Linger (18 page)

Securing his ankles in the leather cuffs at the base of the bench with sure fingers, she looked up, waited for him to reply.

Though a muscle in his cheek twitched, he nodded easily. “Green.”

“All right.” Rising, dusting her hands off on her thighs, Scarlett circled behind Logan, admiring the view of his taut, naked ass as she reached for her toy bag and pulled out a pair of supple leather cuffs with a short length of chain behind them.

After tonight . . . maybe she wouldn't have to reach for her toy bag so often. Maybe she wouldn't have to use the symbols of dominance.

But tonight she did.

Scarlett secured his hands behind his back, ran a finger beneath each loop of leather to ensure that they weren't too tight.

Then, with her pulse accelerating to the point where she thought she might explode, she moved to the center of the room, meeting Luca's gaze.

It was time to push Logan's limits.

“Bren.” The other sub, still kneeling at Luca's feet, looked up eagerly when she gestured to him. “I've decided how you may serve me.”

“Anything you wish, Mistress.” When she gestured for him to come to her, he crawled, though she would have let him walk.

She didn't like his complete and easy submission. She wanted Logan's fire.

Deciding not to make an issue of it, she crouched before him, looked into his face. “Bren, has anything changed on your limits list since the last time I saw it?”

“No, Mistress.” A small smile curled the edges of his mouth—he clearly saw where she was going with this.

“Good.” With her hands, she turned him to face Logan. “Do you think that my sub is attractive, Bren? Your honest answer, please.”

“He cannot hold a candle to Mistress.” Bren's lips twitched with amusement. “But he has a certain rugged appeal. If you're into that kind of thing.”

Don't laugh. Don't laugh.

Doing her best to keep a straight face, Scarlett nodded, as soberly as she could.

“What about his cock? Do you think you might want to suck it?” The mental picture hit her like a sledgehammer, and she clenched her thighs together against the thought of Bren with his head between Logan's legs.

“No!” Logan's words were full of panic. “I don't want that. I don't want him to touch me.”

“In your file at Veritas, I saw no mention of homosexual touching as a hard limit, sub. Has that changed?” Scarlett waited. In truth, there hadn't been much of anything on Logan's limit list.

He would let her push him; of that she was certain. But she would have to keep a close eye on him, to gauge how far was too far for her stubborn sub.

When they'd first met, he'd been proud of the fact that he had never used his safe word. But Scarlett was certain that he'd used his charm and his clever brain to keep all of his Mistresses from delving so deeply into his secrets that he would ever need to.

She was going to take him beyond that point. But she would have to make sure that she didn't take him too far.

Waiting for Logan's response, she watched his body language, the rising tension in that long, lean frame of his.

He didn't care for the idea; that was easy to see. But he wasn't panicking, wasn't showing any signs that this was a hard limit.

As she waited, he pressed his lips together mulishly. Scarlett nudged his ankle with the pointed toe of her shoe.

“Answer me, Logan.”

His eyes spat fire, and he shook his head. She knew he wasn't going to use his safe word.

“Green. I'm green.” But if looks could kill . . .

What he needs, not what he wants.

“Bren.” Scarlett nodded at the sub kneeling at her feet.

“Whatever pleases Mistress.” His tone told her that he had hoped she would command him to serve her more intimately, but he did as he was told.

A triumphant glare on his lips, Bren took Logan's cock in one hand. Scarlett swallowed her moan as the submissive fisted the shaft, then stroked up and down, his thumb swirling over the fat head, catching the moisture that beaded under his touch.

“Don't tease him, Bren,” she chided gently, though in truth she could have watched him stroke Logan's cock all day. The sight was terribly erotic, all hard muscles and lean planes. But then, she'd always enjoyed watching two men
together. “I want him as excited as you can get him, as fast as you can do it.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Bren looked up at Logan again with a wicked grin; Logan looked at Scarlett with panic.

“Mistress, please. Not like this. I'll behave.”

