Xquisite (8 page)

“
Now
.”

Her mouth, open to protest, widened convulsively as a powerful wave of sensation rocketed through her. Her hips lifted off the chair and her hand jammed down of its own accord, her finger working frantically as she tightened around it. Over and over the waves came until at last, the orgasm shuddered to an end.

And she hadn’t even touched her clit.

She stared at the floor, transfixed, unable to meet his gaze. She had just had her first vaginal orgasm, a feat she had long ago concluded was beyond her. She’d once comforted herself with essays by feminist writers who claimed that male expectations of female arousal and response were akin to tyranny. She couldn’t tell Ricardo that, of course…couldn’t let him know the effect he had on her. She might be finished for tonight, but that orgasm alone was worth it. She eased her finger out of her dripping opening and contemplated wiping it off on her thigh, since her clothes were out of reach and the fabric covering the chair cushion had probably cost hundreds of dollars a yard.

“Lick your finger. Clean it for me.”

Chelsea gasped. Just like the episode in the café, the one that had sent her running down the narrow brick alley—except this time it wasn’t sugar that clung to her finger, but the slick residue of her arousal. But to put it in her own mouth—it was…it was…

“Do it,
putita
.”

She lifted her finger and touched her tongue to the tip. Her body was still echoing with the aftereffects of her orgasm, weak with pleasure and deliciously sated. She darted her tongue over the pad of her finger. It tasted earthy and floral and…

Wasn’t this a little odd? She wondered. Chelsea didn’t consider herself judgmental when it came to sexuality; if no one was being hurt or taken advantage of—a big and important if—then she had no problems with what other people did behind closed doors. And she wasn’t naïve. For example, she knew that lots of people enjoyed dominance play, that there were “dungeons” and play places all over the city that catered to those and other predilections.

But kink was for
other
people. Damaged people, people whose desires were formed in the crucible of early experiences, trauma, all the painful harm people did each other. How easily Chelsea could have joined their ranks, given her own past—but she had worked hard, so hard, to ensure that she was strong. Normal. Unaffected.

“I’m growing impatient,” Ricardo said. So Chelsea plunged her finger into her mouth, laving her tongue over its entire surface. What was it to her? As natural as sweat, as tears, the dampness from her arousal wasn’t the least bit unpleasant, and the sensation of her finger against her tongue was…also not unpleasant.

“Well done.” He stood up, holding his nearly empty cocktail glass, and headed for the kitchen. “You’ve earned your glass of water.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Could I have one of those?” Chelsea said, pointing to the glass. “Please?”

Ricardo paused, his back to her, the muscles of his back rigid. “At least you said please,” he chided tightly. “But from now on, I would like you to consider that a better choice of words is ‘please, sir.’ Also, if I had intended to offer you a negroni, I would have. You aren’t finished yet, and I don’t want your senses dulled.”

As he filled a glass of water from a pitcher chilling in the refrigerator, Chelsea wondered if she should untie herself now. “I
am
finished,” she said. “Didn’t you, um, notice?”

He returned and handed her the water. She put the cool glass to her lips and drank gratefully, greedily. She was thirstier than she’d realized. While she drank, Ricardo knelt next to her, another of the scarlet ribbons in hand, and began to bind her free wrist to the arm of the chair. “I noticed,” he said calmly.

Chelsea finished the water and tugged weakly at the silky fabric. “You can tie me up all night long and nothing’s going to happen,” she protested. “Seriously.”

“Oh, I’m very serious,” Ricardo said. He took the empty glass from her and set it on the table, then started on the other wrist. “Remember that you have the power to end this whenever you like. Do you need me to remind you of your safe word?”

“I—I remember,” Chelsea muttered. She supposed that she could fake another orgasm if it made him happy. The clock on the wall said it was a little after eleven—only six or seven more hours until dawn. They weren’t going to be able to fill it with conversation, given the clipped nature of his responses. They might as well…

“Ahh,” she murmured, the sound escaping before she had a chance to control it. Ricardo was running a thumb along the bottom of her wrist, and for some reason her body was responding as though her arm was lined with tiny G spots.

