Play Me Right (5 page)

Shit, Fuck. Damn. I thought I was prepared for this. Thought I had this whole meeting all mapped out. Never in my wildest fantasies did I think it would include Aria all but offering herself to me on a silver platter, any way that I want her.

What a joke that is. Because the truth is, I’ll take her any way I can get her. Take whatever small crumb she wants to offer me, especially after the way I screwed up with her last time. I figured I’d have to grovel—after what I did to her the last time we were together, it’s no more than I deserve. And instead, here she is, tied up and kneeling before me, offering me anything, everything. It’s so much more than I deserve, too much more, especially when all I want is her.

But I’m not a fool and there’s no way I’m turning her away now. Not when she’s half-naked and pliant in front of me. Not when I can see by the floaty look in her eye that she’s already halfway to subspace. I want to take her the rest of the way, want to see her eyes fade out and her gorgeous skin flush with pleasure. I want to make her come, again and again and again, until there is no her, no me, only the ecstasy that stretches between us.

But she’s not ready for that yet, not after the two orgasms she’s already had. So I put a leash on my own need and concentrate on her instead.

Reaching out a hand, I tangle my fingers in her hair and tug a little. She arches in pleasure, her eyes going from dark to starless midnight from one second to the next. I tug a little harder this time and she arches in pleasure, her whole body shuddering at the sharp little pains.

She leans forward then, rubs her face against me, and though there are two layers between my dick and her mouth, I swear I can feel the wet heat of her through the fabric. My cock twitches, leaks, and I give a sharp tug on her hair, try to pull her back. But she resists—the first time since this started that she hasn’t done exactly what I want her to do—and instead presses kisses along the hard line of my cock.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I whisper, my palm cupping her face even as my fingers remain tangled in her hair.

She whimpers a little, tries to take me in her mouth through the silk of my suit pants, and that’s when I lose it.

Keeping my one hand on her head, I use my other to fumble my pants open. To draw my dick out.

Before I can so much as think about guiding her head where I so desperately need it to be, she’s there, licking the head of my cock. Pressing kisses up and down the length of it. Lingering at the base, swirling her tongue around and around until it’s all I can do to remember my own name.

It’s too soon—way too soon—but already there’s a roaring in my ears, a pounding in my blood that warns me I’m on the brink of losing control. That’s the last thing I want to do, after everything that happened between us the other night, but as she sucks me deep into her throat, I’m not sure I have another option. Biting the inside of my cheek, I clench my fists as every muscle in my body tightens.

As my fingers tug at her hair, Aria moans deep in her throat. The subsequent vibrations only make it harder for me to hold on.

“Fuck, Aria. Baby, please.” I pull harder, trying to get her to back off a little, to give me a chance to breathe, to think, to get a better grasp on the control I’m clinging to by my fingertips.

She moans again, slides me up and down her throat in a rhythm that has my eyes crossing, my chest shuddering, my cock begging for release. And still I don’t break free. I can’t. Everything I have, everything I am, is wrapped up in Aria.

I take her sweet ministrations as long as I can, reveling in every kiss, every lick, every moan. But I can feel the electricity building up at the base of my spine, and I know I’m close. Too close. If I don’t stop this now, I’m going to blow right down her pretty, pretty throat.

I tug at her hair, sharply, and she gasps. Her eyes shoot to mine and I see it then, the glazed look I’ve been waiting for. It sends me over the edge I’ve been straddling for what feels like forever, has me coming down her throat with a force that is nearly blinding in its intensity.

I know it can’t be comfortable for her, know that she’ll be hoarse when this is all over—I’m already at the back of her throat and I can’t keep myself from thrusting against her, from trying to go even deeper. She takes me, takes all of me, eyes closed, head back, hands tied behind her back. More important, she lets me take her. Again and again and again.

When I’m done—when my knees are shaky and my entire body feels drained from what might be the most powerful orgasm of my life—I try to pull back, try to pull out.

