11. Dakota #2
“Tell me if anything’s wrong.” Two fingers slide between leather and skin to check the fit. He does the same with the left, then crouches and does my ankles, spreading my stance just enough that I feel the pull, the way the cross opens me up. My arms stretched into a Y above my head.
He steps back.
His chest moves slow. His hands curl at his sides like he’s keeping them from shaking. His eyes travel from my fingers to my throat to my breasts to my hips to my pussy where I can feel the air hitting my wetness, and back up to my face.
“You’re fucking beautiful like this, Dakota.”
I test the cuffs. Pull against them. They don’t give. My heart kicks, not from fear, but from excitement. The cuffs hold, and the world doesn’t end. I’m spread open and helpless, and Dante’s looking at me like I’m a goddamn sunrise.
“How’s it feel?” he asks quietly.
“Safe.” The word surprises me. “It feels safe.”
His throat works. He cups my jaw.
“That’s because you are.”
He kisses me. Soft first, then deeper, his tongue tasting mine until I’m pulling against the cuffs to get closer and finding I can’t, and that helplessness sends a shock of heat straight down my spine.
He pulls back and watches my face. “There it is,” he murmurs. “That look of surrender.” His mouth moves down my throat. My collarbone. The slope of my breast. He takes a nipple between his lips, and my back arches off the wood, and a sound comes out of me that I don’t recognize.
He doesn’t rush.
This man learns me. He runs his hands along every inch I have—the inside of my elbow, the underside of my breast, the dip of my waist, the soft skin of my inner thigh. He bites once, gentle, at the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, and I gasp, and he soothes the sting with his tongue.
When his fingers finally find their way between my legs, I’m already so wet that his hand glides without resistance, and he groans against my throat.
“Christ, baby. You’re fucking soaked.”
“Dante,” I moan.
“I got you.”
He uses two fingers, slow and deep, while his thumb circles my clit in patterns that make my hips chase him. He watches my face the whole time, reading every micro-expression, every hitch in my breath. The pleasure builds steadily, a warm tide rising through my body.
When I’m close, so close I can feel it building like a wave gathering strength at my back, he slows. His fingers gentler, his thumb lifting just enough to back me down from the edge. Lets it ebb.
“No,” I breathe, hips rolling forward seeking the pressure he’s withdrawn.
“Yes. Not yet, baby.”
He starts again. Builds me back up with patient, deliberate strokes. His fingers curl inside me, finding that spot that makes my vision blur. His thumb returns to my clit with more pressure now, circling in tight, maddening patterns. The wave builds higher this time, cresting faster.
Right when I’m about to break, he stops again. Pulls back. Holds me there suspended at the precipice.
A sound escapes me, frustration and need mixed together.
“Again?” My voice cracks.
“Again.”
The third time, he takes me higher than before. His fingers work deeper, faster, his thumb relentless on my clit. My whole body is drawn tight, every muscle tensed toward release. I’m whimpering, making sounds I don’t recognize, my hips chasing his hand desperately.
He lets me get so close I can taste it, and then stops.
My legs are shaking violently against the restraints now. There’s wetness on my cheeks I didn’t notice falling. I’m wound so tight I might shatter from the need alone.
“Please.” It comes out broken, desperate.
“Please what, baby?” He asks.
“Please, Dante, please, I need…”
“Tell me. Use your words.”
“I need you inside me. I can’t… please, I’ve been good, I’ve waited, please…”
His dark eyes hold mine. He sees me, really sees me. Trembling, desperate, completely surrendered to this need he’s built in me.
“Yes,” he says finally. “You have been good. So good for me.”
He’s already unbuckling his jeans. They drop, and his shirt comes off, and the light catches the ink on his shoulders. It’s a beautiful contrast against his brown skin, the cut of muscle, the huge, hard length of his cock.
He kneels first. That’s the thing that breaks me. He doesn’t crowd between my spread legs the second he’s naked. He kneels and unbuckles my left ankle, then my right, his fingers careful as if the leather might bruise me as he takes them off.
“Wrap those beautiful thighs around me,” he says, standing.
