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  He was furious, as angry as she had ever seen a man before. To see a young, powerful male in that state was not only impressive, but terrifying, especially since she had made sure all that rage was centered on herself. She watched his eyes calculate his next move and knew he would take her down with it. She wasn’t that fast in these heels, or that strong.

  She lashed out again, and he took the sting of the braided rope on the forearm, twisting his wrist so he coiled his flesh in its grasp and gripped the weapon in his fingers. He ripped it out of her hand in one brutal and effortless move.

  She didn’t back away, but watched him charge forward. There was no time for doubt now. She dropped her arm to her side, and let the lion spring upon her.

  They hit the stone floor, with her under his hard, roused body. His knee jammed between her knees, spreading her to insinuate his body between her legs. The dress rode up to her waist, as her thighs were pushed up to accommodate his muscular torso. His cock teased at her wet folds, the blunt head a breath away from the decision, as unbearable a taunt to his virility as anything her words could provoke. She smelled the musky oil on his body, felt its slippery touch along the insides of her open legs.

  She did not struggle, or move. Lauren could not hide the pulse leaping at her throat, the simple animal response of bringing the full force of an enraged creature upon her, but she kept her gaze on his, tried to remember how to breathe.

  He was breathing hard enough for both of them, a harsh, rhythmic sound in his throat. The gray eyes were concentrated slits, his jaw flexing with the emotions he wanted to exercise upon her. His bruising grip left her wrist and his hand came up into the field of her vision. His fingers closed on her throat. They were trembling.

  It was a silent, tense moment. If she closed her eyes, the heat coming off that sleek male body and the need of his cock pressing into her could become the searing, greedy touch of hellfire.

  She didn’t close her eyes, but she did replay the memory of the last few moments in her mind. Then she slowed it down, replayed it again. Any fear or doubt she had left her.

  Being thrown down on cold stone tile should have knocked the wind out of her, bruised her skin, jarred the bone structure beneath it. Any or all of those things would have happened if, when they had fallen to the ground, he had not caught her about the back with one arm, slowed their descent so he had taken the brunt of their impact on his forearm. As a result she did not have a bruise or mark on her.

  They hadn’t missed the exit, though it had been a near thing.

  She cocked her head, her brow raised in silent question. His arms continued to hold her, his body quivering with his need, but even so close to her moist gates that her wetness was pooling against his heat, he would not push through that barrier, though the desire to do so would have been unbearable to resist to almost anyone.

  Slowly, her lips curved in a knowing, gentle smile.

  “You see?” she said softly, raising her own hand now to touch his rigid, suffering face. “You can’t do it, Josh. You can’t take me against my will. Not just because you’re a submissive at heart. Not just because I didn’t tell you that you could. You’re a decent human being. You’re a good man, who got his mind fucked over by a woman who has problems. Just like Jonathan did with me.”

  His brow furrowed, the rage dying back, but the pain still in his eyes.

  “It’s that simple, then?”

  She would have reached up, stroked his head, if she were not afraid any movement would betray her weakness, and she would pull him into her before it was time. Instead, she turned her head so her cheek pressed into his.

  “If we let it be.” She eased her legs down a bit, then felt safe enough to stroke through the strands of his hair and run a finger tip along the side of his nose, under one confused eye.

  “You’re not a Dom, not a Master, Josh,” she said. “You’ve never even been close. You’re a submissive. A gorgeous, incredibly sensual submissive that any Mistress in her right mind would cherish forever. You were doing as your Mistress told you to do, and she used you cruelly. I won’t let you blame yourself for anything, Josh, except maybe for not recognizing it sooner, because you are an intelligent man. Your only crime is in denying your own worth, because she made you doubt yours. A Mistress doesn’t do that, Josh.

  “She stripped you down, made you vulnerable, exploited and brought out the aggression in you that’s in all wild male animals,” she smiled, raking his bare chest lightly with her nails and enjoying the flare it raised in his eyes, the instinctive jump in his cock that caught her breath in her throat. “But then,” she sobered, gentled her touch, “instead of cherishing that vulnerability, turning it into pleasure for both of you, she used it to abuse you.”

  “I thought,” he murmured, his throat thick, “like you did. I thought it was the games, the games that screwed us up.”

  “Games can,” she agreed. “You play for pleasure, not for power, but power is such a base element of playing that it’s easy to make it go bad, in the wrong hands. But I think…” and she thought of Jonathan, and knew her next words were the truth she had been struggling to understand herself, “Dominant and submissive exist in all relationships, whether they role play it or not. What protects people when they play is love, and the trust that comes with it, when it’s real.”

  A sigh raised and spread that delightful expanse of chest against her breasts, and he laid his forehead down on hers, a gesture of tender weariness that undid her. She stroked his hair, cupped the back of his head to hold him there while she pressed a series of small kisses along his jawline, and her arm crept around him and held as he closed his eyes tightly and the pain shuddered through him and through her, binding them and cleansing them both.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured at last, nuzzling her cheek.

  “Well, you should be,” she slanted a smile at him, her body aching for him, but her heart soothed by the ease she felt relaxing his muscles. “What kind of man treats his Mistress this way?” She traced his bottom lip, “You’ve been very, very, bad.”

