Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 (14 page)

“Stephanie, this is not simply to humiliate you.” Though of course it would, and I
loved
that. “I need to know you can obey orders. After the stunt you pulled today, I
really
need to see that in spades. You’re going to kneel and crawl under the table and eat your food from the plate we give you. Jodie? Put the plate down.”

She picked up the plate and slid it onto the floor just before our feet.

Stephanie sucked her lip in. An indecisive frown decorated her brow.

Make it a little easier?
“But first, come here to me. Jodie kicked you and I see a bruise on your stomach. I need to make sure you’re okay.” I beckoned.

She took a step toward me.

Yes!

One more step, girl, just one, and then I have you in the palm of my fucking hand
.

Breathe. The man is being reasonable, for once, isn’t he?

Be calm. He hasn’t said he’d do more than gag me if I talk or, or if I stick a damned fork in his leg.

I stared at him. After putting out his hand, he’d sat back and was just waiting again. Like a crocodile in a pool waiting for a victim.
And I’m standing here naked, getting, admit it, wet, thinking of him touching me, or even near me
.

I couldn’t deny it. Something about this whole stupid, upside-down situation had triggered my most disgusting desires. Didn’t mean I liked this, though. I was simply reacting like Pavlov’s dog—dribbling at the smell of a man. Gah. This was as welcome as having hot dreams about some random guy on the street who then turns around and gets all up close and personal. Not welcome. Full stop.

But…standing in front of him was better than groveling under the table. So I stood there naked before him and I let him put his hands, ever so gently, on my hips while he examined the bruise on my right side. When he prodded it, I hissed. Though I swayed, it wasn’t from the pain. How close he was to me, down there. The steady look he gave me invoked even more heat below.

You just did not hold someone like that, so intimately, unless you knew them well. But I had no idea what to do.

I was certain he knew the effect he was having. The bulge in his pants said I was affecting him as much as he was me.

“Thank you, Steph. It looks sore but not bad. You’ll live.”

I bit back a thank you. When he used those same hands of his to urge me to kneel, like some hypnotized rabbit, I did exactly that.

I wasn’t staying there inches away from his cock. Self-conscious, aroused, and ready to run for the door just to get away from his masculine presence, I crawled under the table. I tried not to display more of my sex than I already had and kept my legs together. Embarrassment and horniness wrestled for upper position in my head.

If I couldn’t escape from them, what in the world was I going to do? Mucking around at a party when you could go home afterward and laugh about it was completely different from this continuous assault on my sexuality. I was a person not a place for Klaus to put his cock or Jodie to—

Okay. Face it, I already liked Jodie. I wasn’t sure how much of all this was purely because Klaus was telling her what to do, but I liked her. If it had just been her and me, I’d have been sold. I’d have jumped into bed with her and I would have…I would have done almost anything. Wrestling with Jodie in bed would be glorious fun. But again, this was different…wasn’t it?

A strange thought bumped its way uppermost in my head. I had tried to get into her bed all those years ago, and I’d been unsuccessful. She’d shown no curiosity about me at all. Now though, it was almost scary how intent she was. Not as scary as Klaus, but then who would be?

A scenario played out on the inside of my eyelids—I imagined her going down on me. I’d never think of a shower the same way from now on.

I sighed and stared at the plate with the small pile of Chinese food. Beef and black bean? It smelled delicious. I was hungry but using my fingers would be giving in. No. This much I could do. I’d starve if I had to. Sucking up food with my tongue or fingers was the bloody last thing I was doing. No fucking way.

For ten minutes, I listened blackly to the sound of them eating and stared at their feet. The ting and scrape of cutlery against china made me glower even more. At least they left me alone. I was rearranging my legs and finding a more comfy place on the chair behind me to lean, when Jodie spoke up.

“You need to eat, Steph.”

A trick. I wasn’t allowed to talk, so I couldn’t answer. I practiced making subtle rude gestures instead, hiding them under my other hand. I wasn’t stupid.

When Klaus leaned down and looked at me, I jerked. Fuck. Like a sea monster arriving in your swimming pool. Go the fuck away.

“If you won’t eat by yourself… Come here.” Then he put his hand down and grabbed my hair in a grip tight enough to make me want to bite him.

