Hard Way (30 page)

Because… She could always use those two little safe words.
Eight years.
Then she might as well kiss their marriage goodbye. She could rationalize it by saying it was a night of fun, just a sex game, but oh, she knew better. Giving in now was tantamount to giving up on them. This was about trust and being honest—with each other and with herself.

She didn’t want him to stop.

His face disappeared. She was blackness and nothingness. Eternity flashed inside her eyelids. She was more turned on than she’d ever been. Her body burned with fierce anticipation. Her pussy was warm and wet. She clenched her thighs together, but that only made the ache worse.

Liam’s voice swept out of the darkness like a velvet promise. “You can’t see anything.”

That same vow of honesty prompted her reply. “A tiny sliver at the bottom.”

He adjusted the blindfold until that slice of safety disappeared—not that light could keep her safe when he planned to take what he wanted. She was fully on board, or she wouldn’t have said a word about the last streak of light.

“You’re so pretty like this. Do you know that? My depraved girl. Do you like the way that feels? Being helpless?”

He trailed blunt nails from her collarbones, between her breasts, down to her pussy. He scratched over her labia. Another surge of wetness dampened the tops of her thighs.

Words were almost beyond her to form. She shook her head and clenched her knees together. “I don’t have to answer you.”

He smacked her again—only the tips of his fingers across her cheek. In the back of her burned-out brain, she wondered if he’d been gentler to keep the blindfold in place.

“That’s right. You don’t have to answer, because you’re anything I say you are.”

She tried to kick him. Failed. He pushed his fingers into her cunt, soaking them in her juices. How many fingers? She couldn’t tell. Then he pushed them in her mouth. Three, it turned out. She swallowed her own taste, which was slightly sweet like watered-down syrup.

He stood up, pulling away. She managed not to cry out. So helpless, she wanted his attention. That was the tradeoff.

More than that. She wanted Liam’s everything. His whole being, every part of him. That only happened in these moments, these chances, when they were raw and cruel—totally, completely themselves as they played the worst sort of make believe.

When he touched her ears, his fingers were cool. She flinched. Not that she had anywhere to go. The mattress held her still against the bite of the ropes.

He put something soft and cold against both her ears. A band went over the crown of her head. “Headphones?” she managed to croak. They were the industrial kind that covered the whole of her ear. Her voice sounded very far away.

At first there was silence. No answer from Liam. She clenched her eyes shut against the blackness of the blindfold, as if that small move might take the edge off a lack of control that was almost pain.

Then…a rush of sound. The sounds of people fucking. Anonymous noises.

It was the audio from a porn track.

Her mind’s eye was filled with moans and the cadence of wet flesh. Creaking bedsprings. Maybe there were more than two people, because she heard a man stroking his cock in a furious rhythm. He must be watching the couple fucking on the bed that squealed a rusty metal protest with every thrust. All three were breathing heavily.

Sunny’s own breathing spiraled into a low, slow moan, but for fuck’s sake, she couldn’t hear herself beyond the slightest hum in her bones. She fisted her hands and pulled against the straps.

She couldn’t feel Liam. He wasn’t touching her in any way.

He could be gone.

She could be alone.

She shook her head against the pillow. Her hair scattered over her breast in a soft tickle. She had the cool air, the steady pressure of her body on the mattress, the bite of the ropes and the caress of her hair. Otherwise, her sense of touch was being dictated as thoroughly as her hearing and sight.

The woman on the audio track cried out. Then came a grunt, followed by more, building—the distinctive gathering of a man’s orgasm.

Which one? The one who was fucking, or the one beating himself off?

She squeezed her thighs tighter. Her pussy lips slid and slipped. She bucked her hips, first randomly, then in time with the grunting man. Embarrassment made her stop, but the sounds kept assaulting her with images. How were their bodies arranged? Was the woman on top? Was he fucking her from behind? Was the man on his own in a distant corner, or was he leaning over them, ready to loose his come on their thumping bodies?

Sunny’s eyes prickled behind the blindfold with sudden tears. She drew in a fast, deep breath, trying to blow away the nerves that were eating her alive. She could enjoy this, even come to this, if she wasn’t so damn alone. All she could do was wriggle and listen and crave the release those anonymous bodies strove toward.

“Dash,” she said. “Where are you?”

God, she wasn’t even sure how loud she was talking. Was she yelling? Normal volume? The filthy soundtrack meant she only heard the pulse of their pleasure.

She shuddered on a rush of needy fear, riding high on sharp adrenaline.

“
Liam
. Are you there?”

The sex in her ears turned more violent. The woman shrieked as if in pain. Her next sound was cut off, suddenly gagged. Choked? Or forced to swallow a hard prick? One of the men growled. Strokes sped and slowed and changed—then spanking. Three rhythms competed for Sunny’s attention. Two cocks and one relentless hand. The woman’s muffled cries dipped into a long, throaty moan.

Sunny’s pussy clenched on nothingness. Christ, she
wanted
. She wanted Liam’s touch, his kiss. She wanted him to be as mean as the sounds in filling her mind with picture after picture of sex and need and sharp stings of pain. He could grab her with cruel hands, pinch her tight, make her shake.

Just not this lack. This
absence
.

She didn’t want anything that had to do with losing him.

All she had was the torment of listening to other people getting and giving what she craved.

Torment.

That’s what he’d promised. She’d been idiot enough to think it impossible.

She twisted against the ropes. Helpless. Useless. There was nothing to be gained from rubbing her ass across the body-warmed comforter. She clenched her thighs together against the ache centered in her cunt. No satisfaction, only the building pressure and pressure and
need
.

