He put his mouth close enough to mine that I could feel the heat of his breath. “Say it.”
Teased and tormented to the point of incoherence, I answered something like “whu.”
“Ask me.”
Another command, but one so filled with longing that I finally understood. And my own voice, for once, was steady. “Give me more. Hurt me, Caspian.”
Shuddering, he pressed into me with a muffled moan. A strange embrace, but perhaps one I couldn’t return was the only kind he knew how to seek just then. I grazed my lips against the edge of his brow, accepting this too, letting him take whatever solace he wanted.
“Do you remember,” he murmured, fingers tracing the outline of one of my butterfly nipple shields, “the last time I hurt you like this?”
I gave a shaky laugh. “I’ll never forget. All I had was your voice on the phone. And I wanted you to be there so badly.”
“I wanted it too. I wanted to be the one touching you. Watching you. Making you suffer.”
“You can now.”
He lifted his head. His face was open for a moment, full of warmth as well as passion, the upward curl of his lips unexpectedly tender. And then he put a hand across my mouth and, before I even quite realized what was going to happen, gave my nipple chain a savage twist.
The pain was shocking—a bolt of silver-white lightning—all the more intense for my powerlessness. I couldn’t really move. Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t control it. Couldn’t do anything except feel it.
Which I did—my frantic scream muffled by his palm.
We were both panting when he let me go. And I…I started to laugh. Adrenaline, I guess. And the dizzying rush of fading hurt which was in that moment as sweet as pleasure. Perhaps sweeter.
“Arden?” Caspian’s question was as gentle as his touch was ruthless.
I grinned at him, feeling rather feral myself. “Again.”
He didn’t, though. Not at first. Just toyed with me, tugging this way and that, turning me into a whimpering mess, want and fear feeding each other until I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
“Ohgodohgodohgodohg—”
One hand caught the rest of my wail, as he wrenched on the chain with the other. And, somehow, the pain was worse—sharper and harder and nastier—for my being familiar with it. Or maybe because it came from him, not my own trembling fingers, taking me deeper than I’d have ever dared take myself.
Maybe that should have been terrifying. And…well…yeah, in some ways it was. But mainly it was…freeing. Being able to sob into his skin while he hurt me. The twin flood of agony and arousal making me feel strong and weak and overwhelmed all at once.
And so close to Caspian I could almost taste his heartbeat.
This time, it took me a handful of seconds to realize he was done. All the borders between sensations had dissolved, and I was flying on wings of pleasure and pain.
He pressed himself against me, putting his lips to the edge of my jaw before tracing a tear track all the way to the corner of my eye. The fabric of his tuxedo was exquisitely harsh across my tormented nipples, his tongue like warm velvet against my cheek. I shuddered on the contrast and on the strange intimacy of him tasting the tears he’d caused.
“Arden,” he whispered. “My Arden.”
Words were so not happening with me but I moaned and nodded and conveyed my enthusiasm for the general sentiment of being his.
“You’re so beautiful.”
A slightly ridiculous comment coming from Caspian Hart. Especially when I was half undressed, and soggy all over from crying and sweating and leaking precome like a busted, uh, leaking thing. But he said it with such conviction that I believed it was true. Right then, anyway. For him.
He kissed my damp eyes. And, so softly I was half convinced I’d started hallucinating, murmured, “Everything I’d have dreamed, if I’d let myself.”
And while I was still reeling from that, he dropped to his knees. I probably couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d turned into a chicken. He yanked my trousers open so hard that I heard the button go pinging off somewhere and then he peeled my pants down my hips, freeing my painfully eager cock to the night.
So there I was: tied to a pillar with my nipples still stinging and my dick hanging out. And yet I felt…totally okay. This moment of calm at the heart of a storm.
Caspian glanced up at me. And I thought I caught the glitter of moisture on his lashes too. “You shouldn’t be with someone like me.”
