“Please, Eli. I need you to make me come. I’m begging you.” My throat tightens as he swirls my clit with more pressure. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Please. You’re the only one who can.”

Maybe he’ll think this is part of the game. Something to bolster his ego. But it’s not.

It’s the absolute truth.

There’s a fraction of a pause. I don’t open my eyes to see what his reaction might be, and he doesn’t let the suspended moment linger. “Good girl. That’s better.” And then he dives at my flesh, feasting like a starving man.

Kaplan parts my folds and licks every bit of my pussy. His fingers work my clit when he fucks me with his tongue. When I look down, his face glistens with saliva and arousal. His eyes narrow as he meets my gaze across my body and he bites my clit with the perfect mix of pleasure and pain.

“Make me come, please. Please,” I beg with the reminder he intended with his bite. His tongue soothes the pain and then I feel my reward, the tip of the vibrator pressing to my opening. “Eli, please,” I say again, and then he slips it into my sex and turns it on.

Kaplan keeps a rhythmic pace with the toy as he works my clit, his free hand coming up to pinch my nipple as a constant stream of pleas flows from my lips. I chant his name. I beg him for relief. I pray for release over and over until the coil of pleasure deep in my core implodes, taking all thought and reason and control with it. My legs shake and strain as Kaplan pushes them wider, not missing a second of the orgasm as it rages through every one of my nerves and muscles.

But it’s only just begun.

Kaplan casts the toy to the side and laps at my arousal as he unclamps one of my ankles and then the other with a swift and practiced hand. He only breaks his mouth away from my flesh when my legs are free, and then he hauls me up to a sitting position by the ropes across my chest.

When we’re eye-to-eye, the beast is staring back at me, desperate and dark and nowhere near done.

Kaplan squishes my cheeks between firm fingers. My skin tingles from the pressure and the heat of his fiery, wild gaze. “Open up,” he snarls.

I pop my lips open and he spits in my mouth.

“Do you taste that?”

I nod. It’s the flavor of my arousal, mixed with his own distinctive essence of mint and bourbon, and other things I can sense but can’t define. Elements that swirl together in an elixir on my tongue.

“You’re like a drug that never fades,” Kaplan hisses, his eyes gripping mine with desperation so consuming it looks painful. “Your flavor. Your scent. The sound of your cries. The way you beg. The way you take everything and ask for more… You invade my thoughts and you don’t let go.” An unsteady breath passes his parted lips as his gaze drills into mine. “If only you knew how badly I want to ruin you like you’ve ruined me.”

I don’t smile. There’s no cocky attitude in my expression when I look into his eyes. My voice is sincere when I speak. “I’m begging you to try.”

“This may have started as a game, Bria, but it’s not anymore. I want you to feel the way I feel.”

“Don’t you think I already do?”

There’s a single, shuddering breath between us. Kaplan’s eyes are the deepest lightless night.

“I don’t know. But I’m sure as fuck going to find out.”

Without another word, Kaplan grips the rope around my chest and flips me over onto my front. He pulls my hips up so that my ass is in the air and then pushes my cheek down, pressing my face into the mattress. He digs his fingers into my hips. “Do not move.”

I hear the sound of straps and the cap of the bottle of lube. The liquid drizzles across my ass, sliding over my slick pussy and dropping to the mattress, leaving the scent of salted caramel behind. A whispered curse passes my lips, longing already coiling low in my belly like a deadly, insatiable snake. I want to taste that lube mixed with his cum so badly that my mouth waters.

“What’s your word, Bria?” Kaplan growls as he slides his cock through the lube and positions it at my entrance. Another pressure meets the tight resistance of the pleated rim of my ass.

“Tweed.”

“Good girl.” He works the head of the strap-on past the clenched muscle and guides it deeper. It’s not as thick as the toy from his office, but my heart thunders in anticipation nonetheless. I know he won’t be gentle this time. As if reading my thoughts in the pattern of my breath, he stills when the tip of his cock breaches the entrance of my sex.

“I’m ready, Eli. I want you to ruin me for anyone but you.”

As soon as the words pass through my lips, Eli grabs onto the knots of rope encasing my bound hands and slams into me. I cry out with the invasion and the discomfort and the pleasure, the utter perfection of a fullness my body never knew it hungered for. He glides to the crown of his cock and the tip of the toy and I cry out again, this time at the loss of that feeling of taking everything he can give. I squirm, trying to push my ass closer but he evades me.

“Eli…” I raise my head and he presses my cheek back into the mattress with an unforgiving hand. “Please,” I whisper beneath his palm.

He thrusts into me again. I cry his name into the sheets.

Eli picks up a rhythm, a slow crescendo of thrusts, just like music singing in my flesh. Adagio: slow but powerful strokes. Andante: a steady pace, the friction building and pushing me closer to a cliff I can’t come back from. But it doesn’t stay so kind. Just like he promised, Eli wants to make me suffer. The music is only meant to lure me into a hell of mindless, never-ending need, into the twisting, symphonic madness of pleasure and pain, desire and release. So he pummels into me. He thrusts and grips and pushes and slams. When I cry out, he only pushes harder, delves deeper. The sounds I make just feed the demon that claws every scrap of ecstasy from us both and demands one thing in return.

More. 

By the time I come, I’m breathless and aching and screaming Eli’s name, shuddering and boneless.

But he’s still not done.

“Again,” he demands. Eli slows his pace just enough that I catch my breath, but as soon as he seems sure my heart won’t explode, he picks up a punishing cadence once more.

“I can’t,” I whisper. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even falter a beat in his rhythm. If anything, he grips the rope at my back tighter and fucks me harder.

Thank God.

This. This is what I want. This is what I need.

“I can’t.”

“Again, Bria.”

My thoughts start to spool away like threads on a loom. “Stop. Please, Eli…”

“Are you using your word?”

I bite my lips closed. That’s not what I want. Not at all. I shake my head beneath the pressure of his hand.

“Are you ruined yet?”

“I… I don’t know,” I grit out.

“Then the answer is no. You’re not done.” He slams into me with metronomic precision, both my pussy and my ass aching as I crawl closer to another orgasm. I haven’t said the word, and he won’t stop unless I do. And I feel something I hardly ever feel for anyone. Something so elusive and so precious that it lives at the very core of me, like the sun that shines into the windows of the palace in my mind.

Gratitude.

So I beg. I beg him to stop. I use every word in my arsenal except the one that will make Eli go still. And he thrusts into me with the discipline of a man who will respect my promises, and who will honor the ones he makes to me in return.

When I come apart in a hymn of begging and pleading, a sheen of sweat misting my face and dampening the purple lace of my lingerie, Eli praises me and caresses my skin. One hand still grips the rope at my back, but the other glides over the globes of my ass and the tense, trembling muscles of my thighs.

But he still hasn’t come.