Page 24 of At Her Pleasure

He caught it in his fist.

For a long moment, they stayed that way, staring at one another, breath rasping. She couldn’t tell which of them was trembling. She refused to believe it was her, and wasn’t sure what to think if it was him.

Her heart was drumming in her chest with the exultant energy of a high school band at a homecoming game.

Yet another thing she’d never experienced. She’d tried to break herself of the habit of crafting insipid analogies out of TV and movies, rather than real life, but then she’d realized there was nothing wrong with having a rich fantasy life. Nothing at all.

Mick let her go, fingers slipping off of her white knuckles. As he rose, he offered her a hand. The stiff courtesy to it had her accepting, putting her hand in his and rising to her feet.

He let her go and stepped back. One. Two. Three. Eight steps before he stopped.

Then he dropped to one knee. “I yield, Mistress.”

His face was strangely quiet, but she didn’t make the mistake of assuming he was calm.

“The night we met,” he said, “this was my plan. I was going to wrestle you to a stalemate, or until I won. I knew I had to win, for you to want the next step. I would yield to you, because that was what we both wanted.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “I was going to ask you, ‘What can I do for you? How can I make it better? How can I protect and serve?’ Because I wanted to fucking help, even as I also wanted to take you down first.”

He lifted a shoulder. “You weren’t ready for it to go that way. But it was in my head. Nice to finally be able to share.”

He was right. She hadn’t consciously known she was a Domme that night, but the sexual identity had been there, roused by their interaction. It had never gone fully dormant again. Trying to figure out how to get a roof over her head and food in her belly had been a greater priority. However, by the time Ros formally introduced her to it, Cyn had a full-color catalog in her mind of things she wanted to do to a man submitting to her.

It was in that world she’d found room for herself to breathe. A new way to express her emotions, break away from what held her back. She built herself armor to help her get what she wanted, rather than a wall that prevented it.

So taking control was familiar ground. Taking control of him? That was uncharted territory.

He waited for her, on his knees, his gaze still locked on her. It made her ready to do battle. A different kind this time.

“Stand up,” she said. “Hands stay at your sides.”

Her shirt was ripped, so she pulled it over her head and dropped it to the ground. The Freyja pendant settled against bare skin, the stone brushing the joining point of her bra cups.

As she moved toward him, he tracked her upper body, shifts of muscle, quivers of soft flesh.

“You like my breasts, Mick?”

“I like all of you, Mistress.”

She put her hand on his chest. His shirt was dirty and ripped, too, so she yanked it open, scattering buttons and exposing his chest. The scar twitched over muscle like a disturbed snake. The skeleton and cross rolled to one side, then settled back flat.

“What things did you think of doing to me? Tell me something you thought I’d like.”

“Hoped.” His voice was deeper in the dark. “I wanted to be right, because that meant I was already inside you. You were already inside me. As if, when I was thinking about it, you were looking at me, whispering in my ear.”

He leaned forward enough to do that, his breath against her cheek.

“Touch me this way.

“This is what I want.

“Do it like this.”

“Don’t move.” His desires pressed upon her like a wall, She didn’t know if her will could hold them back, which meant they were too close to what she wanted, too.

When she held the cross and skeleton, his voice rumbled through his chest, under her knuckles. “I thought about you buying that, leaving it for me. What it meant.” That light smile touched his lips, creating a swirling warmth in her chest, a tightening of nipples and a dampening of her body. “Then I told myself you didn’t give it that much thought. You just liked it, and left it for me and Cissy.”

“Yes.” She traced the scar from the starting point at his pectoral, following it up to his collarbone. His body quivered under her touch.