Club Helix: The Power Games (24 page)

“You don’t have to go slow or be careful,” I whisper. I want him with a ferocity I hadn’t imagined possible. I want his roughness. I want him to mark me and claim me.

“Stop topping from the bottom, Avalon,” he growls. He nips my bottom lip. “Rule number six. Trust your Dom to know what you need.”

He bends and abruptly bites my nipple hard, smiling as a little shriek escapes my lips. Pulses of pleasure radiate from my core, and I wordlessly pull him deeper into me. I’m beyond rational thought now, desperate to ease this tremendous ache that’s threatening to consume me.

He continues to glide in and out, each stroke of his cock sending heat flooding my veins. He begins to move faster, increasing his pace incrementally until he’s pounding into me, driving into me with primal fierceness. I meet him thrust for thrust, taking him into the very depth and center of me. His eyes are glazed and his breathing rapid, and I love seeing Roman on the verge of losing control and knowing I’m the cause of it.

Need is twisting inside me like a tornado gathering momentum, and I’m trembling with the impending release. His hand slips between us to find my clit, and he rolls it between deft fingertips. I whimper and clutch at him. The onslaught of sensation is amazing—his thick cock driving into me with such force and intensity as his fingers expertly manipulate my clit. Every cell coalesces into one brilliant point of indescribable need until I can’t take any more. The storm raging within me has become a force that won’t be denied.

With a high-pitched cry, I explode, my very being splintering apart in a brilliant burst of color and light. Shuddering waves rack my body, and my sex contracts around Roman as if trying to draw him even farther into me. He stiffens, his muscles as unyielding as granite. With one last violent thrust, he climaxes, uttering my name like a war cry. His cock pulses over and over as he comes inside me, his teeth fastening onto my shoulder in some primitive display of domination. My own orgasm is seemingly endless, the convulsions wrenching every drop of oxygen from my lungs until I lie panting beneath him.

I slowly drift down from the cloud of ecstasy. I inhale the clean, woodsy, masculine scent of him and burrow into his chest. His arms tighten around me.

“I want to do that again,” I murmur sleepily.

He chuckles. “You’re going to be sore,” he warns.

“I don’t care. We only have tonight…” I protest, but my eyes keep fluttering closed despite my struggle to keep them open.
Dammit, stay awake, Ava!
But it’s futile. I’m exhausted from the games and the beautiful, blissful, absolutely mind-blowing orgasm I just had, and the protective strength of his arms around me that makes me feel safer and happier and more content than I can remember being in ages.

“Go to sleep, Avalon,” he whispers as my eyes drift closed for the last time. “I’ve got you.”

He wakes me up a few hours later, unceremoniously dragging me onto my hands and knees.

“I want you again,” he says hoarsely, his voice gruff with sleep and desire.

It takes a minute for my mind to catch up, but my body’s ready for him, and I’m already wet when his fingers slide into me.

“God, Ava, you’re perfect,” he rasps.

He takes me from behind, guiding his cock into me as I shake the last vestiges of sleep from my head. He impales me on the hard length of him, pulling me back roughly against his hips, and I cry out at the unexpected stab of pain. He was right; I’m sore. His fingers brush my clit, and the pain instantly transforms into delicious ecstasy. When I’m squirming beneath his hand, grinding my ass back into him shamelessly, he gathers my hair, pulling my head back sharply. With one hand fisted in my hair and the other gripping my hip, he controls my movements, driving me forward and back on his cock. I can feel him much deeper this way, and the quickening inside me begins almost immediately. This isn’t going to be a slow build to orgasm like before. This one’s going to be a cyclone that roars through and flattens me in the process.

I brace my hands on the bed as his thrusts grow harder, the force pushing me forward. My breasts bounce each time his hips slam into my ass with a resounding smack, his balls slapping against my sex. It’s rough and violent and savage, everything that I’ve been taught lovemaking shouldn’t be, yet my insides are molten heat.

The first time he’d made love to me. This time he fucks me with an edge of violence that’s quintessentially Roman, and I come just as hard, if not harder than before, screaming as the blood roars in my ears and the battering orgasm shatters me, and I know I’ve finally been claimed by him.

