Page 105 of At Her Pleasure

He was naked, shaking, but he didn’t look diminished. He was a savage animal. She could have kept him bound until he leveled out. Maybe she’d let more tender feelings interfere with her decision-making. A problem she didn’t normally have.

But her gut told her she’d made the right call. Just like it told her what to do now. Picking up the copper tube, she put it across her breasts, just over her nipples. Felt that welcoming initial heat, felt it growing into something else.

He still had his head down, caught in a world of his own. But she could be patient. Patient enough that when he at last raised his head, she had dropped to one knee, because the pain was too much to stand. Her lip had curled back, teeth clenched against making a sound.

“Christ.” Mick launched himself from the wall. He hit the spanking bench with his shoulder, making him stumble, but he reached her and knocked the pipe out of her hands.

“What the fuck…” He had her on her ass next to him, leaning against the bench while his gaze darted between her and the pipe, looking at it like it was a poisonous snake.

She put a hand on his, a reassurance, as she reached over, retrieved it by the handle and dropped it into the bucket before it could burn her floor. Then his hands were on her, touching the red lines across the top of her breasts.

He put his mouth there, light, gentle. She let him do it as she rested her other hand where she’d first put the pipe against his shoulder. Stroking lightly.

“Goddamn, Mistress.” Mick showed her those tormented eyes. “Why did you do that?”

“To remind you of who you are. To bring you back to the here and now. With me. It worked.” She peered at him. “Want a beer?”

He dropped his head to her shoulder, a different kind of quiver going through him. One caused by a desperate chuckle. His mouth rested against her breast again. “That’s your aftercare for this? Burn yourself and offer me a beer?”

“Hey, remember what I told you. If you miss your mother, you’ve got yourself the wrong Mistress.”

He sighed. “Have you ever done that before?”

“First time on someone else. I test everything on myself first. Practice.”

“You said you’ve never had anyone here. Have you thought about it? Doing stuff like this here, in this room?”

She put her hand on his face, making him meet her gaze before she responded. “Extensively.”

She hadn’t allowed herself to indulge softer things like this with subs. She’d been concerned it would make her less cruel, and she needed to be cruel. Yet she’d never been as aroused, as mentally involved in a session, as she was when those two reactions tangled with him.

She didn’t have to worry about Mick deciding she was too cruel or too kind. She could explore this feeling in the shielded safety of her home with him, the first person she’d allowed here that was friend or family.

“Want to see something silly?” she asked.

Before he could answer, she stretched out a leg to hook the student desk with her bare foot and drag it over. He stopped her, instead bringing it over with his stronger grip and longer arm. She pointed out the carving on the inside curve of the chair’s arm, tracing the block letters with her fingertips. M.I.C.K.

“Did you do that?” he asked.

“No. I’m not that sentimental. But it’s why I bought it from a secondhand shop. Where do you think that Mick is now?”

He met her gaze. “Nowhere as good as where this one is.”

* * *

She told Mick he could sleep in her bed, as long as he stayed on his side. “I’m not a Care Bear or a kitchen utensil,” she told him. “I don’t cuddle or spoon.”

He thought that first part might not be true. He was a little too manly to call it cuddling, but the way she’d stroked his hair and kept her arm around him after the scene suggested otherwise.

He followed her upstairs, vision full of her slim back, the movement of her waist and hips, the flex of her calves as she padded up the steps ahead of him. She’d kept on her skirt, but had told him he wasn’t wearing clothes until she said so.

When they reached her bedroom, his beloved sadist pointed him toward a cushioned chair and began to change for bed like he wasn’t even there. She pulled off the skirt and took pajama bottoms and a gray tank out her dresser.

Normal stuff a woman would wear, not intended to be sexy. But he got to see her head-to-toe naked. She had a sleek pelt of trimmed brown pubic hair. All those slender limbs, honed muscle, small curves. Her ass wasn’t big, but the heart shape of it begged to be cradled by his hands. At least in his own mind.

She disappeared into the bathroom. When she re-opened the door and stood at the mirror, she brushed out her hair, tied the curls back with a crimson ribbon, and went to the bed.

“Do whatever you need to do, then come take the left side. Do I need to text Tiger and tell him you’re alive? Or, more importantly, that his truck is fine, and we’ll get it back to him tomorrow?”