Club Helix: The Power Games (27 page)

He bounds up onto the platform with agile grace and reaches up to grab a carabiner clip attached to a chain that dangles from the scrolled-gold inset above the bed. He grabs another one and pulls it to him until it too is overhead. Holy shit! The intricately carved ceiling inset isn’t for aesthetic purposes. It’s an ingeniously constructed grid of channels that allows a Dom to restrain his submissive in an endless variety of ways.

My breath catches as he fastens each of my wrist cuffs to the chain above so my arms are bound over my head while I’m kneeling. I watch silently, my heart in my throat, as he goes to the armoire and returns with a metal bar with cuffs attached to either end. He attaches a cuff just above my knee and then widens my stance so the bar fits between my legs, holding them open as he secures the other cuff to my opposite thigh. He goes back to the armoire from hell, and when he comes back to where I’m bound, he carefully sets several dozen wooden clothespins strung together with string, a blindfold, and a single-tailed whip on the bed next to me.

I’m practically hyperventilating as I look at the diabolical assortment of things he’s arranged around me.

He runs a finger along my cheekbone, and I fight the urge to turn my face into his hand. The juxtaposition of his gentleness with his harsh cruelty is unsettling.

“You don’t seem to have a problem keeping your attention focused now, Avalon,” he observes with amusement. “Particularly when you’re wondering what I’m about to do to you.” He chuckles darkly.

I look at him frantically. “The whip is a hard limit,” I whisper.

He goes back to the armoire and returns with a ball gag dangling from his fingertips.

“No! I’ll be quiet. I promise,” I plead, struggling so hard that the chains clang melodically overhead. Except I’m not going anywhere, ball gag or not.

“One more word, and you won’t have a choice,” he says firmly, placing the gag on the bed next to me as a reminder. He slowly trails his fingers up my inner thigh.

“You will trust me to push your limits but not exceed them.” It’s a statement, not a request. “I haven’t forgotten anything that we discussed,” he adds quietly.

I notice he hasn’t specifically said he won’t use the whip. But he knows it’s a hard limit, and I realize I have to trust him.

My body is thrumming with anticipation as his fingers travel higher, lightly skimming the crease of my sex. He’s a master at the mindfuck.

“I’m also going to test your limit for pain a little while we work on your focus. I want you to say
yellow
if it becomes too much. Do you understand?”

I nod, although I’m quaking inside.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

He frowns, and his open palm strikes my pussy. I jolt at the unexpected blow, even as electricity sizzles through me, my sex puffing until it feels huge and throbbing. I try to close my thighs, but the bar prevents me from moving at all, and I’m more aware than ever of just how vulnerable I am to him.

“Try again.”

I gulp air into my lungs.

“I understand, Sir.”

The smile transforms his face. “Good girl,” he says.

He picks up the blindfold and places it over my eyes, tying it tightly so I can’t see anything; now I don’t have the slightest clue what he’s about to do. It’s terrifying and absolutely mind-blowingly intoxicating.

He skims my inner thighs again, and I can feel my muscles quiver slightly beneath his feathery touch. Then there’s a sharp bite on the skin of my thigh that doesn’t go away. He caresses again, his fingers stroking my skin lightly, and then another pinch. Oh. The clothespins. He resumes the erotic stroking and clamping until he’s attached a row of clothespins in a line along both of my inner thighs.

His warm, strong hands travel up over my hips and abdomen and caress my breasts. They feel heavy and tight in his hands, and my nipples harden as his thumbs brush over them. He circles each breast and then the pinch again. Oh, God. He’s putting the clothespins around my breasts. I squirm as he continues his torturous play, stroking my chest sensually, occasionally rubbing his thumbs across the hardened peaks or flicking them and then attaching the clothespins until I can feel them completely encircling both of my breasts.

“Are you still with me, Avalon?” he whispers.

I haven’t forgotten the ball gag lying on the bed next to me, and I’m silent.

He chuckles. “You’re a quick learner. You may speak. I want you to tell me how it feels.”

I’m silent, searching for the words to explain the strange but undeniably erotic sensation of the nip of the clothespins. He spanks my pussy again lightly. Apparently I didn’t answer quickly enough.