* * * *

Roman

Somehow, we’ve managed to stay on the show. I let Ava sleep while I run downstairs for coffee, some breakfast, and the newspaper, and I run into Logan.

“You are the luckiest fucking bastard I’ve ever met,” he says by way of greeting. “I’ve never known someone who can roll in shit and come out smelling sweeter than before.”

I arch an eyebrow at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The show. Not only did you and Ava not get voted off, you’re sitting in first place after last night.”

I look at him flabbergasted. “How?”

“The hell if I know. It turns out we have more of a female audience than we’d anticipated, and they like the idea of you and Ava together. And after yesterday, they apparently think you’re some kind of hero. Hell, Rachel just about swooned watching last night. She said it was
‘impossibly romantic
’ the way you sacrificed the win to do what was best for Ava.”

But even though we didn’t get voted off, I know Ava’s and my time together on the show has come to an end. The fact that she’s inexperienced at D/s, and a fucking virgin up until last night to boot, is a game changer. I’ve got to let her go.

She’s awake but still in bed when I let myself back in the suite, and she’s the epitome of a woman who’s been well fucked and thoroughly satisfied. Her long dark hair is tangled, her lips are swollen, and her body languid. God help me for what I did last night. I’m a man with nothing to offer but pleasure mixed with pain, a man with nothing substantive left to give. But if I hadn’t already sold my soul to the devil, I would have willingly given it for that one perfect night with her. I know now that I can’t have Ava as my submissive—she’s far too inexperienced and innocent for a depraved sadist like me, but it sure as hell would have taken a stronger man than me to deny her or myself the single night of pleasure she requested.

“Hi,” she says with a shy smile.

“Hi yourself.” I smile back. “I brought you breakfast.”

She scoots herself up so she’s sitting in bed, and my cock throbs at the tantalizing glimpse of flesh that’s revealed as she pulls the sheet up to cover her breasts. I look away. Although I’ll never forget last night, I’ve got to get her and that flawless skin of hers out of my head, and the sooner, the better.

“When do we find out if we got voted off?” she asks, running her fingers through her hair self-consciously.

“I saw Logan downstairs. We’re still in the games.”

A wide grin splits her face. “That’s great!”

I sigh, cursing myself for what I’m about to do. What I have to do. If I live to be a hundred, I’m sure not a day will pass that I don’t regret giving up this opportunity. But Ava needs hearts and flowers and tenderness, or at the very least a gentle Dom like Emmett or Luke, not a ruthless sadist with a hole where his heart should be. She has no business being with me. She deserves far more than what I have to give her.

“It doesn’t matter, Ava. You don’t belong here. You should go home. There’s no doubt you’re a submissive, but I can’t be your Dom.”

“I don’t want a Dom,” she huffs. “I’m not looking for any kind of relationship past the games. But I do need a partner for the games. I want to stay, and I want to compete, and I want to compete with you. I want you to be my Dom for the games.” Her arms are crossed, and her full mouth is set in a stubborn line. It takes all my self-control not to force her to her knees right here and push my cock between those pouty lips.

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Ava,” I say firmly. “I told you once that I’m the devil in a well-cut suit, and I wasn’t kidding. There’s a dark side to me, a part of me that doesn’t just want to dominate you; it wants to hurt you.”

She pales, but she doesn’t look away.

“That morning when I whipped you with the crop? I loved seeing the fear in your eyes and knowing I put it there. If I’m your Dom, even if it’s just for the duration of the games, I will want to have you whenever and however I want, and I’ll demand that you completely submit to me. I fucking love holding you and watching you come apart, but for all the times I will want you wet and willing and begging for me, there are times I’ll want to tear you apart just so I can put you back together again piece by piece. I can’t always keep the monster inside me at bay. And that should scare the hell out of you.”

“It doesn’t,” she says, her voice low.

“Dammit, Ava, it should!” I snarl.

“It excites me.” It’s a confession, a whisper, and although I know better, hope grows wings and beats in my chest. But she doesn’t know the depth of my depravity, or what she’s saying.