“Fuck, Liam. Where did you go?” She gulped. “You have to be here.
Right?
”

He wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t. She knew all the way down to her soul that he wouldn’t abandon her to the world. He was out there, near or far, dying of want too.

Her body bucked on that thought. No matter what this was doing to her… No matter how in control Liam must want to be… In his own way, he’d be twisting inside out as well.

She grinned and hoped he saw it. She arched her back so that cool air would blow under her sweat-damp thighs and over her tight nipples. Again she let her hips fuck the air, but she wasn’t embarrassed anymore. She wanted him as mindless as she.

This was absolutely crazy, if for no other reason than she would keep this soundtrack, the one she already thought of as
hers
, and come to it time and again. She’d have it memorized one day, timing her orgasm with theirs.

At the moment, she could only listen and wait. The grunting, fucking men were losing control. The spanking faltered, then stopped altogether. She could picture them now. The woman on all fours, with the man’s hands digging into her hips. Moans and groans and cussing as one after the other strangled on the unmistakable sounds of coming. The woman screamed her pleasure.

Sunny pulled against the ropes.

Where
was
he? What was he doing? Maybe he was sitting in the corner, on the leather couch. Watching her.

Fucking hell, maybe he was stroking his cock. She liked that one. Her imagination was in overdrive. Behind that pitch-black blindfold, she found the image of Liam, perfectly dressed, with his long, hard prick pulled free through his fly. His hand was wrapped around his shaft, but unlike the guy in the porno, he’d be stroking slowly. So slowly. He would enjoy his view of her, the things he’d done to her, the way he’d turned her into the begging slut he’d threatened.

Two seconds of silence between tracks caught her attention. She held her breath to listen, trying to calm the heavy pulse in her ears.

Liam’s voice growled in her headphones.

“Did you hear that, Sunny?” His voice was low and hard. Completely unrelenting. “That couple fucking? And some man fucking her face? That’s the way we sound when we play these games. When I take you. When I
rape
you. I can never decide which man I want to be first. Fucking your pussy or that beautiful mouth. Doesn’t matter, because I can have you both ways. I’ve come to this track three times, and every time it’s because she screams like you. I love the way you scream.”

There was no getting away from him. It wasn’t the same as being spoken to. At least then she’d have some sense of where he was. She could judge his intent by watching his hawk-sharp eyes. This way, she still had no idea. No clue.

She all but sobbed with a clamp of arousal. She was soaking wet. Her clit pulsed to match the fast beat of her heart.

“I’m so fucking turned on making this track for you,” he continued, spilling his throaty words directly into her brain. “I’m imagining you tied to a bed in some anonymous hotel room. How bad you’ll need me by the time you hear what I’m saying. How… Hell, maybe I’ll come all over your face and walk away. Because you like me to use you that way.”

The touch at her pussy came from nowhere. She screeched her surprise. Cold metal tucked between her lips. A smooth shaft rested against her clit. She cried out again. Liam didn’t touch her anywhere else, only inserted the vibrator in her wet cunt.

His recorded voice kept going in her ears. “This whole night, I don’t care if you come. It doesn’t matter to me. You are three holes to me, my pretty whore. I’ll fuck you however and whenever and for however long I like. You’ll be begging for it before we’re through, because you want to let everything go. You only have to lie there. Be a cunt and a mouth and an ass. Be mine.”

He turned on the toy. The buzz was subtle, barely more than a tickle, but sensation washed across her frayed nerves.

It was too much. Too much to hold back.

Sunny screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dash nearly doubled over with lust.

Between watching Sunny’s reactions, he checked the countdown on the MP3 player. To say he was hyperaware of the audio track’s length was to say he was merely turned on. He was insane with want. Nothing she did escaped his notice. Jerks and wiggles and thrusts, and the noises she made—noises she might not even realize were pulsing from her throat. Once, she smiled and he would’ve burned down the hotel to know why.

He thought he’d be able to touch himself. He was a fighter pilot, for chrissake, and a man trained in a half-dozen martial arts. His self-control was innate. Yet the mere action of unbuckling his belt and unzipping his fly had been enough to tempt him toward orgasm. He didn’t want to lazily stroke his cock. He wanted to fuck.

So he’d waited. Watched. Drove himself as crazy as Sunny was becoming.

Did she know that, somewhere deep down? That for all his power and his plans, he would’ve stopped on a dime had she revealed the least hint of real doubt? Their safe words equaled blindfold off and ropes undone. End of story.

End.

He hated that word.

With two minutes left, he pried himself off the leather sofa and stripped. Nothing worked right—not his fingers or his hands. His feet were numb and his knees were made of wet cement. Finally he bared himself in the warm-hued hotel room. Those same hues painted her skin in golden tones as the light glittered across streaks of sweat on her stomach.

Her pussy was gleaming. His mouth watered, wanting to taste her and suck away those sweet juices. He’d done that to her. Shaking and tense, he watched her for a single minute unlike any he would ever experience again.

Purity.

Beauty.

Freedom.

All of his waiting and his planning… This was the culmination of a dark honesty in his soul. This was the shadow he’d never been able to stare in the face.

When he exhaled, he let go of the pretense. His nerves calmed. She’d been saying for weeks that she wanted the real him. This, this right here, was him. He had total control of his wife. It wasn’t real or feasible or
fair
, but it was an honest, primal urge he would never be able to repress. Here, he could make order out of chaos.

She’d been the one to encourage him—hell, to fight him and dare him to bring the darkness into light. In doing so, she’d revealed how deeply she wanted to be owned, down to every sensation.

With forty-five seconds left, he inserted the vibrator in her pussy. The steady hands he’d been proud of earlier were extinct creatures. He closed his eyes to hold the moment in his mind forever, counting the fifteen seconds that would become as much a part of him as bones and blood.