Bound to Accept (18 page)

That gets me pinned down. He rolls up
the hem of my nightgown and I suck in my breath, and then release
it in a very unattractive series of snorts and laughs as he
raspberries my belly. He doesn't stop tickling me until I threaten
to piss his bed, and only after I admit that he's the
best.

Chapter Eleven

I am no longer a virgin

It's weird. I don't
feel
any
different—inside, I mean. Physically, I'm quite sore. When I shift
my legs, the pain grows into an acute sharp ache that makes me
wince. But considering that this is a major milestone for a girl,
I'm surprised by how…well,
anticlimactic
it is.

Carefully, I roll over to
lie on my right side—the side I prefer sleeping on—and face
Tristan, who's still asleep. I can only imagine what
he
'd
say if he
heard me call the loss of my virginity anticlimactic.

I stare unabashedly. It's the first
time I've been able to observe him freely. Usually, when we're
having sex, there is too much going on around me to take the time
to appreciate the view.

His eyelashes look a lot longer with
his eyes closed, thicker. His lips are parted, and the dry, stuffy
air of his apartment has rendered them a very pale cracked and
chapped shade of pink marbled with bits of white.

That reminds me how dry my own mouth
is—dry, and swollen from his rough kisses, scratched by the stubble
around his mouth. I lift a finger to trace along my lower lip and
the skin feels softer than normal, as though tenderized by his
brutish lovemaking.

The shadow around his jaw is darker
now. He needs to shave. He looks very scruffy. His hair is quite
mussed, too, and sticks up at bizarre angles, and that makes me
want to giggle. Or maybe smooth it down and kiss him again. I
haven't decided. His lips look so sweet.

The sheet covers most of us, but his
shoulders have slipped free of the blanket. He has nice shoulders,
and really strong arms. He cuddled me a little last night, before
we went to bed, and it felt so good. That skin on skin contact. I
ran my hands along the muscles in his arms, feeling them bunch and
tense upon contact, tracing the veins in his wrists, and he sighed
against my neck, stirring the wispy hairs still damp with
sweat.

“
You are so tight and
wonderful, my beautiful pony girl,” he'd purred, wrapping one of
those powerful arms around my waist. The gesture reminded me of the
bodice ripper covers from the eighties, as the hero carries the
heroine off into the night to be ravished by moonlight. “I think
I'm going to keep you around for a long time.”

And I want him to.
I
want
him to
keep me.

I want to be his.

Tristan stirs, and the tissue-thin
skin of his eyelids twitch with sudden movement. His eyelashes
flutter, shedding sleep dust on his cheeks. I reach over to brush
one off, and he tilts his head in surprise. “Oh…Kelly?”

I watch his eyes shift as he looks
around, as if only just remembering where he is, what he's done,
before his attention refocuses on me. Or, rather, my breasts. “Mm,
that's a nice sight to wake up to.” He slides me closer and starts
fondling them, rasping his thumb over my nipples through the papery
lace.

The room is quiet except for our
commingled breathing, the scratch of the sheets, and the illicit
whisper of silk and lace. “I love this nightgown.” He smiles with
sleepy lust as he brings my nipples to hard points and lowers his
head to take one into his mouth as his hand starts to wander up the
hem.

But his touch is too
abrasive against the tender landscape my body has become, and I
dislodge myself from his loose hold, though this means rolling my
hips to scoot away from him. Immediately, I regret it.

“
Still sore?” Tristan
sounds sympathetic, but also amused. His eyes are half-closed and
the lust hasn't left them, yet.

“
Men will never understand
this problem.”

He slides a hand under the sheets to
stroke himself. As his eyes slip closed, he says, “That's not
exactly true. I imagine a sore asshole probably rivals a sore
vagina.”

“
Fine. Fetch me a gay
man.”

Tristan continues to fist his
erection. “Why?” I can see his hand move under the sheets, with
increasingly furious motions as he brings himself closer to climax.
“You want a threesome?”

“
No. So we can commiserate
together, and hate on you.”

Tristan bites his lip, and there's a
quiet pattering sound as his come spatters the sheet. He sighs,
then spreads his hands, as if to suggest he has no gay shoulder
present to cry on. “You know—” his breathing is a little uneven
“—there's plenty of straight men who enjoy taking it up the ass.
It's not just a gay thing.”

This is the last thing I expected him
to say.

I stare at him.

“
No,” he says. “I'm not
one of them.”

“
Pity,” I mutter. “Because
for a moment there, I was totally thinking, 'And me without my
strap-on.'”

Tristan laughs. “You're so cranky. Are
you hungry? I bet your blood sugar's probably low.”

The paternal tone he takes with me is
irritating. It's even more annoying because I know he's probably
right. “What do you have?” I ask him crossly.

“
Delicious things.” He
gets out of bed and strolls to the cupboards. I watch the muscles
in his chest and sides flex interestingly as he reaches into the
top shelf. He comes back with a package of ramen, the good kind
from Thailand. It's Tom Yum flavored. “Want it?” he
teases.

I glare at him, but can't stop my eyes
from darting to the silver foil package. He holds it just out of
reach.

“
Kiss me for it,” he says
lazily.

I kick off the covers and sit up to
kiss him. He cups my throat, forcing me to stretch to maintain the
contact.

He is an evil bastard, but he kisses
like the devil himself. Teeth at my lip. Tongue at the seams of my
mouth. Tristan doesn't leave any spot untouched. It's like I'm a
fortress, and he's laying siege to it. He doesn't kiss, so much as
conquer. “Good girl,” he whispers.