“Answer me,” he commands. “Don’t think about it. Just tell me what you feel.”

“I don’t know what I feel,” I say with frustration. I’m not used to allowing myself to feel anything, much less explain it. “Pain. Pleasure. I don’t know. But it somehow makes me feel your touch everywhere else even more.”

“Try again.”

I try to put the convolution of sensation I’m feeling into words. “It pinches a little at first—actually it pinches a lot—but then it just feels warm, and all I can really feel is the pressure.”

The sudden intensity of the jaws of the clothespin closing over my erect nipple elicits a yelp of pain from me.

“Do you feel something now?” he murmurs, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Can you name how that feels?”

“Fuck! Yes, Sir!” I gasp. “It hurts!”

I can only imagine the sadist in him is loving this. But if I’m honest, I welcome the agony, because with it comes the heady knowledge that I haven’t completely lost the ability to feel something, even if it’s just this inexplicable concoction of pleasure and pain. It means I’m strong; I’m alive. Anthony hasn’t won.

“I made what’s called a rose with your breasts and the clothespins,” he explains. “You look so fucking beautiful.”

He attaches a clothespin to my other nipple, and I try to concentrate on my breathing, deeply pulling air into my lungs, holding it, and letting it out again until the pain recedes.

“Is this how you keep that control you hold on to so tightly?” he asks, lightly tapping the clothespins that line my inner thighs so I feel their pull again. I don’t answer, and he tweaks several of the pins surrounding my breast. “Just breathe and shut down to tune the pain out?”

How does he know? I feel bared to him, stripped of the defenses that have seen me through the past two years.

“Something like that, Sir,” I whisper.

“What happened to you that you’re so afraid to feel?” he asks softly, his fingers probing my sex. I try to tilt my hips up to him, hungry for him to fill the aching need that’s growing in my core. But I don’t answer, and he plunges a finger into my wet heat.

“I’m going to make sure you feel plenty tonight,” he says, his voice thick with desire, and my blood simmers at the forbidden promise.

I can feel my pulse throb beneath the pinched skin, and I fall into the pain. Everything grows and shifts as he uses his fingers inside me, edging me toward oblivion. Then he clips a clothespin to each side of my labia, and the sensations engulf me completely. There’s no painful pinch here, just a subtle but overpowering tug of sensual awareness that’s amazing.

I feel the bed give as he stands up and I can hear the sound of the armoire opening and closing again. I wait with bated breath. With nothing else to distract me, I’m focused on the clothespins again and the inexplicable, painfully erotic pressure they exert. Then he’s next to me, caressing over the curves of my stomach and hips. But his hand’s not bare; it feels like he’s wearing a leather glove, and the hide is soft and sensual against my skin. I sigh as he caresses over my chest and across my back with the soft leather. Then he presses harder, and it feels like tiny knives are carving open my skin.

I struggle frantically against the chains. “Knives and needles are hell-nos,” I cry out.

He immediately stops, and for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to use the gag since I wasn’t supposed to speak. Instead, I can feel the weight of his body settle in front of me, and my body instinctively responds to the sheer nearness of him.

“I know your hard limits, Avalon,” he says quietly. He touches my face, exploring the fragile bones beneath my skin with gentle fingertips. Judging by his voice, he’s mere inches in front of me, his face even with mine. “I promise I won’t puncture your skin. We’re just going to explore some sensation play.”

He scrapes the sharp points of the glove lightly across my bottom. “When you can’t see and your mind must focus solely on your other senses, things sometimes feel more intense than they actually are. That’s part of the appeal of sensation play. Do you trust me?”

Somehow, at least when it comes to what he’s going to do to me in this moment, I do, despite the fact that he’s a self-proclaimed sadist. I have no doubt he will honor my limits, or at least creatively skirt them in a way I can handle.

“I trust you, Sir,” I say.

He kisses me softly, and I want to fall into the sultry, wet heat of his mouth. “Those may be the sweetest words I’ve ever heard from you. Thank you for your trust, Avalon. Now be quiet, or I’ll gag you,” he adds sternly, but I’m no longer afraid.

He continues to trail the glove over my body, but this time I enjoy the slightly scratching sensation like fingernails being run tantalizingly over my skin. Just when I’m getting used to the feel of it, he stops, and something cold—really cold—presses into my vagina.

