“Goodness. Breath-play it is, then. How unexpectedly edgy of you.” His smirk turned wry. “Exhibit A in The Crown vs. Zorah’s libido, I’d say.”
Case closed, damn it, I thought with an inner sigh—though I only muttered, “Great. So, you speak for the British Crown now?”
He made a yes-and-no gesture. “Eh... technically not since the mid-fifteen-hundreds. But in this instance, I’m falling back on it as a point of procedure.”
Ass, I groused in the privacy of my thoughts, though at least this time I had the presence of mind not to say it aloud. He was right, though. My nipples ached as badly as my clit, desperate for more than the fleeting brushes against his skin whenever I squirmed beneath him. At this point, I was pretty much on board with whatever it took to get more of his touch, pride be damned.
“Stop dunking me?” I asked, striving for what I hoped was a submissive tone.
He was silent for a moment, considering. “No,” he said eventually, “I don’t believe I will just yet. You see, it turns out I was right—after all the occasions over the past few weeks when I’ve wanted to put you across my knee and haven’t been able to, I really am finding this rather cathartic.”
The water closed over my head. I surfaced and snorted my airways clear.
“Please?” I tried.
“Hmm. Now, that’s a bit better,” he allowed. “Still not terribly convincing, though. Try harder. In fact, allow me to offer you a bit of added motivation.”
This time, his palm closed over my mouth and nose, pushing me all the way down to rest against the bottom. On the positive side, his hand formed enough of a seal that water didn’t immediately flood my nostrils. On the even more positive side, his other hand wormed between us, his fingers pinching and rolling my right nipple as he held me down.
Shit. That was... surprisingly hot, really.
The tradeoff was that he kept me pinned for several seconds instead of just one or two. And this time, when he let me surface, a light touch on my forehead kept me from doing more than craning my chin up to get my nose and mouth above the roiling eddies and waves from the jets.
“Pretty please?” I tried, casting the words into the invisible void above me.
A moment later, his hand covered the lower half of my face and I was on the bottom again. Seconds ticked by while the other nipple underwent the same torment between his clever fingers. He let go and I spluttered to the surface, once more prevented from lifting my head all the way out of the water.
“Pretty please with sprinkles on top?” I added tartly.
Damn. Even I could hear how snotty that sounded. Resigned, I sucked in a deep breath before his palm covered my mouth and nose, pressing me down to the bottom and holding me in place for a slow count of five, without any attention to my aching breasts.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” I complained after grabbing a quick gulp of air at the surface—even though in truth, I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to hear. I just wasn’t quite ready to give it to him yet.
Apparently, ignorance of the rules was no defense, based on how quickly I ended up at the bottom again. So I tried silence instead—also not a defense, as it turned out. I tried it three more times anyway, just for good measure. I did mention the part about stubbornness being pretty much the only tool in my emotional toolkit, right?
Mind you, all that my stubbornness got me was an extra few seconds progressively tacked onto my sentence, until I started to take the burn in my lungs seriously for the first time since we’d started.
Rans had me hemmed in right now, and I knew it. He really could keep this up—for hours, if necessary. I couldn’t, even if I did have good lung capacity, along with enough swimming experience and breath control that what he was doing was still firmly in ‘excitingly taboo’ territory rather than ‘I’m in physical danger’ territory.
I lay on the bottom, weighing my options as I counted the seconds until the restraining hand let me up. When it did, I stretched upward until I met the familiar finger on my forehead, which held me in the same ignominious position as the last few times. Only my nose and mouth poked up from the surface, leaving me unable to see or hear him as I spat out water and filled my lungs.
Well, fuck it then. In the end, we both wanted the same thing, didn’t we?
“Please... I want to suck your cock,” I said quietly. “Please let me have it now.”
For obvious reasons, I couldn’t hear if he said anything in reply, my ears too full of the sound of bubbling jets. With excruciating slowness, the finger on my forehead pressed me lower until water splashed right up to the edges of my lips and nostrils, taunting me with the imminent threat of another dunking—leaving me unsure if I should keep breathing while I still had the chance, or hold my breath in preparation. And what the hell was I planning on doing if my words still weren’t enough? What else could I offer him?
It was all too easy to picture myself after another few minutes of this treatment—begging shamelessly, and meaning it... suggesting increasingly more perverted and filthy things that he could do to me in exchange for mercy. And... shit. The idea made my sex pulse and clench greedily around nothing. Seriously, what was wrong with me? My nerves sang beneath the jets of water bubbling over my skin and the weight of Ran’s body pinning mine—helpless and bound as I waited for his judgment.
Rather than making good on his implied threat this time, he slid the thumb of his free hand against the seam of my lips and slipped it inside. I made a surprised noise
