Chapter 42
42
SAMANTHA
I ’m greedy.
I don’t want to come now and be done. I want everything Braiden can do to me, every way he can use me. I want to know I have the strength—I have the power—to be the woman he needs me to be.
The heel of his hand rocks against my clit as he slips his fingers out of my drenched pussy, and the pressure is almost too much. I nearly tip over, nearly lose control.
But I hold my breath. I bite my lip. I stiffen my legs and I curl my toes and I shove back the wild flood of freedom.
He takes off my T-shirt like he’s worshipping at an altar. He slips his hands inside the waistband of my boxers, guiding them over my hips, past my knees, down to the floor. I step free, and I’m naked again, bare to the world.
Before I can think about it, before I can stumble over the memory of Russo—what he made me do, what I did to him— Braiden takes my collar out of its velvet case. He kisses the nape of my neck and then he fastens the platinum clasp. He presses the emerald into the hollow of my throat with this thumb.
He stares at me fiercely, as if he can read everything that’s written on the inside of my brain. “ Mo chailín maith ,” he breathes, and it doesn’t matter that I stripped for Russo. It will never matter again, because now I’m naked for Braiden, and Braiden is my heart, and Braiden is the only man I’ve ever loved.
I nod once, and then he snaps his fingers in absolute command. “On the bed,” he says. “On your back. Legs out. Arms out.” And when I don’t move quickly enough: “Now!”
I’m not surprised when he goes to the dresser or when he comes back to the bed with coils of cotton rope. He loops my left foot with an efficient knot, tying it off on the bedpost like he’s a sailor. My right foot too, and I’m spread in front of him, bare, displayed, without even my hands to cover myself, because he ties my right wrist, and my left wrist too.
It’s intoxicating to lie here. He has access to every inch of me. He can do whatever he wants with my body, and I’m powerless to stop him.
Except he says, “Red. Red if you want me to stop.”
I shake my head, because I know I’ll never say it.
But he grips my chin, tight enough to hurt. “This is important, piscín . This is how I keep you safe. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” I say, because that’s what he needs. I only want to please him, only want to make him whole. I’ll accept my safeword so he knows he can do everything he needs to do.
I expect him to go back to the dresser. To pick up a paddle or a cane. The riding crop. The cat o’nine tails, with its metal-studded leather straps. I know he’s going to hurt me, and I want it, I need it, so much more than I’ll ever be able to explain.
But he doesn’t leave the bed. Instead, he shifts his weight and straddles me, framing my hips with his knee. He looms over me, his heavy cock jutting toward my face.
As I watch, he strokes himself. Long and steady and hard, his fingers work his cock. I whine because I want to touch him. I want to be the one pulling on that velvet. I want to take him between my lips, to feel him hit the back of my throat. I want him pumping hard between my legs, pinning me, filling me, making me his.
I beg. I plead. I stretch my arms, fighting to free my hands. But I don’t control what happens. Not when I’m wearing my collar.
“Please,” I say, when a drop of precum spatters on my belly.
“Please,” I moan, when the tip of his cock flushes scarlet.
“Please,” I beg, when he hisses as if his own hand scalds him on one last pull.
He explodes over me, pulse after pulse of hot, wet cum. He paints my belly. He soaks my breasts. He stripes my chin, my cheeks, my lips.
He’s using me like I’m a centerfold he can rip out of a magazine, like I’m a video he can pause. I’m filthy. I’m raw. I’m gloriously, utterly alive.
And when he’s done, when he’s breathing like a stallion, when he’s collapsed on top of me and seared those thick pearly ropes into my body, he whispers against the emerald on my throat, “You’re mine.”
“I am.”
“No one else can do this to you.”
“No one.”
“I’m the only one who can have you.”
“Only you.”
He raises himself on his elbow, high enough to take my right nipple into his mouth. He sucks hard, lancing an arrow to my aching, needy clit. He works me with his tongue, and when I groan, he bites me.
I yelp, and he pushes off the bed. He slaps my flank with his open hand, igniting a whole new constellation of stars inside my head. I close my eyes to hold in the light, but I’m already trying to figure out how to get him to slap me again, how to set my world on fire.
If my eyes were open, he couldn’t take me by surprise. If I were looking, I would know what he was planning. But I’m caught inside my head, lost in a forest of sensations, so I have no warning of what he plans.
My pussy fills with an impossible weight. Before I can protest, before I can scream, my entire body starts to shake, from the savaged place between my thighs to the hollow between my ears where my brain is supposed to be.
It’s a vibrator. I understand that. But I’ve never taken anything that large before. I’ve never felt that constant roar of power. I’m splitting in two, ravaged into separate halves, speared and pinned and suspended.
