Ice Queen (31 page)

“I don’t need to spank you to make it hard for you to walk.” The amber had become gold fire. Just as a lashing could rouse a slave’s submissive devotion to fever pitch, it had fully roused the Master in him, the Dominant male. She knew if he were free right now, there was nothing she could do to escape him, to keep from being shoved to her back, her legs parted and his body thrust into her, fucking her into submission. The thought made her quiver hard and deep down in the dark places of her soul. Something primal was moving in his eyes but a wave of the same was raging through her body, taking her over.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak. Do so out of turn again and I’ll gag you.”

“Do I get to choose what you gag me with?” He cocked his head. “The silk of your hair would make a lovely gag. The full ripeness of your breast, your nipple for my pacifier…your plump cunt. Are you still smooth for me, Marguerite?” 204

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She seized the latigo from the shelf. As it uncoiled with a hiss, she snapped it out of the shadows, making sure the tail struck the base of the scrotum with stinging accuracy.

He flinched but it just increased the challenge in his eyes. When he bared his teeth, she was flooded by the turbulent storm moving within her, driven by hurricane-force winds of emotion. She didn’t step back to let it settle. Not this time.

“Is this how you respect a Mistress? Challenging me, daring me to top you like a green submissive? Did you expect me to buy that bullshit line about honoring the Mistress in me?” Her voice did not sound steady, even to herself. She stepped deliberately out of the shadows, every part of her going still, zeroing in on one objective. To give the power within her an outlet.

Focused on the blatantly male display before her, she swung the whip.

His eyes never left her face. Not as she landed strike after strike on his front, knowing exactly what level of pain would be felt. A man could be hit harder than a woman because their skin was less sensitized. Using her well-practiced skills, she striped his body with red marks, never breaking the skin but delivering the maximum amount of pain. While she didn’t touch his genitals again, she abraded the skin near them with harrowing frequency.

But throughout the flogging, though his breath began to labor as the pain level increased, he remained still. The more he didn’t move, the more the energy vibrated off him until it filled the room with heat, fueling the thing building in her and between them.

His body gleamed in sweat. Her dress had become transparent as she became damp with her own reaction, the stress of the scene, the demand of her own desire.

Stepping back, she picked up the tawser in her free hand. Tyler knew she was considering another round and where to place it. The whip moved with her, coiling around her calves like a sinuous snake permanently enamored of Eve. Or Lilith. His nerve endings were roused, vibrating, affecting his emotions as well as his body. He could admire her ability, her stamina, even as he knew he was losing the ability to hold on to his own control, driven to the edge by pain and his own alpha lust. The desire to become a raging beast, tear the chains from the wall and take her over, was becoming as excruciating as the rawness of his skin.

He could read her emotions through the strikes. Anger. Controlled anger for the moment but definitely teetering on the brink. Frustration. With herself as much as him as she struggled to reach the state of mind she wanted. Pride was part of this, too. He’d mastered her and she needed to balance that, to prove to him she was a Mistress. He’d suspected that would be a component of tonight’s session even before they started. He also suspected he’d become the manifestation of the things that frightened her. He’d stirred them up, things perhaps she’d never allowed herself to want. And then he’d let her go, left her to deal with that alone. This was his penance. He wasn’t going to leave her like that again, damn it, no matter what.

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She lifted her gaze, met his with eyes like a blue wasteland. “Do you know what pain is, Tyler? Really know? You’re so fucking determined to be inside of my head. But you give me nothing.”

“I’d give you everything, Marguerite, if you’d just let me.”

“Don’t try that. Don’t you dare.” His voice, his truth, hit her like a return blow and she lashed back out.

This time she didn’t hold back, didn’t think of rules, only the fact that she was breaking open, her darkness spilling into every corner of the room. It was going to swallow them both up, so what did it matter?

Two steps forward and she at last brought the tawser into play, the handle wet from the sweat in her palm. A strike on his abdomen earned her a grunt of pain as the strap proved its reputation as a weapon of extreme BDSM play.

