CHAPTER 14 #2
She stayed on that spot for a full minute, letting the electricity do what her fingers couldn't. The muscle softened by degrees, unwinding like a rope that had been pulled too tight for too long.
Cole's breathing was ragged now, but it was a different kind of ragged—not the tight, controlled breaths of a man holding himself together, but the loose, open breaths of a man letting himself come apart.
"There's a knot on the right side too," she said. "Mirror image. I'm going to work on it."
"Mara—"
"What?"
A long pause. Then: "Thank you."
She kissed the back of his neck, just above the blindfold's knot. "You're not done yet."
---
She made him turn over.
The blindfold was still in place, but she could see the effect it had on the rest of his face—the way his jaw had loosened, the tension gone from the corners of his mouth.
His chest rose and fell with breaths that were deeper now, slower, as if he'd finally found a rhythm his body could settle into.
His jeans were still on. She unbuttoned them slowly, one button at a time, letting her knuckles brush against the skin beneath.
He was half-hard already—the electricity did that, she'd learned, a physiological response that had nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with the nervous system waking up.
Every nerve ending was alive, firing, alert.
"Lift your hips."
He did. She pulled his jeans down, then his boxers, and dropped them both on the floor. Naked now, stretched out on the bed, blindfolded, he looked different than he did in the bar—less like a man who'd walked into burning buildings and more like a man who'd finally stopped walking.
"The wand is going to feel different on your front than it did on your back," she said. "More sensitive. I'm keeping the intensity the same. But I need you to trust me."
"I trust you."
"You said that already."
"It's still true."
She picked up the wand. The hum filled the room again, that high thin whine that seemed to vibrate in her own teeth. She touched the electrode to his sternum.
Cole's whole body arched off the bed. His mouth opened—no sound came out, just a rush of air, as if the electricity had punched through his ribcage and stolen his breath.
His cock, already half-hard, stiffened fully against his belly.
The response was automatic, primal, the body's oldest wiring lighting up all at once.
"Breathe," Mara said.
He breathed. The air came back into his lungs in a shuddering gasp, and his hips settled back onto the mattress. A fine sheen of sweat had broken out across his chest.
"That's the solar plexus. It holds a lot of tension.
" She traced the wand lower, down the midline of his abdomen, not touching yet—just the static, the anticipation, the almost-there.
His stomach muscles quivered under the field, jumping toward the electrode like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
"You've been holding your breath all day.
Since Leo walked through that door. Maybe longer.
Since the fire, maybe. Since the first time you pulled someone out of a wreck and didn't know if they were alive. "
Cole said nothing. But a muscle in his jaw twitched.
"That's what the rescue instinct does. You hold your breath. You brace for impact. You never let go because letting go means someone might die." She touched the wand to his navel.
His hips bucked. A sound came out of him this time—a groan, deep and low, the kind of sound that came from somewhere beneath conscious thought. His cock twitched against his belly, a bead of moisture gathering at the tip.
"But no one's dying tonight. The bar is safe. Marcus is safe. Santoro backed down. The network is intact. You don't have to hold your breath anymore."
She moved the wand lower.
Cole's hands fisted in the sheets again. His thighs were trembling—she could see the quadriceps jumping, the adductors quivering. The electricity hadn't even touched him there yet, but his body was anticipating it, reacting to the mere possibility.
"Have you ever let anyone do this to you before?"
"No." The word came out rough, scraped raw. "Never."
"Then this is a first." She touched the electrode to the inside of his thigh, just below the crease of his groin. "A first for you. You're always the one rescuing. The one protecting. The one in control. Not tonight."
The electricity arced. Cole cried out—not a word, not a name, just a sound that seemed to come from someplace deeper than his throat.
His whole leg contracted, and then released, and she saw something happen to his face beneath the blindfold.
The tension that had been locked in his jaw for years—the tension of always being ready, always being vigilant, always waiting for the next emergency—it broke. Just for a moment. Just a crack.
But it was enough.
"Good," Mara said. "That's it. Let it go. Whatever you've been holding onto. Let it go."
She moved the wand to his other thigh. The same spot. The same intensity.
