Chapter 21 Angelina #2
He turns me away from the mirror when the tears slow and cups my face, his thumbs wiping the wet from my cheeks.
"Still with me?"
"Yes."
"Good." His hand finds mine. "Come with me."
He leads me out of the practice room and down the short hallway to his bedroom. A door was closed during the tour, a room he didn't offer, and now he pushes it open and guides me through.
The room is clean lines and low furniture with a platform bed dressed in white linens and a single lamp casting warm light.
Minimal like the rest of the house, but lived in.
It smells like him, saffron and cedar concentrated, and the sheets are rumpled on one side with a book sitting facedown on the nightstand, its spine cracked from use.
"Sit."
I sink onto the edge of the mattress, and the rope presses differently in this position.
He strips off his shirt and then his jeans, and my breath stutters at the sight of him.
The scars I've traced with my fingers and the planes of muscle I've memorized with my hands are all illuminated now in the warm lamplight.
The starburst scar on his ribs that I haven't explored yet.
The dark trail of hair leading down to where he's already hard.
"Better?"
"Much."
He kneels between my thighs and spreads them wider with his palms, then runs his hands up the rope pattern, following the diamonds from my hips to my breasts. When his thumbs find my nipples I arch into the touch, heat sparking straight between my legs.
"I've been thinking about this since the first loop went around your wrists." His mouth follows his hands, pressing kisses to the skin between silk lines.
"I could tell."
"Could you?" He looks up at me through dark lashes. "How?"
"Your hands were steady. But you kept swallowing."
A surprised laugh escapes him. "You noticed that?"
"I notice everything about you. It's becoming a problem."
His mouth finds the diamond at my waist, tongue tracing the edge of the rope, the contrast of silk and skin. Lower, following the pattern down.
"Cole—"
"Shh." He spreads my thighs wider. "Let me."
The first touch of his tongue makes me jerk against the ropes. The silk holds without restraining, just present, a constant pressure while his mouth works me open.
"Oh god."
He licks into me slowly, savoring, with long strokes that build heat without giving relief. When I try to lift my hips to chase more pressure, his hand presses flat against the rope at my belly and holds me there. My clit throbs, neglected, and my inner walls clench around nothing.
His palms press my thighs wider and then slide up to my hips, easing me back against the mattress. My shoulders hit the pillow and the rope shifts, tighter across my ribs and looser at my waist. A different kind of held.
"You wanted to let go." His breath hot against my pussy. "So let go. Stop trying to control it."
"I can't—"
"You can." Two fingers slide inside me and curl, and my vision sparks. "You're wrapped in rope that's holding you together. You don't have to hold yourself."
The silk is doing the work my muscles usually do, keeping me contained and keeping me safe. I don't have to clench against falling apart because the rope won't let me.
I stop fighting.
My body goes loose against the mattress. His fingers thrust and curl while his tongue circles my clit, and I just feel. Every nerve lit up, every sensation magnified because I'm not spending energy on control. My thighs tremble and heat coils tighter and tighter at the base of my spine.
"That's it." His voice vibrates against me. "That's my girl."
The orgasm builds slow and devastating, something that starts in my pussy and radiates outward in waves.
"Cole, I'm going to—"
He pulls back.
No!
"Not yet."
"Please—"
"I said." He rises over me, positioning himself at my entrance. "Not. Yet."
The head of his cock presses against me with enough pressure to feel but not enough to satisfy. I'm so wet I can feel it slicking my thighs.
"Tell me what you want."
"I want you to fuck me." The words come out shattered. "I want to come with you inside me. I want to feel you for days. Please, Cole, I need —"
He thrusts home in one stroke.
I shatter.
My back arches off the bed with the rope pressing everywhere, and I'm coming so hard my vision whites out.
He doesn't stop. He keeps moving, fucking me through the orgasm while it rolls on and on.
His hand grips one of the horizontal segments of rope across my ribs and uses it as leverage to pull me onto him with each thrust. The diamonds shift and press with every movement, the silk adding friction against my sensitized skin.
"Kirei." The Japanese spills out of him. "Kanpeki. Fuck, you're perfect —"
His rhythm goes ragged. I wrap my legs around his hips and my arms around his shoulders and pull him deeper. My nails rake down his back, and I feel him shudder and hear his breath hitch.
"Again." His hand finds where we're joined, thumb pressing my clit. "Give me another one."
"I can't…"
"You can." He grinds into me and hits something deep that makes me see stars. "You're mine and you'll give me what I want."
