Page 41 of Unbind

I’m waiting for her to come to her senses, to slap my hand away and push off the wall and call time on this thing we’re doing, but she doesn’t.

I’ve never touched a woman quite so little and been quite so overcome. This is so much less than when she was crashing. When I forced my fingers inside her mouth and rubbed at her gums and stroked her hair and held her upright. It’s so little.

And so much.

I allow myself the merest downward tug of her lip with my fingertip before I withdraw it, watching with something approaching reverence as it springs back into place. I’m so hard I should be thinking only with my dick, yet I’ve never felt so present. So grounded.

This ballerina corset is a frame showcasing the mastery of her bone structure to perfection. I settle the tip of my index finger in the pale hollow that marks the centre of her clavicle, noting how perfectly it fits, before taking both hands and trailing all my fingers along her clavicle so they form a fan. My skin, still tanned from Miami a few weeks ago, is dark against hers. My fingers look huge. The heels of my hands hover over those pointed little nipples.

I flatten both hands against her skin, slowly, slowly, and I grind their heels over the hard buds. The effect on her is instant. She shuts her eyes, eyelashes fluttering and diamanté arcs glittering on her lids.

‘Oh my God,’ she whimpers.

‘Natalie.’

She opens her eyes. She’s teetering on the knife edge ofdesire and perceived bad decisions. Not merely bad decisions, but surrender. I’m fairly sure surrender to me would feel to her like the most shameful capitulation to enemy forces—unless I make it worth her while.

‘Everything that happens from here is for you,’ I tell her, and my dick twitches angrily at this subjugation of its needs. ‘Do you understand? All I’ve wanted to do since I first laid eyes on you is make you feelextraordinary.’ My voice is so deep it rasps on that final word. ‘For God’s sake, take this moment for yourself.’

I sweeten my plea with a firm grind of the heels of my hands against nipples so tautly pebbled I swear they could lacerate this chiffon.

Her eyes roll back in her head. ‘Okay,’ she whispers.

‘Okay, what?’

‘Don’t make me say it.Please.’

And suddenly I understand: words that for me would mean consent would for her mean defeat.

‘Do you have a safe word?’ I say instead, and she looks blank. She’s admitted she doesn’t come in here—usually—so of course she won’t have a safe word. ‘You can tell me to stop anytime. I promised you I won’t lose control. This is all for you.’ I pause. ‘But I need you to take this top off first and show me these pretty little tits so I can give them the attention they need.’

‘I’m not taking my top off for you,’ she says as if surprised, and it strikes me that this brain of hers is still lagging far behind her body.

‘I think you are.’ I keep my gaze on her face as I slide my hands down and roll my fingers over her nipples, pressing them as hard as I can through the fabric.

In my peripheral vision, her hands flutter uselessly ather sides as her face contorts inches from mine. ‘You just want to boss me around. You want to prove a point.’

I don’t lessen the pressure of my fingers. ‘I promise you, the only points I want to prove are that I’m not the only one in this room with a red-hot attraction and that I can make you feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life. It would be my privilege to show you what your body is capable of, if you let yourself loosen up enough to allow it.

‘And I’d boss you around all day long if I could get away with it, you sweet little thing, but I swear to you, if you let me take charge for the next hour or so you’ll be coming so hard around whichever of my body parts you like that you won’t give a flying fuck about point-scoring. Now, how does this thing come off?’

23

NATALIE

Iignore his presumptuous question and make one more half-hearted, spat-out attempt to talk myself out of this, as if every moment of deflection will lessen the burden of my inevitable sins.

‘You only want me because your ego needs to prove you can conquer any woman you like, especially one who despises you.’

‘And you want me because you’re far too intelligent to underestimate the mind-melting power of a good hate fuck,’ he says evenly, those long, clever fingers rubbing at my nipples through layers of pleated silk chiffon and satin.

God, that’s coarse. Even coarser than the way his fingers are abrading my nipples. The mere suggestion of a fuck with him, the pistons of his dick and the cinching of my internal muscles driven not by love but by something far headier, far more base, has those very muscles cramping enough that I shift my hips involuntarily forward into thin air. His hardness isn’t touching me, but it’s as difficult to ignore as it would be if he was naked.

‘Nobody’s fucking anyone,’ I say in a voice that’s despicably breathy.

‘If you say so,’ he says, still in that mature, tolerant voice that makes me want to slap him, even if the strain visible on his gorgeous face is truly gratifying. ‘Anyway, you’re wrong. I don’t want you because you hate me, Natalie.’ He speaks my name like a caress. ‘I want youdespiteyou hating me. That’s a big difference. But I’m not under any illusions here. I’ll take any crumb you’re willing to throw my way tonight, even if it’s the privilege of my tongue in your cunt while you disgorge every obscenity you’ve been too well-bred to voice before now.’

He has no business being this articulate and filthy and persuasive with such a sizeable proportion of his blood flow having left his brain. But the urgency of his words and the force of his visuals and the supplication in those astonishing eyes are witchcraft.

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