I do. My thighs lift, lock around his waist, and the cuffs at my wrists take more of my weight as the head of his cock finds my center. The leather-bound wood of the cross is solid against my back. He’s solid against my front. The world narrows to the space between his chest and mine.
“I’m on the pill,” I breathe. “I want you bare. We’ve all done blood work.”
“I know, baby.”
“I want to feel you. Just you.”
His forehead drops to mine. For a long moment he just breathes with me, our mouths so close we share the same air.
“Look at me.”
I do.
He pushes in.
The sound that leaves me is something I’ve never made before.
It’s not pain. It’s the noise of every wall I’ve built coming down at once, of years of held breath finally let out.
He goes slow. God, so slow, watching my face for any flicker of a sign that I don’t want this, and when he’s seated to the hilt his eyes close for half a second like he’s praying.
“Dante.”
“I know.”
He moves.
The first thrust drags a whimper out of me, and the second, and by the third, my hands are pulling at the cuffs not to escape but to ground, to feel the leather hold me while he takes me apart.
His hips snap forward, and I have nowhere to go.
I can’t push him back, can’t slow him down, can’t do anything but take what he gives.
And it’s the most powerful I’ve felt in my entire life.
“Look at you,” he rasps against my mouth. “Look at you, taking every fucking inch of me. Taking everything I give you.”
“More, please,” I urge.
“Fuck, baby.”
His hand comes up. Settles around the front of my throat. Not gripping. Just resting there, his thumb at the hinge of my jaw, his fingers spread along the curve of my neck.
His eyes lock on mine. Checking. Assessing.
He keeps fucking me, deeper now, harder, the cross rattling, the chains chiming softly with each thrust. His mouth finds my jaw. My ear. The skin under my ear that makes my hips jerk against him.
“This what you needed?” he murmurs. “My cock inside you while you’re tied up?”
“Yes!”
“Held down. Held safe. Mine to take.”
“Yes, it’s exactly what I needed.”
“Nobody’s ever doing it any other way again. You hear me? Nobody takes from you anymore. People give. People give you what you ask for. That’s it.”
A sob breaks free of me, and it’s not a sad sound. It’s the sound of light pouring into the darkness that has suffocated me for so long.
He feels it. His rhythm shifts, deeper, slower, every drag of him against my insides hits the place that makes my vision spark. His thumb traces my throat, and his other hand grips my hip, and I can feel the trembling start in my thighs, climb my spine, ring through my whole body like a bell.
“Dante! I’m gonna—”
“Come on, baby. Let me see how fucking gorgeous you are when you break for me.”
The wave doesn’t crest. It detonates. My back arches off the cross, and the cuffs catch my wrists, and I’m screaming into his shoulder, white blooming behind my eyes, every nerve in my body firing at once.
He keeps going through it, drawing it out, his hand at my throat steady and present and safe, until the second wave hits me on top of the first and I’m shaking so hard I can’t tell which way is up.
He comes inside me with a low, broken sound against my neck. I feel it. Every pulse of him. The heat of him filling me up, marking me in a way I’ve never been so desperate for.
He doesn’t pull out right away. He stays there, forehead to mine, breath ragged, hand sliding from my throat to my cheek.
“There you are,” he whispers. “There you are.”
He reaches for the cuffs. Right wrist first. He unbuckles it and lowers my arm slowly, kissing the inside of my wrist where the leather pressed, then guides it around his neck.
The left wrist next. Same kiss. Same care.
The second my arms are free, I fold into him, and he catches me, one arm under my thighs, the other locked around my back, lifting me off the cross like I weigh nothing.
He carries me to the padded bench. Sits with me in his lap. Wraps me up in his arms like a blanket made of him.
That’s when the shaking starts in earnest.
It rolls through me in waves, head to foot, my teeth chattering even though the room is warm. I can’t stop it. I don’t try. I press my face into the crook of his neck and shake, and he holds me tighter, his hand stroking up and down my spine in long, slow passes.
“You did so well, baby. So fucking well.”
“I’m—I don’t know why I’m—”
“Shh. I know. Let it out.”
“I’m not scared, Dante, I’m not, I just…”
“I know you’re not. You’re okay. You’re safe. I got you.”