13. Arlo
“She’s ready for you.” The petite and curvy concierge speaks before the door is fully opened. I stop mid-pace in the holding room and nod. Normally, she backs out without another word, but this time, she hesitates.
“Yes?”
The woman’s dark brows furrow. I didn’t think them capable of the move. She’s always so serene. “I shouldn’t say anything.”
“But you want to. So go on.” I straighten my cuff links that need no straightening.
“The last time she was here, she used her safe word.” My guts twist as though a drunk teen is using them to jump rope. “Just go easy on her, okay?”
“How long ago?”
“One week exactly.” The concierge gives a flip of her hand. “You weren’t available. She settled, and then she pulled the plug only ten minutes into the session.” Her mouth pulls into a line. “It wasn’t pretty.”
The drunken teen must have thrown my guts into a fire because they burn with a rage so deep, I haven’t confronted the likes of in more than a decade. I was halfway across the world, and she was in need. “Was she hurt?”
“No.”
I glare.
“Not outside of her consent.”
I’m thankful I didn’t drink the two fingers of scotch waiting for me when I arrived. If I had, my contractor would be coming here to patch holes in Crave’s walls as well.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” She grimaces.
“Thank you for letting me know. It’s not overstepping. It’s information I should have to be able to give her what she needs.”
She nods and leaves. I wait until my need to hack a man’s arms from his body subsides. I pace and picture a faceless man. I imagine my knuckles cracking his eye sockets and jawbone. I think of his blood spattering my face and coating my hands.
This exercise isn’t having the intended effect. My heart races now more than it was five minutes ago. It’s taking too long, so I give up.
I move as if a fire alarm has been pulled. Now, more than ever before, I need to see her, to make sure she’s okay, even though I left her in the park only four hours ago.
When I open the door to our preferred room, she stands blindfolded in the center as I requested… only her clothes are already off, save for maroon stilettos. Her familiar tan coat lies in a rumpled heap near the leg of the bed. A thin scrap of black leather that might pass for a mini skirt is under a crooked painting, as though it hit the image of a lounging man getting his cock sucked and slid down the wall.
“Where have you been?” A clump of sequined material is clutched in her right fist. Her chest heaves.
I interrupted a bit of a tirade, and my interest is piqued off the charts. I cross to her and only stop when the tips of our shoes touch. Her warm breaths dance over my face. I smell the mint of toothpaste and the depth and spice of mulled wine.
“Shhhh.” I pull the fabric in her hand. Slowly, she releases it, and the clump unravels in the space between us. How fitting? How sad?
I lean close so I can whisper. Something that’s hard for my throat but imperative for tonight. “Right here.”
Her intake of breath rushes straight to my cock. She’s so close, the glorious heat from her naked body warms my neck. I swallow and ease back ever so slightly.
The very tip of my index finger presses against the forehead of her dragon. It’s situated over the rapid beat of her heart. Her lips part and I withdraw my finger, and then lift it to the top of her blindfold, touching the center of her forehead.
Her lower lip hangs, beautifully parted from her top. The desire to trace them engulfs me. It’s a strange feeling, to be drawn toward another person’s skin, instead of repulsed by it. As skin goes, hers is creamy and smooth. It’s hot and expressive, if that term can even be used to describe it. I can read her skin like a book. And now that I know it belongs to her, my siren, Hailey, I will read her skin like my favorite story.
“Hold still,” I whisper.
“Yes.” She chokes.
I pull my fountain pen from my inside breast pocket—because I’m chickenshit—and ease the angled top to the bow of her upper lip. A silky moan slips between her parted lips. I trace her mouth again and again and then grow jealous of the metal.
My irritation with myself is reaching new heights. I throw the pen onto the chair, shuck my suit jacket, and add it to the pile with my cuff links. While I roll up my sleeves, I stalk her in a tight circle. My gaze roams every inch of her skin. The recognizable crows. The gargoyle perched intimately over her left hip and thigh. The open real estate on her right hip and thigh.
Then my eyes feast on the unfamiliar. The skin I saw only last week. The monsters artfully placed across her front, guarding her. The blush of her cunt. The points of her nipples.
I prowl around her once more, and then stop at her back, leaning the front of my clothed body against the back of her naked one. Her shoulders drop at least an inch. She leans into me and my arms itch to wrap around her.
What the fuck?
Her red hair slicked back in a long ponytail brushes against my shirt.
What would it feel like on my chest?