But Aria moans low in her throat, takes me deeper, refuses to let me go. I tug on her hair as she sucks me in deeper, but that only makes her more determined. With her hands tied behind her back, she can’t grab on to me, can’t hold me in place. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Just like it doesn’t seem to matter that I’m not hard again yet. Aria wants me in her mouth and she licks and strokes, sucks and moans, scrapes her teeth over the sensitive skin of my dick until she gets exactly what she wants.

She feels so good, looks so beautiful, sounds so sexy, that it only takes a few minutes before I’m right at the brink again. But this time, when she struggles against my hold, struggles to keep me down her throat, I lean over and pop her ass with one firm, loud smack.

She gasps, shudders, and though it’s only for a second, it’s long enough to have me pulling free. And then I’m lifting her up, spinning her around so that she’s facing away from me. Then I drape her—ass up—over the nearest chair.

“What are you—”

I stop her with another firm slap to her ass. She gasps and squirms, and I watch her closely, trying to see how she feels about such a rough touch. The last thing I want is to drive her away again after I’ve just gotten her back.

But the look on her face is inviting, her cheeks pink, her eyes totally blissed out as she wiggles against the back of the chair as if asking for more. In that moment, deep in subspace, lost in the pleasure she’s given me and the pleasure she’s begun to take from me, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I never want this moment to end; I want to see her like this forever. She’s open—totally open—to me for once, and I never want to see her retreat back inside herself again.

Pushing her skirt up, I slide my fingers under the side straps of her panties and then yank them down her legs so that she’s completely bare. And then I’m spreading her ass cheeks, pressing my thumb against her anus before sliding it deep inside her.

“Sebastian!” She cries out my name, and now it’s her turn to tremble, her turn to beg for whatever I want to give her.

The answer, of course, is everything. I want to give her everything, want to take everything. Want to be so deep inside of her that she can’t breathe without thinking my name.

“Please,” she begs, and I can’t resist the spacy tone in her voice, any more than I can resist the fact that I’m the one who’s done this to her.

Knowing how sensitive she is, I slide one hand beneath her, pinching first one nipple and then the other. She goes nuts, her body flailing on the chair as she tries to bring herself off. But that belongs to me and I tell her so, twisting my thumb deep inside of her.

“Please, please, please.” It’s her new mantra, said in a broken, breathy voice that I can’t even begin to resist. Not when she’s sliding in and out of control. Not when I’m doing the same thing.

With my thumb still inside her, I stretch my fingers down to her sex to test her readiness. She’s wet—drenched, really—and I take a moment to gather her slick, to spread it on my dick and—after pulling my thumb out—over her small, pink hole.

And then I line myself up, slide my dick between the soft, sweet cheeks of her ass.

She gasps, mewls, presses back against me

I slap her ass one more time and she gasps in surprise, cries out. “Have you ever done this before?” I demand, using every ounce of strength I have to keep from thrusting inside her as she so obviously wants.

Her only answer is a soft, keening cry.

“Answer me, Aria. Has anyone ever done this to you before?”

“No,” she cries out. “No, no, no.” She’s thrashing against the chair now, her body all but undulating with need.

“Do you want—”

“Yes! Fuck, yes. Sebastian, please. Do it. I need you. I need—”

She’s all but sobbing now and it’s the last straw. The last dregs of my trepidation go out the window as I remember the state she was in the last time I made love to her. The way she looked. The way she sounded. It wasn’t much different from how she is now and there’s no way I’m going to go down that road again. No way I’m going to use her need—or her feelings for me—against her again.

Clenching my teeth, praying that my self-control is still as good as I think it is, I slide inside her. Slowly, slowly, slowly. My whole body is tuned to hers, my every thought concentrated on not hurting her. On making this good for her.

I’m buried about halfway inside her when she cries out, and I stop instantly. “You okay, love?” I ask softly.

“Yes,” she whispers, but when she turns her head I can see the tears in her eyes, see the streaks they’ve left on her cheeks.

The sight freezes my blood, and I start to pull back. But Aria cries out, “No! Please,” even as she thrusts her hips back against me.

And then it’s done. I’m buried deep inside her, seated up to the hilt, and nothing has ever felt so good. I’m right back on the edge of control, she’s lost any control she ever had, and still it feels perfect. Even better, it feels right.

