“Is this all for me?” he asked blandly.

I swallowed and just nodded.

“I’d like a proper answer.”

“Yes, Mr. Cavendish,” I tried, not really knowing what he wanted.

“Tell me if you feel any tenderness at all,” he ordered, sliding a finger inside of me slowly. All of the soreness was gone, leaving only an achy pleasure, and I squirmed.

He slapped the side of my ass, hard. “Don’t move.” He continued to stroke me, touching every inch, circling his finger.

“So fucking tight. Unbelievable,” he muttered. It was the closest to thawing that I’d witnessed from him since he’d gone cold at dinner the night before. A second finger joined the first, stroking along every part of my walls, looking for any rawness.

“Any soreness here?” he asked, shoving in deeper a little roughly.

I gasped. “No, Mr. Cavendish.”

He pulled out abruptly, still studying my sex.

“Good. Now I’m going to punish you. Go put that fuck-me nightgown on.” He straightened as he spoke, and I watched in fascination as he sucked on his fingers, then loosened his tie.

“It’s dirty,” I told him. It was on the floor of my closet.

“It’s about to get filthy. Go put it on.”

I did, hanging my work clothes up with shaking hands.

When I came back out of my closet, he had taken only his jacket and tie off, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. His arousal was obvious in his snug, pale gray slacks. And his eyes were still chips of ice.

“Get on the bed, face down. Put your hips directly on the wedge in the center of the bed.”

I noted the strange pillow on the bed only when he mentioned it, but I complied without a word. It was like a miniature version of the ramp he’d used in his house. Travel-sized, I thought.

My head snapped up as I felt a rope being tightened around my wrists. He was bending over the bed, binding them together. My bed didn’t have a real frame, just a flimsy headboard, but James was prepared for that, using a long rope and tying it completely around the underside of the bed to hold my wrists in place.

I watched him a little numbly. Being bound for the second time should have been less terrifying, not more so, but my mind just wouldn’t process that information.

“Do you remember your safe word?” he asked. He dropped to his knees to rig the rope under the bed casually, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. He even managed to look dignified while he did it, totally unruffled by having to crawl around on his knees.

“Yes, Mr. Cavendish,” I answered, trembling.

He tied my feet efficiently, pulling them slightly apart rather than together.

I tried to turn my head to look, but he covered my eyes with a black blindfold, tying it snugly. I wanted desperately for him to touch my face, any sign of affection, but he remained stoic and cold as he prepared me for punishment.

Soft music began to play from the small speakers that my phone plugged into. It was unfamiliar music, but beautiful, a woman’s voice singing a haunting melody accompanied heavily by violins.

I could feel him simply staring at me for long minutes after he’d finished tying me. I squirmed a little.

“Mr. Cavendish, please,” I implored him. For what, I wasn’t entirely certain. He didn’t respond.

I gasped when a hand finally touched me, touching the back of my thigh lightly. He lifted my nightgown up from mid thigh to my shoulders. I heard some rustling. Cloth? Something thicker. And then another touch. It felt like his hand, though not like his skin. Had he put on a glove?

Several more minutes ticked by in an agony of waiting, and all I knew was that he watched me.

The first strike caught me by surprise, a harsh slap from his gloved hand to my butt. I gasped. It hurt. I could feel one of his thighs touching mine as he leaned in close to my side. The first hit was followed by another slap to a spot just below, and then he began in earnest, hit after hit on every inch of my butt and thighs.

I gasped and shifted a little, trying in vain to get away from the harsh contact.

Why does his hand hurt so much more than the riding crop? I wondered. He must have been holding back a lot before. But he wasn’t holding back now.

I lost track of the number of quick-fire slaps, my mind going into a kind of numb state that was all too familiar but seemed to be changing inexorably into something else…

He hadn’t even paused in the blows when I heard him gasp and curse. Suddenly, he was shoving into me, burying himself to the hilt with one brutal stroke. I was so wet that it didn’t hurt, and I clenched deliciously around him. The fullness felt overwhelming for a moment, though, and I screamed, a sound that none of his slaps had solicited from me.

I was in an oasis of pleasure amidst all of the pain as he started pumping inside of me relentlessly. He worked hard at it, my tight passage fighting him with it’s involuntary clenching.

He grabbed my hair with both fists, pulling my head up as he thrust.

“Come,” he said in the roughest voice I’d ever heard out of him. His cock dragged along just the perfect spot as he pulled out of me, and I came with a scream. He didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, grinding against me with ragged, intoxicating gasps.

He brought me to orgasm twice more before I felt him emptying inside of me with a harsh groan. He leaned along my back, covering me completely, his mouth at my ear. He was still thrusting in a small motion inside of me, even spent, as though he couldn’t stop.

“My Bianca,” he whispered into my ear raggedly.

