Page 39 of At Her Pleasure
“I know what I need from you, Mick. What do you need?”
He put it out there. It was also mostly the truth. “I need someone not afraid to give me pain far beyond where others go.” Someone who wasn't afraid to leave a scar. “A Mistress who will leave me bleeding, let me mop it up and get myself to the ER, while she toasts herself on a job well done, knowing I'll come back for more of the same."
Her throaty chuckle teased the base of his spine, spreading that tingling sensation over his buttocks and into his balls. “Skye said the female submissives flutter around you like little birds. You care for them, watch out for them.” She paused. “A part of you longs to nurture your Mistress, but the kind of Mistress you want rejects that.”
He hadn’t considered it that way, but he couldn’t deny it. “Whoever made us this way is the original sadomasochist. I expect you know that as well as I do.”
She passed through a spot of light. She wore trim slacks and a sleeveless top, the same kind that clung to her modest curves, showing off the smooth muscles in her arms. Like a man, she seemed to prefer the same outfit day-to-day, a fashion that fit the club or the office, and the clothes had style and quality. Her curly hair was soft around her face, a hungry, blood-greedy look in her brown eyes.
She’d disappeared again, but left a question floating behind her. “Can you still take pain like a man, Mick? Even after last night, and all those frozen peas?”
“That’s for you to test, Mistress. If you give me that honor.”
“Drop to your knees and take off your shirt.”
Light fell upon her hands as she stepped forward, though the rest of her stayed cloaked. She was threading a collar through her fingers. Two or three inches wide with silver studs, links and chains. She could hook any number of tethers to it to hold him in place.
She wasn’t going to ask him what he wanted, what limits he had. They were adults. If he wanted it to stop, she’d know it. If they did a CNC scene on Ladies-In-Charge night, all limits would be up to her. He suspected she was testing the idea here. So he’d better not fuck it up.
He slipped the buttons of the shirt. Her voice cut through the air. Yep, knife sharp. He felt it on his skin.
“Pay attention. I said kneel and then take off your shirt.”
The anger, the desire to fight back, swelled. Instead, he held her shadowed gaze—at least where he thought her face was—and knelt. The floor was concrete and uncomfortable. Without the colorful and festive army of floats, this would be the kind of place a crime lord would bring an enemy. That bite of concrete through aching knees would be the last thing they felt before a bullet emptied their brain matter onto it.
“With the club’s resources, why do you have this place?”
He unbuttoned and shrugged out of the shirt. With her eyes on him, the fabric slid off his shoulders like the passage of her hand there. He took his time with it, expecting that would please her, too.
“This is where I come when I don’t want to make DMs nervous. Or have to worry about club rules.”
“How many subs have been here with you? Trusted you enough to take that risk?”
“Only a couple. Maybe it’s not trust but stupidity.”
When he put the shirt to the side, she emerged from the shadows. The slacks and sleeveless shirt outlined her sleek body, no spare fat. Her breasts were small, firm curves. She didn’t give a damn about looking womanly, but nailed it because she channeled female energy at its highest power. His Artemis. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen.
Then he noticed her jewelry. She had a skeleton pendant like his, except the bony figure had a more feminine look, and a pewter daisy behind its nonexistent ear. A girl skeleton.
Like the pendant from last night, the cord was long enough to let the skeleton dangle between her breasts. Above it was a second necklace on a chain. The silver dagger twined with a thorny rose, several crystals in the design.
He moved his attention over the slope of her ribs, her waist and flare of hips, the long legs. He thought of them wrapped over his ass, insistent, driving him in deeper.
His emotions bucked, water white capping from a rising wind. Especially as she came closer, her gaze traveling over him in the same way, down his throat, over his bare chest and shoulders, his abdomen. Every inch of skin and fur. The snarling wolf was behind him, and he felt like curling his lip at her, threatening with teeth.
Her dark eyes on his, she held out her hand, in front of his mouth. “Do it. But don’t use your hands.”
He bit down on the side of her palm, tasting her, feeling the bone and sinew, all of it his to tear into. He kept his teeth clamped there as she gripped his hair and twisted tight. While she did that, she bent and brushed her lips against his temple, his cheek bone.
His grip eased and her hand was free, on his chest, pushing him back to his heels. He’d left teeth marks on her skin. He wanted to taste her the same way, leave evidence of himself all over her.
“Eyes down,” she said. “Head stays up.”
He did it because he wanted to. It let him fully absorb the sensations that accompanied her putting the collar around his neck. Her knuckles brushed his beard and the hairline above the collar’s hold in the back. She buckled it with sure fingers, making it snug, then hooked her finger in one of the rings and tugged. “Look at me, Mick.”
If he tried to explain what kind of forces were swirling through him, he’d turn into a monster and do something terrible. A shudder ran through him. Her hand was on his shoulder, feeling that earthquake.
“If you make me repeat myself, you’ll regret it.”