“She’ll be fine,” he said, disturbed that she would think him less than capable of taking care of his mate.
“I’ll be fine,” Jasmine reiterated.
Monica nodded.
As they walked, Jasmine’s hand seemed to practically vibrate in his. She was so far from the Stepford creature Monica always accused her of being, so full of pent-up energy, he barely recognized her. And yet he wouldn’t have her any other way. He was beginning to realize he was much closer to seeing the real Jasmine than she’d ever intended to let him and the idea was arousing.
When they entered his quarters, he turned to her. “You might as well make up your mind right now that you’re going to orgasm because we’re not done here until you do.”
“Well then,” she said, licking her lips nervously, “I think it’s only fair that I explain why that might be difficult.”
When she hesitated, he kissed her delicately. “You don’t have to be afraid—you can tell me anything.”
“I’ve only had one orgasm in my life,” she explained hesitantly.
“Is that so?”
Excitement burst through him. She was all but a virgin. He led her to the chair and pulled the clips from her hair. Waiting patiently for her to explain, he started brushing the luxuriant mass in long, even strokes.
“My…my clitoris isn’t all that sensitive, and no matter how much attention you pay it, I won’t come. The one time I had an orgasm, it took the guy’s pubic bone slamming against mine for a very long time to make it happen.”
After digesting that for a moment, he said, “I wish you’d told me earlier.”
“Well, it’s hardly the kind of announcement you make in front of a crowd.”
“Touché.” He smiled. “My apologies—you’re absolutely correct and I’m absolutely an ass. You’re telling me now and that’s what matters.”
She sagged a little and smiled over her shoulder. “I’m glad you think so. But that still leaves us…”
“Mating in a position that won’t satisfy you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So little faith,” he chided. In reality, he was getting very excited. He had to believe that a big part of why she had difficulty orgasming was her “head game”. She’d admitted she’d never been restrained before during sex. She was just beginning to uncover her submissive nature, and she hadn’t been able to relax enough in front of the other males to really give in to him mentally.
Tonight, she would. Tonight, he would dig deep into his treasure trove of Terran toys and plunge her into sensation the likes of which she’d never known. She would come for him, over and over.
“As you probably noticed,” Shauss continued, opening one of the cabinet doors, “I’ve indulged my domination fetish with a collection of Terran bondage equipment.”
“Like the cuffs,” she said tentatively.
“Yes, like the cuffs. Because of the ship’s construction, I’m limited to restraints that don’t need to be attached to walls or a ceiling.”
“Um, okay.” She was without a clue as to what he was talking about.
“How much exposure have you had to the D/s lifestyle?”
“None.”
“Then even the mildest of bondage gear will seem rather extreme to you.”
They’d passed that a long time ago, but she didn’t say so.
“I want to free you,” he told her. “Free you by binding you so that you’re unable to resist what I have to offer you.”
Her heart sank. Would he restrain her again before she got what she wanted?
“Shauss…” She looked at him beseechingly.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want to touch you first. I want to touch you and smell you and taste you. Please.”
He deliberated for a moment before saying, “I suppose that can be allowed, with one exception—you will not take any portion of my genitals into your mouth.”
She almost pouted. “But why?”
“Take it or leave it, Jasmine.”
She wavered. It was tempting to try to restrain
him
in the bondage equipment. She wanted to go down on him, darn it—that was her favorite part of sex and she was good at it.
“Will you ever let me?”
The way he said “Perhaps” made her doubt it. He looked almost suspicious.
“Is it so hard for you to believe I enjoy giving oral sex?”
“Frankly, yes. The women of our planet made no secret of the fact that the idea disgusted them. I’m fairly certain most Terran women only offer it because their males enjoy it, and if it were up to them, they would choose not to do it.”
“So the only reason you tasted me was because you thought I’d enjoy it? Did I disgust you?”
“No!” he exploded. “You have a fascinating taste and I’m eager to drink my fill of you.”
“Then why is it so unbelievable that I feel the same about you?”
He stared at her. “You’re every bit as stubborn as Monica when you want something, aren’t you? Do you need to be punished for it?”
She bit her lip, feeling a naughty tickle in her belly. She wasn’t being very submissive at all, but she only had a small window of opportunity and she wanted to experience as much as she could of him in the time she had. But the idea of being punished by Shauss revved her engine in a very perverse way.
“If you wish to wear that dress again, you should remove it.”
He turned to his cabinet again so she slowly pulled the dress over her head and stood there with it in her hand. She felt hot and prickly all over to be standing there in only the thong.
“You may hang it in the wardrobe,” he directed. “Although I didn’t originally intend for you to act as my submissive anywhere but in the privacy of our quarters, this evening has convinced me you might feel more comfortable under my guidance even in public settings. Am I reading you correctly?”
She thought about it for a moment before saying, “Maybe.”