He lay on top of me like that for long minutes, still buried inside of me, his lips against my neck now, kissing me softly. He seemed to have exercised all of that cold fury out of his body, and I was left again with the tender lover.

He lifted himself from me eventually, examining me with light fingers. My thighs and butt were sore to the touch. He fingered my sex, wet now from both of us.

“Tender?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“No, Mr. Cavendish,” I answered from my sightless position. He thrust two fingers inside of me.

I wriggled and gasped.

“I wonder how many times I could make you come in one night,” he mused idly. “You’re such a hair trigger. I’d test you, but I think you’d pass out before you asked me to stop.”

I thought he might be right.

He spread something cool and soothing along every part of me that he had hit, applying it with the softest touch.

He untied me eventually, and I lay there passively until he turned me onto my back, pulling my blindfold off.

He arranged me on my back, even fanning my hair out above me, staring at me with the softest eyes, a stark contrast to those glacial eyes that had studied me coldly when we’d entered the room. “You’re an exquisite angel, Bianca. I’ve never touched anything so fine in my life.”

My eyes were growing heavy as he bent down and kissed me reverently on the forehead. He was still fully dressed, with just his slacks undone.

“Now go to sleep, Love.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Mr. Tender-Lover

I awoke as James pushed inside of me. He had my wrists clasped in his hands and pinned above my head. Our naked chests rubbed together and he was kissing me softly and sweetly, murmuring endearments. I was wet and so aroused that he slipped into my tight passage smoothly.

“Morning, Love.” He smiled against my mouth.

“Mmmm,” was the best reply I could get out of my throat. “Ahhh,” followed quickly.

He moved so slowly inside of me, stroking with long, hard strokes that seemed to go on forever. “I want to wake up like this every morning,” he murmured between kisses.

“Mmmm. I could get used to this,” I mumbled back, gasping as he withdrew, dragging along my most sensitive nerves.

“Good. I want you to,” he said with a smile. “Get. Used. To. This.” He said, thrusting to drive home each word.

“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he told me.

I did and he thrust hard, making new nerves quiver inside of me. His beautiful eyes were glued to mine, intense and tender.

“You’re so beautiful,” he told me. “Your eyes change color. I swear they’re almost green this morning. Have I told you yet today how perfect you are?”

“First he’s sour, then he’s sweet,” I murmured back to him, quoting an old line from a commercial about sour candies.

He laughed, then began kissing me passionately.

I felt like I was drowning. I was too inexperienced to resist such a seduction. He wanted all of me, even my emotions, and in spite of myself, he was getting it.

I felt things as I looked into his intense gaze that I hadn’t thought to feel for anyone, let alone someone I’d met just over a week ago.

“What are you doing to me?” I asked him in a rough whisper.

His nostrils flared and he drove into me hard, picking up speed. “I hope it’s something like what you’re doing to me. I want you to feel what I’m feeling, Bianca. I want you to feel this uncontrollable need. I can’t stand the thought that you’re indifferent to me.”

As though in answer to his words, I came, crying out, tears seeping from the corners of my eyes from the exquisite rapture. Shudders wracked me and I cried out his name, again and again.

His eyes went so soft with his own release, and he released my wrists, cupping my cheeks. He held my gaze as the ecstasy took him.

“Bianca,” he called. It was the most intimate moment of my life, shivers of my release still running through me as our eyes exchanged our charged, raw, emotional need. I wondered if every woman he did this to fell in love with him.

How not? I thought, my mind rolling helplessly back into an exhausted sleep.

I awoke to the smell of breakfast and the sound of soft cursing in the kitchen. Short minutes later he served me breakfast in bed, and I sat up, eating the simple fair as though I were starving.

“How do you get women to leave you alone after this kind of treatment?” I teased him, smiling into his beautiful eyes. “I’m surprised you don’t have a mob of them following you everywhere, just for a taste.”

He smiled back, but his eyes held a hint of trouble. He smoothed my hair back from my face, kissing me on the forehead affectionately.

“You think I’m like this with everyone?” he asked, mild reproof in his voice. “Don’t you know? You’re special, Buttercup.”

I just gave him a wry smile. It sounded like a line to me, so I shrugged it off. “So what’s the plan today?”

“You wanna work on those paintings?”

“I’d love nothing more. I’ll need a brief nap in the late afternoon. It’s a long night without one, since I can’t sleep on the redeye, obviously.”

And so we shared another idyllic day, me painting to my hearts content, him working and posing as I worked on the two paintings.

Amazingly, I finished the first painting of him, a record for me. It usually took me weeks to finish a project. I pinned it up in my room proudly, deciding that it would definitely be getting a frame as soon as I had a chance to make one.

James seemed to love the prospect of having his image marking my room whether he was present or not. He grinned as I hung it, then dragged me to the bed for another bout of love-making. The tender lover was driving for that one, with just a dash of the master. I wasn’t particular. I had quickly grown to adore them both.