Naked & Unleashed (5 page)

Seeing her spread out this way, crying with need and utterly at his mercy, filled him with a sense of long-denied satisfaction. But he still wasn’t going to let her come. Leaving her needy and exposed with her ass in the air, he angled his cock against her pussy and drove into her in earnest. Callista needed the lesson she’d learn through deprivation but he had no intention of denying himself. He even gave himself permission to sink into the fantasy on his own terms, granting the violence inside him free rein after keeping it locked up so long.

Over and over again he slammed into her, wrapping himself up in the wet sounds of his flesh spearing into hers and the high, nearly incoherent pleas falling from her lips. As ecstasy wrapped around him, her voice lost shape. A distant part of him prayed she hadn’t started saying “no” and “stop” while another part, frighteningly close to taking over, longed to hear those exact words.

Release began to heat up low in his balls. Mikal bore her down to the floor and covered her completely, grinding his dick into her slick tunnel and his pelvis against the plug in her ass. He caught a handful of her hair and jerked her head to the side, exposing her face and throat. Callista cried out when he sank his teeth into her neck…and she defied him with an orgasm that he felt even through the haze of his own pleasure. Her fast, merciless contractions robbed him of the control he’d stolen and he came hard and deep, just the way he’d threatened.

After he regained a measure of sense but before she stopped shaking, Mikal withdrew and eased the plug from her tortured ass. He shifted her onto her back and spread her legs wide to admire the pearly traces of his semen adorning her pink flesh. When he flicked his fingertips over her clit, she spasmed again and a little more of his come slid into view. Mikal bent over her and used his tongue to smear the salty blend of their juices up over her clit before sucking the engorged nub into his mouth. Callista shrieked and grabbed handfuls of his hair as another orgasm tore through her body, proving him two times a liar. Maybe that was the difference between him and a truly violent man—he had no true desire to leave her incomplete.

He kept his face buried in her pussy even after her tremors subsided. Callista was the one who broke the spell. She loosened her hold on his hair and whispered his name.

Raising his head, he looked up the rise of her ribs to find her eyes. “The hour’s not up yet. I still have time. Give me the right word.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the alarm beeped at his wrist, signaling the end of their hour.

She gave what he demanded anyway, even though she didn’t have to. “Master.”

“Yeah,” he said, but the spell was broken, splintered by the limitations of time and the crashing return of reality.

Mikal rose up on his hands and knees and stared down at the woman caged by his body. Her eyes were glassy, the pupils dilated wide despite the low light. Bright spots of color dotted her cheeks and spread down her neck to her upper chest. Her rib cage rose and fell with the still-rapid pace of her breathing. While he watched, the flush of orgasm faded, leaving her skin pale. Her eyelids fluttered and closed.

There were things he should do. Say her name, help her off the floor, make sure she was warm. Two nights a week, every week, he did those things for women he didn’t know beyond the few hours they spent at Bondage. He took care of women and he was good at it. Looking at Callista, however, he was overwhelmed by self-disgust. He’d brought her to this point. What the hell could
he
have to offer her now?

She opened her eyes. “Mikal?”

“I’m still here,” he answered after a moment of fighting the urge to run. Fear chased close on the heels of self-disgust. There were things he wasn’t supposed to do anymore, ever again, but the flood gates were open now and he had to get away from the temptation she presented. “Hold on, lover.”

Straightening, he quickly stuffed his dick into his pants and keyed up an urgent text before pulling her off the floor and into his arms. The very least he could do was get her off the floor. As he shifted her from the floor to the bed, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Mikal didn’t bother checking the message. He didn’t deserve the relief of knowing help was on the way. The things he did deserve…his flesh ached with phantom pains of anticipation and dread.

“I should say something, shouldn’t I? Etiquette…” Callista followed him with her pretty, shell-shocked eyes, which wouldn’t give him peace. Her faint voice, rough at the edges with the remnants of arousal and fear, scraped down his bones.

“You should rest. You need to rest.” She needed more than that, but he was paralyzed with a surge of fear. What had he done?

Fighting his mounting panic, Mikal dodged her gaze. He tucked a sheet around her naked body and watched the tick of her pulse until a knock at the door set him free.

Callista startled into a half-sitting position. Mikal pushed her back down and stood. “Just someone to take care of you and make sure you get home. I have to go.”

Sam Fletcher, an owning partner of Bondage and a man Mikal considered a friend, entered the room without waiting for Mikal to answer the knock. Sam took measure of the whole scene in a single glance and shook his head slightly. “You’re dangerous. Get out and let me work.”

