Pleasure's Edge (22 page)

To be with him.

She moved to the long mirror by the front door for probably the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Her eyes looked enormous, outlined in black liner, the pupils wide and dark. Her lips looked ful , almost as if they were waiting to be kissed, glossed in a sheer coating of red. Her dark red hair curled around her shoulders, bared by the strapless black dress she’d run out to buy that afternoon after Alec’s cal . It fit her like a glove, a simple satin sheath that came to mid-thigh. Shorter than anything she’d wear anywhere but to the club. She stepped back to look at her sleek, high black pumps, the thick black ankle straps accentuating her long legs.

She felt good. Wel , she felt attractive, anyway. Inside she was al jittery need. Her tiny black silk thong was already damp, simply from anticipating the evening ahead.

Alec.

She was stil amazed at her response to him. Her response to the pain, the way it translated to an intense pleasure she’d never felt in her life.

She’d never been able to admit to herself that she’d had fleeting fantasies about this sort of thing for years. Fantasies she’d repressed because she was too used to having to be the strong one, in charge, in control. Maybe he was right, and that was exactly why she needed so badly to let that control go once in a while.

She would let it go tonight. She already had. She could do it as long as she kept tel ing herself it was just sex. Pure sexual response, rather than something that defined her. Or something deeper. But that part was getting harder and harder to deny.

Her years with her out-of-control mother must have trained her wel ; she seemed to be awful y good at denial, which was counter to her usual, logical self. Or maybe not. Maybe when she’d thought she was being logical, reasonable, al these years, she’d been doing nothing more than hiding from her past, pretending to possess a strength she didn’t truly have.

Scary thought.

Alec was bringing out a lot of scary ideas. Making her question everything she thought she knew about herself. Which brought her back to the denial.

She sighed. Her mind was going in circles. She needed to calm down and simply enjoy the evening ahead.

The buzzer went off and she started, pul ed in a deep breath, and set her glass down on the console table beneath the mirror before hitting the intercom button.

“Alec?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Do you want to come up or shal I come down?”

“You’d better come down.”

“I’l be right there.”

She slipped into her leather trench coat, making sure her smal wal et and her keys were in the pocket, then locked up and took the elevator down. Alec was waiting for her just outside the front door.

“Hi.”

“You look ... amazing, Dylan.”

“Thank you.”

Was she actual y blushing?

He leaned over and brushed a kiss across her lips, and her sex pulsed, her body melting. He pul ed back, his blue eyes searching hers for a moment, then he moved in and crushed her to him, his mouth coming down hard on hers. His lips opened, his tongue slipping between her lips. He was al sweet, minty tongue, wet and

. . . lovely. Her knees were going to buckle. But he held her tight, his arms strong around her. She could feel every hard, muscular plane of his big body through his wool coat. She sighed into his mouth.

He pul ed back. “Christ, Dylan.” He let her go, ran a hand over his goatee. “I’m sorry I didn’t come up. I didn’t think we’d ever leave your place if I did.”

He was smiling at her, that gorgeous, wicked smile of his. But she could see that he was perfectly serious.

She loved that she could affect him this way. That his desire seemed to be as overwhelming as her own. She’d always felt a certain feminine power in being able to bring a man to his knees—

figuratively, anyway. But with Alec it was even more intense.

Everything was.

“Shal we go before I rape you on your doorstep?” He was grinning at her, but she saw the gleam of desire in his eyes, in the loose set of his mouth. Alec raping her on her doorstep didn’t sound half bad.

She smiled to herself, nodded.

He took her hand and led her to his big, black truck, like some sleek monolith. The vehicle was pure Alec: huge, powerful. He opened the door for her, helped her in before going to the driver’s side and getting in himself. Then they were off, the truck’s engine a muted roar.

“How are you feeling about going to the Pleasure Dome?” he asked her.

“Excited. A little nervous. It’s as though I’l have to perform, unless you’re taking me to some dark corner again. But I have a feeling that’s not what tonight is about. And I don’t mind the idea of being in front of other people. The idea is a little thril ing. And a little frightening. But I don’t real y know what you have in mind.” He turned, grinned at her.

“And you don’t plan to tel me,” she said.

“Of course not.”

She smiled, shook her head. “Part of the dominant mind-fuck.”

“Yes. Absolutely. And the uncertainty is part of it for you. You have to simply trust me.”

“I do.”

“Good. Very good. Because tonight I’m going to explore some new ground with you. I think you’re ready.”

“Oh ...”

He glanced at her, then back at the road. Her stomach had formed a smal knot, but it was equal parts fear and an exquisite anticipation.

They arrived shortly at the club, and Alec parked the truck, came around to help her out. His hand on her arm was reassuring, yet her pulse was racing.

They passed through the high red door and into the interior of the club. Alec helped her out of her coat, then took her into the big main room. Dylan blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim, colored lights.

The club was more crowded tonight than it had been the last time they’d come. There were people everywhere, it seemed: clad in dark leather, or naked. Or maybe she was simply more aware of it al tonight. Hyperaware of everything.

Music was a heavy pulse-beat in the pit of her stomach: something dreamy and trancelike, with a lot of bass. And beside her, Alec’s body felt enormous, hulking, as he’d appeared to her the first time she’d seen him at the Asian Art Museum. That seemed a hundred years ago. Had it only been two weeks? How was that possible?

He pul ed her closer into his side as he led her across the room.

