Firebird (6 page)

“So it will be our secret,” she said.

“Yes. Our fun little secret for the next couple of months. Are you in or out, Prosper?”

She hesitated. “If I’m in, then what?”

“If you’re in, I’d like you to come back with me to my place, strip down to your panties, and let me tie you to the bed.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. “Wrists and ankles. Tied with rope.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. “And then what?”

“That’s all. I’ll touch you a little. Talk to you. I won’t keep you more than an hour, I swear.”

“My last dom told me I should never let anyone tie me up the first time. That I needed to build trust first.”

“I’m sure he had your best interests in mind when he said that. But do you really think we need to build trust? We’ve been rehearsing together for a month now.”

She remembered lifts, balances. Hands that never once guided her the wrong way.

“But you won’t…you won’t…”

“Won’t what? There are certain things I won’t be able to do if your underwear stays on.”

He’d thought she was talking about sex, but she was clearly thinking of something else. He noticed the tense little lines around her mouth again.

“Pain. You’re worried about pain? Whether I’m going to want to hurt you?”

She nodded.

“No, not this time. That’s not something I do…” He almost said
at the start of a relationship
, but that was assuming things went well. She might run screaming from his place at any moment, and that would be that. Instead he said, “That’s not something I do the first time I’m with somebody.” An outright lie. If she’d been a regular girl, some normal, needy subby who’d answered his personal ad, he would have hurt her by this time already, more than once. Spanked her, clamped her, bent her over the bed, pulled her head back by that luscious hair. But it was okay. Plenty of time to train her to more stringent play. She was a dancer. She would be able to handle the pain.

“I won’t hurt you, not today, and I won’t ask you to take off your panties. What’s between your legs is not yet mine. Everything else I have a right to. Can you live with those terms for today? One hour?”

“
Not yet mine
.” The
yet
alarmed him. He already considered her his. Somehow he knew this was only the beginning; otherwise he would have pushed to have it all. Maybe he would still push to have it all when he got her alone.
No, no, don’t go too fast. Don’t scare her off.

“What do you say?” he asked. “In or out?”

Please, please, please, Prosper. You can do this.

“In,” she finally said.

Chapter Five

Prosper’s fingers seemed to belong to another person as she unbuttoned her coat. She took a deep breath and shrugged out of it. Jackson hung it on a coatrack near the door while she looked around. His town house was sparsely furnished. A rental, obviously. One couch, one end table. One TV. One table between the living room and kitchen with a computer on it. One bar stool at the kitchen counter, and one coffee cup in front of it. Everything was neutral except for a large bowl of fruit on the counter and a colorful afghan over the arm of the couch. His apartment was very clean. She thought of her and Glenna’s messy apartment. Thank goodness she hadn’t taken him there. Not that she could have. What were they doing? What if someone found out about this? They would all assume she’d slept her way into Jackson’s ballet.

Oh my God
. He was looking at her.

“Come upstairs. To the bedroom.” She let him lead her across the living room and up the stairs. His bedroom was as sparsely furnished as the rest of his house. A large iron bed dominated the room. There was a white shag rug on the floor and a bureau with a mirror across from the bed. She stood and watched with butterflies in her stomach as he folded down the white comforter.

“Down to your panties, Prosper.”

She blinked, and then her fingers began to fumble with the zipper of her dress. Nudity wasn’t a huge hang-up for her. Being a dancer, her body was always on display for appraisal and judgment. What made this different was that she was undressing for
him.

He watched her from a few steps away. His burgeoning erection was obvious through the fabric of his pants. She couldn’t look there, nor could she bear to look at his eyes, so she kept her gaze on the floor. She believed him when he said he wouldn’t take what wasn’t his. But the fact that his erection was there, blatantly obvious, made her own center throb and grow wet. She took off her dress and her bra, then looked down at her garter belt and stockings. Besides them, she wore only a teensy thong. She looked up at him, flushing hot.

“Yes, okay. Pretty lingerie. Leave it on.”

