Authors: Cecilia Tan
*Â Â *Â Â *
I could not have dreamed of a better scene. Did she know how enticing she was, costumed cunningly and playing her role so earnestly? I was entranced by the image burning in my head of the witch-woman willingly submitting herself to whatever violation the villain might choose, overlaid with the undeniable reality that here was
Gwen
submitting herself to
me
. If I thought she would shrink away from the knifeâdulled for safetyâI was wrong. She accepted it the way she accepted all of my attentions: with zeal.
Was it the condom that thrust me out of scene or was it Gwen herself? The moment I pushed into her, the last scraps of the Linder Mage fantasy were torn away and I was nothing but myself, a man burning with need for her, with the need to claim her as my own. I discarded the clamps, unable to tolerate anything that might get between me and her, my blood surging with the need to make us one.
What strange creatures we are. Humans are mammals, warm-blooded animals who reproduce through the oddest activity, requiring the male to insert a piece of himself inside the female's body.
We could dress it up with costumes or contraptions, but with Gwen ultimately I was reduced to this primal drive to put my cock inside her. This wasn't sadism or dominance or mastery; it was raw hunger.
Fast, slow, deep, shallow, from the side, from the rearâI didn't care. All I cared about was pushing inside and the only reason I pulled out was so I could push in again.
This is the animal that Gwen reduced me to, a fucking machine, unable to do anything but pound my flesh into hers like my life depended on it. No woman had ever stripped away every pretense of mine like this before. She screamed, she cried, she wailed, she moanedâevery reaction made me want to do it again, do it more. It wasn't even that I was hunting down my orgasm; I was in such an animalistic state I couldn't even think that far ahead. There was only this, this moment played again and again, of penetration, of
needing
to penetrate.
I don't know how long I fucked her that way. Several positions, several changes of rhythmâ¦half an hour, perhaps? An hour? Long enough that I was giving myself friction burns, where my knees rubbed against the insides of my leather trousers. Yes, my need to put my cock into her had been so great I hadn't even bothered to remove them. Time to regain control. I pulled free now and shucked the trousers, my erection bobbing angrily.
I stripped off the condom, which had gotten somewhat bunched and wrinkled, and put on a fresh one, aware of her watching my every move.
“On your front. Cunt in the air. Open it for me,” I snapped. My heart rate doubled and my lust spiked as I watched her do it with alacrity. Her over-the-top poppy-red wig was bright against the white hotel duvet and her cleft was invitingly pink between her white thighs.
I pushed into her again and she pushed back, ensuring I sank to the hilt. I held her there, my hands on her hips. “Squeeze me.”
She made a little sound of dismay, but she obeyed as I felt the velvet grip on my cock tighten and loosen as if she were pumping it with her fist.
I pulled out suddenly, my arms shaking, on the brink of coming but consumed with the need to prove to myself that I was the master of my orgasm, that it was not the master of me.
I shoved two fingers into her and she groaned and pushed back against them, squeezing. This pussy of hersâI was rapidly becoming obsessed with it. With possessing it. With possessing her. “Tell me how many men you've fucked.”
She looked back at me, her hands slipping from holding her wide, questions in her eyes.
“In real life. Not the book,” I clarified. The wall between fantasy and reality had crumbled once again. That seemed to happen often when I was around Gwen. “Tell me.”
“Three,” she said.
For a moment I felt a thrill that made no sense, as if I had somehow conquered these three anonymous men. Then I remembered she was supposed to be playing the part of a groupie and I wasn't supposed to know she was Gwen Hamilton. I twisted the fingers inside her as I asked gruffly, “Three? Is that all? You present yourself as more experienced than that.”
She grunted and fucked herself on my fingers as she answered. “I've been holding out for the one I really wanted.”
I jammed my fingers into her brutally, as if I could punish her for lying, but instead she simply soaked up the rough treatment, her wetness nearly gushing. Did that mean she'd spoken the truth? Logic did not work when most of the blood in my body was in my prick instead of my brain and the Need was surging.
I clearly wasn't thinking straight. “Do you want my cock?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, please!”
“Do you want it again in the future?”
