Chapter 15
AERYN
His fingers close around my wrist, holding my hand over his heart. His gaze comes to a sudden boil, pouring off heat as he studies my face.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says. “We can take things more slowly.”
“We’ve had ten years of slow. I want this. I want you. Tonight.”
He brushes my hair off my face. “Tiramisu, if things get too rough.”
“Cranberry tart,” I say. “All night long. Take me to your office. Please.”
A wicked light flares in his eyes. “We won’t get that far, babygirl.”
His kiss is danger and desire, longing and sin, his tongue challenging mine for control. His teeth catch my lower lip, closing hard enough to make me moan. He growls when he frees me: “On your feet, babygirl.”
Gripping my elbow with one hand, he edges me toward the door. He snags a couple of hockey sticks from a dense tangle before he marches me into the treatment room.
It’s a large space, part sterile medical office, part high-tech spa, part professional-grade gymnasium.
A counter stretches along one wall, with cabinets above and below.
The opposing wall is filled with gear—crutches hanging on hooks, braces for every part of the body, support belts and weighted vests and equipment bags.
A treadmill hulks beside an elliptical. A lightbox on the wall waits to display X-rays.
A hip-deep tub sits beneath a heavy plastic cover in one corner, next to an industrial-size ice-making machine.
This is the opposite of Kynk. At the club, everything was designed to signal sensual decadence, with an undercurrent of wealth. This treatment room is a place of business. Everything is cold. Unemotional. This is where men come to be healed.
“Strip,” Gage says.
My arms automatically cross my chest, startled into defense by his harsh tone. Something twists inside me, a viper of warning. He said we should take things more slowly, and I didn’t believe him. Now I’ll pay for my over-confidence.
“This isn’t a good beginning, babygirl,” he warns. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
I swallow hard, trying to master the roller-coaster swoop in my belly. When that doesn’t help, I close my eyes, bending to capture the hem of my knit dress.
“Eyes on me, babygirl,” he says. “You don’t get to slip away like that.”
I take a steadying breath while my face is hidden by the dress.
I toss my hair as soon as my head is free.
My fingers clutch the soft wool to my chest as if I can hide my mis-matched lingerie, the rose-studded black lace bra I wore to seduce Gage at the club and the simple cotton knickers Martha Gallagher provided.
“Drop it,” Gage commands, nodding toward my dress.
He sounds like he’s ordering a dog to give up a tennis ball. Before I can think about consequences, I say, “Woof.”
He’s faster than a lightning bolt, closing the distance between us. His fingers clamp on either side of my jaw, pulling my head to a sharp angle. Heat radiates off his body, sizzling my flank. “Drop. It.”
My fingers tremble as I release the sweater.
“Kneel,” he says, emphasizing the order by pointing with his free hand.
I drop to the floor.
My body remembers the rules. I sit back on my heels, my thighs spread. My spine is as straight as a hockey stick, my head perfectly level. The backs of my hands rest on my thighs, palms open in a gesture of absolute surrender.
I don’t understand why I need this, why I crave Gage’s commands.
I’m a rebel by nature. When Da tells me anything, I parse his words to carve out every possible exception.
My brothers know the quickest way to make me freeze is to order me to move.
My teachers at culinary school despaired of my ever mastering the five mother sauces of French cooking; I was too intent on making my own variations.
But here, now, between us, Gage’s word is law.
Maybe it’s because he was my first. Maybe it’s because we needed to work together to hide our relationship from Logan. Maybe it’s because he’s built an empire reading reactions—on the ice, in the boardroom, at the club.
Whatever the cause, something inside me is tuned to Gage’s frequency. He pulls me like the North Pole draws a compass. He perfects me.
“Stay,” he says.
I watch him hungrily as he crosses the room, only my eyes moving so I don’t break posture. He takes his time, pulling his shirt from the waistband of his jeans. He works the buttons at each wrist, folding back his cuffs with a precision that drags a whine from my throat.
“Not yet, babygirl,” he says, chuckling as he pulls the shirt over his head. His belt is next, whispering through the loops on his jeans.
I want him to drape it around my neck and cinch it tight. I want him to flick the end against my pebbled nipples. I want… I lick my lips, fighting the urge to raise my hands.
“Stay…” He draws out the reminder as he steps out of his jeans, snagging silk boxers and socks with the same smooth maneuver.
Ten years out of the game, he still has an athlete’s body—broad shoulders, narrow hips, muscles sculpted like a statue of a Greek god. His cock is thicker than I remember. When his hands flex by his hips, something flips deep inside me, a switch he installed years ago.
“Please,” I beg.
“Not yet, babygirl. Not for a long, long time.”
I can’t help myself. I need to feel that velvet-covered steel. Rocking forward on my knees, I stretch to touch him, to taste him.
He pounces. For a moment, there’s a struggle.
I’m frantic to prove that I can make him happy.
His fingers close around one of my wrists, but he’s close enough that I can guide his cock to my mouth.
He’s grappling for my other hand, though, the one that’s tight around him.
When he squeezes the small bones of my wrist, I have no choice but to let him go.
As my lips slip off his reddened tip, I howl my defeat. “Let me do this, ya feckin’ shitehawk. Let me make you feel good.”
“Oh, you’ll do that, babygirl.” He grunts as he drags me to my feet. “But not until I say.”
He pulls me toward the wall filled with cabinets. Holding both of my wrists with one uncompromising hand, he scrambles for one of the hockey sticks he left on the counter. Settling my belly against the lower cabinet, he holds me in place with his weight against my back.
His cock presses against my arse. If I wasn’t wearing knickers, I could spread my legs and shift my hips. Push against him until he fills my needy core.
