Keeping my hand tight on the leash, I leaned back to watch the show, watch her breasts move as she worked me, watch those hazel eyes gaze up at me with a look that would get me hard in the shower for years to come. And those lips like a gorgeous red halo around my dick…it was the only halo I ever wanted again, a circle of wicked wants and devilish delights.

Up and down she went, sometimes fluttering her tongue, sometimes running it in a hot, wide line down my shaft. I thrust up to meet her, hitting the back of her throat and—losing all semblance of patience—grabbed the back of her head to keep her from pulling away. I held her head with both hands and pumped that way for several long seconds, fucking her throat like I fucked her pussy—hard and without apology, and she deserved it for being such a brazen, shameless tease.

“You like that?” I asked. She was breathing carefully through her nose, and she couldn’t speak, so I talked for her. “I know you do. You like it when a paying customer treats you roughly. It makes you wet to be treated like the slut you are, doesn’t it?”

She made a noise that could of have a yes or a no or simply a moan of pure pleasure. Whatever it was, it made my stomach clench and my hands dig into her scalp and my balls tighten with the need to release. But I didn’t want to come in her mouth.

“Off,” I ordered, pulling on the leash. She obeyed, coming off my dick with watery, smudged eyes and one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen on her face.

I used the leash to bring her face to mine as I leaned toward her. “How much to fuck?”

Her smile faded into a darker expression, an expression that promised me everything I wanted. “We—we aren’t supposed to do that,” she said faintly.

“I don’t care,” I growled. “I want to fuck you. How much?”

“The rest of what you have,” she said, with a defiant arch of her eyebrow, and I silently commended her for her dedication to our game. I took out my wallet and the remaining cash—about $700 (fuck, Poppy had a lot of money)—and then tossed the bills in the air. They floated slowly down to the floor.

“Pick them up with your mouth.”

“No.”

“No?” I tugged on the leash, just enough that she remembered it was there. “I want to get what I paid for. Now. Pick. Them. Up.”

I saw the moment she gave in by the set of her shoulders, but as she started to bend down to reach for the bill closest to her, I put my shoe on the money. “Panties off first.”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth, and I don’t know what my face looked like, but whatever expression was there must have convinced her that she didn’t want to test me. She stood up, hooked her thumbs at the sides of her panties and slipped them down, one gold heel coming off the floor and then the other as she stepped out of them.

Then she bent over and began collecting the money.

I kept a loose grip on the leash as she did, spooling it out so she’d have plenty of slack, licking my lips at the swollen perfection exposed between her legs. When we got home, I wanted to worship her with my mouth, I wanted her coming on my tongue again and again. She deserved it, my little lamb, for going to such lengths for me, creating this little game where I could take and take from her. Yes, after this, I was going to reward her.

But as for right now…

I got on the floor behind her, also on my knees, and because the music was so loud, I don’t think she heard. She was bent completely over, her face to the floor, her ass high in the air, and I took my dick and shoved into her with one rough thrust, all the way in, slapping her hard on one ass cheek as I did.

She squealed—a happy noise—and that was enough to keep my conscience at bay as I fucked her harder than was purely gentlemanly, not fast necessarily, just hard and deep, the kind of deep that made her toes curl and my balls swing against her clit.

And then the snake slithered again, that angry, bitter snake, as I remembered that I was not the first man to do this to Poppy here, that she’d been fucked before like this, in this very place, and then that anger was itching at my palms and coiling in my pelvis.

I wanted to punish her. I wanted to hurt her the way she hurt me with making me care so much, but instead of hurting her, I pulled out and stood up, my cock wet and as hard as fucking steel, throbbing with the need to screw the pussy still raised up in offering to me.

I didn’t want to be Herod. Not really.

I sat down on the chair. “Come here.” I jerked my head towards my cock so that she knew what I wanted, and she didn’t hesitate to climb up my lap and then impale herself on me, sinking down with her tight, hot cunt, her tits right in my face.

And here, now that I could see her face, now that I couldn’t be brutal, I confessed. “I can’t, like that. It makes me want to…”

But I couldn’t get the words out. They were too awful. Instead, I buried my face in her breasts, smelling the lavender smell of her, the clean fabric of her bra.

She tugged at my hair so that my head was pulled back. “Want to hurt me?”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. She must hate me, but she was still fucking me, rocking back and forth like women do instead of up and down, using my dick to get her off as if the rest of me was irrelevant.

God, that was hot.

“I guessed as much today,” she said. “That’s why I brought us here.”

My eyes flew open. “What?”

“You’re a man, Tyler. It doesn’t matter what I tell you or even what you choose to believe…there’s always going to be this Neanderthal inside you that wants to claim me. Reclaim me, if necessary, and I thought here…” She slowed her movements, looking uncertain for the first time. “I thought if we played like this, it would be easier for you to let go. To satisfy that part of you that you don’t want to acknowledge. That part that you hide from. Because it’s a bigger slice of you than you think.”

As if to underscore her point, she scratched her fingernails down my stomach—hard—and my hand spanked her ass so fast that I barely knew what I was doing. She gave a little moan and ground herself down on me.

“See? You need this. And I need this. I’ll take you to every place I’ve ever been and let you fuck me there, so you can rewrite my history as your history, if you want,” she promised. “Let me give that to you.”

I looked at her in amazement. In gratitude. She was so astute and so giving and of course I hadn’t needed to watch out for her well-being. As always, she had both of us under control when she surrendered her control to me.

“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.

“Say yes. Say that you’ll finish the game.”

I’d been wrong. She wasn’t Salome right now. She was Esther, using her body to save her kingdom—our kingdom of two. And how could I act out my primal need to claim her knowing that? Knowing how generous and brave she was?

“It doesn’t feel right, to treat you like this…to claim you like some sort of property. And more importantly, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I want you to claim me like property,” she said, leaning to whisper in my ear. The change in position squeezed her cunt around my length and I sucked in a breath. “And if you hurt me, I’ll tell you. You trust me to say stop, and I’ll trust you to stop if I say it. Sound good?”

Fuck yes, it sounded good. It sounded too good to be true, but then again, that was my Poppy, a woman made like God himself had designed her for me. And maybe He had.

I decided to trust her. Trust Him.

Mind made up, I grabbed her thighs and stood, keeping her pelvis pinned to mine as I stepped over to the sofa. I kissed her—a soft, searing kiss—a reminder of how much I loved her before the rough part of me took over, which it did right after our mouths broke apart. I set Poppy down and flipped her over the arm of the sofa, so that her ass was higher than her head, and then notched the head of my dick in her entrance.