A flash of possessive rage flared to life when Sam crossed the room and sat on the bed beside Callista’s hip, but Mikal knew the truth of Sam’s assessment. He
was
dangerous, no good for her. Swallowing his instinct to drag Sam away from his woman—because claiming her would not be fair—Mikal backed out of the room, leaving another man to take care of the woman he couldn’t let himself have.

* * * * *

An hour later, Sam tracked him down in Bondage’s employee lounge. The other man slammed the door behind him. “You know what I’m going to say.”

Mikal crushed an empty Styrofoam cup and threw it at the trash can. “I’m not a mind reader. Is she gone?”

Sam snorted. “I cleaned her up and put her in a cab. She wouldn’t talk to me, and who could blame her? She didn’t deserve that.”

“She asked for it,” Mikal muttered.

“Then you should have told her no.”

Mikal shook his head. “She came here looking for something. Turning her away at the door wouldn’t have put a stop to her search. It would have endangered her.”

“Damn it,” Sam bit out. “You’re free to make judgment calls in every situation except this one. Forget whatever else happened and the fact you dumped a patron you were responsible for. Blood-letting is against the rules. Those rules apply to everybody. Especially to people who receive a paycheck.”

“I don’t receive a paycheck anymore.” Mikal stood and threw his Bondage polo to the other man. “If I want back in I’ll apply for membership through the standard channels.”

Sam caught the shirt and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself. Play by the rules and draw up a contract. It’s a compromise, but in real life we have to make concessions in order to have what we want.”

Mikal raked one hand through his hair and sat, defeated by Sam’s truth. “How was she really?”

“I told you, she wouldn’t talk. She was confused and embarrassed and wanted me to tell you she’s sorry. Whatever she did to you by coming here, she didn’t deserve what you did to her by leaving.”

“I want her,” Mikal confessed. “I shouldn’t take her.”

“What you should do is acknowledge that you aren’t going to find what you’re looking for with strangers here. If she makes you a better person, figure out how to deal with the parts of yourself you don’t want to face.” Sam threw the polo back at him. “I mean it. You’re useless to me if you don’t know yourself.”

Sam left and Mikal closed his eyes with a groan. The club had been his only connection to the lifestyle ever since he’d forced himself out of practice six years earlier. He wanted things from a relationship that most women couldn’t handle. Or couldn’t be trusted to handle. A few hours ago, he hadn’t known the truth of Callista’s desires. Now that he knew—now that he’d set himself free again—he wasn’t sure he could go back to denying himself. Maybe Sam was right and Mikal had to reconsider his stance on things like safewords and contracts and nice, sanitary arrangements.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Callista woke before her alarm went off. The world outside was still dark. She rolled onto her stomach and sprawled naked on top of her comforter, emotionally and physically drained. Her trip to Bondage had not gone as planned. Not even close. Never mind the awkward strangeness of Mikal leaving her with another man, which she still didn’t know how to handle. She should probably be furious but she was really just tired. Tired of shying away from what she wanted, tired of feeling like a subhuman perv, and tired of wanting a man who didn’t care about her enough to stay after the fucking ended.

After returning to the familiarity of her little apartment, and while using all the hot water in the whole building, she’d done some serious thinking and concluded she needed fewer feelings and more therapy. Or she needed exactly the kind of relationship she’d find with a man like him.
Like
him, because no matter how much she wanted
him
, he’d made it very clear that he wasn’t looking for the twisted dynamic she craved. That he was only in it to teach her a lesson. Well, she’d learned…just maybe not what he wanted her to learn.

Heart aching, she rose up on her forearm and retrieved her phone from the night stand. Her stomach twisted nervously as she keyed up Mikal’s contact info. When he answered before the third ring, she thought she was going to puke.

“You had a late night,” he said, bypassing the niceties of a greeting. He sounded wide awake and clear-voiced, as if he hadn’t participated in the same late night. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

Mikal’s tone was chastising and proprietary. Callista glared at her headboard. “I woke up. Listen, we need to talk.”

“Yes, we do. I’m walking out the door right now to catch a flight. I’ll pick you up on the way to the airport. I should be in your neighborhood in about fifteen minutes. We’ll be gone three days. Don’t bother to pack. We’ll get whatever you need after we land.” He ended the call, leaving her in dead air.

“Oh no way.” Callista quickly dialed him back, but the call went straight to voicemail.

Fighting panic, she scrambled off the bed and tripped over one of the heels she wore the night before, only narrowly avoiding a fall. In the half-dark of morning, her small apartment was a danger zone of too many belongings and not enough space. She didn’t share Mikal’s spare style. For that reason alone she wouldn’t have been able to pack for three days even if he’d given her time. Correction. Even if she was going away for three days. Because she wasn’t. Despite her recklessness the night before, she possessed at least a shred of self-preservation and enough self-awareness to know that she had to distance herself from Mikal now, or she’d come out on the other side useless and addicted to a man who wasn’t interested in pursuing what she wanted.