She couldn’t quite take it al in, the activity around them. She was only dimly aware of the half-dressed and naked bodies bound to the crosses, the bondage frames, laid out over the laps of dominant men and women on the red leather sofas, or kneeling on the floor. There were corsets and col ars and handcuffs. Ropes and harnesses and long, shining lengths of chain. And al of it lovely to her, titil ating.

Wanting
, like a hot tide in her veins. She wanted to be one of them. To be bound, tortured, stimulated. To be admired.

Her brain was shutting down, simply emptying out. And when Alec stopped in front of one of the enormous wooden Xs, a St.

Andrew’s Cross, her heart stuttered in her chest.

This was real y about to happen.

twelve

Alec leaned in and whispered in her ear, “I am going to strip you now. And I am going to chain you to this cross. I love the chains.

They’re better for me than the ropes. More primal. I think you’l like them, too. I think the more extreme, the better, for you. It’l help you to reach that basic, primal part of yourself. To let go.” She could barely speak, wanted to groan. Her heart was hammering, her sex aching.

“Yes, Alec . . . ”

He did it, just slipped her dress off, then her silky black thong, leaving her in nothing but her high shoes. Her nipples came up hard immediately.

She was keenly aware of being naked, with al of the other people in the club right there. It was thril ing as hel . It didn’t even matter whether or not anyone was looking at her. Except Alec, of course. And she felt an odd sense of pride at being able to do this in front of al these people: to be naked, to have him play her. But al of these ideas were in some distant part of her brain. The rest of her was simply in the moment.

He kissed her shoulders as he turned her around to face the cross. She was shivering al over, a lovely thrum of desire shimmering over her skin, arrowing deep into her body.

“Just let me take care of everything, Dylan. Here, raise your arm up. Yes, that’s it.”

Before she knew what was happening, he’d fastened a thick leather cuff around one wrist, then, with one hand on the smal of her back, he moved her in closer to the wooden X, until her breasts brushed the smooth wood. He took her other hand and fastened it even more quickly. She gave a smal pul , felt how tautly she was held by the short lengths of chain running from the cuffs to the eyebolts embedded in the cross.

Her arms were spread wide. She felt vulnerable. Yet entirely safe at the same time, with Alec. And beautiful.

“I’m going to leave your pretty shoes on,” he told her, bending to stroke her calf, then lower, to where her ankle was covered by the strap. “Such gorgeous legs.”

He laid a soft kiss on the back of her knee, and the sensation shot straight to her sex. She moaned.

Then he was standing, his big body pressed against her back, his erection a heavy shaft of flesh against the top of her buttocks.

“I’m going to unpack my toy bag now. But I’m right here. I don’t want you to move. Stay stil , practice the breathing I’ve taught you.

Do you understand me, Dylan?”

“Yes. I understand.”

He moved away then, and she drew in a deep breath. In through her nose, holding it in her lungs a few moments, then out through her mouth, wil ing herself to relax. Some smal part of her mind was stil engaged in nerves, a fear of the unknown. But mostly she was tuned into her body: her hardening nipples, her moistening sex, the tension in her muscles as she waited for things to real y begin.

Alec was behind her once more, his hands on her waist. They were big and warm on her skin.

Touch me . . .

But she didn’t dare say it out loud. She knew enough by now to understand that he would set the pace, and she would fol ow.

He began to stroke, his fingers feathering over her skin, bringing up goose bumps. He caressed her back, her sides, her buttocks, her thighs, and moving her hair to one side, the back of her neck.

Desire rippled over her skin everywhere he touched.

“Ah, you like this, Dylan. I can feel it. I can hear it in your breath.

Are you going under? Tel me.”

“Yes . . . yes.”

“Excel ent. Good girl.”

That now-familiar rush of pleasure at his approval.

Good girl.

Lovely.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes. I’m ready.”

“And you remember your safe words?”

“
Yellow
for slow down,
red
for stop the scene.”

“Very good. Now, then . . . ”

He stepped back, and very quickly she felt the soft brush of leather on her skin. A heavy suede flogger, she could tel . But he was being gentle with it.

She let herself sink into the rhythm of it as he swung in a crisscross pattern over her upper back, warming her up. There was no pain, only a deepening pleasure. She tuned into the music, which he was working in time with. And the music became part of it, the thudding beat-beat of it almost a part of the touch of the heavy flogger.

Her limbs were melting al over, relaxing, blood flowing into her arms and legs, her bel y. And her breasts and her sex were aching with it, but not urgently. Not yet.

She yelped when the flogger came down in one hard smack, thudding across her back. But before she could real y absorb it, the gentle rhythm began again. And again, she let herself sink into it.

It seemed to go on forever, mesmerizing, until she was floating in some misty, beautiful dream place. She stayed there for an almost eternal period of time, waiting, drifting.

Another hard smack took her by surprise, woke her a little, yet her mind was stil floating. And even though he was hitting her harder and harder, the flogger stinging, hurting, her mind was suspended in that lovely place, her body converting the pain to immediate pleasure. The pain
was
pleasure: desire, need, hot and aching.

He stopped, and ran his hand over her sore skin.

“Beautiful, the way you pink up. Gorgeous. Are you stil with me, Dylan?”

“Hmm ...”

“Dylan.” His voice a bit sharper this time. “Answer me. Are you stil with me?”

“Yes, Alec. I’m here.”

The heat of his body vanished, and suddenly he was in front of her, lifting her chin with his hand, his gaze boring into hers.