In theory, the idea made her hackles rise. She was an independent woman who could take care of herself and make her own decisions, thank you very much. But in practice, she’d loved deferring to him, being guided and petted by him in front of Kellen and Monica. She’d felt cherished and had loved pleasing him. It was the first party she’d ever really enjoyed and felt free at. Typically she only felt comfortable at parties when she had an assigned job.
She wasn’t sure how to react to this dependence on him.
Shauss brought out a handful of black leather items and a shiny black bar, and like a light switch, the clinking of metal on metal instantly shut down conflict in her head.
He tossed it all on the bed. “You may undress me if you wish.”
Thrilled, she pulled down his zipper very slowly and carefully so as not to catch any skin and then pushed the fabric over his shoulders and down. She dropped to one knee to pull his feet out of the uniform, looking up at his already-erect penis with longing.
“You know better.” He stepped away to drop his uniform in the sanitizer and then sank onto the couch, his hands behind his head and his knees splayed. “I’m yours to explore within the agreed-upon context.”
Still on one knee, she hesitated, shocked by the impulse to cross those few feet between them on all fours. She would keep a watchful eye on his face, and while he was distracted by the seductive stretch and roll of her catlike body, she’d pounce, capturing his long, steely cock in the cage of her razor-sharp claws. He wouldn’t dare move or even voice an objection while under such a threat, and she would be free to settle at his feet and consume him at her leisure, savoring the musky flesh between his thighs for hours while he sat there sweating…
“Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
Startled out of her fantasy, Jasmine shot to her feet.
Seductive
, she snorted. As aesthetically pleasing as she might be in her own synthetic way, she’d never been particularly seductive.
Approaching the couch with perverse reluctance, she perched beside him. It seemed so unreal to have him at her disposal. She devoured him with her eyes first. His silky black chest hair was a stark contrast to his pale skin, but it was so very masculine it gave her shivers in all kinds of places.
“What’s this?” she asked, tracing a finger over a two-inch scar on his abdomen. When he didn’t answer, she looked up. “I’m sorry—touchy subject?”
“Monica stabbed me,” he confessed. “With my own dagger, no less.”
“Oh my God, you’re kidding!”
“I wish I were. She was none too happy to find herself mated to us—at first.” His grin was so satisfied, so happy and tender, Jasmine’s heart shriveled instantly. He loved Monica. God, he loved Monica and she’d taken him away from her.
“Don’t worry,” he said, pulling her against him. “She did me no permanent damage.”
“I’m glad,” she whispered against his chest. She kissed her way down his torso, silently begging forgiveness and vowing to make every minute of their time together worth it for him.
“Peserin!” he swore when she nuzzled his scrotum, inhaling deeply. God, he smelled so absolutely delicious, she did it again. Sliding her tongue down to his perineum, she licked a broad swath over his tightening sac all the way to the base of his penis.
“Enough,” he said roughly, picking her up by the wrists as he stood, ignoring her whimper of disappointment.
Setting her on the end of the bed, he ordered, “Scoot back and lie down face up.”
When she did, he fastened the leather cuffs around her wrists again and clipped them to two widely separated rings on the headboard.
When he reached up with a blindfold, she protested, “But I want to see you!”
“You’ve seen me. Now I want you to go beyond what you see and just feel,” he said.
Sighing, she settled into the blindfold. She heard more clinking and something was wrapped around her thighs just above the knees. Then Shauss pushed her legs far apart and attached something to hold them in place. She was effectively spread-eagled on the bed, and the realization sent her pulse racing.
The sight must have affected him too, because his spicy scent suddenly grew very strong. Jasmine soaked it up, breathing deeply. If she was going to suffer the consequences of pheromone exposure, she might as well reap all the benefits first.
Excitement suffused him as Jasmine relaxed before his eyes. He’d acquired all this equipment with the intention of experimenting on one of the common-use copulative recruits, a surprising number of whom had expressed interest in bondage and domination, but he’d never dared dream he might use it on a mate. Or at least he hadn’t until Monica responded so explosively to being restrained and punished.
Bondage was definitely in their lives to stay.
He pinched one of the flowers from Jasmine’s plant and started stroking her with it. Starting at her wrist, he trailed the delicate petals down the vulnerable flesh of her inner arm into her armpit. She gasped, writhing as he continued over her collarbone and up the other arm. Following a similar circuit, he then started at her ankle and dragged it up her thigh. After swirling it over her belly for a while, laughing softly at the way she twitched and squirmed, he pulled it down her other leg.
When he took it to the soles of her feet, she screeched, breathless with laughter, and tried to kick him away, but he grabbed her ankle.
“Ticklish feet,” he said. “I’ll have to remember that.”
Though he had to sprawl one knee out to accommodate his aching balls, he continued to torture them both with the flower, enjoying the sounds of her pleasure mingling with his own increasingly ragged breaths. Peserin, but she was a passionate little handful.