I gasp at the icy intrusion. It’s thick and smooth and made of some sort of metal, and it’s fucking freezing. The shock of it has my pussy clenching around it. He works it slowly in and out of me, and in no time it has warmed to match the heat that’s burning inside me. It has ridges on it that touch some deeply hidden sweet spot, and I’m writhing in the restraints, the proof of my arousal trickling from between my legs when he pulls it out. I whimper in frustration. I feel empty, and I want the now warm thickness of whatever was inside me back.

Roman presses it against my stomach. “Do you feel that? Your body has generated all that heat just for me,” he says smugly.

A feather tickles my skin next, teasing the throbbing tips of my breasts beneath the clothespins and the now incredibly sensitive skin of my breasts. He trails it lower over my torso, laughing softly as my stomach convulses. He teases my mound before dragging it across the crack of my ass and up my back. I’m ticklish, and I breathe deeply, separating my mind from my body to shut down my impulse to squirm.

But Roman’s having none of that. He’s intent on keeping my body guessing and my mind fully focused on what he’s doing. I barely have time to process the abrupt change in sensation as he gently presses what feels like a small pizza cutter with sharp little points over my breasts. This time I don’t move; I trust him not to hurt me. He varies the speed and intensity as he works the wheel over my entire body, and it’s exquisitely agonizing and like nothing I’ve ever felt before. My whole body tingles from the extraordinary sensation, raising goose bumps. It’s delightfully sensual when he runs it lightly over my skin, and deliciously painful when he pushes down harder. I’m quivering with anticipation and longing when he stops. I brace myself for whatever new sensation he’ll introduce next.

It’s leather again, but I can tell by the feel of the thin strip that he trails over my body that it’s the whip. After several agonizing minutes, he pulls it between my legs so that the leather bisects the folds of my pussy, stimulating the throbbing point of need centered there. I moan. It’s becoming too much, all these sensations melding together, and I want to come.

“Please,” I murmur.

“What did you say?” he asks, scraping the thin leather masterfully across my clit. The pressure in me is building to an impossible threshold, and I can’t take it anymore.

“Please, make me come, Sir,” I beg louder, proud of myself for remembering the title this time.

He stops abruptly, and before I can protest, he’s pushing the ball gag between my lips and fastening it securely behind my head. I thrash about wildly in the restraints. I don’t want to be gagged. I feel completely out of control, and it’s terrifying.

“Rule number seven, Avalon. There are consequences to disobeying. I was very clear that you weren’t to speak.”

He presses something soft into my hand.

“Squeeze that.”

I squeeze, and the object in my hand squeaks.

“That squeak is your safe word for both
slow down
and
stop
while you’re gagged. I personally think it’s a vast improvement over
Anthony
,” he adds drolly.

He caresses every inch of me, and I sag in the cuffs. There’s nothing like the feel of Roman’s hands on my body, and despite the clothespins or maybe because of them, his touch feels even more exhilarating. Although I hate the ball that’s forced between my lips, painfully stretching my jaw, the gag somehow adds a titillating component. Maybe because it reinforces my vulnerability.

He worships my body with his hands and his mouth, driving me toward a need so great I’m afraid that the orgasm, when it finally comes, might level me. As he rubs and licks and bites my sensitive flesh, he occasionally tweaks the clothespins, causing the pain that has receded to a bearable level to crest again. He spears a finger into me, and I gasp. He adds another, fucking me roughly, but I’m desperate for his ruthlessness, and I welcome it. I’m close, my muscles contracting in tandem with the tension coalescing in my core, when there’s an intense sting as he pulls first one and then the other line of clothespins from my thighs.

I moan behind the gag, but I barely process the pain; my mind has been shut down by the more imperative demands of my body. He unclips the pins on my pussy lips, and every sensation between my legs intensifies as the blood rushes back. I’m mindless with a fierce craving but helpless to do anything but wait and hope that Roman will give me what I want. He fucks me forcefully with his fingers as the orgasm builds. I hover at the precipice, ready to fly. He angles his finger inside me, touching my G-spot at the same time that he yanks the clothespins from my breasts with a single tug.