“Yes, of course!”
I pulled my fingers free and teased her with the head of my cock, rubbing it up and down her pussy lips but not putting it in, no matter how she squirmed. Madness. What I spoke next was pure madness but it was everything I felt and I could not hold back. “Then I want to be the only cock you'll take.”
She froze for a moment and I knew she was considering what I said seriously. “Iâ¦I would
love
for yours to be the only cock I'll take.”
The surge of victory thrill coursed through me again. Mine! She was mine. “I want you to be as hungry for me as I am for you,” I said, putting it in an inch and then pulling it away. “So no dildos either.”
“Yes, Mal.” She sounded breathless, elated.
“No fingers. Even your fingers would be cheating.”
She gave a little sound almost like a sob. “Butâ¦but am I allowed to come? Without you?”
“Only if you are thinking of me.” Sweet mother of angels, I had truly gone insane. I was guaranteeing that her obsession with me was only going to grow.
It was only fair, though, given how huge my obsession with her was becoming.
“I'm going away for three weeks starting tomorrow,” I said, putting my cock into her again and then pulling out. “Can you stand three weeks with nothing inside you?”
“Not even the chastity device?” she asked plaintively.
“No. Cunning though it is, it goes inside you and that makes me jealous.” I pushed into her again, freeing my hands to grab the stainless steel toy and examine it. Fascinating. The insertion ball was detachable.
I detached it. “There. Now not only may you wear this, but also you're going to. For three weeks. Remove it only to bathe or if you need to eliminate.”
“Really?” she asked excitedly, then more seriously, “I mean, yes, Mal!”
I had no idea if what I was asking her to do was reasonable or not. I was beyond reason at that point. I did know they made these things for long wear. How she would hide it from the people in her life was not my problem. How much it tortured her with constant arousal was not my problem.
Three weeks without her was my problem.
“I'm going to fuck you now and spank you until I'm satisfied while you reach between your legs and make yourself come.”
“How many times?”
“Until I say you can stop.”
Oh, how she squeezed me internally when I said that. This woman loved being tormented with pleasure as well as pain. I laid a heavy hand onto her buttock as I drove into her and quickly fell into a rhythm, alternating hands right and left.
By the time she came her sixth time and I came my first, her cries of ecstasy had turned to whimpers of pain. I emptied my bollocks with a great bellow and then pulled out all too soon. Even utter perfection must come to an end, unfortunately. I discarded the condom in the bathroom and then returned to the bed to find she had barely moved.
Seeing her lying like thatâspent, exhausted, aching from the things I had inflicted on herâmade my chest tighten and my eyes grow soft with a sudden protective urge.
You're insane,
I told myself.
You're the one who hurt her and now you want to be the one to kiss and make it better? Madness.
But a madness I indulged. Now I wanted nothing more than to coddle her, to care for her. “Excrucia, dearest,” I heard myself say as I encouraged her to roll onto her side. She groaned a little but did as I asked. I pulled back the covers and coaxed her under them, sliding in with her and cradling her with one arm. Her warm skin against my own was a luxurious pleasure unto itself.
“That was unbelievably amazing,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I did promise to satisfy you, did I not?”
“You did. And you definitely kept that promise.”
“For your part, you did quite well, too,” I said. The memory of entering the room and seeing her for the first time in full costume, kneeling at the ready, was burned into my brain. A more gorgeous sight I could not imagine. “I was unsure if you'd go so far as to obtain a chastity belt. I am pleased that you did.”
She wriggled happily against me and it was as if that happiness soaked right through her skin into mine. I even smiled. “I'm glad you like it. Re-reading that part of the book, do you think Ariadne Wood knew when she wrote it that things like that existed?”
“I have no doubt of it. Chastity devices are not a new invention, you know.” I petted her hair, luxuriating in the bliss we had both strived so hard to earn. Such a rare feeling. My mind was rarely so quiet. I had to wonder if part of me didn't crave that even more strongly than the primal rutting. “I do have to wonder what the author intended for us to imagine in the scene in the tower.”
