Page 43 of At Her Pleasure
No, they didn’t. She didn’t have these conversations with her subs. Nothing suggesting a personal interest beyond the session. Sy was probably the closest to being a friend, and though they might banter about it over drinks in the lounge, it was high level, fun analysis. Not intimate.
Usually when a sub tried to engage her like this, she recognized it as a defensive measure, an attempt to get inside her. Mick was already there, though. Staring at the walls she’d painted, and what she’d put upon them.
Ros and the others accepted her sadism with genuine “my kink isn’t your kink” tolerance. But they didn’t ask her much about it, either, because it was well outside their comfort zone. She hadn’t thought she wanted to talk about it, and maybe she didn’t normally. But with him, it was different. She wanted to hear where his mind went next. He didn’t disappoint.
“What if you had the chance to tour a gallery with an artist? A famous one. Ask them questions.”
She stroked the bullet scars, but not like she stroked the cuts, bruises and welts she’d made. Those were marks she wanted to stay on him. She wished the bullet scars could disappear, could never have been there.
“I wouldn’t want to do that. The person looking at the art…it’s theirs in a different way. If I was the artist, I’d rather find out what meaning it gives to them. Rather than risk taking that away from them. Maybe the artist sees it as commercial crap he did for money. Or he was bored and it was something to do.”
“Do you think that’s why subs don’t ask you what you see when you look at the marks you put on them?”
Her hand stilled, but as she remained silent, he kept going, his voice drifting and a little rough, going down a rocky slope in his head. “I’m betting when he goes home after a session with you, he twists himself around like a pretzel, to try and look. Or maybe he gets the light bulb idea to use two mirrors. When he sees what you’ve done to him, he frames it in terms of how it relates to him, his needs. How it makes him feel.”
“That’s typical. Expected.”
“Yeah. It is. He’s thinking, ‘Did I please her, enough she’ll be willing to give me that again?’” His fingers curved against the cross. “But does the selfish bastard wonder about you, and what made you choose him as your canvas? Does he feel fucking grateful for that, like he should? Does he hope he pleased you enough he’ll have the opportunity to give you that gift again?”
She moved to the front, where she could see his face between the two upright pieces of the cross. “Enough,” she said, far more gently than she usually spoke.
His gaze rose to hers as she put her hand on his face. It was haunted. “Enough,” she repeated.
“You don’t need to bind me,” he said. “I won’t move, no matter how much it hurts.”
Her alpha preferences usually made that kind of assertion in the beginning. They saw this as a test of their abilities, a chance to prove their fortitude, what they were willing to take. Much like what he’d described, that was about them, not her. That arrogance was another enjoyable challenge, a wall to break down.
However, she heard no boast in the words, no arrogance in his suddenly flat expression. She answered in the same calm and rational way, even as it disturbed her, what it suggested was going on inside him.
“It’s part of the creation. When you yank against the bonds, flex or quiver, the way your muscles move, the resistance, changes the welts, the shape of the bruises.”
He thought it through. “Your strikes, my dance. The combination makes the art.”
“They make the moment,” she corrected. “Art is a bullshit term. It’s a moment.”
She buckled the left cuff over his wrist, keeping the forefinger claw out of the way. As she always did when she started to bind a man, holding him for her will and pleasure, she felt a nice charge in her lower belly.
But there was a deeper level to this. She’d said this was new terrain for them, and the mystery of it, the unexpected turns it had already taken, had removed any awareness of the world outside. She didn’t know what time of day it was and didn’t care. This space, and the man, was hers for as long as she wanted.
A stillness had gripped him. He was following her movements like she’d put her hand inside a cage where a savage creature hid in the shadows, waiting for his chance.
“Tell me what’s going through your head as I do this,” she instructed.
His mysterious eyes had gotten darker, the pupils expanding. The cords in his forearms stood out, his naked body vibrating. His cock was stiff, fully erect, fluid glistening on the tip. She thought about clasping and stroking it, but preferred to let him see her staring at it, make him long for her to do that. As he spoke, his breath teased her temple.
“I’m looking at all of you, taking you in on every level. Scent, taste, your sheer fucking energy, pressed all over me. I’m aware of your cunt, wanting it to be wet, wanting to fill it. I want to eat you, tear you to pieces, bathe in everything you are, take you inside me and keep you there. So I’m never without you, never alone in this horrible, fucking world.”
As he spoke, he’d adjusted, thrusting his face forward so she was staring up at that beast, two pieces of rough-hewn cross the only barrier between them. She had one hand resting close enough to where he was cuffed that his fingers had latched onto her pinky. He was holding it uncomfortably tight, making the bones ache.
Some subs became far more dangerous when they were bound, as if the restraints gave terrible parts of themselves permission to come forth. She should step back and free herself.
She didn’t move. “For some people, the only way to find love is through violence,” she said in an even voice. “Like being born. Tearing apart and forever marking the person who carried us. So that someone a thousand years from now might look at a female skeleton and figure out she gave birth.” Her fingers passed over the one at her throat.
“But they can’t say she was a mother or not.” Mick didn’t blink. “Only the child can say that.”
“Remind me to dig up my mother’s bones and carve, ‘Not a fucking mother’ on them.”
His lips curved, quick, grim. It made her think the dangerous moment had passed.