Mina's Heart (3 page)

She stood under the spotlight with perfect posture, her gaze lowered and her body relaxed. She was the portrait of perfect submission, and his heart ached, mourning what they’d lost and not quite believing this wasn’t a dream.

Getting to his feet with far less grace than she had, he ambled toward her. As proof she was hyperaware of him, her breathing sped up as he came closer. He’d spent some time in that spotlight because he wanted to know what a submissive would see, so he knew the quality of her perception. Right now, she could see him, but she couldn’t make out the details. Soon it wouldn’t matter.

He took a blindfold from his pocket and held it where she could see. “Remember this, Mina? It’s the same one.”

All those years ago, he’d used this to mask her vision. He’d wanted to lick her pussy, her first brush with sex, and she hadn’t been able to relax enough to enjoy it. Once he’d bound her wrists and blindfolded her, she had been fine. He hoped to achieve the same result today.

She lifted her gaze, surprise ruining her submissive position. “You kept it?”

He heard her hope and her unasked question. He harbored the same hope, but he didn’t know the answer to her question. Was it too late for them? So he answered the question she’d voiced. “Yes. I hoped to one day have you in this position.” He’d built this playroom with her in mind, but he couldn’t tell her that, not yet.

Whether she suddenly remembered her status or she was simply overcome, she dropped her gaze once again. “Thank you for giving me this chance, Master. I won’t let you down.”

She trembled with the force of her convictions, or maybe that was just nerves. He slipped the blindfold over her eyes and adjusted the strap so that it was under her hair. That way it wouldn’t slip off with her movements. By the time he finished with her, she wouldn’t be able to move much, but she would have some maneuverability.

“What’s your safe word, slave?”

“Oasis.” She responded without hesitation, just as she always had.

“Hold your arms out in front of you.”

“Yes, Master.” She held her arms out as he directed, but with her palms up.

While that pose would be easier to hold for a longer period of time, he wanted her palms down, so he turned her wrists to correct her position. Then he wrapped neoprene cuffs around each one. They were lined with a soft material, and they fastened with Velcro. Easy on, easy off, nearly impossible to escape. The D ring wasn’t as strong, but it would get the job done.

An access panel near the door hid the buttons that would unwind and drop the chains that were connected to winches built into the structure of the house. He pressed one, but he watched her. She stiffened when she heard the clinking sound, but then her shoulders relaxed. He knew holding her position for a long time wouldn’t be fun, and he had no plans to keep her that way.

Wordlessly, he lifted her arm above her head and attached the snap to the hook. Then he repeated the action with her free arm. Now she was bound at the wrists, chained to the ceiling. He returned to the panel and made an adjustment to the chain. He wanted her flat on her feet for now.

“Go ahead. Test them.”

She yanked against the bindings, but she wasn’t able to accomplish anything. This would do very nicely.

MINA’S HEART BEAT a little faster. It always had when he’d bound her wrists. Fear didn’t play into it. She’d always trusted him. He’d established his trustworthiness from the beginning, even as he barreled through her limit about not kissing on the first date. She hadn’t known what he was doing back then because he’d never explicitly discussed his need to dominate her. She hadn’t understood his honor code, but she did now. She understood so much more about him after researching and negotiating.

This was one of her favorite things, yet she wasn’t sure how she felt about it tonight. From the clanking sounds it had made when she’d tugged against it, that was definitely a chain holding her in place. Before, she’d always been tied to his bed, or he’d simply held her wrists down. This was different, a little impersonal.

He slid his hands around her ankles, wrapping cuffs that felt similar to the ones he’d put around her wrists. Then he spread her legs wider, forcing her to shift her weight to the balls of her feet. She heard the rattle of chains again, this time sliding against the floor. A click, and she felt the slight weight holding her ankles so that she would not be able to alter her spread position.

As the realization of her helplessness crashed down on her head, hot cream rushed to her pussy. The scent of her arousal reached her nose, and she knew Ever could smell it from wherever he was standing.

Behind her, as it turned out. He rested his fingertips on her waist. “You like being bound like this, don’t you, Mina?”

