, shifting on top of me.

“You said it yourself that night.” I wrapped my legs around him as he rubbed his cock up and down. I could feel it hardening against me. “You own my pleasure. You own this.” I ground against him.

“I intend to take good care of it,” he said. “And you.”

With that he thrust into me, one deep stab so fast it almost hurt, except that I wanted it so much.

There was no blindfold now, no ropes, no leather, but somehow I felt every bit as bound as I had when I had been in the stocks with my neck and wrists immobilized and my ankles spread by an iron bar. With his tongue claiming my mouth, his arms wrapped around my back, and his cock buried deep inside me, I felt … at home. “I’m yours,” I heard myself whispering as he slid all the way out of me and then thrust in again, claiming me again.

I’d never been fucked like this before. My experience had been that once a guy was in, he was in, and he’d sprint to the finish line.

But this was Axel, and how many times was I going to learn that Axel wasn’t like other guys? He pulled all the way free again and thrust all the way in again, making me gasp.

“How do you feel?” he asked, as he pulled free and then teased at my wet lips with the head of his cock.

“Lucky,” I said.

“Fuck me? Did you say ‘fuck me’?”

“Lucky!” I tried to say it louder. My voice really was shot. “Just think, if we hadn’t met, or hadn’t met the way we did …” I might be on a date with Grant Randolph and hating it right now. Or working for him. Ugh.

“Mmm, lucky,” he murmured in agreement, and plowed me again.

“That makes your cock feel huge,” I said.

“Mmm, and it makes your pussy feel incredible. Every time I pull out it’s like you plump up in anticipation.” He wiggled the head back and forth again and I whimpered with need.

I don’t know how long it went on like that, with him driving into me, occasionally giving a couple of pumps and a grind, and then he would pull out and tease me. He sometimes pushed into me with agonizing slowness, and pulled out just as slowly, leaving me making hungry sounds, trying to get him back again. But there was no hurrying him. It was almost like Axel went into a kind of fugue state, where time didn’t move; only his hips did.

And then he pulled out and closed his eyes. His voice was hoarse and tight and I feared what he might be thinking as he demanded, “How do you feel?”

I cradled his face in my hands. “Like I love you more than anything else in the world.”

He opened his eyes and I could see the shimmer of unshed tears there.

I went on. “Like I want to cherish you the way you cherish me. I need your help to do that, though, Axel. We need to figure out how to make it work together. But we will. I don’t just need you. I don’t just want your body. I love you. I love you and everything else we’ll figure out later.”

He smiled as he filled me with his cock, a smile that was like the sunrise. “I love you, too, Ricki Hamilton. I love you, too.”