Then Bren swallowed the head of his cock, and Logan let out a low moan, part in protest and part, Scarlett recognized, with pleasure.

He might not have chosen another man to bring him pleasure, but she was confident now that he wasn't as opposed to it as he would have her believe.

Slowly, Scarlett positioned herself behind Bren, so that she could watch what was happening. Placing her hands on Bren's shoulders, she looked at Logan's tortured expression and felt herself weaken.

Then she thought of the way he'd broken down after she'd pulled that first orgasm from him, that very first night they'd met. How he'd opened up once the control was taken away from him.

Steeling herself, she squeezed the hard muscles of Bren's shoulders with her fingers and nodded her approval.

“I'm not looking for you to simply behave, Logan, and if you don't understand that by now, then I've failed somewhere along the way.” Below her, Bren slid the entire length of Logan's cock into his mouth, moving up and down, running his tongue over Logan's glistening shaft.

Logan bucked his hips, pushing his pelvis forward into Bren's mouth. Scarlett fought the urge to drop to her knees, to join that tangle of wild male flesh.

Her own needs had to come after those of her sub.

Logan strained against his bonds as Bren worked him with his tongue, his lips, both pressing forward, urging Bren
on, and pulling back at times, trying to get away from the onslaught of stimulation.

“Why are you doing this?” His words were a groan as Bren took his testicles in hand and squeezed gently. God, but the pair of them made quite a sight, all that muscle and sweaty skin and sinew.

“Logan, you know that you can stop this at any time. You have your safe word.” But he was a damn stubborn sub, and in this particular instance, she was counting on it rather than cursing it.

Bren's clever mouth was taking Logan to the peak—and knowing that it was happening because Scarlett had commanded it and that there was nothing he could do about it unless he used his safe word . . .

It was a strong reminder of what she wanted from him.

Everything he had to give.

He would do what she asked, to prove that he was strong. And when he found pleasure at Bren's hands—and mouth—it would break down far more walls inside of him than if Scarlett had been the one to do it.

“Bren, I want you to bring him to the brink of release. Just the brink, but don't you dare let him come, or Luca will use his bullwhip on your ass.”

The muscles of Bren's ass clenched at her words, and from behind her, Luca chuckled, the sound full of malicious intent.

Bren kept sucking, focused anew on his task. His cheeks hollowed as he worked Logan's cock, and Scarlett wondered again why it wasn't him, this obedient man, who made her want him so desperately.

But then she was caught up in the barely banked fury, panic, and need that swirled through Logan's eyes, and she knew.

She'd never believed in love at first sight, and furthermore, at certain times in her life—when she'd been fostered with families who seemed to be in it for the paycheck more than anything—she'd wondered if love existed at all.

She knew that it was way too soon to have fallen in love, really in love with Logan, especially since there was the very real possibility that he wasn't going to be able to give her what they both needed—that she wasn't going to be able to pull it out of him.

But she knew that she would fight for it. For him. For the potential future that lay between them.

Logan groaned and closed his eyes, breaking that intimate point of contact, as Bren sucked faster and faster, his head bobbing up and down vigorously. Scarlett watched Logan closely, noted the tightening of the muscles in his legs, the way his fists scrabbled at the padded leather of the bench.

“Stop. Now!” Clasping her fingers in Bren's hair, she pulled him bodily off of Logan, his mouth releasing the cock with a sound of wet suction.

Bren sighed with disappointment, but Logan—Logan's groan was a noise of pure frustrated agony.

“Son of a bitch!” He opened his eyes to glare at Scarlett. His cock was thick and deliciously swollen, the head purple and wet. After nudging Bren out of the way, Scarlett ran a delicate finger up and down the underside of the shaft, and Logan pulled against his restraints.

