Smoking Holt (7 page)

He tipped his head to the side and traced the lip of his cup. “Limits.”

“L-limits?”

“I think it’s important. Don’t you?”

She gulped. “I suppose.”

“Let’s start with
the basics.”

“O-okay.” Hell. She’d never had a sex negotiation before.

“For example, I don’t do men.”

“I do.” It was supposed to be a joke, to lighten her tension, maybe, but he didn’t laugh.

He simply fixed her with a steady gaze and asked: “Do you do women?”

She choked on her
breath. “I…ah…no.”

“Multiple partners?”

“Definitely no.”

“Good. Me either.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “When I’m with a woman, she is my only focus. My whole world.” His voice cracked a little on the word.

“I…ah… Yeah. Me too.”

“So what kinds of things won’t you do?”

She shook her head. “I don’t really know what we’re talking about here, Holt.”

He nodded. “Okay. When I smacked your ass. Did you like that?”

Heat scorched her. She turned away. His hold on her tightened. “Look at me please, Bella. It helps if I can see your expression.” She complied. “Did you like when I smacked your ass?”

“Y-yes.” A whisper.

“Okay. Good. That’s probably something I’ll do again.”

“P-probably?” She burbled the word.

He grinned, revealing that he had, in fact, been teasing.

Oh, not about smacking her ass again. Sometime. In the near future.
No. He hadn’t been teasing about that.

“I’d really like to give you a paddling…” He shifted restlessly. But then, so did she. “I’d also like to tie you up, but before you said something
about that. Have you ever been tied up, Bella?”

Jesus. He looked so sincere. Spoke those words in such a fucking normal tone. As though he had conversations like this over pancakes and
bacon all the time.

T
he thought pissed her off.

She was so pissed off, she forgot to control her reaction to his question.

His eyes narrowed. “You have. Haven’t you?”

“Yes.” A mutter. It had been a dismal experiment with an even more dismal partner.

“You didn’t like it?”

“No.” She’d hated it. The loss of control, the creeping fear. The panic when he wouldn’t untie her.
She snorted and tried to make a joke of that miserable memory. “I had rope burns for a week.”

He stilled. “Rope burns?” A low snarl. “Why would you have rope burns?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. God. She didn’t want to relive this. Not with him.

“Why, Bella?”

“You know. From struggling to get free.”

His voice, when he spoke, was a slithery snake. “Why would you need to struggle to get free?” Ooh. This Holt scared her a little. She scooted her chair back. Just a bit.

“He wouldn’t…”

“He wouldn’t untie you? Did you ask?”

God yes. Begged. Until her throat was raw. She nodded. Nibbled her lip.

“Fucker,
” he growled. Bella jumped when his palm slammed on the table. Her gaze snapped to Holt’s face. She winced at what she saw there. Rage.

She cowered a little when h
e stood in a rush and came around the table. He was so big. So strong. And she felt so vulnerable right now. But he hunkered down at her feet and took her hand and kissed it gently. Reverently.

“I will never, ever, ever, never, ever do that to you. Do you understand?”

“Umm hmm.” She was speechless. Because all that fury, all that rage, was on her behalf. No one had ever smacked a table for her before.

“If we ever do that, it will only be because you want to and
you expressly ask for it. And by all that is holy, the moment you say ‘untie me, Holt’ you are fucking free. Do you understand?”

“Umm hmm.”

He looked up at her and tried to smile, but she could still see anger simmering behind his eyes. He sat in the seat next to her, but didn’t let go of her. “I mean it, Bella. It’s a partnership. We’re in this together. Anytime you want me to stop what I am doing, no matter what it is… If I’m fucking you and a breath away from coming and you don’t like something, you say your safe word and that’s it. It stops.”

“My…safe word?”

He blinked. “You do know what a safe word is?”

She blew out a breath. “I read. Of course I know what a safe word is. I just…well, I don’t have one.
Hell, I don’t even know how to pick one.”

“It’s easy.” He
stroked her palm with his thumb. “Some people go with ‘red light’, because red means stop. Some people pick a word they might normally use, but would never say during sex. Like…bacon.” He shot her a playful grin.

“No.” She tapped her lips. “I might say that during sex.”

His chuckle warmed the room. “Okay then. What would you never say during sex?”

She snorted.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s…God. The one word I would never ever say during sex?”

“Yeah?”

“Kristi.”

He gaped at her, then threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, that would kill the mood I guess.”

She frowned at him. She’d forgotten. He had a thing for her sister. “
It would kill the mood for me. Might spur you on.” She didn’t mean to say it quite like that, with so much bitterness. But she did.

He noticed.
His lips tightened. “It would not spur me on.”

“Tell me you don’t have a crush on her.”

“I don’t.”

“Everyone has a crush on her.”

“I don’t.”

“I saw the way you looked at her the last time we were all here
. I saw—”

“I fucking don’t. Get this through your thick, stubborn head, Bella. I’ve never had a thing for Kristi. Not the way I—” He broke off. A red tide rose on his cheeks.

He would have leapt to his feet—escaped, perhaps, but she held tight to his hand. “Not the way you what?”

He blew out a breath. Scrubbed his face with a palm. “We’ve covered this Bella.” He met her wary gaze. “You’re the one I want.”