I snatch the ramen from him and spring
off the bed before he decides to change his mind. I grab one of his
bowls from the cupboard and fill it with water, then pop it into
the microwave for two minutes.

Tristan leans back against the
counter, watching me with a half-smile on his face. “You going to
share?”

“
I don't know that I
should.”

“
You should—because if you
don't, I will tie you up, and tease your clit with my mouth until
you're half-mad. And the moment you're close, I'll kiss you
good-bye and leave you to squirm.” He smiles at me. “I might even
sit there and have a drink while I watch you beg.”

“
Okay,” I say, after a
pause. “You can have some.”

“
Thank you. That's very
generous.”

I get another bowl out of
the cupboard and pour half the hot water from the microwave into
it.
Bastard.

When I break the square of ramen in
two, I make sure to give him the smaller piece.

There are two packets of flavoring in
the package. The regular Tom Yum soup stock mix and a packet of red
chili powder. That's another reason I like this kind. When I open
the second packet, though, Tristan says, “No chili powder for
me.”

I shrug and dump the entire packet
into my own bowl of ramen. More for me. “Wuss.” I slide his portion
across the counter. “Here's your wuss bowl.”

He gives me the finger. “Suck on it,
Kelly.”

I spoon salty noodles into
my mouth and close my eyes. Oh my
God
. I wouldn't have thought it
possible, but they taste even better after sex.

“
Are you ever going to
take me to St. Andrew's Cross?” I ask between bites of the
delicious post-coital noodles. When they figure out how to bottle
up orgasms and sell them as a food additive, I'll be first in
line.

Tristan glances at me over his bowl.
“Probably not.”

The blunt refusal startles me. “Why?
Corrine said we should drop by. She said we'd be popular. Not that
I care about being popular, but I'd like to meet your BDSM friends.
Er—” is that too twee? “—I mean, associates.”

“
Corrine is not your
Master. I am. She does not know what is best for you. I
do.”

“
Why are you so against me
going?” I fold my arms under my breasts. “I want to learn more
about BDSM.”

“
Because you are painfully
new, and I don't want to see anything bad happen to you.” He waves
his spoon at me. “Flashing your tits at me won't change my
mind.”

I hastily lower my arms. “Like what?”
I scoff. “What could possibly happen to me?”

“
There's a lot of unspoken
etiquette and rules at clubs like St. Andrew's. The things that
could happen to you run the gamut from you offending an old friend
of mine to you getting violated by one of the mentally-unbalanced
types who joined because they like the idea of hurting women for
fun.”

Mentally unbalanced? “But you said
BDSM was supposed to be safe, sane, and consensual.”

“
Ideally, yes. But that
doesn't mean that there aren't people who slip through the cracks
to abuse the system.” He pauses. “Or people who make
mistakes.”

What an odd thing to say.
“Have
you
ever
made a mistake?”

Tristan sets his ramen bowl aside,
even though he didn't finish the broth. “We've tried most of your
oranges now,” he says. “All that's left is rape fantasy and impact
play.”

He's changing the subject, and not
subtly.

What was his mistake? And why won't he
tell me? He told me about Nipple Pincushion Girl.

What could be worse than
that?

I look at him, leaning back against
the counter like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and want to see
him in the darkness, among all his demons.

When he was talking to
Corrine at Hana Hana there were hints of a whole other person
lurking deep inside of him. A dark, dangerous person, who fucked in
public, and had people
begging
to be tortured by him.

I know how magnetic he can
be, perhaps more than anyone, but I'm starting to suspect he
dilutes it for my sake. He's certainly never kissed me in public
the way Corrine kissed her sub. He doesn't treat me like he
owns
me. Just watching
the two of them made me aroused.

That decides it for me. “Let's try the
rape fantasy.”

“
You're not ready for
that.”

“
You put it on the list of
things you were interested in. I agreed to try it. So what's the
problem? Let's try it.”

Tristan pinches the bridge of his
nose: something he only does when he's stressed out, and, lately,
seems to happen mostly around me. “You just said that you were
still sore,” he points out. “A rape enactment won't
help.”

“
Oh…right.” He has a point
there, although I'm 99.9% sure that isn't his reason for saying
“no.”

But Tristan pounces, scenting
weakness. “Rape fantasies also require a lot of
planning.”

“
How so?”

“
First off, clothes. You
have to wear something that's easy to take or rip off. Something
you wouldn't mind having ruined.” He ticks off the items on his
fingers, looking at me. “Second, safeword. You tend to forget you
have one at times, and I need to remind you. I won't do that in
this scene. If you say no, I won't stop. If you say stop, I won't
stop. Even if you fight me off, I won't stop. I'll probably take it
as encouragement.”

My mouth goes dry. “That
sounds…”
hot
“intense.”

What is wrong with me? Why did I think
'hot'? Tristan's basically telling me how he would go about raping
me. That isn't sexy, it's terrifying.

But…I kind of like the
idea of being taken by force. Just thinking about it is making me
wet, and now I feel like I'm a terrible person. Does having a rape
fantasy mean that I'm subconsciously okay with other women getting
raped? Does it mean that
I
want to be raped?

Note to self: Google search
“does having rape fantasy mean you have psychological
problems?”

“
Third,” Tristan is
saying, in that same hard voice, “I'll need to borrow your spare
apartment key.”

“
Why would you need my
spare?”

He takes one step closer to me. Just
one. But it's enough to make me quite aware of the size difference
between us. “So I can come into your apartment without asking, and
then take you by surprise.” I stare at him, wide-eyed and
inexplicably turned-on. Tristan looks back at me expressionlessly.
“Still want to do it?”

“
Yes.”
Oh God, yes.