And that’s when it hits me, what I wanted to teach Aria all along but what I had never internalized myself. Control doesn’t have to be about power any more than losing control has to be about weakness.

Making love to Aria takes me right to the brink of my control every time, and then hurtles me straight into the abyss on the other side. But loving Aria, being loved by her, makes me feel stronger, more in control, than I’ve ever been. She’s the security I’ve been searching for all along.

Overwhelmed both by the pleasure slamming through me and the thoughts circling in my head, I lower my forehead to her back and take a few deep breaths. The need to come is urgent inside me, but even more urgent is the need to claim Aria, to make her mine once and for all.

With that thought in mind, I press kisses up and down her spine even as I begin to move gently inside of her. I pause every few seconds to suck a new bruise into her shoulder or her back or the side of her breast, relishing the feel of her heat around my cock, her soft skin under my lips.

Aria takes the gentleness as long as she can—even soaks it up like the parched earth soaks up rain—but just as my restraint gets the best of me and a bead of sweat rolls between my shoulder blades, she convulses beneath me, cries, “Please, Sebastian. Please. I can’t—”

I slam into her then, pulling her hips up and back so that I can ride her hard and fast. At first I’m worried about hurting her, but the way she’s trembling and begging for me alleviates even that worry.

Sliding one hand beneath her, I circle my thumb around her clit even as I continue to pound into her ass. She’s crying out with every thrust now, her breath broken, her body all but shaking apart. And still it’s not enough. Still I want more—from her, for her. More and more and more until there really is no ending, really is no beginning. Until there’s just her and me and the need that rages between us like a forest fire.

“Sebastian.” She calls my name as she shudders and arches beneath me.

“Sebastian.” She’s pleading, her strong, slender body clutching at me, trying to hold me deep inside.

“Sebastian!” She’s whimpering now and it’s enough. It’s more than enough. It’s everything.

With a pinch of her clit and a slam of my hips, I send her hurtling over the edge. She screams my name as she shatters, and then I’m coming too, my body shaking as I empty everything I have—every
thing I am—deep inside of her.

I can’t stop shaking. Even after it’s done, even after Sebastian has pulled out and untied my hands and cleaned me up, I can’t stop trembling. How can I, when what happens next will determine everything
—including whether Sebastian will forgive me for lying to him or if he’ll never want to see me again.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to tell him, that wants to keep quiet and just revel in what it feels like to be made love to so thoroughly, so completely. But he’s opened up to me, trusted me with his deepest secrets and most horrible wounds. How can I do any less?

And yet, when it’s time—when I’m dressed again and Sebastian is waiting for me to speak—I can’t believe how nervous I am. How the words wrap themselves around my tongue, tying me in knots when I spent most of yesterday afternoon and all of last night thinking about what I’m going to say to him. Thinking about how on earth I’m supposed to explain something I don’t really understand myself.

And while I came up with three different plans last night, the truth is the best one is often the simplest. And with the orgasm he just gave me still turning my knees—and my brain—to mush, simple seems the best choice all the way around. Too bad I can’t think of how to start.

But then, Sebastian seems to know that. He always seems to know. He reaches for my hand, strokes his thumb reassuringly across my wrist as he leads me over to the couch near the window. I don’t sit down—I’m too nervous. Instead, I walk to the window and look out. I’m not seeing the Strip though, not seeing the lights or the people or the crazy-ass attractions. No, I’m seeing that day a little over a week ago when Sebastian pressed me against this window and made love to me. When he introduced me to the slippery slope of control and power exchange and—

Something stirs inside of me and I cut off my thoughts before my low-grade interest can turn into full-blown arousal. I try to focus on the task at hand instead of the amazing pleasure Sebastian has always brought me, but it’s hard. At least until it occurs to me how ironic life is, how fickle. How this thing between Sebastian and me—whatever it is—is going to end in the exact same place it started.

But then Sebastian is there, behind me, one hand stroking down my spine while the other curves protectively around my left hip. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassures me, pressing soft kisses against my temple.