“The interesting thing about this knot,” he said, ignoring her outburst, “is that the more one struggles against it, the tighter it becomes. Really, an ingenious invention.”

Chelsea gave an experimental tug of one wrist. The silk grew tighter and didn’t loosen when she relaxed her arms.

“These bindings are forgiving, of course,” Ricardo continued, as he stood inches away from her.

At her eye level, she could see evidence of his arousal—his cock, straining against his trousers—was rigid and quite large. Ricardo seemed oblivious, but Chelsea’s breath quickened, and her lips parted as she imagined taking him into her mouth, wrapping her hand around his shaft as she tongued him. What was going on with her? Chelsea didn’t mind oral sex with her lovers, but she didn’t exactly crave it. Considered it a pleasant enough chore, like watering her African violets or sorting the mail.

But right now she
hungered
for Ricardo de Santos. Without thinking, she strained against the knots, and they tightened further. It was only mildly uncomfortable, but if she kept it up she was going to cut off the circulation to her hands.

“You say that you can’t reach orgasm more than once in one evening,” Ricardo said. He gently hooked a finger under her chin to tilt her head up so he could look into her eyes. “Perhaps that is so. But if I am not mistaken—and I sure I am not—you are still aroused. Your blood runs hot. Your body craves touch and more. Isn’t that right?”

Very gently, he bent down and unhooked her bra so that it dangled from her shoulders. Now she was naked except for her panties, and her nipples were as hard as stone. He traced a forefinger gently around one of them, making slow, lazy concentric circles that came closer and closer to the sensitive center, while his warm breath heated her neck.

For the second time this evening, she thought he might kiss her—and rather than recoiling she found she wanted—no, needed—to kiss him back. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I….crave…I want…”

“Yes,
who
?” Ricardo interrupted her stammering.

“Yes.” Chelsea arched toward him, closing her eyes, ignoring the pain in her wrists. “Sir.”

“Good girl.” Then his mouth was on her, tracing a path from the tender hollow of her neck down to her shoulder, and Chelsea understood that she had been wrong. Dead wrong. She could come again tonight…she could come again in the next thirty seconds if Ricardo de Santos would do to her clit what he was doing to her shoulder.

So when he pulled away from her, she almost yowled with frustration.

Ricardo continued to ignore her distress. He picked up the lone white candle and held it before him and regarded her in the flickering candlelight.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Chelsea. And yet…there are a few things we must do with you. To make you more beautiful still.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling her face flush with embarrassment. Not now, she thought, after she was so filled with need. She should have taken more time getting ready. “I was, um, I’m about to get a haircut and—”

“That is not what I am talking about,” Ricardo said. “Not the first order of business. Which is…”

While he was talking, he had accidentally let the candle tilt at an angle, and a drop of hot wax suddenly fell from the top and landed on her chest, in between her breasts. She jerked at the sudden, oily heat.

Ricardo did not appear to notice. “…a wax. Have all your intimate hair removed, please, around your lovely cunt.”

A second drop splashed down.

“Ow!” she said, both horrified at his suggestion and at risk of being burned. “Please—the candle. It’s dripping on me.”

He followed her gaze to the burning candle, to the melting pool at its tip.

Then he looked into her eyes and tilted the candle farther. This time the entire stream landed on her breast, streaking across her nipple. The sensation was sharp and shocking, the combination of heat and the slick wax a blend of pain and needle-spikes of pleasure.

“I am aware of the dripping of the candle. It is a particular kind that I have made in London. The wax is a combination of beeswax and soy—its melting point is low. You will not be left with burn scars, but you should be…completely aware of the heat.”

Another few drops rained down on her other breast. She bucked against her bindings, her pussy aching to be touched.

“The hot wax both releases adrenaline and increases the sensitivity of the skin. As you are no doubt becoming aware. But we were talking about your grooming.”

Deep inside Chelsea’s mind, in the fraction that was still focused on anything but her pleasure, a warning bell sounded. Long ago, she had vowed that she would never let a man tell her how to care for her own body, especially in
that
realm. “All grown women have pubic hair,” she snapped.