She didn’t mind his gloating tone. He’d always been cocky and confident. What rocked her in that moment was his use of her name. He hadn’t called her “slave,” a term she felt kept the wall between them firmly in place. She liked the way he said her name, and she missed the way he used to call her “honey” and murmur sweet phrases in her ear.

She tried to speak, but her throat was a bit dry from all that heavy breathing. She swallowed to wet it. “Yes, Master. Putting myself at your mercy is definitely a lot more erotic than I thought it would be.”

His fingers slid across her skin and dropped away. She listened intently to the sounds of him moving around the room. Seconds later, she felt something small and round against her bottom lip.

“Drink some water.”

She accepted the fact that he was going to be pouring it into her mouth, and she parted her lips. He fed her in sips, his competent actions advertising the fact that he’d done this before with other women. Probably recently. She ingested the bitter taste of her own folly with the soothing coolness of the water.

“Thank you, Master.” She signaled a stop with her gratitude.

He licked a stray drop from her lip before she could get to it. She hoped the quick swipe of his tongue would lead to one of those drugging kisses of his, but it didn’t. The next time he touched her—only moments had passed, but it seemed forever—he drew his fingertips over her hips.

She shivered at the lightness of the sensation, and she wondered what he planned to do with her in this position. The research she’d done indicated this was the time for impact play, but she’s specified no flogging.

The caress moved up her ribs. He stroked the undersides of her breasts softly, coaxing her nipples to sharp points without once touching them. Then she felt the press of his lips at the place just below her ear that sent tremors racing down her body.

“So soft, so responsive, so mine.” He repeated the caress on her other side. “I’m going to show you how a master uses his slave, Mina. You aren’t allowed to climax until I tell you to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.” She knew she was supposed to ask first. Heat rose to her cheeks as she remembered Isla telling her that she had to ask. More heat scorched her chest as she remembered the last time they’d been together, her first punishment. She’d begged, but he hadn’t let her come. She had forgotten when she’d masturbated on his lap, but he hadn’t punished her or even mentioned it.

He was behind her now. He pulled her hips upward, rolling them forward, and she felt the tip of his cock nudge her entrance. No condom for this. She’d been explicit in her request once all the medical tests had come back clean. He was the only man she’d ever let take her without a condom. She wanted nothing separating them.

Reaching around to the front, he guided his cock into her wetness. His thrusts were shallow, short jabs that targeted her sweet spot with unerring accuracy. He grasped her hips hard and fucked her quickly.

She wanted to feel more of him against her body, not just those three points of contact. She wanted him to stimulate her clit, touch her breasts, caress her body, and kiss her. She wanted to be surrounded by him, engulfed by his body, but that wasn’t the lesson he sought to teach. As he’d said, he was using her body.

And she loved it. Serving him this way reduced her from a cherished lover to a comfort object. She should have hated it, but because she knew him so well, because she trusted him, she could accept this temporary reassignment. She could revel in the decadence of submitting to him in a way that fulfilled his needs.

And damn if he didn’t see to her pleasure when he could have just taken what he wanted without reciprocating. Tension built inside her abdomen, and he stopped his actions, pulling out and stepping away.

She whimpered a protest. If he heard it, he didn’t respond.

Something soft whispered against the underside of her knee. It continued upward, stroking her thigh and her butt. Analyzing the sensation, she knew he wasn’t using his hands. Pictures of various implements and toys filed through her mind, a pornographic slide show that wasn’t providing answers. She’d concentrated on researching things that could cause pain, and this did not.

As he traced his way around her body, she thought the soft touch might relax her, but it had the opposite effect. Combined with the need pulsing between her spread legs, it made her skin hypersensitive. Each stroke awakened more nerve endings, setting them on high alert.

Then he tickled the undersides of her breasts, a place she hadn’t realized was so responsive, and she moaned loudly. The sound echoed in the silence of the room, shattering some of the tension. His lips closed over hers, and he teased the seam of her mouth with the tip of his tongue. Helpless in the face of his masterful onslaught, she parted her lips, submitting in all the ways he demanded.

