Committed (22 page)

She clasped her hands behind her to stop fidgeting and bit her lip.

Damien blew across one breast and she sucked in a breath, bowing her chest away from him.

“None of that.” He twisted his hand in her hair, forcing her to straighten and push her chest out. “When did you put these on?”

“Before we played.” Her cheeks heated further, spreading down her throat and to her chest.

“You’ve been wearing these for an awfully long time, then.” He frowned.

“They don’t really pinch. The magnets aren’t strong enough. It’s more … about me knowing they’re there.”

“I see. Sit.” He released his hold on her hair and gently pushed her back onto the bed.

Poppy sat, the mattress bouncing for a moment under her. She placed her hands behind her, thrusting her chest toward him. Her heart raced as he examined each breast, but didn’t touch her.

Yoshi rose and prowled over, sliding between them to her empty lap.

“Cat—which one is this?” Damien stroked Yoshi’s head before picking him up.

“Yoshi. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. He just wants your attention, but too bad for him. You’re all mine tonight.” To the cat he said, “Yoshi, this isn’t the place for you.” Damien deposited the large Maine coon outside of the bedroom, gave him one last scratch, and closed the door.

Damien turned to face her, his gaze roving over her half-naked body. The one time he’d been in her seemed like an age ago. Three, almost four weeks? Enough that her nerves were tied up in knots as he paced toward her.

“Have you ever used this bed frame for bondage?” He glanced at the white posts and canopy top. She could practically hear the wheels in his head turning.

“Not yet.”

He gripped the post next to her thigh and gave it a little shake.

“I bought this one because several people had it listed under pervertable furnishings. I talked to one of them, who uses the canopy for suspension. He’s had it over two years without it breaking or wearing much.” She spoke in a rush, all her deeply private fantasies rising to the top.

“Hmm.” Damien circled to the other side of the bed and reached up to the bare canopy frame draped with white gauze panels.

He grasped two of the metal arches rising to the center and pulled himself up, doing three chin-ups in a row. She held her breath. The bed creaked slightly, but held.

Damien lowered himself to the floor and dusted his hands off. He seemed impressed.

“I’m going to go get my bag out of the car.” His gaze dropped to her. “When I come back I want you naked—leave the clamps on—kneeling in the middle of the bed.”

“Yes, sir.” Her breath caught in her throat. The honorific slid from her tongue as if she’d always said it.

Damien grinned, pausing to take her chin in hand and brush a kiss across her brow.

Poppy continued to hold her breath as he exited her bedroom. She listened to his footsteps through the kitchen and out her front door. Her lungs burned, but she didn’t move.

She’d called him sir, as easily as if she’d always done it. Panic rose up, gripping her brain. What if he left her now? What if the job called? Would he get in his car and leave this instant?

She wasn’t his first priority, and she needed to remember that. But there was nothing that said she couldn’t enjoy him while he was there.

Poppy rose from the bed, tiptoed to the windows, and peered out. Damien had snagged a prime parking spot across the street from her building, and had wedged his SUV into the space. She could make out his dark figure pulling the rolling bag out of the backseat and closing the door.

He was coming back.

She blew out another breath, collecting her nerves and shoving them into a mental closet. She’d deal with her issues later. For now, she wanted him. She pushed the dress and panties down her hips, stepping out of the clothing and heels.

Naked, she stretched toward the ceiling. She’d wanted a new experience when she’d gone to House Surrender, and she was getting it.

Poppy crossed to her nightstand and turned on a playlist of sensual songs before getting on the bed, kneeling in the middle, and listening for the creak of her door. Instead, she heard the faint, tiny voice of Yoshi, crying outside the bedroom. For such large cats, they had the smallest voices.

The front door creaked. She marked Damien’s progress through the apartment, the pause near the hallway, his muted voice as he spoke to Yoshi.

It melted her heart a little that he seemed to realize how important her fur babies were to her, and paid them special attention.