He fucks me with the toy. He eases it out until it barely flirts with my slick lips. He waits for me to arch my back, to raise my hips from the bed, to plead with every muscle in my body. And then he slips that colossal thing back inside, deep, deep, deeper than I think I can stand. He changes the speed. He changes the angle. He plays me until I’m screaming, until I’m begging, until I’m sobbing and desperate for release.
He’s taken all my words. He’s taken all my power. He’s in absolute control, and all I can do is offer myself up to the wild ride.
I don’t come. He doesn’t let me do that.
Over and over, he brings me to the edge. It’s like he has a secret instruction manual for my body, like there’s a hidden code inside me that only he can read. He knows when one more second will be too much. When one more breath will destroy me.
The fifth time he pulls away, I turn into an animal. I scream. I snarl. I bite the air, because he doesn’t let me reach his cruel, cruel hands.
And there, in the heart of madness, in the grip of need, an evil creature telegraphs the most secret folds of my soul: Of course he won’t release me. I’m marked. I’m branded. I’m damaged beyond repair.
Once the thought infects my brain, I’m trapped. My legs go limp. My arms sag in their bonds. My body is locked away from me, cut off completely. The only thing I can feel is Russo’s tattoo at the base of my spine, gritty and greasy, like a scorched cinderblock dragging me to the bottom of the sea.
“ Piscín? ” Braiden asks, but I don’t have words to reply.
“Samantha?” he says, but there’s no point in responding to my name.
“Say it, piscín . Just say red.” That’s what he orders, but I don’t care about colors, red or black or white, everything’s the same.
I hear him at the nightstand. I feel him cut the rope. My hands are free. My feet are free. I can draw my knees together. I can hide. But there’s no reason to bother. Not when I’m destroyed.
That’s why he tied you up , the wicked thing says. He needed you on your back. He needed to hide the mark.
I want it to be wrong. I want Braiden to look at my back, to see my tattoo, to touch it and tell me he loves me. I almost find the strength to say that out loud. I almost tell him: “Turn me over. Fuck me from behind. Fuck me hard.”
But I can’t do it. Not when I’m wearing my collar.
I cannot, will not, must not top from below. I owe Braiden that. I owe myself that.
Even if that means I’m lost. I’m finished. We’re done.
But Braiden is my Dom. He understands my mind. He understands my body. He knows me better than I know myself.
So without my saying a word, he folds his arm around my belly. He drags me to the edge of the bed. He swings me around, so my feet are on the floor and my chest is pressed into the mattress.
Once, I thought the most terrible thing about this position was having my ass exposed. Now, I know there’s something worse.
I look over my shoulder at Braiden looking down at me. At my back. At my tattoo.
I expect to see disgust. Revulsion. Hatred for the weakness I let destroy us.
But none of that is on his face. Instead, I see compassion. Understanding. Love.
He slips one foot between mine, tapping my ankles wide. He closes the distance between us, and his cock is hard again, hot, demanding. He grips my hips with both hands, tight, tight, tighter, until I feel the bruises bloom.
I catch my breath against the tendril of hope that uncurls in my belly. He fits his cock to my straining pussy lips and drives in just the way I need—hard enough to make me gasp, to push me onto my toes.
I’m still wet from his merciless teasing with the vibrator. I’m soaked. I’m ready.
He hisses as he pounds into me, muttering something between his teeth, and it takes me too long to figure out what he’s saying: “ Is liomsa tú. Is liomsa tú. Is liomsa tú. ”
You are mine.
You are mine.
You are mine.
This is the man I need. This is the way I need to be fucked. This is all I desire in the world.
His fingers tear into my left hip, like he’s going to carve me apart at the joint. His right hand shifts. It lands on the small of my back, covering up the black mark. He owns my segno . He takes it because it’s a part of me, it’s who I am, and who I’ll always be.
“ Is liomsa tú! ” he shouts, and then he’s coming hard, filling all the empty places inside me.
I come too then, but it’s not like any orgasm I’ve ever had before. It’s not in my pussy. It’s not in my clit. It’s in my entire body, in every nerve I possess. It’s in my brain, and it’s in my heart, and it’s in the blackened flesh of my tattoo. It’s everywhere, and it’s everything, and I give myself over to it, and to Braiden, and to everything we are together.
I lose track of time and space and the limits of my body. Somewhere, sometime, somehow Braiden pulls me up beside him, against the pillows at the top of the bed. He works the clasp on my collar and sets the perfect emerald aside.
He wipes me clean with a warm, wet cloth, and he holds me close when I start to shiver. He puts a cool glass against my lips and helps me to drink. He places a square of chocolate on my tongue, and he covers me with a blanket while I let it dissolve.
He talks to me then. He tells me I’m his piscín . That I’m his good, good girl. He tells me that I’m strong and beautiful and brave and that he’s never known another woman like me. He tells me he can’t believe he almost lost me, and he’ll never let me go again. As I drift off to sleep, he’s saying he loves me, he loves me, he loves me.