I grab her hair. The softness threatens to knock me onto my ass. I pull a pin hidden underneath and a group of strands unwinds from around the rest, and then it’s loose around my fingers. The sensation is foreign. It’s like the feathered reed grass I played with as a kid, only more substantial.
My hands slide through it, slowly, carefully. I drop some onto her shoulders and fan it across her back, only to grab it again and squeeze it in my hands.
A headiness washes over me. I separate her hair into two parts and drape it over her shoulder, so it tickles her breasts. Then I put my lips near the shell of her ear.
“On the bed. Face up.”
The moment I step away, she turns and hesitantly walks forward, feeling with her feet and outstretched arms. I don’t help her. Instead, I move to the chest and grab what I need, just in time to watch her find the edge of the bed and climb on top. I can’t stop the approving hum that rumbles in my chest.
Heaven, if the damned place exists, will be her. At my feet. By my side. On my bed. In my head. Devouring my heart.
Her lips curve at the sound of my approval. It’s a buoy to my tattered soul. I go to her, loop one of the satin straps around one wrist, and tug her hand until it rests on the bed, gently outstretched above her head. Then I tie the other end to the post. Slowly, I move around her, claiming parts of her, stretching them out, and then binding her.
You’re a fucking vision.
I want to say the words, but I’ve already spoken too much tonight. Chanced too much. I’m chancing everything by being here, partaking in her, now that I know who she is to me. But I can’t stop. Not yet.
She’s spread open for me instead of hunched over. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picky. This is just a whole new level of intimacy I’m requesting. That she’s allowing.
It’s amazing.
And terrifying.
One by one, I lay my implements out beside her, save for the one I want to use. I spin the four-head Wartenberg wheel, and the metal spikes sing through the air.
Hailey’s chin snaps toward the sound. Her hips tilt, and her breasts blush under and around her ink. I home in on her pert nipples. The wheels skip across the pebbled flesh in the barest glance. One, and then the other.
Her yips echo in my ears.
I move to her hip and toy with the gargoyle that looks familiar, beyond the obvious. Its three-dimensional friends sit atop the architectural marvel of a building she lives inside. I shouldn’t know that, but I do. It’s yet another secret she’ll hate me for.
She is so responsive. By the time I’m skating the spikes gently up the inside of her leg, inch by agonizing inch, her perfect pink cunt is swollen. The tip of her clit peeks out, begging for attention.
I want to spread her wet lips wide. I want to breathe her in. I want to suck that little aching spike into my mouth until she screams my name.
She doesn’t know my name. Not here.
Instead, I stop the wheel less than an inch away from her pelvic bone.
My siren’s hips jolt, not away like one would expect, but up, seeking contact. Saliva pools in my mouth. “Mmm.” I swallow it down, wishing it was her release.
“Please,” she begs.
In all our times together at Crave, she’s never spoken until today. Her voice is a song I want on repeat. Her begging is pure heroine. It rockets up my veins and makes me believe anything is possible.
The heft of my cock has never been greater. The bar of my inhibitions has never been lower.
I abandon the Wartenberg wheel and climb onto the bed. I kneel between her spread legs. It feels like home. I lean forward, brace my hands on either side of the bed even with her waist, and lower myself until my chest almost touches hers, until my face is lined with hers, until my hips nearly meet hers in the perfect place for me to enter her perfect body.
Muscles in her forearms flex, along with those in her abdomen. The satin restraints go taut. She’s trying to hold still, but her control is slipping. I want it completely obliterated.
Levering back just a bit lower, I blow on her nipples. The gathered flesh constricts even more.
My heart slams against my chest. It pounds loudly in my ears as though conjuring this new will from another world. A world where I am normal and have the usual desires of a grown man. I ease back and pull one shaking hand from the bed. My fingers hover over her breast.
She nods frantically as though she can see me, as though she knows what I’m contemplating. I know she can’t, but it’s the encouragement I need.
The warm swell of her skin meets my palm. It’s softer than I expected. It’s more intoxicating too. Unbidden, I curl my hand around her breast and lift it toward the center of her chest.
“Yes.” Her gasp drives me.
I drag my thumb over the gentle curve, over the subtle bumps of her areola, and then her gorgeous nipple. She arches into my touch. Her chin lifts. My fingers mold her skin to mine. It’s transcendent. Like the combination of our skins’ mismatched textures and contrasting temperatures ratchet the shocking pleasure. Like I’m different now than I was just a few moments ago.
I fucking love it.
Her parted lips redden, and her breaths come faster and faster.
