BlindHeat (15 page)

He lifted her to the shelf. Cold stone connected with hot
flesh. She squirmed and shivered.

“Easy,” he said, his voice running down her spine. They
bumped foreheads, then noses. His teeth nipped her bottom lip and she opened to
him, taking his tongue inside, her will bending to his as easily as the evening
breeze bent blades of grass. He tasted like cinnamon. Like fire.

He pressed his body between her knees, ribs and muscle
angled against the soft flesh of her inner thighs. He rubbed his face against
hers, one side and then the other and the gesture reminded her of the way a cat
rubbed its owner. The sensation had a destabilizing effect, like whiskey
consumed too fast. When he stopped she did the same to him, needing to feel
that faint rasp of stubble against her jaw, over and over.

A new craving took hold, until all she could think of was
his teeth. She craved the feel of his teeth as she’d never craved anything in
her life. She wanted to feel them against the back of her neck the way he’d
done last night. She wanted them at her nipples, along her arms, her belly, her
thighs. Her clit.

“Please,” she moaned.

His hands encircled her wrists and pressed them back against
something hard. Metallic. Clamps, it turned out, mounted on the shelf, one on
each side where the shelf connected to the pillar. Marcus twisted a clasp,
opened and then closed the iron bands to receive and bind first one wrist and
then the other.

She tipped her head back and looked up at the cross piece,
saw two more steel bands, spaced farther apart than her shoulders or his.

He was always reminding her to breathe. Allie was breathing,
breathing as if she’d run a mile uphill. Realization dawned. This pillar, in
this spot between the fire pit and the bubbling fountain, was meant to hold an
offering of the female sort. If her hands were clamped down below her hips,
there was only one thing left to go up there. What scared her was how turned-on
the idea made her and how she didn’t care at all when he locked her ankle above
her head, because he followed that up with a hot trail of soft bites, nipping
his way from ankle to inner thigh. She wrapped her free leg around his head as
soon as he got below her knee.

“You’re lucky I’m flexible,” she managed to say.

“So very lucky.” He chuckled and the feeling trembled
against the skin just there in the curve of her thigh, that spot where a man’s
head seemed to fit perfectly. His fingers closed around the ankle and he gently
freed himself, giving her dripping pussy a quick lick just before he
straightened and fastened that ankle to the crosspiece.

It was a marvel of engineering, this display altar of his.
That her body could bend and stretch in ways that allowed him to display her
was another marvel. A vertical beam supported her back. The stone shelf
underneath her had a manacle on each side for her wrists. None of that terribly
complicated to get right. But the crosspiece, resting on a mount that extended
a foot from the beam at her back, was positioned so that her ankles fit the
manacles above her head perfectly. She supposed there were built-in methods for
adjustments but she hadn’t seen Marcus make any.

The result had her legs bound apart above her head, and her
hands locked down out of his way. She was looking at him through the vee of her
spread legs. He had an unobstructed view and complete access to whatever part
of her he wanted to explore. She was completely at his mercy now. Merciful
wasn’t a description she could apply to Marcus when it came to sex.

Heat ribboned through her core, had her need dribbling onto
the altar. He dipped a finger into her and she could only watch between the
frame of her thighs as he tasted and tipped his head back.

Framed there against a limb-laced sky, the moon a spotlight
just to the right of his head, the robe slipping back from his shoulders to
reveal the broad expanse of his chest, he brought to mind ancient druids and a
time when sex was a part of worship rather than something religions shunned. It
was as if they’d stepped backward in time and she was about to be initiated
into a sacred and primal rite.

When the wolf in the forest howled this time, something
other than fear stirred. She had to bite her tongue to hold back an animal cry
in response.

Marcus dropped to his knees and sighed. Allie would be
self-conscious about the way he had her displayed, were it not for his attitude
of total adoration. He had the look of a starving man contemplating a feast. He
closed his eyes, leaning in to inhale. The exhale was slow, directed right
along the cleft of her pussy, he spread the lips with his fingers and delivered
more of the same right over her clit. She squirmed in her bindings of stone and
steel. Then his tongue followed the path his breath had taken, unleashing a
flood of juices.