But his eyes were calculating. Waiting. Still waiting.

For something she couldn’t give him. Why didn’t he understand that? Or maybe he did and this was just his special torment for her, to try and pry it from her.

Lashing out wild, control slipping away from her, this time she struck the left nipple dead-on. His jaw clenched, breath whistling out between his teeth. And still that same steady, waiting look. She needed to obliterate it. Her fingers clenched on the handle and she snarled, took him across the jaw with the tawser.

Striking in the face for any reason except with the flat of a hand was a cardinal sin at The Zone. She didn’t care. They’d come, they’d stop her, she’d never see The Zone again, she would never see him again.

“Marguerite—”

“Shut up. Just…don’t…speak.” She spoke through the roar, the white noise in her head so loud that his voice grated across it like a jagged dull knife over a wound already infected. She struck out again, not caring where, just wanting to hurt. She heard a stifled curse and redoubled her efforts. Safe words. There were no safe words. He hadn’t asked and she wouldn’t give him any. No mercy. Nothing safe. Nothing but pain.

She struck again and again. The face, the torso, his legs. She cried out with each blow, each one feeling as if it were ripping the flesh from her soul.

When she couldn’t take any more, she dropped both weapons, threw them from her and spun away, covering her face with her hands, squatting down on her heels in an effort to protect her vital organs, vibrating from the pain she was sure was going to shatter her into a million pieces.

She’d hit him, she’d hurt him. Deliberately, not for pleasure but to inflict pain, to impose the agony that was burning through her. She was dying inside. There was so much darkness, she couldn’t see. She was afraid to take away her hands to see what might lie in wait for her in that darkness. And the roaring would not stop, the rush of water behind a dam of memories she thought she’d secured away from herself. They 206

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were going to come crashing down, pummel her with an eternity of this mindless, screaming pain.

“Marguerite.”

She had no idea how long he’d been saying her name, that gentle repetition. Not angry, not panicked, simply calling to her. A little bit of a hoarse strain to his tone. She had no idea where in the room she was. In the shadows, in the light, it didn’t matter. It was all the same.

“Come here, angel. It’s okay.”

It couldn’t possibly be okay. She couldn’t see anything. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see the crime she had committed, the pain she’d inflicted on his body merely because she wanted it so much.

“Come here, Marguerite. Now.”

She turned toward his voice, that fierce tiger’s power, the
mouko
, compelling her at last. She stumbled, stepped out of her shoes, took one barefoot step, another. He’d stopped talking, so she stopped. There was only darkness.

“Right in front of you, angel. Just a few more steps.” He knew. He could tell she was lost, lost in broad daylight. If she could just huddle in that darkness, stay in the shadows, it would pass. She would find herself again as she always did, find the balance she was able to maintain as long as she stayed in solitude.

But now she didn’t need silence. She needed that voice. Needed it more than she’d ever needed anything, more than she’d allowed herself to need in a very long time.

Reaching out, she found him. It was his rib cage, the skin hot to the touch, wet with sweat. When she blinked, a haze moved through the blackness. Moving closer, she felt his heart beat against hers. Slow. Even. Hers reverberated back. Fast. Erratic. But the pulse of the world was in him, going on steadily even under chaos.

Leaning in, she pressed the side of her face against his neck, smelled blood where she’d bitten him. As she nuzzled the wound and licked it gently, he made a soft sound of reassurance. She had just beaten the hell out of him, broken every rule a Dominant could break but she sensed nothing from him but…sanctuary.