The second orgasm hits without warning, sharper than the first and almost painful in its intensity. I cry out his name and something in Italian I don't remember choosing and sounds that aren't words at all.
He follows, burying himself deep and coming with a groan that sounds like it's torn from his chest. His forehead drops to mine, both of us breathing hard and still connected.
or a long moment neither of us moves. His weight on me. The rope pressing between us. Him still inside me. Our hearts hammering against each other.
Then he presses a kiss to my forehead and eases out of me carefully. His hands find the first knot and he works it open slowly, taking his time.
"How do you feel?"
"Floaty." My voice sounds far away. "Like I'm not entirely in my body."
"That's what I meant earlier about the endorphin release." His hand smooths hair back from my face. "The pressure, the vulnerability, the intensity. Your body processed all of it. It will settle. Just breathe."
"Is that normal?"
"It's the goal." As each rope is removed, he massages the skin beneath, checking for marks and circulation and anything wrong. "Your body trusted the process. That's what it feels like when it works."
The red silk pools on the floor between us. Faint impressions cross my torso, lines that will fade in an hour but that I want to memorize now.
"You did beautifully."
He disappears briefly and returns with a warm washcloth, a glass of water, and a blanket from the foot of the bed.
Those same hands that bound me now clean me with such gentleness that my throat tightens. I let him without protest, without insisting I can manage on my own.
He wraps the blanket around my shoulders, sets the water on the nightstand, and pulls me against his chest.
"Drink."
I drink. Obedient in a way I never am.
When the glass is empty, he sets it aside. I settle against him, my cheek finding the spot over his heart. My fingers trace lazy patterns on his chest, drifting toward sleep.
Then they stop.
There's something under my fingertips — slightly raised, a familiar shape.
I prop myself up and look down at his chest.
A tiny firefly. Right over his heart.
"When did you get this?"
He doesn't answer right away, and the silence carries weight.
"Japan." His voice is stripped bare. "Ten years ago."
Ten years. Before I was pregnant with Chesca. While I was trapped in a marriage that was slowly killing me. He was on the other side of the world, putting a firefly on his skin.
"I remember you calling that before. In college. Firefly."
"Because of your eyes."
The memory surfaces without warning. His voice in a dorm room, a lifetime ago. There. Right there. You've got fireflies in your eyes, and they only come out when you're feeling something real.
"No one else ever noticed them."
"No one else was looking."
I stare at the ink, small enough to hide under any shirt, hidden for a decade while he watched me through screens and across parking lots and from a bench where he fed pigeons he didn't care about.
"And the one on your back? The flowers?"
He shifts slightly, letting me see. "Bamboo and wisteria. Neo-traditional."
The design is intricate with thick bamboo stalks on one side and cascading wisteria on the other, meeting in the center of his spine. I trace the edge of the wisteria where it meets his shoulder, following the ink with my fingertip.
"Why those?"
"My parents." His voice goes careful. "Bamboo is my father. Rigid. Traditional. Bends but doesn't break, or so he likes to believe. Wisteria is my mother. Adaptable. Beautiful. She taught me to move between worlds."
"They're on your back."
"Behind me." He swallows. "Where they've always been. Watching me walk away into a life they didn't choose for me."
"And I'm over your heart."
"For ten years. Hotaru." The Japanese is barely a whisper. Firefly.
My palm flattens against his chest, over the firefly. Over me.
"While I thought I'd lost you." His eyes finally meet mine. "While I was trying to move on and failing. It was the only way I could keep you without actually having you."
I lean down and press my lips to the firefly, soft and deliberate.
Then I rest my head right back where it belongs, cheek against the ink, over the ten years of wanting he carries on his skin.
"You impossible man."
His arms tighten around me.
We lie there in silence, breathing together with my head on his chest over the firefly and his hand stroking slow paths down my back.
"I cried." The words come out quiet, wondering. "When I looked in the mirror. During the binding."
"I know."
"I keep crying with you. Before you came back, I hadn't cried during anything intimate in years. Now I can't seem to stop."
"Angelina." He tips my chin up. "Don't feel bad about feeling."
I hold his gaze. The gold flecks in my eyes must be going crazy right now.
"Thank you." He says it quieter. "For letting me see."
I don't respond. I settle closer, my palm flat over his heart.
My breathing evens out. Almost asleep. But there's one more thing.
"Cole?"
"Mm."
"Next time..."
"Next time what?"
"I want to learn the knots."
His hand covers mine where it rests on his chest, over the firefly, over ten years.
"I'll teach you."