The blocky red numbers of her alarm clock glowed tauntingly from the nightstand as she dragged running shorts and a hoodie from the pile of clean laundry she’d dumped on the floor of her small closet. She winced as she shimmied into the shorts. Ordinarily so soft she barely noticed them, the shorts felt rough on her skin and the crotch seam rode uncomfortably high between her legs. The fuzzy inner material of her sweatshirt rubbed her nipples so aggressively that she had to swap the sweatshirt for a thin camisole instead.

In the bathroom, she flipped the light switch and reached for her toothbrush. Her reflection in the mirror over the sink drew her up short. Callista stepped back until the towel rack dug into her spine and stared at her body in the mirror. The silky white camisole didn’t hide a bit of her hard nipples, which were a dark outline beneath the thin cloth, and her low-slung blue shorts clung to the lips of her pussy. The pale blue material was interrupted by a dark line along the seam, where wetness seeped through the cloth. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the wall, drowning in the heavy rhythm of want beating from her core.

She was an idiot if she thought she’d be satisfied with anybody but him, and she was delusional thinking she wasn’t going with him.

“He doesn’t love you, you idiot,” she muttered to the woman in the mirror even though she was fully aware that woman didn’t care.

When her phone rang in the other room, Callista sighed and pushed away from the wall to answer it. “I can’t leave for three days without luggage.”

“Yes you can. Are you dressed?”

“Not in anything that won’t get me arrested.”

Mikal hummed appreciatively. “Excellent. Wear that and come downstairs. My driver just turned onto your street.”

She closed her eyes and sat on the edge of the bed. “Mikal, this isn’t a good idea. We should talk.”

“We will talk this weekend. I’m here now and I can give you what you want.”

This time he didn’t disconnect. The purr of his car’s engine was a backdrop for the soft, tempting sound of his breath in her ear. She hugged her pillow to her stomach and bent over her knees, bearing down on the desire coursing through her system and sinking into the memory of him behind her in a blindfolded dark.

He spoke first to break the silence. “Come be with me, Callista.”

“You’re going to hurt me,” she said softly.

“Yeah, I am…but only the way you want me to.”

He was wrong about that. She sighed. “I’m coming down.”

A few minutes later, she exited her building. Mikal stood on the curb, leaning against the rear passenger door of a black limousine. Instead of one of his endless supply of black t-shirts and cargo pants, he wore a tailored navy suit and a white dress shirt. He’d drawn his hair back into a low ponytail, washed away the eyeliner and removed the jewelry from his eyebrows. Even in the muggy morning heat, he looked crisp and cool. The semi-formal dress was such a change that Callista stopped short and stared. Nightclub-goth Mikal was totally hot. Wealthy-businessman Mikal was devastating. And she was seriously underdressed.

“It’s a business trip,” he said, straightening. He opened the door and held out his hand, beckoning her to take the last few steps to be with him.

She pressed her thighs together and shifted her overnight bag to hide the indecent state of her shorts. “I should go back inside and change.”

“You should get in the car so I have time to bury my face between your legs before we have to check in and board.” He crooked his fingers. “Now, Callista. Don’t second-guess yourself.”

“I…” She trailed off, unsure what she meant to say but positive it didn’t matter. Instead, she went with the words she
wanted
to say. “I’m coming, Master.”

His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared. Callista dropped her gaze in a fit of self-consciousness regret, only to find physical proof that he approved of the words. His cock rose against his fly, ruining the smooth line of his trousers.

Swallowing, she crossed the sidewalk to the car. Mikal shifted to block her entrance and slanted a hard kiss across her lips. Heat shot straight to her pussy as he sucked her tongue into his mouth and squeezed her ass with one large hand. Callista crumpled his carefully pressed shirt in her fists and rose on her toes to rub her pussy against him through their clothes. He twisted the waistband of her shorts and pulled the cloth taut, forcing the seam between her lips and up against her clit. Moaning, she strained to ride the stimulating pressure, suddenly desperate for a repeat of last night’s orgasm.

Mikal broke the kiss before she could find a satisfying rhythm. Breathing hard, he bit the side of her neck. “Get in the car and get down on your hands and knees on the floor. I want your head on the floor and your ass in the air. Understood?”

The roughly spoken instruction weakened her knees. A cocktail of fear and uncertainty pumped through her bloodstream, magnifying the desire that already burned under her skin. She didn’t let herself stop to think long enough to revisit all the reasons why getting into Mikal’s limo was a bad idea. Instead, she rubbed her cheek against his jaw and whispered, “Yes.”

And it wasn’t totally a lie. While she still didn’t know where they were headed emotionally, she
did
understand where they were headed physically. She was ready to give him the reins.

