Just the sight of her bare breasts, the gentle curves at her hips, the small thatch of hair between her legs where she pressed against me made the wires in my brain completely cross so I couldn’t even remember what she’d asked me.
“You said”—she braced both hands on my chest and looked down at me in the dim light—“‘I don’t make love, Natalie. I don’t fuck. I dominate.’ Do you remember that?”
I blinked up at her, fuzzy-headed and hot. Really fucking hot. But also vaguely aware my own words were about to get me in trouble. “Yeah. But that was before we were involved.”
“Very true.”
She leaned down and kissed me, and I breathed a sigh of relief when our lips met, because I’d just dodged a bullet.
“I knew that first night in Rome you were lying to me.” She scooted back, lifted her weight off me, and grasped my boxer-briefs to drag them down my legs. Tossing them on the ground, she held my gaze as she crawled back over me, careful not to touch my already stiff cock even though I was aching for her to do so.
She settled her weight back over my belly once more as she looked down at me again. “Yes, you dominated me, but you also made love to me on that couch when you claimed you never would. You fucked me in the shower like you couldn’t get enough of me. And every time we’ve been together since then, I’m always excited and eager to know which Luc I’m going to get—the sweet man who can make me melt with a soft touch, the voracious lover who can’t wait to fuck me into next week, or the assertive Dom who can very nearly make me come just by ordering me to my knees.”
I sucked in a sharp breath because I knew now just where she was going with this.
And all that arousal I’d been feeling threatened to overwhelm me. To control me. To push me to a place I didn’t want to go. “Natalie—”
“The thing is, Luc...” She leaned down and pressed her lips against the center of my chest. “I love making love with you. This last week has been amazing. Like discovering a side of you I only saw glimpses of before. But it’s not really you. Not all of you.”
I shifted uncomfortably beneath her, tried to pull my hands down, but the stupid cuffs held them in place. “Natalie...”
“I told you before if you pulled away, I’d just drag you back to me again. Consider this part of me dragging you back.”
She reached down for whatever she’d set by my hip, and brought it back in front of her. I squinted to see what she had in her hands, but it was still too dark to tell. She held her hand out over my chest, then something slick and cool dripped over my skin.
Oil.
I bit back a groan as she massaged the oil into my skin, using her fingers to knead muscles I didn’t even know were sore. Okay, that, I definitely hadn’t expected.
“Like?” she asked, smiling down at me.
“Ah, sì.” I closed my eyes and relaxed, loving the sensations she was building inside me. “You had me worried for a second.”
“Worried how?” She moved her silky hands down my sides then back up to my shoulders.
“I don’t know. Talking about before. Everything’s different now.”
“Everything is different. But I’m not. And you’re not either. And if there’s one thing I know about you, Luc”—her heat surrounded me as she leaned down and brushed her lips against mine once more—“it’s that no matter how gently you can make love, deep down, you are not and never will be a vanilla lover.”
She drew back from my lips, and I blinked into the darkness, confused by her last statement. Then a lighter flared, and I realized what else she’d been hiding next to my hip. The other object she now had in her hand.
A candle.
“You said something else to me. When we were in Venice. When I was struggling with our relationship and the things you wanted from me.”
I sucked in a breath as she held the candle a foot over my chest, letting the flame melt the wax around the wick. Beneath her, my muscles tensed, and I grew rock hard.
“You said you weren’t a sadist. That what you did wasn’t for pain but for pleasure. To train my mind and body to surrender to someone who only wants to please me. You were telling me the truth then. Only, this last week? You haven’t been living that truth. You’ve been denying that part of you that I fell for in Rome and Venice. And until you let that Luc come back to me, things aren’t going to get better. Not completely.”
She looked down at me, the golden glow from the flame illuminating her soft features and heated eyes. “I want that Luc back.” Her fingers tipped the candle so the melted wax rolled right to the edge and hovered. “Don’t you want that Luc back too?”
I clenched my jaw as I stared up at her, fighting an urge that was so primal, so engrained in me, I couldn’t tell if I’d been born with it or if my sick House had corrupted me along the way.
Every day, I fought the urge to dominate her sexually. To take her in any and every way I imagined. To force her to enjoy all the deviant things I liked.
I’d tried to do just that when we’d first been together, and she’d balked along the way. And she’d been right to balk, because one person bending the other to their depraved will wasn’t love. It wasn’t a healthy relationship. And it wasn’t the man I wanted to be. Not anymore.
“No.” My voice was thick, gravelly, sounded nothing like my own, but I held my ground and didn’t look away from her eyes. “I don’t want that.”
She inched her hips back, until her sweet little ass bumped against my aching cock. “Feels to me like you do.” She reached back with one hand and grasped my shaft, massaging my length until I groaned. “You haven’t been this hard in quite a while.”
If she kept stroking me like that, I just might come. “That’s”—I cleared my throat—“biology. You’re sitting on me naked.”
“Really? So if I were to drip this wax onto your chest, it wouldn’t make you hotter?”
Oh holy fuck...
“Tell me no and I won’t do it.”
Her eyes held mine, hot and challenging, and when I didn’t answer, only clenched my jaw and curled my hands into fists above my head, she bit her lip and tipped the candle so a droplet of hot oil splattered over my left pec.
A searing sting, like being snapped with a rubber band, shot through my skin and echoed all around my nipple, causing me to suck in a sharp breath. Arcs of electricity shot outward from the spot and torpedoed straight into my groin, and even though I willed it not to, my cock grew even harder and pulsed against her ass.
A knowing smile spread over her face, and she whispered, “I thought so,” just before she moved the candle to my other pec and let several more droplets fall against my skin.
Each sting of pain was immediately followed up by a pulse of pleasure that only made me harder. And the little vixen knew. She knew and was getting off tormenting me.
And, sweet mother of God, I loved it.
I closed my eyes as she dribbled wax all over my nipples and pecs, even along my belly, careful to avoid any areas with hair. Gripping the cuffs pinning my arms to the headboard above, I tried like hell not to rock my hips up against her every time I felt that sharp stab of sizzling pain, but failed miserably.