But I am wearing knickers. And he’s bigger than I am. Stronger than I can ever hope to be. He fumbles for something in the cabinet beside my head, swearing as I shift under him.
It only takes him a moment to find what he needs and then he shifts his weight, pinning me with one carved hip.
There’s a scream like an animal dying, but it isn’t coming from me.
I realize he’s ripping athletic tape off a roll, wrapping thick white strips around my wrist, then around the hockey stick.
He binds my right wrist to the wooden shaft, then shifts his attention to my left arm. It’s awkward with the stick above my head. He positions my wrist nearly at the end, by the blade, cementing my grip with a dozen rounds of tape. He stops just short of dislocating my shoulders.
Before I can figure out the new weight of the stick, he snaps the clasp on my black lace bra. Reaching around from behind, he frees my right breast first, pinching the stony nipple hard enough to make me yip.
My bound hands are useless. I have no defense as he savages my left breast too. I howl as arrows of pure sensation shoot straight to my clit.
Caging my body with his, he gathers my hair off my heated neck.
I lean forward from my waist, letting the cabinets take the weight of the stick and my arms. Gage moves with me, finding the pulse point beneath my jaw with his mouth.
He sucks for a moment, which almost feels like comfort.
Before I can relax, though, he starts to tongue my throat.
Every nerve ending in my body is tossed into a bonfire. I need to pull away, and I can’t, and the tension tightens the muscles of my thighs. He quickens his pace, licking, lashing, tearing me apart.
It’s so simple, what he’s doing, and so completely devastating. My fingers splay on the cabinet like broken branches. I’m balancing on my tiptoes, desperate for release. I’m moaning every time I pant, so close, so very close, almost, almost there.
He stops.
“You goddamn, fucking shitehawk,” I start, the second I get enough breath to speak.
“Language, babygirl,” he says.
“How’s this for language? Let me come, you motherf—”
I don’t know where he got the scissors—on the counter, or in a cabinet, maybe from one of the drawers.
The cold steel against my right hip makes me shudder, convulsing almost double at the shock.
I jerk back from the cabinet, unsteady with my arms above my head.
Before I can find my balance, he snips again, pressing against my left hip.
Taking my knickers from behind, he tugs toward the small of my back. The cloth is soft enough to glide through the slickness of my soaked folds, but it’s rough enough to push my throbbing clit to the very edge.
If there was more fabric, if he held the pressure longer, if he went back to his ravaging assault on my neck, I could come. Instead, he strands me on the very edge of release again.
“Just do it!” I scream, when I realize he’s left me hanging. “Fuck me or—”
He fills my mouth with cotton.
My knickers are already drenched, coating my tongue with honey and salt.
I push with my tongue, trying to spit them out, but Gage is ready for that too.
He doesn’t use tape this time. Instead, he grabs an elastic bandage, the type meant for splinting and sprains.
It feels like sponge against my cheeks, pulling tighter with every round.
I try to buck him off, but he has all the advantage. I’m trussed up with the hockey stick, breasts bare, mouth so full I have to concentrate to breathe. But none of that keeps me from screaming my protest, even as he presses another bandage into my hand.
I try to throw the roll at him, angling behind my head, but he easily side-steps my attack. He retrieves the bandage and curls my fingers around it, squeezing firmly. “That’s your safeword now. Drop it if you want this game to stop.”
Game.
I’m humiliated here—bare arse, bare breasts, arms stretched wide on the stick above my head. He’s brought me to the edge twice and left me dangling. He’s in charge of everything, in absolute control. He owns me.
And I have never been more turned on in my life.
I bow my head as best I can beneath the hockey stick, submitting.
He settles down to serious business then.
He orders me to spread my legs, and when I don’t move quickly enough, he positions them with his own rough hands.
He collects the other hockey stick, the one I foolishly forgot.
He lashes my ankles to the wood, same as my hands, setting my feet further apart than I think I can bear.
While he’s down there, he bites my arse—not enough to draw blood, but enough to make me squeal into my knickers.
He kisses the flaming mark he leaves behind, soothing with his lips first, then his tongue.
As I press back into his face, his arm wraps around my hip.
He finds my clit and reduces me to wordless pleading in seconds.
But still he doesn’t let me come. Instead, he throws me over his shoulder like I’m some crazy bendable doll. He carries me over to one of the massage tables and puts me on my back
The table takes the weight of the stick in my hands, easing the pressure on my shoulders. His fingers close around my waist, dragging my arse toward the end of the table, until I feel the edge just behind my knees. He strokes my thighs, then, saying, “That’s right, babygirl. Relax.”
I’d scream if I thought it would do me any good. I can’t relax with my arms stretched over my head. I can’t relax with my feet strapped to a hockey stick, dangling beneath the table. I can’t relax with my knees spread wide, displaying my most private parts like a filthy invitation.
Gage has seen every inch of my body. He’s smelled me. Tasted me. But it’s still reflex for my knees to close, for me to hide from his burning gaze.
He hasn’t left me any room to maneuver. My feet are tied too far apart. I can’t pull away in shame. I’m forced to lie here, belly rising and falling like I’m a wild animal in a trap.
But I’m still holding my roll of adhesive bandage. I’m clutching it tight, against even the faintest possibility of it slipping out of my grasp. I’m dirty and I’m desperate and I don’t ever want this game to end.
Gage catches a rolling stool with his toes, pulling it over to the foot of the table. Straddling the feckin’ seat, he settles between my legs. I groan as he pulls closer, unable to stop him, unable to wait.
He hits a switch on the end of the table, and the surface lowers so I’m even with his mouth. “Finally, babygirl,” he says. “I’ve been dreaming of this for years.”