“Maybe that's the beauty of it,” she said. “People could imagine whatever they wanted. Whatever they needed.”
“Hmmm.” I rolled her onto her back and toyed with the bright red strands of her wig. “The power of imagination serves up whatever we need mostâis that the idea?”
She nodded.
“Three weeks,” I said. The band had agreed to go into the studio with Larkin Johns for another try. I needed to keep myself free of distractions, but I had a strong feeling when we emerged from recording I was going to be burning with the need to see her again. “I'll message you with who to be when we reunite.”
Of course the day I was supposed to meet Mal again would turn out to be the day of Ricki's app launch. Originally they called the app Stargazer, but it turned out there was an astronomy app called that already, so they renamed it the much more on-point Man Candy. The app showed you photos of hot guysâmodels, actors, pop stars, and so onâand let you rate them by hotness. The app would not only serve up new photos of guys from all the syndicated newsfeeds like Getty and AP, but it would also learn what type of look you liked and show you new hot guys you didn't already know about. The app was intended to be a sideline for her media company WOMedia that would simultaneously let them do market research into what women liked while giving them a direct marketing tool right on women's mobile phones.
Genius. That's my sister.
Not that I was a slouch in the intelligence department myself, of course. My challenge was to figure out what to wear to a press event that would hide the chastity device I was wearing, and how to meet Mal in secret without Ricki getting suspicious.
“Your calendar's clear, right?” she had asked.
Right, because I didn't put my secret trysts with Mal on the calendar that she could see.
Thankfully Ricki didn't ask for any more details when I said the afternoon was free but I would be out that evening. I knew it would sound weird if I was too vague if she asked later, though. I settled on telling her a college friend was in town and wanted to reconnect.
Mal's instructions included the address of a different hotel from the previous one, as well as a scene from an Ariadne Wood book I hadn't read but that featured a virgin sacrifice to a dragon.
Black wig acceptable,
he wrote,
but put it up, atop your head or in a bun.
To match the character in the book, who was described as wearing ritual garments made of spider silk, I packed a see-through lingerie gown. I had my full makeup kit, so I could do the heavy eyeliner and facial contouring that I figured had to be the only reason Mal hadn't recognized me yet. My face is actually pretty generic when I'm not made up.
There were moments during the last scene when I'd felt like he was going to say something, especially after I'd dropped character completely. I was sure he'd figured it out. But then he didn't say anything.
Maybe he knows but wants to keep up the fantasy that it isn't me?
It seemed plausible given that I wanted to keep the fantasy up for as long as possible myself. It was working so well. I felt freer somehow, less judged, less self-conscious when I was pretending to be someone else.
Maybe in order to keep it up, he really did need to pretend I was a groupie and not the kind of girl his father would have fixed him up with. I had to hope that by the time he either figured it out or dropped the charade he had decided I was worth bending another one of his rules for.
First I had to get through the press conference. I was distracted, trying to imagine what Mal was going to do to me tonight. The chastity device was very odd: I'd gotten so used to it I'd forget it was there, until I thought about Mal and suddenly I couldn't ignore it. I know, scientifically, it was probably that thinking about him aroused me and made my clit swell, but it felt a lot like magic. As if thinking about him invoked him, as if that were his hand tugging at the chain, tightening the device.
The scene he had sent described the priests binding the sacrifice to the altar with “inescapable” bonds and then leaving her there alone. The dragon had then entered the stone grotto and, tongue flicking like a snake's, had tasted the sacrifice's skin to determine whether she would be accepted or rejected. If rejected, she would be burnt to a crisp.
In the original scene, the dragon becomes enraged by the spider silks and tears them away with his claws. “And then the dragon's tongue performed a most thorough and complete exploration of her skin, leaving not an inch untouched by that muscular appendage. Yes, it would seem the dragon deemed her an acceptable sacrifice.”
There the chapter ended. I had bought and devoured the ebook to find out more, but the next scene began with a priest coming to collect her charred bones and finding her surprisingly alive and whole. Perhaps Mal was going to dress as the priest?
Ricki nudged me from behind and I smiled, suddenly realizing I'd been fantasizing and hoping my face hadn't been showing my feelings. Then again, for what the app was supposed to do, maybe some drooling was appropriate.