“You can be as pissed at me as you want.” Bending, she pressed her lips to his in a soft kiss, eyes narrowing in warning when he tried to force his tongue past the seam of her lips. “But you need to remember. Your pleasure, or the lack of it, is my decision. My responsibility. If I want you to come with my finger up your ass, you will, no matter how vulnerable it makes you feel, because I have decided it for you. You can come in
the mouth of another man and stop fighting the fact that it feels good, because I have told you that it's okay. Don't you see it yet?”

Suddenly frustrated, Scarlett curled her fingers around the base of Logan's shaft and squeezed, just enough to make sure that she had his full attention.

He shook his head, his body beginning to quiver. “I'm trying.”

Scarlett squeezed a bit harder, and a flush from pleasure-pain spread over Logan's chest and neck.

“Until you give me control of yourself willingly—
all
of your control—then I will take it by whatever means necessary. Until you tell me to walk away.” She gestured to Bren, who was still kneeling at her feet.

“Bren, go in my toy bag, please, and get me the cock harness. The one with the leather straps.”

“No.” Logan's voice was hoarse.

“No, or red?” Scarlett stroked him up and down, a gentle reminder—
whatever you won't give me, I will take. You don't have to worry about whatever hurts you, because I will take care of it for you.

Logan remained silent. Scarlett hesitated.

She'd heard of subs who couldn't be trusted to use their safe words when they needed to. But Logan—it wasn't that he was too far gone to use it. More that he was too stubborn for it, that he felt he could continue to hold on to that thin edge of control if he didn't admit defeat.

Tonight she needed to push him to give his troubles into her care.

If it didn't happen tonight, she wasn't sure it ever would.

“The harness, Mistress.” Bren returned with it, a sleek fall of wine-red leather that Luca had given her as a gift for passing the submissive portion of her training.

“Thank you, Bren.” Scarlett took the leather straps in her hands and began to unbuckle the metal fastenings.

“I don't need that,” Logan said quickly, eyeing the leather that would fit around his cock. “I won't come.”

“I know you won't,” Scarlett said, then, despite his protests, eased forward and wrapped the first of the leather bands around his waist, buckling it into place. “Consider this a symbol. A sign that you can't come until I give you permission.”

That I am the one patient enough to break you down. To care for you, to nurture you.

A low moan escaped his throat as Scarlett wound another leather strip through his legs, then cinched the buckle at the base of his spine. Then, her touch exquisitely careful, she secured another loop of the supple leather around the shaft of his cock, another at the base of his testicles, taking extra care to make sure that neither was too tight.

Stepping back, she admired her handiwork.

God, but he was magnificent, bound to the bench, cock jutting magnificently out of the red leather that bound him.

Arousal was a tight knot in Scarlett's belly, but tonight wasn't about sex, apart from its use as a tool to pry Logan open.

Tonight was about emotion. About the power exchange and what it could bring to them both, if Logan would just finally give in.

Logan looked at her, anger and misery twined tightly together in his expression as he watched her back away.

“I'm doing this for you,” she reminded him. “What you need, not what you want.”

Turning her back on him when the air between them was so charged that she could feel the sparks crackling in the air, Scarlett retrieved a chair from the dining table, pulling it halfway across the room.

Luca caught her eye as she moved. His expression was cautious, watchful, and a pang of apprehension worked through her.

She was going past the point where even her mentor had experience. But then again, she doubted that even Luca had ever encountered a sub as stubborn as hers.

She owed it to Logan to press onward.

Slowly, making a show of it, Scarlett sat down in the chair. Bending over far enough that both Bren and Logan could see down the front of her skintight dress, she extended one leg out in front of her.

“These boots are gorgeous, but they're killing my feet already.” Her fingers found the side zipper and inched it down in a mini striptease. “Bren, there's a bottle of massage oil in my bag. Fetch it, please, and then come kneel in front of me.”

“I don't want him to touch you.” Logan's expression was fierce, but this time he didn't pull at his bonds. “Please, Mistress.”

“If you had been a well-behaved sub tonight, I would have let you pull these zippers down with your teeth.” Easing her foot out of one boot, Scarlett started on the other. “Just to remind you that you are mine.”