“You like that?” he asked.

She couldn’t speak.

He pulled back, looking up at her. “Answer me.”

She nodded.

“You want more?”

All these questions were a bad sign. This didn’t seem like
an appropriate time to get chatty. “Yes,” she said.

He pushed to his feet, stepped back. “We need to talk
first.”

Smart of him to lock her down before he pulled this. “You
can’t be serious.”

“Oh I’m very serious. I left instructions detailing how I
wanted you to continue the lesson we started last night. Did you practice this
morning?” he asked, stripping off his robe as he turned away.

He folded the robe and put it on a boulder near the fire.
The firelight accented the planes and hollows of taut muscles in his back and
ass as he moved and bent. His dark hair gleamed.

When he turned back around her gaze latched onto his erect
cock. She couldn’t look away. There hadn’t really been time in previous
encounters to look at him, appreciate the full impact of how beautiful he was.
She had the uneasy feeling she was going to get more time than she wanted now.

“Allison?”

He waited for an answer. Silver eyes pinning her attention.
She couldn’t recall the question.

“You didn’t practice this morning, did you?”

She tried using humor to wriggle out of answering. “Where’s
that ESP of yours when you need it?”

He didn’t smile. “I want to hear an answer. A direct
answer.”

“There wasn’t time,” she said. The plaintiveness in her
voice sounded pathetic even to her.

“Allie, we made a pact last night. I committed to teach you.
This is not something you can start and not finish.”

He slid one finger along her wet slit and she shuddered. His
cock jerked. “To leave off midway is dangerous. You understand this?”

She nodded.

“Good girl.”

He flicked his thumb lightly back and forth over her clit.
Pleasure sparked. Her breath quickened, but she held still, absorbing the
increasing pressure until he stopped, holding his thumb firmly over her clit.
“Now,” he said, “tell me why you really didn’t practice this morning.”

She looked at him. “I was afraid,” she said.

“You light a candle and spend ten minutes meditating on what
we did last night. Where is the danger in that?”

“You left out that you wanted me naked, imagining the light
as your fingers running over my skin.”

“Why do you feel that is dangerous?”

“I don’t know. It just does.”

“I want a better answer than that.”

She turned her head from side to side, jerked her hands
against the restraints.

He withdrew his thumb and had her instant cooperation.

“I feel like someone else, like someone I don’t know, when I
do these things for you.” She turned her head, finding it easier to watch
flames licking timbers in the fire pit than to gaze into the silver depths of
his stare. “When I do these things with you,” she added.

His hands returned her attention to him. He ran a finger
along the arch of her foot. She quivered, the air between them incensed with
her desire. He put a hand on each ankle, just below the black iron bands that
kept her legs open, held her spread like an offering. He closed his fingers
around one and then the other. He watched her face when his hands inched lower,
moving over the line of narrow bone, the firm curves of calf, lower still to
yielding thighs and lush bottom.

He dropped to his knees again, kissed the inside of one
thigh and then the other, before looking up at her. Her breasts rose and fell
with her soft panting. She watched him as if she were cornered prey, waiting
for the sign the devouring was to begin.

“You’ve been on this journey with me since I took you in the
rain and opened your body to me with water’s elemental power. It’s not
something we chose for ourselves, but something fate chose for us.”

A log fell in the fire pit, sending a shower of sparks up
toward the moon.

“Do you believe in fate, Allie?” She looked toward the fire,
swallowed, lifted one shoulder in a hesitant shrug.

“Some things we have a choice about.” He slid his hands back
up the length of her legs. A tremor ran through her. “We reach for them or run
away.” She whimpered when his hands moved back up her legs, but kept her eyes
on the fire. A flame popped and another log tumbled in a burst of red and gold.

“When I asked you to reach for the mystery yesterday, you
did,” he continued. “I warned you it wouldn’t end until I let you go. But
letting you go isn’t a choice for me. Understand?”

