Club Helix: The Power Games (31 page)

“If the weights are too much for you, you can lean forward a little so they rest on the floor and take the pressure off your breasts,” he suggests casually in my ear.

Ah. Thank goodness. I lean forward slightly until I can feel the weights touch the floor and the blessed relief from the harsh tug on my nipples, but while the position takes the weight off my nipples, the forward motion causes the ball to press deeper into me. Fuck Roman and his depraved mind for putting me smack-dab in the middle of a no-win situation. If I lean forward, the hook pulls the ball in deeper, stretching me; if I hold my head up to ease the pressure the hook exerts, the weights tug uncomfortably on my nipples.

“Hmmm. Seems like you’re in another predicament, doesn’t it?” he asks.

“I… You…” I stammer as I realize what he’s done. I’m having trouble putting coherent thoughts together, much less verbalizing them. Roman has me delicately balanced on the edge of pleasure, pain, and vulnerability. I have never felt as defenseless as I do right now, totally immobilized and humiliatingly exposed, fully under his control, and I finally understand. This is submission.

I have also never been more thoroughly aroused, rendered completely at Roman’s mercy.

“Is this because of Emmett?” I manage.

“It’s because you need to learn what to do when faced with difficult predicaments,” he corrects. I can hear the smile in his voice. “Luckily, I’m going to help you.”

Oh, fuck. What is he going to do?

I have found the smallest space possible where I can almost balance the tug of the weights on my nipples and the pull of the ball into my ass when I feel his mouth between my spread legs. He licks my pussy, and I jolt forward at the exquisite pleasure, pulling the ball higher into my body. The sensation is overwhelming. I pull my head back quickly, and the weights yank on my increasingly sensitive nipples.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” I chant as he makes his tongue flat and licks me with long, firm strokes from my ass to my clit, which is now pulsing with violent need. I can’t help but move, my hips restlessly thrusting of their own accord as his tongue stabs into me and his fingers begin to toy with my clit, hurling me headlong into full-blown arousal that’s wrapped in an urgency beyond anything I’ve experienced before. I give up on trying to stay still; it’s impossible with the way Roman’s working my pussy and clit with his fingers and tongue, driving me mindless until my brain shuts down and all I can do is feel—each twist of my body creating a new sensation as the clamps pull on my nipples and the ball tugs sweetly inside me.

It’s exquisite agony, and I’m suddenly uncontrollably and recklessly desperate to come.

“Don’t forget I own your pleasure, Avalon,” Roman admonishes from between my legs. “You do not have permission to come.”

“Noooo!” I wail as I feel the sweet gathering in my core. I want to come so badly! I tighten my grip on the board, willing myself not to fall into the beautiful abyss I’m teetering on until he says so. Roman has stopped tormenting me with his mouth, and his hands wrap around my thighs as I try to catch my breath.

“Do you want it, baby?” he rasps. “Do you want the orgasm I can give you?”

“Yes. Please, Roman,” I beg shamelessly, my voice ragged with need.

I’m met with silence.

“What do you want from me?” I ask desperately.

“I want to be first,” he says quietly. “I will not be a predicament for you, Avalon.”

I haven’t cried in two years. Not when Anthony coerced me into doing the unthinkable, not when my mother turned away from me when I needed her most and chose to believe Anthony over me, and certainly not during the games with Roman. Although Roman has coveted my tears, I didn’t cry when he punished me over the desk that first night even though tears of rage threatened to spill, or when he used the crop on me while I sucked him off, or when I was on stage during Western Night, or when he paddled me earlier. Anthony has stolen my ability to feel enough to cry. I am unbreakable.

But the naked longing in Roman’s voice is almost enough to crack me open, and I feel tears prick against my eyelids. I can’t give him what he wants. I have nothing to give anyone. And for the first time in two years, I wish I did.

When I don’t answer, he spears his tongue into me, and just like that I’m back on the brink of orgasm. He licks and circles my clit lazily while he simultaneously tugs on the hook, moving the ball inside me until I moan in ecstasy. He stops abruptly.

“I can do this all night,” he says evenly.