“Are you comfortable?” he inquired, trailing the flower over first one small, tight nipple and then the other.
“Um…not exactly,” she moaned, earning a smile she couldn’t see.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
When the bloom started to fall apart, he tossed it aside and set about following the same path with his tongue, keeping his eyes on the faint trails as they dried on her skin. The sense of ownership they inspired was overwhelming, as though he were marking her with his saliva.
The memory of her saliva cooling his skin made him wonder if she’d experienced a similar reaction. His jaw hardened at the idea—he would never be any female’s possession—but he had to admit the velvet swipe of her tongue on his scrotum had aroused him almost beyond sanity.
He focused on tasting every inch of her skin, and by the time he reached her nipples again, she was moaning, begging him to take her. Instead, he feasted on her firm breasts, plumping them with his palms, squeezing and massaging until she sobbed his name.
“Am I making you so very miserable,
aramai
?” he murmured against one hard, wet nipple.
“Yes, you beast!”
“That’s good.” Very good, considering how very miserable he was becoming.
He scissored his teeth over the tiny bud and she screamed, bucking hard. The knowledge that she thrived on a bit of erotic pain was hell on his already-suffering cock. Ignoring it, he gave the other nipple the same treatment and reveled in her hoarse cries for release.
Sliding farther down on the bed and planting his elbows inside the triangle created by the bar, he lowered his head to lavish time and attention on the ultrasmooth mound of her cunt, immensely gratified to find copious amounts of slick moisture sliding from her. He lapped it up while she writhed and begged him to stop.
Her clitoris did seem less responsive to the stimulation than her nipples were. He’d rather expected the opposite to be true in light of her breast implants, but his knowledge of Terran female genitalia was limited and mostly secondhand. No doubt pornography was as unrealistic as Monica claimed and he shouldn’t base his expectations on its images.
“Please, please,” she whimpered.
“What do you want, Jasmine?” he asked. “You have to tell me.”
“I want you!”
“What do you want of me?”
“Your…your cock,” she gasped. “I want it inside me.”
When he unfastened her wrists and turned her over, she moaned, “No!”
“I’ll take care of you,” he assured her, linking her wrists and attaching them to the headboard. Pulling her up to her knees, he braced his legs outside hers to help compensate for the difference in their heights and slid deep into her cunt. He rode her slowly at first, holding her hips in his hands and pulling her back as he thrust forward, making sure his scrotum ground against her clitoris with every penetration. It was eminently clear from her groans and pleas that she enjoyed being handled this way, so he took his time, savoring every nuance of her surrender. Her back was beautiful, her narrow ribs expanding and contracting in deep, shuddering breaths as she undulated with him. She was utterly at his mercy now and reveling in it, trusting him to provide whatever it was she needed.
And what she needed now was
more
, so he increased the power of his thrusts, driving into her and then withdrawing slowly, his pace deliberately controlled and controlling. The more broken her cries became, the more determined he was that she would orgasm.
He stopped suddenly, drawing another agonized “No!” from her. He fancied he heard an echo of the same from his cock.
Dropping his hands to the mattress, he braced himself over her back and took rough possession of her exposed ear, claiming every ridge and groove with his tongue before savaging her lobe with his teeth.
“I’ve got endless endurance, Jasmine,” he rasped, hoping it was true. “I’ll fuck you all night if that’s what it takes.”
“Then do it!” she screeched, her voice muffled by her arm.
Sliding his hands into the creases between her thighs, he lifted her until her knees left the bed. She hung limply in his hold while he drove into her from a deeper angle, pounding her until his balls ached. His spur erupted, but the angle of his thrusts didn’t allow for the dual penetration, which was just as well.
When the broad, flat spur glanced off her perineum, she squeaked, and Shauss froze, worried he’d injured her.
“It’s okay,” she gasped. “Oh God, please, please…”
Still concerned, he let her dangle for a moment, his chest heaving with arousal and exertion and frustration. Peserin, what if his testicles couldn’t strike her hard enough to…
Strike her
.
The image that particular phrase conjured made his cock surge inside her, and a wicked smile curved his lips. Despite Monica’s admonishments against spanking and “kinking out”, she’d never failed to come in a spectacular fashion when subjected to either. Perhaps it was time to see if Jasmine was similarly bent.
Letting her knees drop back to the mattress, he leaned forward and unhooked the clip holding her to the headboard.
“I told you I couldn’t come,” she moaned. “Quit torturing me!”
“Patience, my mate.”
Suddenly lacking patience himself, he shoved his rampant cock back into her cunt and drizzled saliva over the sweet pink pucker of her anus. Jasmine barely had time to stiffen at the sensation before he was driving his spur into her, and her squeal excited him beyond endurance. He tugged her upright and yanked off the blindfold, lifting her bound wrists until he could duck into the circle of her arms. She immediately seized two handfuls of his hair.