She scooted her knees a little closer together, splayed her hands over her thighs, and took another calming breath. Before him, she’d never felt the urge to be submissive, to bend her will
to another. Surrendering her desires to his seemed the only way to go, and yet it was foreign to her. She didn’t know if this was how a submissive was supposed to sit, if she shouldn’t do or be something else. But he’d never asked her to be anything. Even now, they hadn’t renegotiated anything.

The bedroom door swung open and Damien pushed his bag in before him.

“No, Yoshi. You stay out here. I’m sorry, kitty.”

“You are not.”

Damien flashed her a smile as he closed the door. “Not really, no.”

His gaze dropped to her chest, nipples still captured in their metal prisons. The heat there stoked her fire higher.

Damien took several bundles of rope, some other nylon equipment, and a metal ring almost big enough for her to put her head through out of the bag, and placed them on the bed. He stepped onto the mattress and grasped the peak of the canopy. Once more, he hoisted his weight onto the structure, lifting himself several times. The frame remained stable and unmoved.

She watched him loop a nylon strap around the metal hoop and hang it from the top of the canopy. She knew from watching many a rope suspension that the ring featured prominently as a point from which people were hung.

He selected two bundles of rope, tucked one in his pocket, and began shaking the other out until it trailed over the edge of the mattress and onto the floor. It was almost comical how his head stuck up between the bars, like some giant in her delicate palace.

“Come here.” He crooked his finger at her and her pulse jumped.

Poppy scooted down the bed toward him and he took a knee.

“Up on your knees.”

She did as he requested and he circled her hips with rope. His fingers flew, tying knots, looping the rope around her thighs and between her legs until she wore what looked like a bulky garter belt. He never touched her pussy, not even once. She almost groaned at the injustice of it.

“Sit down. Hands on my shoulders.” He bumped her forearms, urging her to comply.

He did an even faster harness on her chest, tightening the rope around her breasts and over her shoulders until it felt as if she were captured in an embrace. The whisper of rope over her skin was seductive and just a tad bit rough, sensitizing every place he touched, and even those he didn’t.

Her nipples ached, not because of the clamps or pain, but because she wanted him to touch her there.

Damien stood, shook off her grasp, and took two more bundles of rope from the foot of the bed and looped them through the ring. He measured the length of what he’d pulled out, then reached for her. He grasped the front of her hip harness and pulled, ordering her to rise without a word spoken.

Poppy rose up on her knees again and he ran the rope through the harness until it was taut, then he pulled the rope through some more, hauling her up off the mattress a few inches.

She gasped and clutched the rope, a little thrill zinging through her.

The tendons on the side of his neck stood out and the muscles in his arms bulged as he easily held her weight with one hand and tied the rope off. She’d known he was strong, had felt it, but seeing it like this was another matter.

He took another bundle of rope and looped it over the metal ring and attached it to her chest harness.

“Lie down.” He grinned at her and she smiled back, thrilled and excited. “I won’t let you fall.”

He supported her weight as she leaned back. Her body twisted, and she spun until her knees bumped against his stomach. His grin spread and he pushed his hip between her knees. He tugged on the rope and she swung toward him, gasping when her bare pussy hit his belt.

When she was half-reclined, he stopped her and tied the rope off. He used the remaining rope to tie to the bands around her knees, so they too were suspended, a little higher than the rest of her, but not uncomfortably. The whole thing felt like a custom-built hammock.

“How’s that feel?” he asked.

Now, finally, he ran his hands over her skin, paying special attention to the places where the rope was supporting most of her weight. She swayed with each movement, cool air wrapping around her smoldering body.

“Amazing.” She grasped the ropes and leaned back.

Damien chuckled and withdrew his touch. The springs creaked slightly as he moved, but she wasn’t concerned.

She was flying.

He grasped her knee and pushed.

Poppy yelped as she spun around and around, the room racing by and her stomach flip-flopping at the unusual and not exactly pleasant sensation. She pulled her limbs in and spun faster, like a top.

“Not funny,” she said, despite laughing as she spoke.

She stopped suddenly, swaying on the ropes. The room continued to spin and tilt precariously on its side.