Cole's body arched again. But this time, when he came back down, his hands uncurled from the sheets. His palms opened. His arms fell to his sides—not limp, but loose, surrendered.
The wand hummed in Mara's hand. She looked at the man on the bed—scarred, blindfolded, stripped of everything except his body and his breath—and felt something shift in her own chest. The pendant was on the nightstand, but she could feel its warmth even from here, a pulse that seemed to say yes, this is what it's for.
This is what the chamber was built for. Not just pleasure. Release.
She turned the wand off.
The silence was sudden, profound. Cole's breathing was the only sound—deep and slow, as if he'd been running for miles and had finally stopped.
"Mara."
"I'm here."
"Don't stop."
"I'm not stopping. I'm switching." She set the wand on the nightstand and picked up one of the glass toys—the curved one, the one with the bulb at the base, the one the original Mara had designed for g-spot stimulation.
But Cole didn't have a g-spot. What he had was a prostate, and the curve would work just as well for that.
She coated the toy in lubricant from the tube she'd brought up from the chamber—slick, cold, faintly scented with something herbal. Then she coated her fingers.
"Roll onto your left side," she said. "Bend your right knee. Pull it toward your chest."
Cole moved slowly, as if his limbs were remembering how to function.
The blindfold didn't seem to hinder him—if anything, it seemed to help, freeing him from the need to orient himself by sight.
When he was positioned, his right knee drawn up, his left leg extended, he looked like a man who had finally found a comfortable way to hold his body after years of forcing it into rigid readiness.
"Good. Now I'm going to touch you. Not the wand. My fingers. And then the glass."
"Okay."
She traced a slick finger down the cleft of his ass, circling the tight ring of muscle. Cole's breath caught, but he didn't tense—didn't brace, didn't clench. The electricity had done its work. His body was open, receptive, willing.
"Have you ever done this before?"
"Once. A long time ago." His voice was quieter now, less guarded. "A firefighter. We were on the same crew. It was—" He paused. "It was over too fast. We were both scared."
"Of what?"
"Wanting it."
She slid her finger inside him.
Cole's breath came out in a long, shuddering exhale. His inner muscles clenched around her finger once, then relaxed—the reflex of a body that had learned to accept instead of resist. She moved slowly, finding the angle, the depth, the place where the prostate swelled against the rectal wall.
"There," he said. "Right there."
She pressed.
The sound he made was something she'd never heard from him before. Not a groan. Not a gasp. A raw, unguarded noise that seemed to come from the place where pleasure and pain blurred into something that had no name. His cock twitched against his belly, a pulse of fluid slicking the head.
"You've been holding onto so much," Mara said. "Control. Responsibility. The weight of everyone else's safety. Let me hold it for a while."
She withdrew her finger and replaced it with the glass toy.
The curved tip found his prostate immediately—the original Mara had known what she was doing when she designed these, had understood the architecture of the male body as well as the female.
She rotated the toy slowly, pressing the bulb against the swollen gland, watching Cole's face beneath the blindfold.
His mouth opened. His jaw worked, trying to form words that wouldn't come. His hands, loose at his sides, began to tremble again—but this was a different kind of trembling. This was pleasure, pure and undiluted, moving through a body that had forgotten how to receive it.
"Don't hold back. Whatever you're feeling. Whatever sounds you want to make. Make them. No one can hear you but me."
She rotated the toy again.
Cole cried out.
The sound was loud in the small room—loud and broken and utterly unguarded.
His hips bucked against the toy, his body seeking more pressure, more friction, more of whatever was building inside him.
Sweat was running down his chest now, pooling in the hollow of his sternum, tracing the lines of his scars.
"More," he said. "Please—more."
She turned the toy a third time, pressing deeper, finding a rhythm that matched his breathing.
In—pressure. Out—release. In—pressure. Out—release.
His prostate was swollen under the glass, and she could feel the tension building in his whole body—not the tension of resistance, but the tension of approaching release.
"Don't hold your breath," she said. "When it comes, let it come. Don't try to control it. Don't try to make it last. Just let it happen."