  He chuckled, but his eyes were serious as he framed her face in his hands. “You risked too much. I could have really hurt you.”

  She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t. I just knew it.”

  “You should have stopped. You really pissed me off.”

  “That was the plan. And,” she gave him an impish look. “I couldn’t.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  She tilted her head up, saw Marcus sitting on the lowest step of the dais and eyeing them with an appealing combination of relief, confusion and arousal. She also noticed he held a police baton in his hands. He had been ready to intervene if needed, if she had been wrong.

  “Ye of little faith,” she teased.

  He rolled his eyes, made a dismissive wave at her. “Not a doubt in my mind,” he said dryly.

  “Tell him why I didn’t stop, Marcus.”

  The art dealer sighed. “You never said anything about butterflies, you moron.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lauren could not prevent a reflexive gasp and arch as Josh chuckled, vibrating his semi-erect member against her. His eyes darkened and he moved, just slightly. “Something I can do for you…Mistress?”

  Her rebellious submissive. She managed a suitably unaffected look, though her body fairly screamed an affirmative answer. “Many, many things. But first, your punishment. Marcus must put you back on that cross.” Her finger traced a path, albeit a trembling one, down the center of his chest, “I intend to torture you.”

  “What if I disobey?” he leaned down, bit her throat, and she moaned, gripped his shoulders.

  “I would have to punish you severely,” she drew the last word out several more syllables than proper English required, as he rubbed his knee along the inside of her thigh. So close…

  She caught his hair and tugged, hard, eliciting a yelp, and made him meet her eyes. “You will obey me, Josh, because I am your Mistress. Now, get
up, and go back to the cross, because I want to see you walk that fine ass of yours back across the room and lick my lips over it. And,” she didn’t ease her grip, “you’ll straighten my dress first, with your teeth, so you’ll smell how much pleasure you bring to me.”

  “Cruel bitch,” he said, with a smile that trembled at the edges and twisted her heart. He eased up, leaving her missing his weight, but quickly drove that from her mind.

  He bent to her thigh, running his tongue over the taut muscle and making her squirm before he took the hem in his teeth and tugged. His chin and jaw scraped her sensitive skin, as he went back and forth, to the outside of each side of her hips. The wet heat of his mouth fastened on her skin here and there until he had the skirt worked over their flare and tapering down along her thighs. She rolled to one hip to help him, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare ass, and enjoyed his huffed, frustrated breath.

  When he rose, his cock was fully recovered, and it was all she could do not to touch herself to relieve some of the aching pressure. He looked at her with such yearning, she almost broke again, but she managed to make an imperious gesture, an order to go back toward the cross. He nodded, acknowledging the command, but with a deferential dip of his head, he bent, slid his arms under her, and lifted her to her feet, straightening the dress with respectful hands, smoothing the fabric from waist to thigh. As she looked up at him, unable to tear her eyes away from his face, he focused on her hair, tucking it back up into the pins she had used when she slicked it back from her face. Taking care of her.

  He held her face in his hands a moment, his thumbs along the jumping pulse and fragile bones of her neck. He did not say anything, but Lauren was not aware of silence. A hundred words and emotions were expressed in that look. She thought it might be the first expression on Man’s face when he was first created and the whole world was a new place, with so many mysteries and wonders, places of dark and light.

  He released her, turned and walked back across the room, his body moving gracefully. He stopped before the cross and hesitated only a moment before he allowed himself to be once again stretched out and strapped in. It made her eyes sting, his trust.

  However, sentiment was swallowed by even stronger emotions as she watched the process of restraining him. The adjustment of hip, the tightening of his stomach, the flexing of muscles as his arms were extended. Marcus buckling the straps over his spread, muscular thighs, framing his arousal. She had him stop before he restrained the neck and forehead. She wanted Josh to be able to move his head this time.

  “Cock harness, my lady?” her Egyptian assistant queried, his dark hair whispering along the white silk of his robe as he turned his head toward her.

  “No, not this time. I intend to make use of it.”

  She came back across the floor to stand before Josh, strutting, slow, her hips swaying with her steps. His eyes drank in the sway of her body, the quiver of her breasts, the hard points of her nipples. Last time he had been blindfolded. Now he did not have to imagine.

  “Ten lashes, I think,” she tapped her foot. “And if you handle that well, then you’ll get a reward. Do you think that’s fair?”

  His hands closed into fists again. The shadows still lurked in his eyes, the residue of opening a festering wound to bleed, and she intended to wash it clean once and for all with pure, healthy lust.

  “Ask me for them, Josh,” she murmured. “Tell me you want my punishment.”

  Josh nodded. “Anything to please you, Mistress.” And his lips curved up in a way that speared straight to her vitals. “Anything.”

  “Insolent creature. Perhaps I’ll make it fifteen.”

  He was hard as a rock when she landed the first blow, licking the area just above his hipbone. The shuddering reaction of his skin was almost the same as if she had caressed him.

