Chapter 16 #2
Not because she's forgiven me. Not because everything is settled between us. She kneels because the submission is hers, and she refuses to let my failure make it false.
"Hands behind your back."
Her hands clasp at the small of her back. Her spine is straight. Her breathing deepens.
I walk a slow circle around her. The corset frames her waist. The thong is a thin line across her hips. The collar holds the only light in the room, the ruby a dark ember against her skin.
"I choose this," she says. And the words carry a weight they've never carried before, because she knows everything and she's choosing anyway.
"This doesn't fix us," she adds.
"I know."
"And it doesn't mean I forgive you."
"I know."
I reach down and hook one finger under the collar. Tilt her chin up until her eyes meet mine.
She isn't offering the trust I had before. What's in her face is harder and more expensive. A woman claiming something that belongs to her, from a man who nearly ruined it.
I unlace the corset with unhurried slowness, each hook releasing the structure that holds her shape. The fabric loosens. Her ribs expand with a breath that shudders through her.
I draw the corset away and drop it on the floor. Her skin is bare except for the collar and the thong, and the flush spreading across her collarbones has nothing to do with temperature.
"On the table. Face up."
She climbs onto the padded surface and lies back. Her hands stay behind her until I pull them free and press them flat against the table at her sides.
"Don't move your hands. I don't care what your body wants. Your hands stay where I put them until I tell you otherwise."
Her fingers splay against the leather surface. Her eyes stay on mine. Daring me.
I start with my hands on her shoulders. Press down. Not restraint. Weight. The kind of pressure that tells a body to stop fighting.
I drag my palms slowly across her collarbones, down the center of her sternum, over her ribs.
Her skin is warm under my hands, and the warmth deepens everywhere I touch, as if her body is answering a question I haven't asked yet.
She arches into the contact, and what escapes her is small, involuntary, shorn of every defense she brought into this room.
I take my time. Every pass of my hands covers more skin.
Her stomach, where the muscles contract under my fingertips.
The curve of her hips. Her inner thighs, where the muscles tense and release in a rhythm she can't control.
I trace the edges of the thong without removing it, dragging one knuckle along the crease where fabric meets skin.
Her hips roll toward my hand with a desperation that makes my blood thick.
"Color."
"Green." The word is barely there.
I pull the thong down. She lifts her hips to help.
She's not performing surrender and she's not hiding inside it. She's here. Eyes open. Knowing what I am. Choosing to stay.
I run one finger through her folds. She's slick, swollen, the heat radiating against my palm before I've done more than touch her. The sound that escapes her is guttural, pulled from somewhere she can't control.
I circle her clit with slow, measured pressure, and her body responds at a volume she can't modulate. I feel the tremor in her thighs against my wrist, the involuntary clench of her stomach, the way her breathing breaks apart when I shift the angle.
"Look at me," I say.
Her eyes open. The pupils are blown wide. Not blind trust. Harder. Trust with teeth.
I press two fingers inside her. She clenches around me, slick and hot, and I curl forward to find the spot that makes her spine lift off the table.
Her hands stay flat where I put them. I can feel the effort that costs her in the tension of her forearms, the tendons standing visible from wrist to elbow.
I build her slowly. Withdraw to circle her clit with a wet thumb. Return. She's tight around my fingers, tighter each time I press back in, her body gripping me as if it can hold me there by force. Her breathing fragments into short, sharp sounds that sync with the rhythm I'm setting.
She starts to tighten. The contractions begin, the threshold close enough that I can feel it in the flutter around my fingers.
I stop. Pull my hand away entirely.
She lifts off the surface, chasing contact that isn't there. Her fingers curl against the leather. Every muscle in her arms tenses with the effort of keeping her hands flat.
She keeps them flat.
I wait. Her skin is flushed from her throat to her navel, damp with sweat, the pulse visible in her neck.
When I touch her again, the sensitivity makes her flinch, and the flinch becomes a moan that fills the room.
I work her back to the edge with my thumb on her clit and two fingers curving inside her.
She's tighter now, swollen, the arousal so intense that every touch registers at twice the amplitude.
I can feel her pulse against my fingertips.
I stop again. Her eyes are wet. Her jaw is clenched. Her hands haven't moved.
"Good girl."
Her entire body shudders at the words.
I lower myself between her thighs. Her body tenses when she realizes what I'm about to do, and the tension is anticipation so acute it borders on fear.
"Still," I tell her.
My mouth finds her. She's swollen, slick, so sensitized from the denial that the first stroke of my tongue makes her jolt against the surface. The taste of her is salt and heat and something darker. I press my forearm across her hips to hold her down and take my time.
I use my tongue with the same precision I use my hands.
Slow. Measured. I trace the length of her folds with broad, steady pressure, then close my lips around her clit and suck gently until her thighs tremble against my shoulders.
Low, broken sounds that match the pace I'm setting, not the pace her body wants.