I shrug, because it either is or it isn’t, and at this point there’s not all that much I’m going to be able to do about it either way. The knowledge should calm me down, but somehow it just makes me sicker. Sebastian has been suffering the sins of his father for ten years and has managed to hold it together. To be strong, in control, kind. I’ve only been dealing with them for fourteen months and I can barely handle it.

I’ve never felt more out of control in my life than when I open my mouth to speak. But then Sebastian puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezes, before wrapping his arms around me from behind. And somehow I have the strength—the control—to say, “My father is Gabriel Santini.” I don’t stop to ask if he knows who that is—if he knows Nico Valducci, he knows who my father is. Nico might have his hands in a lot of the casino’s pies, but my father runs Las Vegas and everyone who is anyone knows it.

“Gabriel Santini.” His hands don’t move from where they’re holding me but I feel him stiffen against me. Not that I blame him. It’s a lot to take in. “And you’re working as a cocktail waitress and living in a hovel?”

I start to take offense, to tell him my apartment isn’t a hovel. But truthfully, it is. And even if it wasn’t, that so isn’t the point right now. Not when there’s so much else that needs to be said.

“My father and I are…estran
ged.”

“Estranged? As in he kicked you out?” He still doesn’t move, but I can feel him fairly vibrating with fury. “Left you with nothing?”

“Estranged as in I couldn’t live with his way of life any longer and so fourteen months ago I walked away from almost everything. Including my last name.”

He seems to digest that for a moment and then he does move, spinning me around so he can look me in the eye. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to look at his face, afraid to see what’s reflected there. But if living as my father’s pampered princess for twenty-three years taught me nothing else, it taught me that burying my head, hiding from unpleasant things, never helps anything. The problem just gets bigger and more out of control while you refuse to look at it.

And so I force myself to look at Sebastian, to try to see what he’s actually thinking and feeling right now as opposed to what I’m afraid of seeing—or what I’m hoping to see.

But his face is impassive, his eyes carefully blank. Panic assails me and for a second, I feel lost. Sebastian has looked at me a lot of different ways in the days since we first met. But this is the first time there’s been absolutely no emotion there. Nothing that I can hold on to.

But his hands are still on my shoulders, and I can feel the warmth of his palms even through my shirt. It grounds me, makes it easier for me to answer when he repeats, “Almost?”

“Yeah. I thought of moving away, of going somewhere my father’s name was less recognizable. But my sister has brittle bone disease. One of the bad kinds and she probably doesn’t have more than a decade left unless there are some major leaps forward in biotechnology. We’re close and she depends on me to keep my mom from wrapping her in cotton and not letting her do anything. I couldn’t just walk away from Lucy, too.

“So I stayed in Vegas. I changed my last name to give me some semblance of distance from my family and got a job at the Atlantis. I’ve been working here ever since.”

“Why the Atlantis? Why a cocktail waitress? You’re obviously smart and well-educated—”

“At first, I didn’t want to show my degree around because it has my real last name on it. And by the time I got everything changed legally, I was comfortable here. Besides, my dad made it so that I couldn’t get a job many other place. The other casinos all asked flat-out about my family connections—I don’t know if he got to them or not—but the Atlantis didn’t. So when they were willing to hire me, I didn’t want to do or say anything that might rock the boat.”

“Because my father has been in bed with Nico Valducci for twenty-five years. And since your father and Valducci aren’t exactly the best of pals right now—”

That news shakes me almost more than the thought of the story I still need to tell him. As does the knowledge that Valducci has a hand in the Atlantis. But first things first. “What do you mean? Since when are my father and Nico at odds?”

“I don’t know. It’s just what I’ve heard since I put out feelers. Something happened last year that—” He breaks off. Eyes me with concern as he starts putting pieces together. “What happened fourteen months ago that made you walk away from the only life you’d ever known?”

I’m still reeling in shock from the information that my dad and Nico are no longer friends and business associates when for so long theirs was a match made in hell. But at least with those thoughts reverberating in my head, it’s easier to say what I have to. Easier to tell him what it still shames me to admit.

“I was engaged to Carlo Valducci.”

