Beyond Shame

“Oh…” Even imagining it tightened her body. Bound, helpless. Open to him. Trust, again, and she offered it by smiling as she toyed with her shirt, edging it up just far enough to flash skin at him. “Are you going to teach me about make-up sex?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to show you what it means to be mine, with nothing held back.”

His. No shame, just anticipation and a thrilling tremor of something almost like nerves. Not fear, just the understanding that Jasper would push her beyond herself, beyond anything she’d known.

And she’d love it.

Noelle closed the distance between them and rose on her toes to kiss him. “Do I get to be bad?”

He licked her lip and wove a hand in her hair. “If you’re willing to pay the price for it.”

Even that was sweet heat, the softness of his mouth and the roughness of his hand a beautiful contrast. “What’s the price?”

Velvet and leather brushed the back of her hand, and he drew the open cuffs up her arm. “Say yes and find out.”

“Yes.” She pressed closer, rubbed her tight nipples against his chest, and groaned her assent. “Yes.”

Jasper dropped the cuffs on the bed and kissed her, already moving his hands over her clothes. Pushing up her shirt to meet her waiting hands, and then moving on to the button on her jeans. They had to pull apart to get her tank top over her head, but her lips found his again as she twisted her arms behind her back to open her bra.

He shoved her jeans and panties down, and for a giddy moment Noelle imagined hard, fast sex, Jasper slamming her into the wall and plowing into her, but she should have known better.

Jasper always took his time.

Her back hit the bed, and he leaned over to strip off her shoes. “Second thoughts?”

“Maybe I’m wishing I’d brought my new jewelry…”

He yanked off her jeans and panties and dropped them on the floor. “You don’t need it. I want you just like this. Ink and leather.”

She inched up the bed, squirming when he loomed over her. He blocked out the room when he did, his broad shoulders filling her vision. “So is that what you want me to wear to Dallas’s next party? Cuffs and ink?”

“We’ll see.” He buckled a band of leather around one thigh, then the other, and waited for her to hold out her wrists.

So serious. Biting her lower lip to hide her smile, Noelle moved her arms into place, savoring the soft slide of velvet as he buckled the cuffs.

“Now you’re stuck.” Jasper teased the tip of one finger over her hipbone before twining his fingers with hers and lifting her arms up and out. With those cuffs tethered to the ones on her thighs, the movement drew her legs apart. Wide open.

She drew in a ragged breath, tensing in spite of herself as his gaze drifted over her. That first thrill still hit her, the vulnerability of being bared to him, the illicitness and the pleasure. “I don’t mind.”

Her thighs trembled under his touch, even more when he bent his head, his beard tickling as he dropped openmouthed kisses to her skin. Slow, hot, the heat of his tongue and the scratch of his beard. She tried to press her thighs together and growled when the short chains snapped tight. “Jas…”

He ignored the plea as he licked his way to the top of her thigh. “You’re wet.”

“Of course I am.” His breath ghosted over her, and she choked on another moan. Maybe if she begged with all the dirty words, he’d forget whatever torment he had planned and touch her already. “I’m so wet. Please, can I have your—your tongue in my pussy?”

“No.” He spread her wide and circled the tip of his tongue lightly around her clit instead. Pleasure jolted up her spine, lifting her hips even as she cried out.

“That’s a start,” he whispered, then began to explore her pussy, tracing every fold, slow and firm. She was panting in minutes, tugging restlessly against the leather cuffs as he coaxed her body to painful, trembling arousal.

But not over the edge. Noelle raised her head and lost herself in the sight of him, bent over her, so intense, his fingers parting her, opening her for the lash of his tongue.

Erotic overload. Groaning, she dug her head back against the bed. “I’m never going to get to pay the price if you won’t let me be bad.”

Jasper laughed and turned his head. Bit her thigh. “This is the price. On the edge, Noelle, for as long as I damn well please.”

She tried to close her legs and only managed to crush her knees against his shoulders. “Oh, God.”

Again, deeper this time, his tongue thrusting inside her before dipping back out to flick her clit. She might have come then, if he’d kept up the pressure, but he retreated as she started to tense, easing back only to begin the slow exploration again.

And again.

The third time his tongue darted away from her clit just before release broke over her, she lost control of her tongue. With pleasure a throbbing, frustrating ache, the words barely registered as they tripped from her lips, begging and hoarse. “Let me come, please… I’ll do anything, anything if you just—just—”

He flipped her onto her stomach, her cheek pressed against the blanket as the click of a buckle and the slither of leather broke through the fevered haze of blood pounding in her ears. One breath, two, and then his belt cracked against her skin, drowning pleasure in a momentary sting of pain.

Her body reeled at the sudden shock. It hurt more than his hand or the crop had, and Noelle sucked in a confused breath only to lose it in a groan as the belt hit her again, burning a stripe of fire across her ass. It was like the tattoos, sharp pain that built into something else, something hotter that left her squirming.

The third stroke drew everything tight. The fourth made her cry out. One more agonizing slap of leather and the throbbing of her blood in her ears expanded. She was throbbing everywhere, pulsing and tensing, clenching, and it had built so inexorably that she could do nothing but groan as heat burst through her, the sweet relief of an orgasm so intense she tried to muffle her screams against the blankets.

The sting faded into a warmth that unfurled slowly, an afterburn both soothed and urged on by Jasper’s hands rubbing over her back and ass. He bent low, his now-naked chest pressed against her skin as he nudged her hair aside with his nose and murmured into her ear. “Beautiful.”

She shivered and rubbed her cheek against his, still floating. “You like me like this?”

His teeth scraped her earlobe. “I love you like this.”

Love.

Drunk on the word, she laughed. “Would you love me with my lips around your cock?”

“Yes.” Jasper rose and pulled her upright to sit on the edge of the bed. He shed his jeans and gripped his cock. “Want it? Take it.”

She started to reach for him and laughed again when her wrists snapped to a halt, tethered by chains she’d almost forgotten. He watched her, one large hand wrapped around his shaft, and at another time it might be beautiful to watch him stroke himself to release.

Today—today it was her turn to torment.

Flicking her gaze up to his, she leaned forward and extended her tongue, touching only the tip of it to the flared crown. A slow lick brought the taste of him into her, salty and musky and intense. “Like this?”

He urged her mouth wide with his thumb on her jaw. “Open up, sweetheart.”

She obeyed—but not without a teasing retort. “You love to tell me that.”

“Hell yeah.” Gripping her hair, he teased the head of his cock past her lips, over her tongue…then deeper. Over and over, pausing to let her lick his cock as he groaned.

His next advance drove him against the back of her throat, and his fingers tightened on her skull, gentle but unyielding steel holding her in place as she struggled to relax, to ignore her body’s instinctive response and savor the darker one, the should-be-shameful pleasure to be had in submitting to his whims.

She choked—gagged—and he eased back with a shudder. “Again,” he commanded, but he didn’t thrust forward. He waited for her to come to him, cupping her head as she took him as deep as she could.

Not all the way, not this time. And as if she’d proved her willingness by coming to him, his fingers tightened.