“Roman.” It’s a plea and a curse and an apology and a prayer.

Seconds later I’m looking into his somber gray-blue eyes, the blindfold lifted.

“Am I a predicament, Avalon?”

The pain in his eyes breaks my heart.

“Only because I want you more than I should,” I say honestly, my voice catching. “You make me feel things I never thought I’d feel. Things that are too dangerous for me to feel.”

He looks at me long and hard, and those intense eyes of his seem to see straight through to my soul. He sighs. “That’s enough for now,” he says softly.

He stands and removes the nipple clamps, and I look at him bewilderedly.

“Is it over?” I ask, trying not to let disappointment creep into my voice.

He rubs my nipples as the blood rushes back into them, and I can feel the ache between my legs at his touch. I’m going to die if he makes me wait much longer for the orgasm still hovering just out of reach.

“No, sweetheart, we’re only beginning,” he says with a smile.

He slips the blindfold back over my eyes and unbuckles the cuffs from my wrists and ankles, helping me stand. Using the hook that’s still buried in my ass like a handle, he turns me to face the audience, and my face heats at the eruption of applause. Then I’m in his strong arms, and he’s carrying me God knows where.

Wherever it is, it’s not far, and I hear the click of a door closing as the sounds of the club recede. We’re in some sort of private room, and he lays me down on something soft, like fur. It’s deliciously cozy and warm and comforting against my skin after being strapped unceremoniously over the horse, and I’m aware of his body braced over mine, even though I can’t see him. I explore his chest tentatively, clasping my hands around his neck as I pull him toward me, impatient to feel his lips on mine. He complies, his mouth slanting over mine as he kisses me hungrily. He takes my face in his hands, his lips so close to mine that we’re sharing the same breath.

“I want to fuck you,” he growls.

“I want you to fuck me!” I say breathlessly.

He keeps the blindfold on, and I can hear him fumble with a condom wrapper before he spreads me open and sinks his cock into my wet heat. The thick, pulsing length of him nestled snugly inside me is sheer heaven. The ball makes me even tighter, and he groans as he sheathes himself to the hilt. He begins to move, one hand imprisoning my wrists overhead and the other using the hook to move the ball inside my ass as he thrusts into me.

Roman doesn’t just fuck me. He claims me, replacing all my thoughts with him. He tempers my longing with the heat of his touch like fire refines iron into steel, turning my eagerness for him into grasping desperation. He ravages me with pleasure, destroys me with his all-consuming need until I meet him in the dark shadows of lust and depravity, sin and redemption. When we finally come together, it’s more than just sex. It’s a conflagration, a transcending blaze of two souls meant for each other, and when the flames burn to embers, I can feel myself emerging like a phoenix, daring to be reborn as something new.

Later, I climb into bed next to him in our suite, and he pulls me to him so I’m cradled against him with my back against his chest. I’ve gotten used to sleeping this way, my body surrounded by the comforting heat and strength of his, and my heart tightens at the thought of sleeping alone again after the games are over. He tenderly smooths my hair away from my face, and I snuggle closer to him, knowing I owe him an explanation. He deserves to know who Emmett is to me and why, and here in the dark, wrapped in Roman’s protective arms after he’s broken down my every defense, may be the only time I’ll have the nerve to tell him.

“Emmett saved my life,” I say softly.

Roman’s hand stills for half a second, and then he resumes playing idly with the long strands.

I sigh. “He didn’t just save my life; he gave it back to me.” I pause, trying to gather my courage to continue, and he waits patiently, his fingers stroking of my hair. “Something happened a couple of years ago. I…I did something terrible, and I couldn’t live with myself afterward. I didn’t think I deserved to live at all,” I say, my voice strangled. The truth is, I still don’t, but I can’t tell Roman that. I take another deep breath. “I decided to take my own life. I’d just returned to New York for my junior year at NYU, and that night I went to the Washington Square station and waited, making note of where the train began to slow down and the best spot to jump in front of it.”

Roman’s fingers have moved to my face, and he traces my cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. I turn into his hand as I continue. This is harder than I’d thought it would be, the memories still as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday.