With a sigh of relief, she went to the bed. By the time she’d arranged herself across the stark white sheets, he had equally stark white ropes dangling from his hand. He took first one wrist and then the other and tied them to the posts of the headboard with a casual ease that indicated he was far from new at this. They were soft ties, of nylon maybe, but they were strong. They had no give at all when she tested them with quick, furtive pulls. He watched her with a hint of a smile.

“You’re caught now, aren’t you? Try to get free. Pull hard.”

She did and felt fearful excitement when she couldn’t move her wrists more than an inch or two in each direction. He reached down and snapped one of her garters. She yelped at the sting and reached to soothe it, but her hand was stuck fast.

“Naughty girl. You wouldn’t have worn those if you didn’t have every intention of getting naked today with our friend George.”

He looked down at her in mock censure. She shook her head.

“No, I wouldn’t have. I only wore them… They make me feel… I hoped—”

He snapped the other garter. She yelped again and fidgeted on the soft sheets.

“Little liar.”

“Really! If he… If you had been a stranger—”

“Stranger or not, Prosper, you should never let anyone tie you up unless you’ve negotiated first. You didn’t even ask for a safe word.”

“Safe word?”

He raised his eyebrows at her as he took her right ankle and pulled her legs apart.

“You
are
a novice.” He wrapped her ankle in rope and secured it. “You don’t know what a safe word is?”

“I know what a safe word is. But I know you. I trust you.”

“Do you? What do you know about me? What do you know about my needs and my limits? Do they match yours?”

She looked at him, wrapping her mind around his questions. “I know you won’t hurt me,” she said finally.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you need me for your ballet.” He looked down at her and burst into laughter—a rich, warm sound she’d never heard before. She was so used to critical comments and serious commands that his laughter caught her off guard.

“Okay. You’ve got me there. Not that you’re totally irreplaceable,” he said, waggling a finger at her. She giggled at his teasing and felt herself relax. He wouldn’t hurt her; she knew it. His fingertips brushed her ankle, checking the knot, making sure the rope was neither too loose nor too tight. The care he took made the warm throb intensify between her thighs.

“A common safe word partners use is
mercy
,” he said. “Today we’ll use that, not that you’ll need a safe word. Just a formality.”

She nodded as he walked to the other side of the bed to secure her left ankle. When he finished, she would be completely subdued, at his mercy.
Mercy
. It was an appropriate word, but it didn’t feel safe. The fact that such a thing as a safe word needed to exist between them took her breath away.

He stood back when he finished, and his gaze swept over her, making her go hotter still. He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what he wanted to do
to her
, and that made her wet, wetter than she could ever remember being. She was terrified he would touch her there and discover just how drenched she was.

“Okay?” he asked. “Your hands and feet feel okay? Your circulation isn’t cut off? As you pointed out earlier, I have a bit of a vested interest in your body. If you feel anything going numb, let me know right away. Don’t try to tough it out.”

She nodded.

“You can answer ‘yes, Sir.’ The nods and headshakes seem a bit rude.”

The reprimand in his tone washed over her, cold and hot lust. “Yes, Sir.”

He sat beside her, his solid weight dipping the bed toward him. She stayed where she was, inexorably tied. He leaned close, so close she could smell him, the clean scent of soap and aftershave, an amalgamation of maleness. She breathed deep.

He lifted a lock of her hair and brushed it across her shoulder. “How do you feel, Prosper? Have you ever been tied up?”

She shook her head, then remembered and said, “No, Sir. Not like this. With rope instead of cuffs.”

“Do you like it?”

His gaze penetrated her. There was no way to hide the truth from him.

“Yes.”

“‘Yes, Sir, I like it.’”

“Yes, Sir, I like it.”
Like it
? She was so overwhelmed with arousal, she could barely get the words out.

“Speak so I can hear you. Talk to me when I ask you a question, no whispering.”

“Yes, Sir, I like it.” She managed to say it more loudly, but he must have heard her voice shake.