Turning her cheek, she rubbed against his unmarked shoulder area, moving her lips over the rounded end. Bending down, she tasted the slope of his side just beneath his arm. Her hands descended, taking her down inch by inch. She touched each shallow valley between the ribs, reaching the crisp hair that narrowed to a point over his flat abdomen. Down to the hipbone, her palm finding the buttock. Another blink of her eyes and the darkness was slinking sullenly away, clouds defeated by his blazing heat. She felt the golden fire of his eyes like the warm touch of sun on her hair and skin. And like the sun they were something she could not look at directly. Her bare foot pressed on his, her toes digging in to feel it flex under hers. When she sank down, her cheek grazed his cock, still remarkably semi-erect above his scrotum. She tasted him there, a shy kiss.

Sliding her arms from his hips, she found a lower circle around his thighs and rested her head just below his genitals. Her mouth, the wetness of her breath against that first 207

Joey W. Hill

mark she’d put on his thigh. Her fingers told her he had welts everywhere. Bleeding in several places, for her dress was stained with it.

She couldn’t top him. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be a Mistress to Tyler.

The knowledge of it was quietly there, the real battle she’d come in here to fight. What the waiting look in his eyes told her he’d known all along. He’d proven himself her Master even when bound, taking over her senses even without the privilege of touching her.

She was lost in him to the point of immobility, so integral that it went past having to define it as Master and sub.

She had denied what they both knew was true from the beginning, not because she didn’t believe it deep in her soul but because she couldn’t accept it. But he hadn’t let her have any other choice. Her own needs had forced her to face the truth.

Tyler could not find sexual satisfaction with anyone but a woman whose nature could submit to him. She’d known that from the beginning, which made this moment an undeniable truth.

She was a Mistress who needed a Master. Who needed him.

* * * * *

Join Tyler and Marguerite for the rest of their story in:
Mirror of My Soul

Coming soon from Ellora’s Cave.

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About the Author

I’ve always had an aversion to reading, watching or hearing interviews of favorite actors, authors, or musicians because so often you find that the real person does not measure up to the beauty of the art they produce. You find their politics or religion distasteful, or you find they’re shallow and self-absorbed, or a vacuous mophead without a lick of sense. And from then on, though you still may appreciate their craft or art, it has somehow been tarnished. Therefore, whenever I’m asked to provide personal information about myself for readers, a ball of anxiety forms in my stomach as I think,

“Okay, the next couple of paragraphs can change forever the way someone views my stories.” Why on earth does a reader want to know about me? It’s the story that’s important.

So here it is. I’ve been given more blessings in my life than any one person has a right to have. Despite that, I’m a Type A, borderline obsessive-compulsive paranoiac who worries that I will never live up to expectations. I’ve got more phobias than anyone (including myself) has patience to read about. I can’t stand talking on the phone, I dread social commitments, and the idea of living in monastic solitude with my husband, a few animals, books and writing is as close an idea to paradise as I can imagine. I love chocolate, but with that deeply ingrained, irrational female belief that weight equals worth, I manage to keep it down to a minor addiction. I adore good movies. I’m told I work too much. Every day is spent trying to get through the never ending “to do” list to snatch a few minutes to write.

This is because, despite all these mediocre and typical qualities, for some miraculous reason, these wonderful characters well up out of my soul with stories to tell. When I manage to find enough time to write, sufficient enough that the precious

“stillness” required rises up and calms all the competing voices in my head, I can step into their lives, hear what these characters are saying, what they’re feeling, and put it down on paper. It’s a magic beyond description, akin to truly believing that my husband loves me, winning the trust of an animal who has known only fear or apathy, making a true connection with someone else, or knowing for certain that I’ve given a reader a moment of magic through those written words. It’s a magic that reassures me that there is Someone, far wiser than myself, who knows the permanent path to that garden of stillness, where there is only love, acceptance and a pen waiting for hours and hours of uninterrupted, blissful use.

If only I could finish that darned “to do” list.

Joey welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

Also by Joey W. Hill

Behind the Mask
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Enchained
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Forgotten Wishes
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Holding The Cards

If Wishes Were Horses

Make Her Dreams Come True

Natural Law

Snow Angel

Virtual Reality

Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC

on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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