She was right; literally all I was required to do at the event was nod and smile. There were tons of cameras and lots of photos were taken. They showed the promo video as part of the presentation. The rest of it was blather about their business plan; I thought about Mal instead of listening.
And then, at last, it was over. I went to say good-bye to Ricki before hitting the road. She was talking with their publicity manager, Thalia Rashan, a tall woman with her hair in an upswept knot at the back of her head. I took mental notes, wondering if I could put the wig up that way.
“Oh, Gwen,” Thalia said when she saw me. “Thank you so much for doing that video. You were perfect.”
I wasn't sure what to say to such a compliment; I hadn't done much but goof around on my phone making faces while they filmed it. “Um, you're welcome? It was fun.”
“We might do a follow-up video at some point. It's great having you in the family so we'll always know where to reach you,” she said with a smile. “Oh, one more thing.” She reached into her blazer pocket for a business card. “This photographer wanted you to contact him. Says he has some great portfolio shots and his work's often in
EW
.”
I looked at the card but didn't recognize the name: Beau Lavern. His phone number and e-mail were printed next to a generic logo of a camera. I tucked the card into my purse. “Is he here?”
“He said he couldn't stay.” Thalia shrugged.
“Well, speaking of not being able to stay, I've got to go off to my next stop. Don't wait up for me, Ricki.”
She chuckled. “Do I ever?” She suddenly looked at me. “Who are you meeting again?”
Thank goodness I had cooked up what to tell her in advance so it came out smooth. “Oh, a college friend who's in town!” I embellished it a little. “Recently broke up. I don't know if we're going out partying or if she's looking for a shoulder to cry on.”
“Well, have fun either way, I guess.”
*Â Â *Â Â *
The new hotel had private villas with high-walled patios, each with an outdoor Jacuzzi tub. A note from Mal on the bed told me to remove the chastity device, “prepare myself,” and await him on the “altar.” I searched the suite for what he might mean by that and didn't find anythingâ¦until I went out onto the patio. Beside a hot tub large enough for eight was something altar-like draped in dark cloth. Under the cloth I discovered a massage table. The cloth had an odd feel to it, like it had been waterproofed.
I also found there were Velcro straps attached to the legs of the table and a blindfold with an elastic strap sitting on top. I unhooked the chastity belt and set it on the edge of the hot tub and then climbed onto the table. Did he expect me to put the bonds on myself? It felt like he had left me a puzzle to solve. What did I think would please him most? And should I be faceup or down? I went back inside and reread both his instructions and the scene on my phone. Faceup, I decided, although the text was a little ambiguous. Then I stowed my phone and all my clothes in a drawer and put the see-through lingerie on.
After I finished applying my makeup, I set about pinning the wig up on top of my head as he'd specified. Imitating Thalia's hairdo turned out to be the right thing, twisting the dark locks into a single curl and pinning it at the crown of my head.
Now to solve the self-bondage puzzle. On the “altar” it was easy enough to strap my ankles down and my left hand, but how should I do my right hand? If I looped it around my wrist loosely, I found I could “tighten” it by wrapping it around my arm a few times. I took one last look at the scant pinpricks of stars in the dark sky before I slipped the blindfold over my eyes, lifting the elastic strap easily over my pinned wig. Then I lay back on the table, put my hand back through the last of the Velcro loops, and made the necessary twists of my wrist.
Bound. Ready. Trying to be calm but heart racing and clit throbbing.
I had been lying there on the table for only a few minutes when I heard the glass door from the suite slide open.
I heard the creak of leather as he walked across the stone patio.
And then I felt the brush of a finger along my lower lip. I tipped my chin upward reflexively and felt the sharp metal of the claw-tips he wore.
“Sacrifice,” he whispered, and I found myself nodding, as if that were a question to be answered.
And then: “Mine,” and I nodded again as he began to tear open the lingerie. He was not gentle, rending and ripping, occasionally catching my skin with his claws until I was laid bare to the sky and to his gaze, his touch.