“Okay. Better.” He reached a hand up to caress her jaw, the length of her neck, and down to the fullness of her breasts. She didn’t know where to look. His eyes? His hand? His fingertips as they brushed across her nipples—
ohhhh
. She tried to hide her reaction to the stimulation, but a jerky breath escaped. His other hand came down next to her head, and he leaned forward over her and then drew the undisciplined little nipple into his mouth.

The sensation took her breath away. She writhed in the bonds, hating herself for doing it. He’d only been touching her for a minute, less than a minute, and already she was tossing around like a tart. She tried to steel herself against the pleasure that threatened to undo her. With a smirk, he laved the other nipple, drawing it between rough lips that teased and tortured before releasing it with one sharp bite. She clenched her teeth to keep the groan inside. His fingertips touched the inside of her thigh and pinched her softly.

“Are you wet, Prosper?” He whispered it against her ear.

Her eyes were closed.
Please don’t touch me there, or you’ll know. You’ll know.

“Answer me, ‘yes, Sir’ or ‘no, Sir,’” he said. “Prosper. Are you wet?”

“Yes, Sir,” she whispered.

“Louder.”

“Yes, Sir. I’m wet.”

He moved his hand farther up the inside of her thigh, and she jerked again. He held his palm over the inadequate triangle of material that covered her. It hovered there, a hairbreadth away. If he pressed down, his palm would come away soaking wet.

“Please—”

His unforgiving gaze was terrifying. “Please what? Please touch you?”

“No, no,” she pleaded. “Please don’t.”

“I already know you’re wet.” He smiled. “You told me. Either way I would have known. I can look at your eyes and see it.”

“I just don’t want you to—”

“Take it as an invitation?”

“It’s just my body, my body doing things—”

“Your mind doesn’t agree with your body? Your mind isn’t turned on by what I’m doing to you? Tying you down, touching you, but not quite touching you enough?”

She looked at him, desperately wanting to produce the right answer. In the end she kept silent, too horny to speak.

“I turn you on because I like to see it. I’d like to feel it too, but I won’t. Not today. But if I’m turning you on, don’t try to hide it from me. Do you understand, girl?”

Her mouth fell open a little. If he made her any hotter, her pussy was going to set fire to his bed.

“‘Yes, Sir,’” he prompted her.

“Yes, Sir, I won’t hide it. I—I’ll try not to—”

“Try? No. See that you do.”

He moved his hand up the inside of her thigh slowly, teasingly. “Okay. Let’s go again. Show me how it feels.”

When his palm hovered over her center, when she couldn’t evade his eyes and she felt she would die from craving his touch, she stretched and arched with a soft sigh.

“Good girl,” he said. “More.” He lowered his mouth to her nipples again and wrested two throaty moans from her as he pulled each one into his mouth and suckled it. Her chest rose and fell as pleasure flooded her.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he whispered. “Under my power. Under my control. Do you want me to control you, Prosper?”

“Oh, yes, Sir.” She said the words with no conscious thought, only knowing they were true.

“And what if it hurts sometimes? Will you still want it?”

“Yes. Yes…” His hand was running over her belly now, down over her garter belt, then lower. He pressed just where her thong began, at the top of her pubis. She gritted her teeth and strained at the ropes.
Lower, lower! Please!

“Yes, I see now.” His breath blew against her ear. “I see exactly what you need. Exactly what you want.”

She shook her head, past rational thought. He was torturing her. The heel of his hand pressed again on her pubic bone but slid no lower. It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t enough!

Then his hand left her. He rolled off the bed and began to untie her ankles. Her hips arched, seeking fulfillment he wasn’t going to give. “Our hour is almost up,” he said.

No, no, it can’t be. I need more.

He untied her other ankle, then knelt over her to untie her wrists. He straddled her naked breasts, and she could feel his knees pressed against her shoulders, the rough fabric of his pants chafing her nipples. His erection, though clothed, thrust practically against her face. She felt pinned. She felt completely submissive to him. Prosper had never in her twenty-five years
wanted
to suck a man’s cock, but she thought if he weren’t dressed, that’s exactly what she would have done. She would have opened her mouth and taken his full length gratefully. She would have had no choice from the way his body subdued her, and that turned her on most of all.