I drag her out of bed and to her feet. I fist my hand in her hair, my fingers digging painfully into her scalp as I yank her head back so she’s looking at me. Tears spring into her eyes, but she returns my gaze steadily, almost challengingly. She’s still naked from our lovemaking last night, and I slide my hand over her flat stomach to her sex, unceremoniously thrusting my finger into her with no sweet foreplay or thought for her pleasure. Yet I can feel the truth of her words for myself; she’s dripping.

But she can’t want this. She may respond to me like she was made for this—and for me—but she’s completely inexperienced. She doesn’t know what she’s asking for.

I push her against the wall and curl my fingers around her wrists, holding them over her head with one hand while my other encircles her throat again. I crush my mouth against hers cruelly as my hips pin her to the wall, my hard cock pressing against her stomach. I want her to know exactly what I am, and exactly what she’ll get with me.

My teeth bruise her lips as I kiss her, stealing her very breath. My tongue spears into her mouth, roughly demanding that she acknowledge the impossibility of what she says she wants. I want to punish her, to break her and prove that she’s no match for the darkness that lives within me, but instead of turning away, she opens to me, her lips soft and yielding against my brutal attack. I break away. My resolve is weakening with each sweet stroke of her tongue against mine.

“Do you want to stay for the money? You don’t need it; you have the sixty thousand from the photo shoot. You haven’t signed anything yet. You could probably bargain for more. Hell, I’ll give you more.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not the money. Let me stay. Let me be your submissive for the show. Please.”

It’s that last word, coupled with those vulnerable green eyes, that is my undoing.

“Fuck, Avalon. You should run like hell from me, but I’m not sure I have the fortitude to make you.”

“Then don’t.”

“You have to be sure about this,” I say warningly. “There’s no going back if you agree to this.”

“I am sure. I’ve never been surer of anything before.”

“If we do this, there will be rules, and I will expect you to abide by them. I can work with your inexperience, but I won’t go easy on you or do this half-assed. It will be my way or no way. There will be no pretending. If I’m your Dom for the games, I’ll demand complete submission, and I’ll want complete control.”

“Okay,” she whispers.

Our eyes lock, and neither one of us moves for several long minutes. God, I want this. I want her. I’ll no doubt go to hell for not making her leave, but I can’t fight it anymore.

“Kneel!” I command.

She lowers herself to her knees in front of me and looks up at me with that intoxicating mix of apprehension and need in her eyes.

“Say it. Tell me what you want. I have to hear it.”

“I want to be your submissive. I want you to show me how. I want to give you control, and I want you to take what you want from me, however you want it.”

“You’ll have to trust me,” I warn. “Completely.”

“I’ll try,” she says.

“And what will you give me, Ava?”

“Me.”

That single word spoken with such simple guilelessness destroys me. This damn woman is going to kill me.

“I was looking for you to say your obedience,” I say with a wry smile.

She doesn’t smile back. “I want to give you everything. No limits. I want to give myself completely to you. I want you to make me yours.”

With a growl, I pull her to her feet and crush her to me. “You were mine from the day I first laid eyes on you.”

Chapter Sixteen

Roman

“Why does Rebecca hate you?”

Ava and I are enjoying an early dinner together before we go out tonight with the rest of the contestants to see
O
by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio, and she spears a piece of salmon onto her fork before shrugging in answer.

“I don’t know. Probably for the same reason you hate Emmett.”

“I don’t hate Emmett.”

She gives me a skeptical look.

“I don’t.” I smile self-deprecatingly. “I just don’t like him that much. I can assure you the feeling’s mutual.”

“Emmett likes everybody,” she maintains. She frowns. “And usually everyone likes Emmett.”

“And that’s exactly why I don’t like him,” I say. “No man, and especially no Dom, wants to compete with another man for his submissive’s loyalty.”

“It’s not like that!” she protests.

“What is it like, then?” I ask, leaning forward in my chair. “He’s not your Dom, and he’s not your lover. Who is Emmett Stone to you?”

She picks at her salad, her eyes studiously avoiding mine.

“Ava, honesty. Remember?” I prompt.

She levels those emerald-green eyes at me and says softly, “Emmett is the single most important person in my life. He will always have my loyalty and love, but there’s nothing romantic between us. I can’t explain. Please don’t ask me to.” She covers my hand with her smaller, softer one. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”