His hands traveled the backs of her thighs, cupped under her
buttocks, squeezed. He slipped both his thumbs into the scalding heat of her pussy.
She bit down on her lip, closed her eyes. Even though she tried to seal the
sound in her throat the soft mew was audible. He tipped his head to the side as
if to catch the sound, watching her. He’d heard.

“It’s not a choice I make to let you go or keep you. You
made the choice and now we’re bound by it.” His next words had a raspy edge.
“You are my fate.” He pressed his thumbs deeper and withdrew, slowly. Her
muscles clamped down, but couldn’t keep him. She wanted, needed, more from him.
Would he ever give it?

She wanted to ask more. Was prepared to beg.
Please, fuck
me, Marcus.

His eyes went straight to hers, as if he’d heard the
thought.

He knelt. His forehead rested right there, against the cleft
of her sweet altar. He closed his eyes, tried to close off his craving. He was
a male owned irrevocably by this female, his mate.

He swiped her dripping slit with his tongue and this time
her cry was full throated. She shouldn’t be able to shift here. Her wrists
jerked at the bands. Her legs trembled. Bound by the power of ancient stones,
grounded in their energy, her energy wouldn’t rise high enough to reach the
shifting vibration. He smiled, nuzzled her plump lips and sucked the nectar
they fed him. She was at his mercy.

“Hold tight, little cat,” he whispered into her heat, “we’re
going to be here awhile.”

He interspersed licks with nips, using his teeth on her
tender pussy lips. Drunk on the beauty of female moans, he caught crisp dark
curls in his teeth and tugged cries from her. Scraped her clit and closed his
teeth in a firm enough hold to fuck the little nub. Forcing her to stillness,
his hold demanded she maintain self-control even when her body was screaming
toward orgasm. It would intensify the sensation, and it was just one more tool
in the collection he was employing to hold her earthbound and unshifted.

She couldn’t move but she could vocalize, a low, keening
sound that rose as she approached the edge. He held his teeth around her clit,
every fiber tuned to her need when she came, when pleasure vibrated through her
in waves. She blinked in and out, light to dark, like a human firefly, but her
energy remained anchored to the altar, and to him. Her orgasm crossed the body
barrier, rippling through his cells with a power that stole his breath and milked
his cock. The tremors kept coming, the aftershock of one triggering a rise to
the next climax.

At first she’d begged him to fuck her, and then she just
begged him to make it stop. He couldn’t do either. Like her, he could only hold
on until she was too weak to come again.

She was shivering when he finally released her from the
altar, wrapped her in his robe and collapsed in a soft patch of grass near the
fire. He held her against him, stretching out on his back and looking up at the
stars. Head on his shoulder, she adjusted her position, following his gaze.

“It’s as if you could reach up and pick one from the sky,”
she whispered.

Stars were a safe topic, much safer than thinking about what
had just happened. What might yet happen.

“When I was a boy I’d spend hours star gazing on a summer
evening. It’s been too long since I’ve done this.”

“With no television or internet to keep you entertained, it
was probably easier to find time for it.”

“So true.” Not that he had time for those popular human
pastimes either. And then he realized she’d meant it to tease him about his
age. He couldn’t recall when television was invented, but he doubted there were
many humans older than television.

“Brat,” he added, rolling over on top of her and looking
down. She was grinning up at him and reached to brush hair from his eyes. He
caught his breath. It was such a rare thing, her initiating touch. He tried to
recall one time she’d reached for him without an order from him. He didn’t
believe it was because she didn’t want to be close. For whatever reason,
reaching to touch a friend or lover was not second nature. That it happened
spontaneously now lifted his heart and his cock.

Her fingertips stilled on his face. Her other hand brushed
his chest. Her fingernails skimming over his skin called up sexual reserves
he’d thought depleted. And this time, he promised himself, he would stay in
command of the encounter. With the edge taken off he might just be able to give
her what she really wanted. Now he just had to hope the power of the stones
held him earthbound and unshifted as well. That he could give her an experience
she would remember with a smile, rather than terror.