“Shh…” he whispered into her ear as he caressed the side of her face with two fingers. She turned her head toward him, into his hand, into his palm and it was like breathing in a gust of winter wind. Oh yes, this was him.
She relaxed and started to say something like, “You scared me, you monster,” when he brushed his fingers over her lips, silencing her. She didn’t need his words to tell her none were allowed. Not until he gave her permission to speak.
He kissed her shoulder again. A chill as delicious as a cool breeze on a steaming New Orleans night passed through her, down to her toes. Twenty-three years together, and he could still make her toes curl and give her goosebumps and scare her down to the bone. Especially when he lifted the belt to her neck and pulled her back against him again. The pressure on her throat wasn’t painful—the collar protected her vocal cords—but it did change her breathing. Her breathing and his.
Søren held the belt steady, keeping the pressure constant, and she felt his chest panting and heard his breaths coming as quick as her own. It was a sacred thing to be loved by a sadist like Søren. Sacred like a sacrifice, like a vestal virgin offered to a god. What was a god, anyway, but one who held the power of life and death in his hands? By that measure, surely Søren qualified, if only when they made love.
A long minute—maybe two or three—passed before he lowered the belt from her throat. Nothing would happen quickly tonight. She understood this, and accepted it. Other men who’d gone a month without sex would rush to the deed quickly, no delay. Other men would have had her in bed already. Ah, but Søren wasn’t other men. He wasn’t other men and that’s why after, twenty-three years, she was as alive to his touch as she’d been at seventeen. She tried to touch him with her hands and he caught her wrists in his iron grasp. She gasped, the sound loud enough to echo off the ceiling and drop to the floor.
“Shh…” he said again, not to silence but to soothe her. He brought her arms down to her sides and then pulled them behind her back, the fearsome grip unrelenting as he held her still in that spot, her back arching. They still stood by the window. Although she was blindfolded, there was a chance anyone passing by could see them. He knew this as well as she did. There was only one explanation for why he hadn’t moved her from the window—Søren wanted them to be seen.
He pulled harder on her wrists and her back arched even more. He pressed his body to hers but didn’t kiss her. Ten minutes or more had passed since she’d stepped foot into the room…yet he hadn’t once kissed her on the mouth.
The cruelest thing he could deny her was himself.
In the blackness behind her blindfold, she’d lost track of what he’d done with his belt. But now she felt it as he pushed even closer to her. He’d slung it over his shoulder, and the cold metal buckle tickled her back. That he still had it with him, hadn’t dropped on the floor meant he wasn’t done with it yet.
Søren released her wrists, but only long enough to wrap the belt around them. Using the belt as a leash, he pulled her backward into the room, taking her slowly, very slowly, a step at a time to where-she-didn’t-know. Likely the bed. She wondered if anyone out on the street had seen the sight of the naked, blindfolded woman and the statuesque blond man behind her? Let the whole world watch if it wanted. What did they have to be ashamed of, now?
He brought her to the bed. The heavy fabric of the duvet brushed the back of her thighs. He took the belt off her wrists, and blood rushed back into her grateful fingers. When he took her wrist in hand again, it was gently this time, though his purposes were no less nefarious than before. He brought her hand to his crotch and pressed her palm into his erection. She felt the hardness, the thickness, the long length of it even though the thick denim of the jeans he almost always wore when riding his Ducati.
With her palm still against him, he opened his pants and she took him in hand, nearly moaning from the sheer pleasure of his skin on her skin. He pushed his hips into her grasp and she stroked him from base to tip, tip to base, back again and again. A month apart, choking her with the belt…it was a miracle he wasn’t inside her already, a miracle she hadn’t begged for it either.
His hands came to her shoulders, and he pressed her down to the rug on the floor. She knelt there, trapped between him and the bed. When he nudged her mouth with the tip of his cock, she opened wide to take it into her throat. In the small space between his hips and the bed, she could barely move her head an inch. No matter. She didn’t have to. He slipped his hands into her hair and held her while he moved in and out of her mouth.
Nora moaned in pleasure. She had missed this…the taste of him, the scent of him, the sheer force of him. While sucking him, she slid her hands up his thighs and to his stomach where she caressed him under his shirt. Caressed and then scratched him with her fingernails, digging in, not afraid to hurt him. Taking such a liberty was a risk and one sure to be punished. But the punishment was even sweeter than the crime. He grabbed her wrists once more and held them locked together behind her head. This was brutal mouth fucking. He even lifted his knee and rested it on the mattress by her head, imprisoning her in that tiny space between him and the bed.
Søren was a man of uncommon desires. Nothing aroused him more than inflicting pain on a willing victim. The chronology was usually linear—pain first, arousal after, sex as the finale. But in his more sadistic moods he managed to combine the three into one. If the sex was rough enough to cause her pain, it would fuel his arousal. She might be trapped while he fucked her mouth all night.
Nora heard him inhale sharply and while it was a small sound, to her it was more erotic than another man’s loud moaning, and she would have smiled if her mouth weren’t otherwise occupied. There was nothing like the triumph of making a man like Søren lose control, if only for the space of one gasp, one groan.
He pulled out of her mouth so quickly she nearly fell forward on the floor. She caught herself with her hands and sat there, waiting and obedient, her hair falling into her face. He stood at her side and twined one hand into her hair again, lifting her gently by the long locks and bringing her to rest her cheek against his thigh.
This was bliss. She was his again, his slave and his servant and his slut. Her lips were already swollen, her throat raw, her knees aching.
His grip on her hair tightened. He pulled—not hard but firmly—and she knew he wanted her to stand. She moved into a kneeling position again, tucking her toes under and rising straight up off the floor, a skill she’d learned at his knee when she was young and had never forgotten.
When she came to her feet, he turned her toward the bed. With the tips of his fingers alone, he pushed her forward until her face rested against the duvet. She placed her hands on the bed by her head as he used his bare feet to spread her legs apart.
A snap. She flinched. He hadn’t struck with the belt. Not yet. For now, he was merely using it to get her attention.
He had it.
“Thirty-four,” he said, and that was all he said. Thirty-four…that was how many nights he’d been gone. It was also how many times he would belt her. She’d belted enough of her clients to know he would double it in his hand to shorten the length and make it easier to control. And with the first strike right on her upper right thigh, she knew she was right. When it came to a sustained beating, precision was far more important than power.