Chapter 4
COLE
I’m her Dom. I’m supposed to protect her.
My Kate is a wild creature. I’ve spent the past two months learning that lesson—starting at the Boston wedding where she threw a glass of champagne in my face because I foiled one of her online raids.
Left to her own devices, she’ll gnaw her own flesh to break free from a trap. Not that she’ll literally chew with her teeth… She uses a scalpel instead.
Twice, she promised she was through with that. The first time didn’t take—she cut deeper than ever before, until she needed stitches. I leashed her after, thinking that would keep her safe.
I was wrong. I nearly broke her. Nearly broke us.
But she came back to me. She trusted me enough to try again. I’ve never been given such a valuable gift before—so it feels like I’m shoving a knife through my own flesh when I say, “Not today.”
“I need you,” she says, and I’m not sure which of us is more surprised by the admission.
“That bratva cocksucker beat you with his gun.”
“I’m fine,” she says, extending her hand to prove it’s not still shaking. She touches the side of her head where he struck her, then shows me her clean fingers. “See? He didn’t even break the skin.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have a concu—”
“I’m fine,” she repeats, interrupting, which I suspect is part of her plan to goad me into disciplining her. “I’m not dizzy,” she says defiantly. “Not seeing double.”
“Maybe not anymore. But I saw how stunned you were when he hit you.”
“He just caught me by surprise.”
I hear the pleading in her tone. Shaking my head, though, I say, “You must still be sore from last night.” Last night, when I used the cane she’d been longing for since her first trip downstairs. Last night, when she cried out her safeword in agony.
“Please.” She looks directly in my eyes. “I need it. I need you.”
The truth is, I need her too. Kate isn’t the only one learning how to trust another human being. I trusted her last night—enough to actually fuck my wife for the very first time.
When the cane was too much for her, she used her safeword. I can believe she’ll use it again if she needs to.
So I take her hand and lead her to the basement.
The room is large. The indirect lighting cost a fortune to install; the heated floor even more. All the equipment was purchased from master craftsmen, geniuses with a passion for leather and steel and wood.
The bed is still rumpled from last night’s play. Her clothes—jeans and a sweater—tangle with mine on the floor. Standing behind her, I catch her gaze in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “Red,” I say. “If you need me to stop.”
She nods, just once. Her eyes look black in the dim light, the emerald of her irises thinned to narrow rims. “Green,” she says, as if I asked her a question.
I bend to kiss the pulse-point beneath her right ear, my lips curling as her heart starts to race. A quick lash of my tongue makes her catch her breath. I close my teeth over the spot, hard enough to make her flinch, and then I laugh close to her ear.
“Out of those clothes, my dear,” I say. “Fast, now. Or you won’t get to play.”
She mutters something in Irish, but she reaches for the hem of her gray hoodie. Trusting her to act in her own best interest, I turn to the massive armoire against the far wall.
I can’t bind her wrists. An hour ago, Tarasov had her in zipties. I saw the raw red lines where she strained against them, where she fought for freedom. Those are bruises I won’t add to.
Besides, I don’t want her thinking of that Russian motherfucker again until we’re back upstairs.
I collect a leather harness from a velvet-lined drawer. The steel buckles are cold against my fingertips, perfect for what I have in mind. I shove a short length of chain into one pocket.
She’s glaring at me when I turn back around. “Was that fast enough for you?” she asks, jutting her chin toward the fresh pile of clothes.
“Watch your mouth,” I warn.
She rolls her eyes, punctuating her response with a click of her tongue and an exasperated gasp.
“One,” I say coolly. It’s a joy to watch her squirm.
Just as it’s a joy to fasten my leather collar around her throat.
I purposely make it tight; I want her feeling the pressure of every breath she grabs.
A single strip of leather traces her sternum, splaying her tits.
Five separate buckles fasten across her rib cage, transforming the harness into a punishing corset.
Before she can think to fight, I cinch bands around her biceps, pinning her arms to her ribs with short metal chains.
She wrestles me for control over her forearms, but I snag them too.
“So you need to tie me up like a feckin’ Sunday roast? You think that will keep me under control?”
“No,” I say. “But this will.”
I produce the longer chain from my pocket and clip one end to the D-ring at the back of her neck. Before she can pull away, I stretch for the hook that hangs from the ceiling, the one she’s clearly forgotten about.