Without much thought, only an innate drive that suddenly and cataclysmically erupts after being dormant for too long, I settle onto my heels and lift my other hand to her bare breast. My timidness is still there. The bad feelings sit in the background, waiting to pounce. But this new desire to touch blows past them.
I pinch her neglected nipple between my thumb and forefinger. Her hips writhe. Her most intimate parts hump the air just inches from my knees. She pants the word “yes” like a chant to some ancient gods. The flush on her breasts deepens and spreads low. Her sex twitches and pulses, and I tweak her nipples a bit harder and knead them, as though imprinting them onto my skin.
Her pants turn to a heady moan. They drag out and echo around the room. The shape of her mouth contorts into an O. Her hips snap up and freeze, making her body an erotic arch. She shivers under my hands.
Cum, just a little, squirts from her reddened cunt and onto the knee of my trousers. It’s like a badge of honor. I might frame them and hang them next to my Leighton. The famed artist’s work meant nothing to me, until I saw the red flowing hair and sweet porcelain skin. It reminded me of her. Then, like now, I had to have it.
With one last caress, I release her breasts and grab the smallest vibrator, turn it on, and prop it just above her clit on her pelvic bone. She stills, but her moan ratchets high once more. I grab the largest vibrator and use the bulbous head to gather her wetness from my pants. I ease the tip onto her clit and work it through her slippery folds.
I wish it were my bare cock or my tongue, whipping her into a frenzy.
Too soon, her hips buck. The small vibrator rolls down her belly and rests near her ribs. She works herself on the calm, fat head I’m holding. I grip it still and let her. Hell, I revel in her lust. It’s hypnotic. She’s addictive.
I am her junkie.
With my free hand, I grab the smaller one, drag it down her belly and position it at the base of her swollen clit. After a few strokes, her moans turn to screams, and she flies apart for me again.
My cock seeps in my pants. I want to take it out and ram myself home.
Touching someone so intimately, skin to skin, has always made me want to burn the world to the ground or roast my skin, at the very least.
But Hailey, my siren, something deep inside me says I’d find home inside her and make myself home there for the rest of my life.
Home?
Fuck!
I drop the vibrators and scramble off the bed.
She breathes deeply as though trying to regulate herself. I brace my hands on my hips and try to do the same. My heart feels like it’s in my fucking throat, and my vision goes fuzzy around the edges.
I’m fully bricked out. If I were to walk the street right now, I’d be arrested for indecent exposure.
Far sooner than mine, her breathing is even. She’s a limp noodle on the bed, and that keeps the last stitch of my sanity connected. The longer I stay away from her, the more she cocks her ears. The quieter her breathing gets.
“Hey?” she whispers.
“Yes?” I whisper back, pinching the leather of my belt between my hands and possibly bruising my skin underneath.
“Please, take my blindfold off.” Her words are quiet. Her request is deafening.
My fingers go numb, my head spins, and at the same time, her beautiful form comes into stark focus.
I could walk over to her. I could pull the blindfold from her eyes. I could leave everything in her hands.
Before I complete the thought, my head shakes. I walk over to her, grab the small vibrator, turn it off, and toss it aside. She’s quiet, listening, waiting. I grab the larger one and press it between her legs at the mouth of her spitting cunt.
“Please,” she begs.
I give her what she wants more than the blindfold removed. I give her the vibrator, slipping it inside her one slow inch at a time. I work it to the hilt and can feel her heat on the side of my hand. It wouldn’t take much to touch her there. I want to. I want to bury my face between her legs and drink from her body. I want to dig my fingers into her wet, hot folds.
Instead, I turn on the big vibrator and work it inside her, stroking the big head across her G-spot over and over. Too soon, her hands are clutching. Her legs shaking. She’s panting, and her hips are pumping.
She screams her orgasm. What I wouldn’t give to record the sound. Though I’d never get anything done, and my cock would be raw.
“Please, take it off,” she pleads.
I turn on the vibrator and pump it into her at a maddening pace.
“Yes.” she sobs. “Oh God. Please. Fuck me. I want your cock. Please.”
She bows and shrieks. Tears seep out from behind the blindfold and slip down her cheek. Her belly convulses, and her cunt pulses around the vibrator for nearly a minute.
When I pull it out and turn it off, she goes limp. Her chest still heaves, and little hiccups accentuate them every once in a while.
I toss the tool to the side and move to the head of the bed. I lean over her and trace the outline of the blindfold.
“Please,” she weeps.
My finger slips down her cheek. I collect her river of tears and slip them into my mouth. She tastes salty and sweet. Then I leave while I still can.