He does stiffen then, does pull away. It’s no more than I expect, though. No more than I deserve, so I don’t try to hold on to him when he steps back. No matter how much I want to. No matter how much my body aches for the comfort of his.

“Our fathers arranged it years ago, when we were young, like a couple of feudal lords. They wanted a union to cement their alliance and there Carlo and I were. And so it was arranged.

“The only problem was I never really liked him. We’d grown up together and I’d seen that he has a cruel streak. You know, when you grow up in the kind of family I grew up in, you learn about the different types of men pretty early on. The men who do their duty because they believe it’s the right thing to do, the men who don’t like the life but are too weak to try to leave it, even the men who do leave and end up crawling back later because they can’t make it without the family. Those men—all of those men—hurt others, even kill others, because they have to. Or because it’s expedient. Or because they need to make a point or a name for themselves. I’m not making excuses for them, but that’s how it is.

“And then there are men like Carlo. Like Nico. Who not only do their duty but who revel in it. Who enjoy bullying those weaker than them. Who like going in for the kill. Those are the ones you need to watch out for, because you never know when they’re going to snap. Never know when something is going to set them off and they’ll use it as an excuse…”

“An excuse for what?” Sebastian asks. His hands are clenched by his sides and though his face is still an impassive mask, his eyes are alight with a fury I haven’t seen in fourteen long months. There’s a part of me that wants to back away, but there’s another part—a more rational part—that knows that isn’t necessary. Sebastian might destroy me emotionally, might rip me to shreds with his unconcern later, but I don’t believe for a second that he’d ever hurt me physically. Not the way Nico and Carlo hurt people. Not when he’s been so careful to make sure his employees are taken care of the best way he can. Not when he’s been so careful to make sure that I’m taken care of.

I turn away from him. I’m committed to telling this story now, but I can’t do it looking into his eyes. And so I look out at the Strip that has been both my prison and my sanctuary and I tell the story Sebastian has already figured out. The story that’s so clichéd and unoriginal that it should be a late night women’s fiction movie—except in the movie you always see the warning signs and the way out. When it’s happening to you, it’s nowhere near as easy to predict…or understand.

“Carlo always had a temper. Even when we were kids. Little things would set him off and he’d pick fights with the other boys. He broke a few bones, gave a few of them concussions with how hard he hit—”

“And this is who your father handpicked for you to marry?” Sebastian demands.

“For years they had the boys will be boys mentality—”

“He’s not a fucking boy anymore. He’s a man in his late twenties and he should fucking know better than to lay a hand on a woman.”

“Yeah, well, he much preferred to use his feet so that argument doesn’t really—”

“Son of a bitch!” The words explode from Sebastian, interrupting my one attempt at being flippant.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Do you think that fucking matters to me? It could be ten years ago or ten hours ago. I don’t actually give a fuck.”

“I know that. And I appreciate it. I really do.”

“How long did you stay with him?” he demands.

“Too long.” I shrug when he looks at me incredulously. “In my house, family duty is a pretty big deal. So I put up with it until I couldn’t hide the bruises anymore.”

Sebastian growls deep in his throat, looks like he wants to hit something. It doesn’t scare me though, doesn’t have me drawing back in fear the way I would have with Carlo. Partly that’s because I know Sebastian would never hurt me like that, but it’s also partly because of me. Because I’m not the same woman I was when I left home fourteen months ago. Not the same doormat who caves because it’s easier than fighting, even if it means getting hurt.

With the thought comes the worst of the memories and tears bloom in my eyes. I try to blink them back, try to pretend it doesn’t still hurt, but the fact is it does. And it probably always will. Not Carlo, not what he did to me, but what came after.

“God, baby, please don’t cry,” Sebastian says, pressing his lips to my cheek and kissing my tears away, one at a time. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

I don’t know how to tell him that that isn’t why I’m crying. That I’m over Carlo and what he did to me—have been over it for months. It’s his outrage that gets me, his fury that someone would do something like that to me. His desire to do something to make it stop when my own family didn’t give a damn.

This is where the story gets hard to tell. Not that talking about the fact that my fiancé beat me is ever easy, but this part…it’s this betrayal that made everything so much worse.