I didn’t know what he’d done. What he was doing. What he had in mind.
I no longer cared as long as there was more of him that I could have, taste, touch.
Coming back to me, he watched from beneath hooded eyes. His thick erection made a prominent display inside his pants, and he stopped several feet away.
Almost desultorily, he adjusted that positively enormous cock, a smirk lifting the side of his mouth.
And I panted.
I couldn’t move.
There was no place to go.
I didn’t want to go.
“Can you stand all right?” He took another stalking step toward me.
“Yes.” Breathiness invested my voice, making my tone reedy and thoroughly feminine.
“Khorosho.”
It felt like approval, the word he’d uttered once before.
Then he brought out a thick coil of black silken rope that he lengthened between his two strong hands.
I am his to control.
To save.
To enslave?
I no longer knew. Magnificent heat soared in my belly, my nipples ached for some sort of contact, and slick trails of slippery arousal already slid down the insides of my thighs.
I glanced away just long enough to gather breath in my chest.
Ropes?
What was he planning?
Did I even care anymore?
His steps ranged closer.
That was when I spotted a cross directly opposite the bed. The diagonal crossbar construction was easily over six feet tall, painted deep black and burnished to a high sheen. Something to crucify a person on.
Or tie a woman up to . . . to have her at his mercy.
My eyes fled back to Arkady.
He rolled that rope up one thickly muscled forearm that was scattered with black hair and more Russian ink.
Fear fluttered through me, but curiosity coiled inside uppermost.
He didn’t move and neither did I.
Heat compelled me closer, but I instinctually knew I was supposed to stay still. I almost forgot the burning pain of my thigh as my nipples pebbled beneath Arkady’s obviously possessive perusal.
At last, I found my voice. “Do you bring women here often?”
He scoffed. Then his head tilted down, and he gazed between my legs where my pussy pounded with a pulse of its own.
Lifting his face back up, he stopped at my breasts, which I pushed out even more.
He licked his lips I’d tasted so few times then asked in a low rumbling voice, “Why do you ask about other women? Are you jealous?”
“No!”
“Hmm.”
Ambling forward, he began unspooling the silken black rope. “There’s no need for you to be, Lucia.”
I shivered when he circled behind me.
I arched my back and, teasingly, he slid a fingertip into the top crevice of my bottom—a place I’d never thought was erogenous before.
“Well?” I snapped at him despite the goosebumps coalescing everywhere he touched.
His lips skimmed along the side of my neck while he dragged the corded rope across the bud of one of my breasts. “You are the first here.”
My head rolled aside and, before he could draw away, I nipped at the strong line of his chin.
Virile. Masculine.
Arkady smelled so good and was so strong.
So strong he ignored my invitation and surveyed me once again. “You need something tangible? A different kind of pain you can see and understand?”
I jolted toward him as if his low-spoken words touched the deepest part of me. He circled in front of me, uncoiling more of the rich black rope. His blue eyes smoldered into my flesh like his tongue was dragging across my nipples, over my heated cleft.
He pushed me suddenly down to my knees, and I came face to face with the rigid arousal surging against the placket of his pants.
I dragged in a breath that brought his musky dark smell into me.
With a deep groan, he bent his legs to press his clothbound cock against my lips, and I mouthed him heatedly. That hard barrel of hidden flesh tantalized me, but before I could even try to drag his pants open, he cruised behind me again.
Suddenly I realized I kneeled directly across from another of those tall cheval mirrors.
Spellbound, I watched as he dropped down behind me. I was captured, enthralled by the strong muscles of his arms and shoulders, the dark skin of his hands as he drew my arms above my head.
My breath halted when he ordered, “Keep your arms there.”
I barely nodded, watching, always watching.
“I’m doing this to you because I’m in control.” His hands appeared, and he cupped my heavy breasts.
My head tipped back, eyes briefly closing as that scant touch made another river flow between my thighs.
“Because you are a danger to yourself and I won’t let you hurt yourself anymore.” With a quick twist, he pinched both my nipples then his hands were gone.
10
Lucia Part Two
MY LUST MOUNTED AND my gaze flew to Arkady.
I won’t let you hurt yourself anymore.
Those powerful words were a gut check to me.
He stood in one fluid motion and began lacing my wrists together.
The black rope felt soft, and my fingers curled into my palms. I stayed completely still, only my rapid breaths bouncing my breasts.
Arkady tied me with precise knots until my arms were bound from forearm to wrist. Then he lifted me up, steadying me from behind.
There was a soft whir of machinery as a rich red velvet loop lowered from the ceiling directly overhead.
I licked my lips, panting. “What are you doing?”
“The rope technique I’m going to use to bind you until you’re beautifully powerless is called shibari.” His hand appeared with a large double-ended hook. “So I can show you a different way.”
He dragged the sharp point of the hook down the mound of my breast and across my engorged nipple. The action made me sway, but he held me up.
“First though . . .” he murmured deeply before hooking the rope at my wrist into the loop from the ceiling.
Suddenly I was suspended, lifted just slightly off the soles of my feet. It wasn’t painful, but the suspension made it impossible for me to move with any real ability.
I stared into the mirror and saw Arkady’s wicked grin before he moved away. Through the reflection, I viewed myself in the middle of this room nude and helpless against a Bratva underboss. The very thought should have sent fear running like ice through my veins. Instead, heat swelled, flames sparking all over my body that already shined with sexual arousal.
Arkady came back with more rope and began strategically binding my torso.
I watched, eyes drifting to half-mast as he worked silently around my body. Every so often his fingers brushed the undersides of my breasts or seemed to inadvertently course across the taut peak of my . . . tit.
With no contact to my aching center, the lust he provoked just kept escalating.
“This is breast bondage, Lucia.” He cinched another rope, and I felt a knot at the middle of my spine.
When he came back to my side, he finished his wicked machination by making sure both my breasts sat within the black rope harness.
“And it looks fucking great on you.” His voice had reached a new low timbre, the sound of which made me want to clench my thighs together.
But I couldn’t without losing balance.
I moaned instead, and he rubbed his rough palm across one torturously aroused nub, his voice rumbling right at my ear.