“I can feel your thoughts spinning a million miles an hour.” Logan looks down at me gravely. “It’s time for all that to stop.”
I squirm a little uneasily. “What’s gotten into you?” I’ve gotten used to the easy banter between us. But Logan’s not having any of it.
He leans over. He’s not wearing the mask over the ruined half of his face anymore, but he’s still every inch the Master. More than ever, maybe, because there’s no obstruction to his ice blue eyes blazing into mine.
“I am Logan. But I’m also your Master. And it’s time you remember that.”
I reach up to caress his face but he catches my wrist in a firm grasp and stretches it over my head.
My breath hitches when I feel a soft leather cuff circle my wrist and cinch tight. I look up at Logan, at Master, but apparently I’m not going to have any control in this session. Because the next thing I know, he’s coming at me with a sleeping mask. He settles it over my face, completely blocking out my vision.
“Relax,” he intones in a low, mesmerizing voice. “Your job is to keep every single muscle absolutely relaxed, no matter what I do to you. If you start to tense up, you’ll be punished. And I promise you won’t like my punishment.”
Goosebumps prickle all over my body. I don’t know about that, I’ve enjoyed his punishments in the past.
Within minutes, he has all four of my limbs tied down and with the distinctive noise of a scissor’s snip, the filmy fabric of my nightgown comes away from my skin. I can’t help gasping as my nipples pebble, not so much from the cold air as from his bold actions.
My stomach clenches and my toes curl in anticipation.
Master draws back. “What did I say about tensing your muscles?”
No, I wasn’t, I was just— But I know better than to speak my paltry excuses out loud.
Will he punish me now? My heart rate speeds up and my thighs clench together.
A light swat hits my thighs, a switch from a leather riding crop? But it’s nothing more than the barest stinging sensation before it’s gone, the merest promise of a touch.
And then the Master’s voice is in my ear. “The punishment will mean an automatic cooldown time period of five minutes every time you tense your muscles.”
An achingly soft, featherlight touch that might actually be a…feather traces down the center of my chest and then up and around my breast.
I give into the sensation and gasp, “Are involuntary shudders allowed?”
He leans in again, the hot air of his breath tingling the hairs fluttering near my ear. “We’ll take it on a case-by-case basis.”
How can he make me want to laugh and go supernova at the same time? Not fair not fair not f—
“Oooooohhh yes,” the pleasured moan comes from a place deep inside of me, “please gods do that thing again with your fingers.”
But his fingers are gone, as is the rest of him. Even his weight is gone from the bed.
I want to whine out my frustration. I didn’t mean to tense up. You try having the sexiest man of your dreams in bed with his hands all over you and not ‘tensing’ with excitement. Ha. Tense. I’ll show him tense.
I pull at the restraints on my wrists, but only lightly. I want as much energy as possible for whatever Logan has up his sleeve…whenever he actually gets to it.
But the next touch on my skin isn’t a feather and it isn’t a crop.
It’s Logan’s hands. I melt under his touch.
“Shhh,” he says in his low, haunting voice. “No more play. You’re mine and tonight we’re both going to remember it.”
He pulls the mask off my face and I’m met with his startling blue eyes, right as his hands come up to cup my face. But it’s not like usual. He isn’t holding my face so that he can lean in and kiss me.
No, it’s like he’s a blind man, trying to learn my face for the first time. His thumbs explore my nose, the shape of my eyebrow, the slope of my top lip, and then my bottom one. When I gasp, expecting him to slide his thumb inside my mouth, he only skirts along the open seam before dancing away to explore my jaw and the delicate place where it connects to my neck.
And the look on his face the entire time he does it—like he’s awed. Like I’m a forbidden museum and he’s finally allowed to touch the exhibit for the first time.
But no, it’s so much more than that, because our eyes are locked the entire time, and each external touch is connected to an internal touch, this zing of intimacy I didn’t know could exist.
And my face is just the beginning. His exploratory massage continues down my neck, outwards to each shoulder, down my arms.
I’ve melted into the mattress at this point, but I don’t want to miss a thing, so I keep my eyes drowsily open.
I swear though, if he does all this just to put me to bed, I’m going to kill him. If this turns out to be another soothing exercise to help Daphne sleep because she’s too sick, that might actually fucking break me.
But then I see all sorts of implements on the table beside him in an open bag. There’s the feather and the crop, yes. But also big fat candles with luxuriant looking wax. I’ve heard what these are for but obviously, never tried them for myself.
Master catches me looking and his eyes go dark.
“I want everything with you,” I whisper.
I see the pain enter his eyes. Pain and indecision.
“No. Stop it. And don’t look away.” If my hands were free, I’d grab his face and force him to look at me. “I want everything.”
But by his face, I see that he still doesn’t understand. He still sees this, me, as something to fix.
“This is your fault, you know. You taught me how to want things, and now I do. I want the big life and I want you and I want kids—” his eyes go wide and shit, I didn’t mean to say that, so I hurry on— “and I want…everything. I want an explosive sex life and decades under the sunshine.” I look over his beloved face. “I want to grow old by your side.”
He drops his big body to mine and cradles my face. “You will. We will. I’ll find a cure.”
I shake my head. I’m not just looking for false platitudes. I know some people like to hear people say it’s okay, that everything’s going to be okay. But that’s bullshit. There’s no cure for this. My mom died. I watched her die.
“You’re not listening,” I say, exasperated. “You just want to fix, fix, fix.”
“I’m going to,” he asserts, as if there’s no other possible outcome.
I sigh. Maybe that’s how it has to be in his head. He literally can’t fathom there being any other outcome. But that’s a game I can’t play. And I can’t pretend for his sake. If I try, it will start to build up between us and Logan refuses to allow that so—
“I don’t know what to do with you,” I mutter, banging my head back against the pillow.
“Do nothing,” he says, laying the whisper of a kiss across first one nipple and then the next. “Let me take care of all the doing. Lay back and let me give you a big life. Explosive sex. Let me make you want things and then give them to you.”
I giggle at him repeating my words back to me verbatim. At least he’s a good listener, even if he’s ignoring the underlying gist of what I was saying and diving straight for the sex. Shocker.