I judged perfectly. Her heels are raised, but her feet keep contact with the ground.
Of course she thrashes. Her hair flies around her face like an unholy halo. Her shoulders work in the harness, putting her tits on display, and her nipples flush dark. Her fingers open and close at her sides, transformed into helpless claws. “Let me go, ya fucking shitehawk!”
I laugh. “Or what?” I say, gliding to stand behind her.
“I’ll show you what,” she growls to our reflection in the mirror. Balancing on one leg, she lands a solid kick to my shin.
“Two,” I say, working to smother my admiration. I didn’t think she could find the right angle. But I have tools to keep that from happening again.
“You and your feckin’ counting,” she says. “What’ll it be this time? You’ll spank me? Go after me with a paddle?”
I don’t bother telling her she’s off the mark.
Instead, I return to the armoire and open one of the lower drawers.
All my spreader bars are forged from steel.
Some are covered in leather. Some have four cuffs, designed for wrists and ankles.
Some adjust to different widths, locking into place with pins.
I choose the simplest—bare steel, one yard long, two cuffs waiting with padlocks. Kate never has a chance. Suspended as she is, heels off the floor, she can’t offer a true fight.
I lock her right ankle first, then her left. With her legs spread, she’s forced to balance on the balls of her feet.
Her breath comes fast now, her belly rising and falling beneath the constriction of the corset.
I run my thumb down the shaved landing strip across her mound, biting back a smile as she arches her back to meet me.
She shudders when I tap her clit. I lean in for a kiss as I slip two fingers past her soaked folds.
She moans as I flex my wrist, pulling her closer, and her inner muscles flex around my fingers. She isn’t coming yet. She’s just begging for more.
“Ask nicely,” I murmur against her lips.
She bites me.
I shouldn’t be surprised. This is my Kate, after all. She’s barely civilized enough to sit at my dining room table. When I press the back of my hand to my lip, it comes away red with blood.
“Three,” I say.
“Ya’ve got me all a-tremble, ya feckin’ gobshite.”
“Not yet,” I say. “But I will.”
I assume the stream of Irish flowing from her lips is swearing. She twists as she says the words, throwing back her shoulders. The motion drives me back to the armoire, to one of the drawers on the right.
“I love you sounds so much better in other languages,” I say, palming my latest toys.
“That’s not I love you, arsehole. That’s me telling you exactly what I’ll do once you let me out of this thing. That’s—”
I clamp her nipples in metal clothespins.
I’ve sucked on her before. Gone after her tits with a vibrator. I’ve pinched her, hard. But the pins are far more intense than any of that.
I take care to catch some of her shadowed areolas to manage the pain, but I watch her closely, measuring her body’s reaction.
Her eyes close. Every muscle in her body jerks tight as she rises onto the very tips of her toes.
Breath hisses between her clenched teeth, and her fingers tighten into fists.
I focus on her lips. At the first sign of pursing, of the R in red, I’ll pull the pins free.
Her throat works. She swallows. But then she opens her eyes, glaring as she snarls, “Green, you miserable shitehawk.”
That means another trip to the armoire. That means a dildo slipped past the slick lips of her pussy, moving fast in and out, pushing deeper than my fingers.
That means her cursing in Irish again as I keep up the action, working her until the foreign words catch in her throat and she arches her neck, howling my name as she comes.
“That’s one,” I say, watching her breathing slow to the frantic push of a freight train.
Two is a vibrator against her clit, slicked by her own body. I control the speed, bringing her to the edge two times, three times, four before I let her come again.
And three is my kneeling before her, pressing my face into her soaked pussy and devouring her with my lips, with my tongue, with my teeth until she comes so hard she sags against her collar.
Her ankles are too weak to hold her so I have to do the job for her, digging my fingers into her the tight muscles of her ass.
“Jaysus,” she finally wheezes, her feet flexing in their cuffs.
My fingers slip between her thighs, pinching lightly at her clit, but she doesn’t react. Her nerves have no electricity left to fire.
That’s good, because her nipples have gone crimson in their pins. I release both metal clips at the same time, spreading them wide so they don’t drag at her tender flesh when I pull them away. Even so, she moans at the rush of blood.
“You goddamn fucking bastard,” she says. That’s good, solid English. My Kate’s back under control.