“And yet, not all of them choose to keep it.”

“It’s—it’s infantilizing,” she protested weakly, grasping at a near-forgotten claim made in an essay she’d read long ago.

“It is certainly
not
.” Ricardo sounded angry. “I know full well who you are. I am attracted to your mind—your very adult mind. I am drawn to your passion for art, to your determination. I respect you as a woman. But let me be very clear: when we are alone together, we are not equals. We are not colleagues or peers. We have very different roles, which should be becoming quite clear to you now.”

“What if—” another splash of wax, this time on her inner thigh. He had moved the candle without her even noticing. The burn lighted other sensations, hot longing that radiated along her legs to her toes, before rocketing back again. Her wrists, jerking convulsively against the red silk restraints, were becoming painfully chafed. “What if I don’t want this role?”

Ricardo laughed and tipped wax on her other thigh, letting small drops make a lazy trail higher and higher. Her hips ground and bucked in response.

“You really don’t know yourself at all, do, you,
mi niñita
,” he said, finally setting the candle back on the table. “A moment ago I said that
some
women choose to groom themselves so that they are bare and smooth. Not all women are suited to such a thing. I have loved—and respected—women for whom such an act would be as incongruous as you using these restraints on me.”

“I’ve tied men up before,” Chelsea protested, though for the first time she wondered why she’d been so insistent, ever since she became sexually active, on being always the one in control. On the one hand it was easy to understand; controlling situations took out the element of fear and minimized the possibility that she’d be overcome by the horrors of the past.

On the other hand, it had never occurred to her to wonder if she might be missing out on particular pleasures. If surrender with the
right
man might…possibly…not be the danger she had always feared.

Ricardo
had
caused her pain, it was true. The wax burned. The bindings were cutting into her skin. She flinched every time he raised his voice.

But in his company, she had also experienced pleasure unlike anything before. And he hadn’t made her feel afraid. There was a fine line between delicious trepidation and genuine fear that she had never considered before.

As if reading her thoughts, Ricardo picked up the silver-handled knife. In the candlelight, the blade flashed wickedly. He tested it with his thumb, nodding his approval.

“I’m tired of talking,” he said. “Now, no more words. And you are not to come. Not until I tell you that you may. Do you understand?”

“I’m not going—”

“A yes or no will do.”

She stared up at him, watching him fit the filigree handle to his palm. She shivered, wondering what the knife’s purpose was. For a moment, she thought she must be insane, allowing herself to be bound and helpless in front of a madman with a knife.

But her fear sensors—the real ones, the ones that were hidden deep inside her—were silent. Only the sensations of anticipation and the thrilling agony of waiting for his touch remained. Maybe he had been right, after all—maybe she was capable of a second orgasm in one night, but she could also easily prevent one.

“Yes,” she whispered, needing to know what would come next.

He pulled his chair close and sat so that his legs straddled hers, the smooth fabric of his trousers pressed against her bare skin. Her panties had slid halfway back over her mound, the elastic edge teasing at her swollen lips. By moving her hips slightly she could cause the elastic to slide back and forth on her clit, and she found she was doing so unconsciously as he leaned in close.

Again, she thought he might kiss her…and again, she was wrong. He slowly lifted the knife until the flat side of its blade was pressed against her breast near the cooled wax. The metal was cold, the pressure of the blade strange against her skin, but there was no pain…yet.

“It is time for me to make an important promise to you, Chelsea,” he said softly. “You must know that, regardless of whether you ever choose to use your safe word, regardless of what we do to each other’s bodies, I will never hurt you…here.”

He placed a hand against the top of her left breast, cupping softly. Her
heart
.

“I will never make you unhappy.”

“You can’t promise me that,” she said raggedly, her breath coming quick. It was a ridiculous claim—people hurt each other every day, even when they didn’t want to. Look at her father, who broke her heart by dying. Look at her mother, who’d once wanted only to take care of her little girl until she found something she needed more.