Mikal released her and stepped aside. Brushing past him, she climbed into the limo and knelt on the floor as instructed. A brief look around impressed upon her images of black leather and tinted windows. Complete privacy. The carpet was immaculate under her hands and knees. The masculine scents of leather and whiskey crowded close. Closing her eyes, she bowed close to the floor and angled her hips obediently.

A moment later, he entered behind her and sat on the seat that faced the rear of the car. Without a verbal command from Mikal, the driver pulled away from the curb and merged with the first wave of the early morning commute.

Mikal hooked his fingers in the loose leg of her shorts. He pulled the crotch aside to bare her wet flesh. “Turn on the overhead light, William.”

Reminded that they weren’t alone, she tensed and lifted her head to look back over her shoulder. “Maybe this isn’t a great idea. Your driver—”

“Is a very good driver who concentrates on the road.” Mikal rapped on the small window behind his seat. “William, can you see Miss Callista’s pussy?”

“No, Mr. Steele.” A soft yellow glow filled the car as William switched on the light.

“That’s good. I don’t think she’s really the audience type.” Mikal caught her gaze and lifted an eyebrow. “If you’re finished questioning me, I have big plans and little time.”

His chiding tone made her blush. She bent back to the floor and rubbed her cheek on the carpet, silently deciding that Mikal was wrong. The idea of his driver knowing what was about to happen only amplified her excitement. When Mikal ran his hand over her ass and down between her thighs, his fingers slid easily in a thick pool of wetness. Callista inhaled sharply and squeezed her eyes shut. In the blackness behind her eyelids, surrounded by the low hum of the engine and Mikal’s even breathing, she quickly lost herself in his touch.

He was very…
thorough
. Careful fingertips parted her outer lips and stroked each engorged petal before slipping into the narrow spaces between her inner and outer labia. His smooth fingernails gently scored her delicate flesh. Callista moaned against her forearm and arched her back, shifting into his touch. Mikal evaded her efforts to bring him in contact with her clit but gave her the next best thing when he slid one finger into her heat. Her body tightened around him, squeezing and pulling selfishly. Mikal indulged her by adding a second finger to the first. His thumb played across her anus and her nipples became painful points stabbing at her camisole and the floor below her.

She started to shift her weight and cup her breasts but a little dark thought thrilled through her mind. She wanted to ask for permission instead of taking by rights. “Master?”

His thrusting fingers stilled. “Yes?”

“I want to pinch my nipples. May I?”

He withdrew his fingers. “Get up on the seat and spread your knees.”

Painfully empty, she unfolded her limbs and shifted up to sit across from him. Mikal had his pants unzipped and held his cock in one hand while he sucked on the fingers of the other. He took his time licking her arousal from his fingers while Callista squirmed against the leather, hyper-aware of her aching pussy and taut nipples. She was on the verge of just pulling off her top and cupping her breasts with or without his permission when he slid off his seat to kneel between her legs.

She watched breathlessly as he bent his head and placed an open-mouthed kiss inside her thigh. His teeth traced the tendon running between her knee and groin. Temporarily forgetting about her breasts, she kicked off her flip-flops and put her feet on his thighs, using him as a springboard to propel her pussy toward his circling kisses. Mikal dodged her efforts but only long enough to pull her running shorts down over her hips, stretching the elastic to its limits across her spread thighs.

“You act like you want something, lover.” Using his thumbs, he pulled her smooth lips apart and tilted his head. “And you look like you want something. Your clit’s all red and wet.”

Clutching the edge of the seat with both hands, she sank deeper into the cushion and inched closer to his mouth. “I want you to suck on it. Please…Master.”

He glanced up to meet her eyes, one brow raised. “That word isn’t a tool you can use to manipulate me. I like hearing it but it’s not going to get you what you want just as a reward for using it.”

She flushed and dropped her gaze. “I’m trying to get used to the feel of it. Tell me when it’s appropriate and when it isn’t.”

“Oh it’s appropriate all the time. I just wanted you to know it’s not always going to get you anywhere. Today, though…” Without warning, he ducked his head and flicked his tongue across her sensitive clit.

Tingles of pleasure immediately arced away from that central spot. Callista whimpered and shoved her head back against the leather, digging her fingernails into the upholstery to keep herself from grabbing his head and holding his mouth to her flesh. Mercifully, Mikal didn’t make her beg or claw at him for attention. After the first taste, he cupped her ass and tilted her hips up to receive his mouth. He sucked at her lower lips and licked down her slit, following the same path he’d already explored with his fingers. His tongue dipped into her pussy and she cried out with a combination of relief and frustration. The hot invasion wasn’t enough, couldn’t replicate the way he stretched and filled her with his cock.