  He kept his eyes locked on her, and she didn’t make him cast his eyes down. She liked to see the fire build, passion destroying pain. The shadows were being chased away by an excruciating combination of pleasure and pain, a tug-of-war that was bringing a flush to his face and chest with every strike. It was as alluring as the red glow she was bringing to the skin on his thighs and ass as she switched from one side of the cross to the other. The whip snapped, pulling blood to the surface of sensitized skin.

  Strike fourteen, and he was panting, his eyes filled with the light of the wild animal again, only violence wasn’t what he had in mind this time, she was sure. She caught the rattail end of the whip around his shaft on the last stroke, tugged before she loosed it. Even as he jumped, a male, defensive reaction, fluid leaked from the tip. He was ready to detonate, every muscle quivering and possessed by the savagery brought by mindless desire, and she had brought it to him.

  The thought of that was almost as stimulating to her as the thought of what she wanted to do with that cock.

  “What do you think of our beautiful man, Marcus?” she asked, coming closer. Josh strained against his bonds toward her.

  Marcus was watching Josh, almost as fascinated as the bound man was with her.

  “He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Mmmm. Would you like to fuck him, Marcus?”

  That snapped both men’s attention to her. Lauren stepped up to Josh, aware of the charged tension that filled the air between him and Marcus. She laid her hand along Josh’s cheek, made him look into her eyes. “What do you say, Josh? I’ve always wanted to ride a man with another man inside him.” she leaned in, licked his jawline and let him strain to nibble at her temple. “I think it would feel absolutely incredible.”

  Marcus drew close to Josh’s shoulder, meeting her gaze over the tanned curve of skin and muscle. His hand touched Josh’s nape, a whisper brush down his spine. A shiver ran through Josh, but it did not appear to be one of revulsion. He brushed his lips against her face and she let herself be nuzzled as Marcus bent, and gently kissed the line of Josh’s shoulders where neck and collar bone met.

  “You must answer your Mistress, Josh,” Marcus commanded quietly, and Lauren felt her already warm blood stir as she heard some of the Master enter Marcus’s voice. “Tell her what you desire.”

  Josh turned his head. Lauren’s hand lay on his bare chest, playing there, her hips rubbing inside his thighs, brushing his excited groin.

  Josh met Marcus’s gaze and something deep, lingering, was considered. “If it will bring my Mistress pleasure,” his attention came back to Lauren, “then I want Marcus to fuck me.”

  There was still too much shuttered behind those gray eyes. She curled her hand on his neck, tightened her grip.

  “It will bring me pleasure, Josh, only if it brings you pleasure,” she responded. “Do you want Marcus inside of you?”

  Josh gave a half-deprecating laugh. In a slight motion that took both his captors by surprise, he laid his forehead briefly against Marcus’s close temple. “I believe he always has been, in one fashion or another.”

  Despite the seriousness of the moment, Lauren felt her cheek muscles quiver at the utter shock that crossed Marcus’s normally self-possessed features. Josh might have appreciated it as well, except the admission had flustered him, and he had lowered his gaze, a light flush rising in his cheeks.

  The shyness, and deference, stoked the fire in both of his admirers. Marcus’s hand came up, cupped Josh’s jaw, his thumb making a firm stroke over the other man’s cheek, and when Josh’s eyes lifted, Marcus pressed a brief kiss on the other man’s lips, his brilliant green eyes locked with storm gray. No tongue, no physical outburst that might send Josh into a panicked retreat. She had to admire Marcus’s restraint. After such an admission, she would have wanted to gobble him up whole.

  Marcus lowered his hand, caught hers, and drew it forward. He curled her fingers around Josh’s cock and the man groaned at the squeezing pressure of her heated skin.

  “I’d like to see you stroke him while I prepare myself for our beautiful boy, if it suits you, my lady.” he said. Not a command, not from
one Dom to another, but a request she was more than willing to grant.

  She nodded. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered, touching Josh’s jaw, and turned her back to him, bending over the close chair. She coiled the whip on the seat. When she straightened and turned, Josh’s eyes lifted.

  “I could almost see your pussy,” he murmured. “I’m glad you came to the island.”

  She smiled at the disjointed thoughts and touched his face, his neck.

  “Me, too.” She ran her hand along his arm, over the three straps that held it there above his head. “Are you comfortable?”

  He chuckled, glanced down. “Not entirely.”

  She wrapped her other hand around him, and slipped back into a Mistress’s role with the ease and joy as if she had been born in a dungeon with whip in hand.

  “Good,” she murmured, rubbing her breasts against his bare chest, drawing his eyes to the gather and stretch of the fabric as the full curves lifted to accommodate the pressure. “Do you like being uncomfortable for me, Josh? Do you like being so hard so long for me?”

  “If it makes my Mistress wet to see me so,” he made a futile attempt to catch her ear in his teeth when she rubbed her cheek against his.

  “Bad boy,” she chuckled, giving his cock a hard squeeze that brought something close to a whimper from him. “But I think you know your Mistress too well. We’ll have to punish you for that, won’t we, Marcus?”

  Marcus had emerged from the dressing room with a green glass bottle. His lithe movements toward them shifted the open white silk robe, emphasizing and framing his chest, hard stomach and even harder cock, clearly molded by the soft material of the gathered pants.