“Right now. You know. ‘Cause I’m here and all.”

“You’re the one I want.”

Something, maybe the waver in his tone, convinced her. At least for now. She was the one he wanted. For now. She would take what she could get.

“Okay then. Kristi it is.”

He blinked. “What?”

Her lips curved in a sly smile. “My safe word. Is Kristi. And if it spurs you on, I’ll kill you.”

Once their negotiations were finished, Holt suggested—with the waggle of his brow—that they hop into the hot tub before they began. Since Bella wanted to take a quick shower first, she asked him to dig her bathing suit out of her suitcase, which she shouldn’t have done.

Because she’d forgotten.

She’d stopped by the supplier on the way to the island and the samples were tucked in her bag.

Yeah.

Dildos and floggers and the dreaded nipple clamps.

She stepped out of the bathroom to find him
sitting on the living room floor with toys strewn all around him like a kid at Christmas.

“Oh, hell.” Heat crawled up her cheeks
as she watched him finger a leather collar with metal studs. “Give me that.” She snatched it from him. She did not understand the glint in his eye. “What?” she snapped.

“You know, when a sub takes a collar from her Master, it has a special meaning.”

She tried to glower, but his grin was too engaging. “I am not taking a collar from you—”

“Yeah, I think you just did—”
He winked.

“And you are not my Master.”
Yet.

He arched a brow. They had agreed to one trial session. With her as the meek little sub. She didn’t hold out hope she could make it through without bursting into manic laughter. Or punching him in the gut.

He’d offered to take it slow, but she’d dredged up her courage and told him not to hold back. If she was going to try this, she should try it all the way. Shouldn’t she?

Only n
ow she wasn’t so sure…

He held up a package. “This looks interesting.”

“What is it?” She leaned closer. She hadn’t paid any attention to the new items her distributor had foisted upon her. She was planning to go through all that stuff on Monday.

“An egg.”

“An egg?”

He waggled his brow.
“With variable controls. And a remote.”

Ooh. She didn’t like his expression.

Or maybe she did.

“And this…” He picked up a leather flogger with knots tied along the multiple tails. He glanced at her. “Probably too much to start with.”

She gulped. “St-start with?”

“This one is better.” A slender wand with a flap on the end.
The flap had a little heart cutout.

“Cute.”

His expression was wicked. “Maybe we should put off the hot tub until later. What do you say to a game of 8-Ball?”

This change of topic surprised her. She blinked at him. “You want to play pool?”

“Did I say pool, little slave?”

“I’m not your slave.”

“I think I said 8-Ball.”

“I’m not your slave.”

He ignored her, making a pile of items and tossing the rest back into her suitcase, which he zipped closed. She was delighted—beyond words—to see the collar and the leather restraints go back in the bag.  He did, however, leave an evil-looking halter out. And the egg. And the flogger. He came to his feet and took her hand. “What do you say? Are you game for…a game?”

She pursed her lips. Oh, sure. It had been one thing talking about this over the dining room table. It was another thing entirely now. Three feet away from that table. “No.”

He tipped his head to the side and studied her. “No is not your safe word. No doesn’t stop anything. You understand that?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Nodded.

“So if I don’t hear that very special word…I’m going to assume you’re just being a brat—”

“I’m not a brat.”

“A
brat
who wants more punishment.”

God, h
e was so sexy, standing there like that, staring at her. Like that. The sensuality simmering in his eyes. The scratchy scruff on his chin. Those full lips…

Excitement
lashed her.

She was good at being a brat. She kind of liked that he was encouraging it.

And the thought of punishment… Why did that make her nipples tighten? Dampness pool between her thighs?

Oh, she knew
why.

W
hat really turned her on was the fact that he knew too.

“So we’re agreed?
We both understand the rule?”

“The
r-rule?”

“No safe word, no stopping?”

Something caught in her throat. She swallowed heavily. Nodded.

“I need to hear
you say it, Bella.”

“Yes, Holt. Only my safe word really means no.”

He squeezed her fingers. “Okay. Let’s go downstairs.”

“Down-downstairs?”

“Umm hmm. Pool table’s downstairs.” 

“You said you didn’t want to play pool.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Are you talking back?”

The way he said it. That harsh tone… It sent a sizzle through her womb. “N-no.”

“Call me Sir, if you please, Bella.”

“S-sir?” Why was she stuttering?

“Indulge me.” He waited, studying her as she worked up the courage.

It took a while.

“S-sir.” A whisper.

Only a whisper, but the change in him was dramatic. His expression went firm and stern. His beautiful lips pulled down into a frown. “Well, darling? What are you waiting for?” She turned to head for the basement, but he stopped her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Hmm?”

He waved at the toys on the floor. She gulped. “You want me to carry them?”

His grin was wolfish.

The basement, the rec room, took on a new light somehow as Bella made her way down the stairs carrying the implements of her impending torture. For some reason, the thought of that impending torture didn’t scare her in the least. It should. But it didn’t. She trusted Holt to keep his word and stop if she said the magic word.

Still, her pulse
fluttered as she stepped off the last stair into the darkened room. It could have been a dungeon. There were sofas and chairs strewn around the large screen television, but a large pool table dominated the room. Balls were neatly racked at one end.