I emerged from under the table shuffling on my knees, making
ow, ow, ow
noises and glaring.

“I think we should make this young lady consume some food.” Klaus studied me. I glared some more back at him. Not talking was hard. It wasn’t that I wanted to obey him; it was that I didn’t want to give him an excuse to punish me.

“Yes, you need to eat, Steph.” The softer, rational voice of Jodie made me relax a little and lower my gaze to Klaus’s leg. “Can you let her go, Klaus? She might sit on your lap to eat?”

What!

“Good idea.” Then he hauled me up there. Within seconds I found myself sitting on the man’s lap, without clothes on, and with Jodie smirking at me from the other chair. His forearm fastened across below my breasts as he adjusted how I sat, shifting me higher on his lap.

This was going too far. I fumed, wanting to smack someone. At the last second. I remembered what to do, and patted his leg.

“You can speak, Steph.” Damn unfair—having him talking, all bass-note-male, inches from my ear.

Men who did that should have to register their voices as deadly weapons. I’d felt the warmth of his words on my neck. In an attempt to get my reaction under control, and to keep my private parts private, I clamped together my legs. What had I planned to say?

“I can eat by myself. Let me go, please.” I figured politeness was advisable when someone had the power of life and death, or spanking and not-spanking, over you.

“Let you go?” He put his nose to my neck, and breathed in. My eyes crept shut and a shiver ran through me. “No, I need to make sure you eat. So…” With one arm still across my waist, he bent and retrieved the plate and put it on the table. I watched as he selected a piece of the sliced beef with his fingers and held it to my lips.

“Eat. Now.”

Feet away, I could see Jodie being amused. I shut my eyes, blocking her out, him out. Not, this was absolutely not, fair.

The now-cold meat prodded at my mouth.

“Open,” he demanded, voice in rumbly beast mode.

I firmed my lips, while thinking some more. He’d banned talking, and I sure wasn’t going to kick Jodie, or him. Especially
Him
. Ugh. The consequences of kicking Klaus would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition and probably feature spiky things and spiders dropped in my eyes.

“Open.” The tone he used for this simple command was getting harsher.

I rallied my rational self from the fog of mixed horror and lust that only Klaus could summon in me. But Jodie… I checked her out. If I could show her that this was going too far, maybe she’d convince Klaus to rethink. Passive resistance then. Sit him out?

Klaus swiped a gooey fingertip along my bottom lip. “I promise you, Steph, I will get your mouth open soon whether you do it voluntarily or not.”

Crap. I panicked and tried to surge to my feet only to find that his arm beneath my breasts was far stronger and snugger than any seat belt. I growled and tried to shove harder with my feet, tried to throw myself sideways, tried everything. I kept it up for two or three minutes before I stopped, gulping in big swallows of air.

At some point he’d trapped both my arms against my body. The man was like some freaky octopus when it came to wrestling.

“I’m far stronger than you.” This time he bit down on my neck, twice and painfully, leaving teeth marks and bruises I was sure.

Fuck. I shut my eyes, mortified at not being able to get loose. He hadn’t even used both arms. I’d never before pitted myself against a man like this. Never realized how much stronger he might be.

“You won’t win. Last chance before I get the spider gag. Open.”

Neck stinging, muscles burning with fatigue, and my heart thudding hard, I eyed this now horrible symbol of my defeat—a piece of meat, and then I opened my mouth. He slid the food into my mouth.

“Chew and swallow.”

A tear slipped down my cheek as I chewed and swallowed.

“Now that—” Starting near my hairline above my ear, he kissed a line down my neck sending the most awesome vibrations directly to clit central. “—was the best behavior yet.”

I opened, and chewed, and I swallowed some more, feeling myself sinking ever deeper into whatever trap this was.

“She’s crying.” As if in awe, and sadly quiet, Jodie sat forward and ran the back of her finger down my cheek, capturing a tear.

“Is she?” With his hand wrapped hard over the side of my face, Klaus turned me so he too could look. I managed to summon a minor glare. “I think that’s more angry tears than sad ones. Yes?”

I growled deep in my throat and attempted to shake my head as much as I could while held. And got nowhere.