“There were still a lot of people there, even though it was almost midnight, so I got a train schedule and waited. By two a.m., the station was virtually empty, and I stood on the platform, waiting for the next train. I heard the rumble of the approaching train, and I stepped off the platform.”

Roman’s breath stops for a fraction of a second as his hands tighten almost imperceptibly. He pulls me closer, his arms wrapping around me protectively as if to stop me from jumping all over again. I hold on to him tightly, just like Emmett had held me that night two years ago.

“I don’t know how I didn’t hear Emmett behind me. I guess I was just so focused on jumping in front of the train. Later he told me he’d guessed what I was planning to do and had crept up behind me in case his suspicions were correct. He grabbed me right as I stepped off the platform. I was angry as hell, hitting him and struggling to get free and cursing him for stopping me.”

“You?” Roman says drolly. “Imagine that.”

I never dreamed I would ever be able to tell someone this story, much less smile during it.

“Go on,” he encourages softly.

“He simply held me against his chest and let me hit him and curse him until the fight was gone, and then he began to put me back together. We sat huddled on a bench in Washington Square, and he told me about his life and how he’d thought about suicide five years before, and how instead he’d decided to fuck over the people who had hurt him by living the best possible life so they wouldn’t win.

“What happened to me was terrible, but what Emmett has been through is horrific. I wasn’t sure I deserved a second chance, but he convinced me to at least reconsider. The fact that he’d not only survived what he’d been through but also thrived gave me a shred of hope that somehow I might salvage my own life. We were kindred spirits, and we stayed and talked until the sun came up, and then I followed him home like a lost puppy.

“I know that sounds crazy, but he was afraid to leave me, and to be honest I was too emotionally raw to even think straight. I suppose he could have been a serial killer, but at that point I didn’t really care whether I lived or died, so it was a moot point. He was living in a tiny studio apartment, and he let me stay with him that night. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“What about your family?” Roman asks.

I sigh. Now we’re getting into tricky territory. “My father died when I was fifteen, and my mother remarried a year later. I didn’t get along with my stepfather, and my mom and I weren’t speaking at the time. I’d returned to New York because I already had a plane ticket back to NYU, but in the haze of depression that followed what happened that summer, I hadn’t registered for classes or signed up for housing. I wasn’t planning to be around to need them. My roommate had an apartment with her boyfriend, and she offered to let me stay with them, but it was a tiny apartment, and they were so normal and happy it just reminded me of what I’d never have again.

“So I stayed with Emmett. He understood me and what I’d been through like no one else could have. And he knew how to help me heal—when to make me talk and when to give me space, how long to let me hide and feel sorry for myself and when to push me out the door and make me start living again. I got a job at a coffee shop and eventually enrolled in classes for the next semester. I appealed to have my scholarship reinstated, and between his income as a tattoo artist and my scholarship funds and part-time job at the coffee shop, we were able to afford a one-bedroom loft apartment in Greenwich Village close to my classes.”

“And what did Emmett expect from you for coming to your rescue?” Roman asks, his voice hard.

I turn in his arms so I’m facing him. “Nothing. I told you before, it’s not like that between us.”

“And does he still hang out at the subway station, preying on vulnerable young girls?”

I roll my eyes. “Do you believe in destiny?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Emmett does, and he’s convinced he was put there that night to save me. He’d gone out with friends that night, and they were getting in a cab when he realized he’d left his wallet at the bar. He told them to go ahead, and he went back to bar, but his wallet wasn’t there. He didn’t have money for a cab, but he had just enough change in his pocket to catch the subway home, which is how he happened to be at the Washington Square station when I was about to jump. He thinks I was his chance at redemption. It’s why he’s so protective of me.”

“Did he ever find his wallet?”

“Apparently his friend had picked up his wallet by accident and had it all along.”

Roman rubs my back comfortingly. “I’m forever in Emmett’s debt for saving you,” he says quietly. “The world would be darker without you in it. Whatever it was you did, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

I want to believe him, but I know it’s not true. He may think he’s the devil, but he doesn’t know what I’ve done. My soul is as black as his. Maybe more.