21. Vera #2
The vibrator shifts angle and I cry out.
“I have to tell you, Vera.” A pause, the pressure building again, precise and merciless. “I could do this all night.”
“Please—” My voice breaks on it. “Please, Sir, please, I need—”
“I know what you need, Vera.”
“Please let me come, please.”
A low groan escapes him, pulled from somewhere deep. “You’re perfect like this.” The vibrator presses deeper and I cry out. “Absolutely perfect.”
“Kane — Sir — please—”
He holds it there. Holds me there. Right at the edge, right at the exact place where I’ve lost every version of myself except this one.
“Please.” Barely a sound. Everything I have left. “Please.”
“Come.” The command drops into the silence. “Right now. Come for me.”
I detonate.
Every muscle locking at once, a sound tearing out of me — raw and unguarded. The leather creaks under my hands. My thighs shake against the bench.
His hand presses flat against my back. Warm. Unmoving.
“Give me all of it.”
The second wave hits before the first has finished. I cry out again, higher, helpless, the plug and the vibrator and his hand and his voice converging into something so total the edges of the room dissolve.
I stop being able to hear anything except my own pulse.
His hand stays. Right there. The one fixed point.
The shaking moves through me in waves until there’s nothing left and I’m limp against the bench, wrung out and weightless.
The vibrator gentles. Then less. Then gone.
His hands move to my hips, warm and certain. I’ve got you. His thumb traces one slow circle against my skin while my breathing finds its way back.
“Vera.” His voice has changed. Lower. A frequency I haven’t heard from him before. “I need to ask you something.”
“Mm.” My brain is offline. It’ll be a moment.
A pause. Then: “Are you on birth control?”
That lands. Cuts through the haze.
I turn my head to look at him over my shoulder. He’s watching me with an expression I’ve seen in fragments before but never quite like this — careful, and wanting, and uncertain in a way Kane Sinclair almost never allows.
His hands have gone completely still on my hips.
“I am,” I say.
“I want to feel you. Nothing between us.” His jaw works. “I’ve never done that. In a scene. I need you to know that.”
“I want that. I want to feel all of you.”
He holds my gaze for one more beat, then steps out of my line of vision. The sound of his zipper cuts through the quiet. Air shifts behind me — his presence, the heat of it, before any contact. My pulse drops lower, thickens.
His palm settles warm between my shoulder blades, steady and certain. Then the slow, certain push of him inside me. All of it. Until there’s nowhere left to go.
And the sound I make is immediate and loud — nothing has prepared me for this. The plug still present, him filling the space beside it, the pressure of both so complete that language dissolves entirely.
We both go still.
His breathing has changed — I can feel it against my back, the expansion of his chest slower than usual, deeper. His hands move to my hips and his forehead drops forward, the warmth of it settling between my shoulder blades.
Neither of us speaks.
His lips find the curve of my neck below my ear. Warm and real. His chest settles against my back and my eyes sting.
“You feel incredible.” His voice is rough at the edges.
My throat tightens.
His lips move to my shoulder. His teeth graze it once, lightly.
Then he moves. The first stroke and my breath leaves me entirely — a sharp, helpless sound. He stills immediately.
“Don’t stop.” I press back against him. “Please. Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop.
He finds the angle that makes my vision blur and stays there, his hips rolling in a steady rhythm. The pressure of him and the plug together so complete my mind keeps trying to close around it and failing.
“Kane—”
“I know.” Rough already. “I’ve got you.”
He deepens the rhythm and I moan.
“You’re perfect.” The word lands against the back of my neck with his breath. His lips follow it, pressing once into my skin. “You feel perfect. Every time I’ve thought about this—“ His rhythm deepens and I gasp, fingers scrambling for the edge of the bench. “Nothing came close.”
He drives deeper.
I cry out his name. Loud and unguarded, torn out of me like it’s been waiting months to be said exactly like that.
His hips snap forward.
“Good. Again. Say my name again.”
“Kane—”
He drives harder and I lose the word halfway through it.
“Again.”
“Kane—” Higher, broken.
His grip tightens to the edge of bruising, his rhythm urgent now, precision gone entirely.
“Good girl. Don’t stop.”
“Kane—” I can’t stop even if I wanted to, his name the only thing left in my mouth, torn out with every thrust — higher, more desperate — and he groans, deep and unguarded, his forehead dropping to my shoulder.
“Vera—” Just my name. Wrecked. I feel it everywhere.