Abruptly, he pulled away. This time he approached her from the front. The tip of his cock slid into her wet and waiting pussy. His thighs pressed against hers, and he gripped her ass. Again he fucked her with short, hard strokes, and she could do nothing but stand there and take pleasure from him.

Her breaths grew ragged, and she let her head fall back. Heat spiked from her pussy to her navel, and she felt the first stirrings of her orgasm.

“Master, may I come?”

Immediately he halted his actions and pulled out. “No.”

He refused her in the simplest terms, his tone completely lacking emotion, as it might if he were having coffee and the server asked if he wanted a refill. Well, maybe not exactly like that. He’d thank the server. Mina didn’t expect to be thanked, but she also didn’t expect to be refused. He used to love to watch her climax.

The next thing that pressed against her skin was a vibrator. She recognized the sound and the shape. Once she’d realized that John wasn’t going to be able to satisfy her in bed the way Ever had, she had purchased a pink vibrator. John had been upset at the implication that he wasn’t good enough, so she’d pretended to throw it away. In reality, she’d just hidden it with her feminine hygiene products because she knew John would never look there.

Even then, in the back of her mind, she had known that Ever would have welcomed the purchase. He would have used it on her. Those bitter thoughts had damaged her relationship with John, not that he would have been able to make her happy anyway. She’d never managed to move past her feelings for Everett Burke.

Ever ran the tip of it along her inner thighs, teasing with proximity. It pulsed in short bursts, so some areas received more stimulation that others. Then he played around with it, holding it against her nipples, skimming it along her sides and neck, and then pressing it to her lips.

She knew what he wanted, so she opened her mouth. He slipped the tip inside, just barely, forcing her to pursue it with her tongue. Part of her wondered why he didn’t just put his cock in her mouth. She loved licking it and sucking on it, listening to the sounds he made when she drove him to a place of extreme pleasure.

He cupped the back of her neck, just as he did when she went down on him. “Yes, honey. Just like that.”

She made a noise, a desperate sound, but she was beyond caring. He took the vibrator away, drawing it down her body. He parted the lips of her pussy with it, rubbing it back and forth. She wanted to thrust her hips, but he’d bound her too well. She whimpered, simultaneously begging for more and letting him know how much she loved what he was doing.

She felt his lips against her throat. “No coming, slave.”

“No, Master.” God, she wanted to come!

He moved his lips down her neck and swirled his tongue around one nipple. He coaxed it to a peak. She expected him to suck it into his mouth, but he bit it. Hard. She cried out at the sudden and unexpected pain that lent sparks of white to the darkness of the blindfold.

The list of her hard limits played through her head. She’d only outlawed impact play. This didn’t fall under that umbrella. She understood that, but it wasn’t being flogged she feared; it was the pain.

“Ever, don’t do that.”

He laved her other nipple, teasing it to a point. Heat radiated from the one he’d bitten. It felt like his teeth were still around it, but now that the initial sting was subsiding, it pulsed with a sensation that bordered on pleasure.

Just as she was becoming used to the aftereffect, he did the same thing to her other nipple. She sucked in a breath, uncertain whether she wanted to be upset with him for doing something she’d just told him not to do or because it hurt.

“Damn it, Everett. I told you not to do that!”

He smacked a kiss on her cheek, a loud one. “That’s twice, slave. You can scream and beg as much as you want. I love to hear it. However, slaves who forget their place and give orders are punished. Swearing at me isn’t going to make me want to go easy on you either.”

As he spoke, he slid the vibrator into her pussy. The sensation competed with the pain in her nipples, which was turning into something unexpectedly pleasurable.

“I’m sorry, Master. I’m just—I wasn’t expecting for you to hurt me.”

He brushed his palm across one nipple, knocking something metal against her breast. “Does it hurt more than it feels good, slave? Think for a moment before you answer. Concentrate on the feeling.”

Mina tried to banish all thoughts and focus on the feeling, but that was quite a feat in the face of the fear clogging her mind. “It’s about even, Master. It feels like you’re still biting me.”