Damien loomed over her. His shirt was gone and he had a little leather strap with metal studs in his hand.

“It’s hysterical.” He grinned and slapped the strap across her thigh, not hard, but she jumped.

“Is not.” His grin was contagious, and if she were honest with herself, even the spinning in circles was thrilling.

“Hmm. It is what I say it is.” He brought the strap up against her ass on one cheek then the other.

“Ow.” The studs were shockingly cold.

“You don’t like that?” Damien rubbed the metal bits over her bottom and thighs.

She squirmed in her rope prison, but she was completely at his mercy, just as she had been once before. He bent and gently bit her inner thigh on one side, then the other. She gasped and her toes curled. Her channel clenched and she barely held back a groan.

Slap
.

Poppy swallowed a yelp as heat blossomed across her bottom.

That was a hand.

“Good girl. Keep quiet. Don’t want the neighbors to hear,” he purred.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, without any heat.

“In a minute.”

He pushed the ropes attached to her knees apart, opening her to him. She stopped breathing, her heart pounding in her chest. It didn’t matter how many times she was laid bare, this moment of vulnerability got to her. Was she attractive? Did he find her arousing? Did she smell funny? Would it be as good as it was the first time?

Damien knelt between her spread legs, releasing the ropes, coasting his touch up her thighs to the juncture.

Oh God
, she chanted in her head.

Damien passed his fingers through her folds.

“You’re wet,” he said.

She whimpered, unable to form words.

He spread her labia and she closed her eyes, too vulnerable at that moment to watch. She gripped the ropes and let her head drop back again, waiting for a more intimate touch.

His lips wrapped around her clit and her spine bowed up, the air rushed from her lungs, and for a single moment the world seemed to pause.

That was not what she’d expected.

Damien’s tongue flicked the bundle of nerves back and forth while he kneaded her ass in his palms.

Her breath stuttered in her chest and her pussy clenched on nothing, and yet she arched farther into the ropes. She opened her mouth on a silent shout as her body convulsed, the delicate muscles in her channel spasmed, and the delicious release of climax washed over her. Just a little one, enough to leave her gasping for breath, her head spinning.

She pried her eyes open, to find Damien watching her as he pressed a kiss to her thigh.

“Again,” he said.

“What?” she panted.

He didn’t repeat himself.

Damien gently brushed his fingers over her clit, pulling the hood back.

“Oh God,” she whispered. If this was his idea of payback, she’d make sure he always owed her.

His mouth settled on her clit, hot and raw against the little bundle of nerves. Her body, sensitized and strung tight, quaked despite the small respite. He rubbed his tongue over it, and this time she couldn’t tear her gaze away. He stared at her while he teased her opening with his fingers. He saw down to the depths of her soul while his mouth made love to her, demanding the rise and fall of her breath, the pounding of her heart.

“I can’t,” she sobbed.

His gaze said,
Yes you can
.

She gripped the ropes and moved her hips, urging his fingers faster. Heat rose on her cheeks, spread to her chest, warming her body. Multiple orgasms weren’t something she’d done more than a few times, but he’d played her body with expertise before.

Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach, blossoming into lust. She tossed her head back and groaned, reaching for the ropes and stretching, arching into it. Damien stroked her through it, prolonging the sweet torture of release without his cock.

“That’s it,” he whispered, stroking her thighs, and up to her stomach.

She sagged, the second release taking all of her energy.

Damien brushed his fingers over a nipple and a sensation like an electric charge zapped through her. She gasped and jumped, snapping her eyes wide open.

He chuckled and leaned against her, some of his weight falling on her and the ropes, but not too much to bear.

“Time to remove these.”

He stroked the other breast and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. The clamps came off with a little tug; he did both at the same time. She groaned as blood rushed into the peaks. Maybe the clamps were stronger than she thought.

Damien didn’t give her any respite. He rubbed his palms over the abused flesh. She whimpered, trying to move away, but he had her captured, completely at his mercy. Or lack thereof. Pain turned to pleasure and she arched into his hold.