His hot mouth upon my nipple. Yes! I could feel the points of his claws as he gripped my rib cage, holding me still so his tongue could rasp across one nipple and then the other, and his mouth could wander up and down my breasts, suckling and biting while I fought to keep myself silent. He hadn't said I should be quiet, but what if there were other guests on the patio next door?
He dragged his claws down to my hips as his mouth traveled down my stomach. And then his tongue was teasing my clit out from between the inner lips where it usually hid, until he could suck it between his teeth and grip it, trapping it for his tongue tip to torture.
The sweetest torture ever. So much for staying silent. After a few minutes of that I couldn't keep my voice quiet and whimpers began to escape me, then moans, and as I drew close to the peak of orgasm, outright cries.
But he pulled back before I could climax. I heard a scissors snip and felt the last shreds of the lingerie being tugged away. Then his handsâwithout the claws this timeârunning up and down my torso, caressing me all over while my legs shook with the need to close, to clamp down on my clit. I was that close to coming.
“I'm going to set you on fire now,” he said.
I was startled into saying, “Really?”
He chuckled and kissed me on the pubic mound. “Yes, really. I am a dragon, after all.”
I felt him moving around beside me, preparing for whatever he was going to do.
“It's very important that you don't make any sudden moves,” he said.
I decided this might be a good time to bring up this fact: “Um, my right hand is bound kind of loosely.”
He made a grunt of acknowledgment and untangled my arm, reattaching it with the Velcro snug around my wrist.
The next thing I heard was the unmistakable sound of a lighterâ
chttt, chttt, chttt
âand then I felt something warm near my face.
“Open your eyes,” he ordered softly as he lifted a corner of the blindfold.
I looked up into a blazing orange flame on what looked to my lust-addled brain like a marshmallow on a stick in a campfire. I sucked in a breath, more excited than truly afraidâif I feared anything, it was the fear of the unknown. What was that going to feel like? He'd promised no permanent damage, so that thought hadn't even entered my mind. The only thing in my mind was whether I would be able to stand the pain or not.
The first place he touched me was on my stomach and all I felt was a moment of coolness, then warmth, then the caress of his palm. I sighed as he petted me.
Several more touches like that followed and I realized he was swiping me with the flame, leaving a dab of lit fuel behind and then extinguishing it with his hand before the heat could build up in intensity. I groaned with pleasure. He worked his way down my stomach onto my thighs and then up to the swells of my breasts, letting the fire burn longer and longer, until I began to let out little gasps of pain. And yet it still didn't really reach the point of actually hurting.
When he yanked the blindfold off, it got caught partly in the wig but then came free, and I found myself looking up at him. He tapped the flame with his fingers and then tapped his tongue, the flame burning momentarily there before he closed his mouth. I stared in amazement.
Dragon. Like the tattoo on his back. He had stripped out of his clothes and I drank in the sight of his bare skin, muscular chest, his hair up in a topknot.
He did the flame trick again, transferring it to his tongue with his fingers, this time closing his mouth around my nipple, just a moment of heat and then wet. I groaned again.
The place I was wettest though, by far, was between my legs. He slid his fingers into me and then pulled them out, sucking them clean and then transferring the flame to his tongue again before snapping his jaw shut.
When he positioned himself between my legs, I wondered if I knew what was coming.
Yes, I did. He spread my labia with one hand, tapped my clit with the fire wand, and doused the flame with his mouth against my flesh. He did it again, letting it burn a moment longer and then soothing the pain with his incredible tongue. He brought me close to orgasm again, then returned to teasing me with the flame, sometimes setting me on fire, sometimes his tongue, but always dousing it with his tongue against my clit.
My cries were loud echoing off the stone.
But again he didn't let me climax. Next, he knelt down out of my sight and rummaged in a bagâI sensed he'd put the flame out even though I couldn't see him do it. I missed its cheery thrill, but not for long: When he stood, he was holding a wicked-looking black and green dildo, carved with ridges like a dinosaur's tail.
He let my legs free and lengthened the bonds that held my arms. “Bend your knees.”
I did, trembling with anticipation. “Iâ¦I⦔