“Kane—” He answers it immediately — pulling me back, driving deeper —
The orgasm hits without warning, my whole body seizing, a sound tearing out of me as he groans and drives home one final time, coming apart with me.
When it all subsides, neither of us moves.
His forehead stays pressed to my shoulder, his breathing ragged and warm, his hands still gripping my hips like he hasn’t quite remembered to let go yet.
“Holy fuck,” I manage.
He presses his lips to the back of my neck.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “That was—”
He doesn’t finish.
He doesn’t need to.
He tends to me, removing the plug, releasing the restraints, pausing to check at each stage, with the same attention he brings to everything. When my legs give out the moment I’m free he’s already there.
He lifts me and carries me to the aftercare couch. Wraps me in the blanket, and pulls me against his chest with one hand in my hair and one resting over my heart.
“I’ve got you.”
The amber light holds us. Outside this room, the city keeps moving. In here, nothing is required of either of us.
I must have drifted, because the next thing I’m aware of is being lifted again, strong arms, the cedar scent of him.
“What—” My voice is blurred at the edges. “What are you doing?”
“Bath. You need to soak.”
“I’m fine—“
“Humor me.”
I don’t argue. I’m not sure I could if I tried.
His bathroom is all marble and glass and the same controlled aesthetic as the rest of his penthouse. But the large tub is already full, steam rising from the surface, filling the air with lavender.
I look at the tub, then at him.
“When did you—”
“You were asleep.” Like it’s nothing. Like drawing a bath while someone sleeps is an obvious thing a person does.
He sets me down, steadies me when my legs wobble. Then, to my surprise, strips off his shirt.
“You’re getting in too?”
“Unless you’d rather be alone.” He’s already stepping in, lowering himself into the water.
“No, I—” I blink at him. “You don’t strike me as a bath person.”
“I’m not.” He holds out his hand. “Come here.”
I step in and let him guide me down between his legs, my back against his chest.
His arms come around me. Loose. Warm.
We’re quiet for a while. His hands trace slow patterns on my arms, not building toward anything. I watch the steam rise and think about nothing in particular, which is rare for me and feels like a gift.
“This is nice,” I say finally.
“Nice.” I can hear the amusement.
“Okay. It’s perfect. Happy?”
“Very.”
I let my head fall back against his shoulder.
The quiet stretches, comfortable. His thumb moves against my arm, slow and absent, like he’s not thinking about it.
That’s when I know. I’m not falling for the Dom, or the architect, or the man who makes coffee with six level scoops. I’m falling for all of them. Every version of him I’ve been allowed to see.
And that’s not a problem I can sequence my way out of.
His thumb keeps moving. The quiet stretches a little further.
“You mentioned Vanessa once,” I say. “What happened?”
He’s still for a moment. Then:
“I’d been trying to get a read on her for months. Not directly. I wasn’t ready for that. So I’d drop things into conversation. Make a remark about liking being in control in the bedroom. Mention something I’d read. Watch her face.”
The water settles around us, still.
“Sometimes she’d go quiet. I thought that was her processing it, deciding how she felt. And then she’d come back with something like sounds intriguing or maybe we should try that sometime, and I’d think — she’s getting there. She’s working her way toward it.”
“You thought the hesitation was interest.”
“Yeah.” His chest rises once behind me, slow.
“So I tried once to be more direct. To actually say it — that I was interested in BDSM. That it wasn’t a passing curiosity, it was something I’d wanted for years.
” His voice empties out, reporting rather than feeling it.
“I’d planned what I was going to say. Practiced it, even. And then I said it, and she laughed.”
I wait.
“Not unkindly. She thought I was joking. She said Kane, you’re the least kinky man I’ve ever met and kissed me on the cheek and went to make dinner. And I let her think that’s what it was. A joke. Because the alternative was saying — no, I mean it — and watching her face change.”
“So you didn’t push it.”
“I told myself I’d find a better moment.
And then I stopped looking for one and started looking for proof she already understood.
” His thumb stills against my arm. “At some point I suggested we make a room. Somewhere we could experiment. She looked at me and said, you want to make a room to worship my body? I said yes. After a few moments of silence she said I think I’d like that.
” His thumb starts moving again, slower than before.
“I built six months of certainty on those words. Her willingness. Her readiness for the lifestyle. Everything I needed her to be.”
He’s quiet long enough that I feel his heartbeat instead of hearing his voice.