CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Approval once again etches Kace’s handsome face while amber heat lights his blue-eyed stare. I am aroused by his demands. I don’t know this part of me, but I do hunger to understand.
He presses my hands over my head. “Don’t move them or I’ll stop what I’m doing and spank you now. Understand?”
My nipples pucker and I give him a breathy, “Yes.”
He studies me, watches me, searches for something, I don’t know what, but seconds tick by eternally until his grip slowly eases. His fingers trail down my arms, a featherlight touch leaving goosebumps skittering about my skin, before falling away. I feel their absence like a punishment, my body aching, my need for his touch already a living, breathing thing. He leans in, hot breath fanning my neck and I am weak, so very weak. I reach for him. He captures my hands and presses them back over my head, his eyes meeting mine. “I don’t think you really understand at all.” His voice is not gentle. It’s a reprimand.
I bristle despite the tingling of my limbs. “I think you’ve made your point quite well.”
He clearly doesn’t concur as he says, “Next time, I’ll turn you around, spank you and not even fuck you after.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His lips, those punishing, delicious lips, quirk ever so slightly. “Try me, baby. Unless you want to quit. Stop. Say no.”
The heady mix of alcohol and man feeds my courage while his hand that grips my wrists remains my shackle. “I don’t want to stop,” I dare.
“No?” he challenges.
My chin lifts defiantly. “No.”
He studies me, long and probing, and I’m quite certain he’s punishing me for touching him, because outside of my shackled wrists, he’s not touching me. Finally, the fingers of his free hand almost lazily tease one nipple, little darts of sensations spiking my nipples until they are hard knots, and tingling, delicious sensations ripple through me. My lashes lower and his hand goes to my jaw, lifting my gaze to his. He kisses me, his teeth scraping my bottom lip, and I can taste his hunger, I can taste his demand. He wants this, too. He needs it and I’m reminded of the reasons he might need control right now, namely Alexander and Gio, who are two of a kind—two men who would break us apart. Two men who would take from him and blame him for their sins.
“I’m not going to make love to you, Aria,” he says. “That’s for later. Now, I’m going to fuck you.” My sex clenches with those bold words. He’s going to fuck me. Yes, please, I think. Fuck me. I never let myself just fuck to fuck.
“Unless I touch you too soon?”
“Exactly. But first,” he promises, “I want you on my tongue, but I’m not going to let you come.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“I didn’t promise to be fair.” His fingers caress my clit and I pant out a breath. Already, he’s exploring the wet heat of my sex, stealing my ability to think.
“You can tell me no at any time, and I won’t spank you. I’ll stop everything I’m doing.”
Don’t stop is all I can think and he doesn’t.
His hand slides away from my wrists, and he seems to wait for me, to gauge my compliance and when he seems certain he has it, at least for now, he rewards me. He slips two fingers inside me, his thumb flicking my clit, and I’m not thinking of the spanking. I’m thinking of him inside me.
He settles on his knee, his teeth scraping my hipbone. Heat burns low in my belly and I swear I am so aroused that I might come the minute his mouth touches me. Just when I’m certain I will defy his vow to deny me, his fingers are gone. His hands are on my hips. His lips curve as he studies me with those blue, blue eyes, and then he kisses my trembling belly. Slowly, his mouth lowers, not to the spot I crave him to be, but to my stomach again. The soft, seductive flick of his tongue undoes me and sends a shiver through my entire body. The tenderness of this seduction, the slow burn, is a contrast with the promise of his hand on my backside and fills me with anticipation.
It’s all I can do not to reach for him, not to touch him. “Kace,” I whisper, my plea radiating in that one word.
His mouth eases lower and his breath is warm on my clit, his tongue doing a slow, barely-there lick. My hands lower but I catch myself, planting them on the railing. Another lick follows and then he’s suckling my swollen nub, and sensations explode inside me. I am so close to coming that I reach for him, afraid he will stop. And that’s exactly what he does.
The second my fingers tangle in the dark strands of his hair, his mouth and fingers are gone. I pant and his arm is suddenly around me, his fingers I want in the most intimate places now tangled in my hair, his grip a rough erotic tug. “I said no touching.”
My sex clenches painfully. “That’s a difficult order to follow.”
His lips quirk, the dark edge of his command fading into that moment. “And you take others well?” he teases.
“Yes?” I ask, remarkably at ease with Kace in all things, including this. He’s still going to spank me. I feel it in the air.
“No,” he says. “There’s a price for breaking the rules.” His lips linger just above mine, a promise of a kiss he does not give me. He cups my naked backside and lifts me, maneuvering me to the end of a long lounge chair. He lowers me, my front to his front and there is tenderness in his expression now that is as seductive as his commands. “I’m going to spank you now, Aria.”
“I know,” I whisper, my nipples puckering with his promise.
“It’s punishment for not listening to me,” he says, “but it isn’t about pain. It’s about control, about anticipation that becomes pleasure.”
“The anticipation is too much right this minute.”
His lips curve, and he cups my head, leaning in to kiss me, and it’s a drugging, sexy, possessive kiss that I feel in every part of me. And when it ends, I can feel the shift in him, the dominance even before he turns me to face the long end of the chair and orders, “Don’t move.”
For a long few beats, his hands rest on my shoulders, and he seems to just be getting me comfortable with the idea of him behind me. Nerves flutter in my belly and I focus on the window, where the snow is still skating by, zigging and zagging in the wind. And for just a moment I see myself as one of those flakes. All I did for years was skirt and skate in the wind. Control was a façade I clung to desperately and suddenly I know why I am so willing and aroused to allow Kace this kind of adventurous control. I know what Kace has been trying to tell me about myself.
Control is giving and taking. It’s a decision. It’s not an absolute.
He’s taking now.
I’m giving.
Only I think he is, too. Taking and giving.
“I’ll spank you four times, Aria. You’ll know before it happens, and immediately after I’m going to fuck you hard and fast. Understand?”
I like that he asked for my approval. I like that he’s told me what to expect, but I don’t miss the promise to fuck me after he’d sworn that denial and I call him on it. “I thought you weren’t going to fuck me.”