“Don’t growl, girl. Naughty things happen to growly kittens.”

His assured smile sent a prickle of delicious terror into me that I now recognized as a Klaus specialty. Dissected by his gaze, situated naked on this man’s lap, and subject to whatever experiment in pain he might choose to do, it was a moment of scalding understanding. I was his victim, whether
I
chose to be, or not. I also knew that I found it arousing.

I melted then and there under the watch of those gray-green eyes. Moisture leaked from my cleft and I shuddered.

His smile deepened, he examined my face for a few more seconds as if memorizing me then released his grip. Desperate, I swung away.

“Are you sure she’s okay, Sir?” Jodie’s eyes were large, her mouth crooked as if she nibbled in worry.

“Yes, I am. Not only is our girl aroused by this, I can feel her cunt juices soaking into my pants leg.”

Oh God. Was that true? Was nothing about me to remain a secret? If I’d been mortified before, now I wanted to sink into the floor and be one with the fucking dust. Eyes down, I waited and did nothing.

“I see.” Her voice was rich with amusement.

“You need to eat more, pet.” Without further comment he resumed feeding me.

This time I said nothing, did nothing, that might encourage him to say any more horrible things. And I tried to forget what he’d just said.

At the end, Klaus wiped my lips, not with a napkin, but with his fingers. “Lick them clean,” he instructed.

I stared at his fingers.

“Lick.”

Mesmerized, stuck in rewind, unable to figure out what else I could
do
, I curled my tongue out and licked, tasting the black bean sauce on his skin, tasting him as well, and when he inserted that finger into my mouth and murmured, “Suck.” I did that too. I was so fucking lost.

When I was done, he shifted the bowl away from the edge of the table, and kissed my nape. “Now, what can we find to do to our toy?”

Our toy.
A tide of electricity swept me—all the hairs on my neck arose and the tingle spread down my back to all those secret sexual places, my nipples, my groin, inside me.

“Do you like being called a toy?” He shifted so my legs fell to the outside of his, spreading me apart as he spread his own legs.

What would Jodie see? From the rapt fascination in her eyes—a lot. I went to close my legs but he wrapped his other arm under my breasts and tsked. “No. Bad. Stay as I put you.”

I stilled, afraid.

“Let her look. I want you to touch her, Jodie. I missed seeing what happened today and I think I need to catch up. I need to see her come. Can you do that?”

She chuckled as she rose to her feet. “Of course, Sir.” I watched her look over my shoulder. “Thank you, Sir. For this present.”

“Next time we’ll wrap her up together with some kinbaku, some breast bondage, and a few clamps here and there.”

“That would be awesome.”

I opened my mouth to…to… And shut it again. Damn, still afraid. What was I? A
thing
? Their toy? I inhaled deeply, and didn’t blink at all as Jodie moved in on her knees, to kiss first one of my breasts, then the other.

“Be good,” she whispered.

My arms were clamped to my sides by Klaus, but taken by some delayed wish to remain inviolate, I raised my lower arms and spread my fingers, shaking my head the tiniest amount as I did so.

Jodie hesitated, wearing a frown that sketched a tiny cute wrinkle on her forehead. Strangely I wanted to kiss her there. I sighed. Totally fucked up, was me.

Then, slow as an incoming tide, she leaned forward mischievously and nipped one of my fingertips hard. When I flinched, she nipped another while fastening that hand in place by holding my wrist. Switching over, she nipped the fingers on my other hand until I hissed and hid it away.

“Mmm!” I shook my head again.

“Don’t you like me nibbling on you?”

Torn enough to consider speaking and saying no, and finding I’d forgotten to breathe, I watched her approach my nipple with her finger extended. Concentrating, with her tongue tip on her lip, she circled it with her nail and the lightest touch. My nipple crinkled and the nub stood up hard.

I wanted her to suck it. The
need
that simple act had evoked.

Klaus seemed content to watch, though his erection pulsed under my bottom as she finally,
thank god
, put her head down and engulfed my nipple with her hot mouth. When she bit me delicately, I gasped, unable to stop myself trying to arch toward her.

“I think she likes that,” Klaus observed.