Steel Dominance (26 page)

She rocked free from reality. For a few soul-melting seconds, she became nothing more than his—a creation, waiting for the next act of this god that had taken her. Sounds blurred into the distance.

Head down, she heard his words, then felt his hand on her shoulder. “Are you here with me, Sofia?”

He knew. She sucked in a long, quavering breath, then nodded. “Yes. I’m here.” The world calmed.

He slipped the pants to knee level and shoved them the rest of the way with his foot in the crotch. The damp cloth stuck to her.

“Step out of the pants, then put your wrists behind you.”

She was naked. Looking down, she saw her erect pinkish nipples and the roundness of her breasts. There was sand on the tops of her toes.

“Sofia?” He gripped her upper arms as if to steady her.

She put her hands behind her and caught one wrist in the other hand. Something cold and hard looped about one wrist, then secured it crosswise to the other one, and locked with a clockwork purr. What was this? Then she recalled the silver arm decorations she’d seen on him when he left the water. Pulling did nothing except remind her she was tied. Whatever it was, it didn’t give. Another loop above her elbows pulled them in.

Glorious
. He didn’t mean her to escape. She shut her eyes and wallowed in the sensation.

Something touched her ankle. A silver-scaled snake rippled around her, swallowed its tail, and wrapped snug around her legs. She squeaked.

“What is that!”

“Be calm, my lady. An invention of Henry’s. It’s clockwork, but it obeys me, just like you do. Better than you do, perhaps.” Dankyo stood, sliding his large hands up her legs but lingering at the juncture of her thighs. One hand shoved between them, found the wetness, and a slippery finger dived inside her. His moistened thumb tip probed her other hole. She jumped.

“No!”

“No?” He nipped her shoulder, fastened her to him with an arm across her breasts, and wiggled thumb and finger deeper. “If I want to, I will. You know that.”

Unless she said no.

The pressure down there, pushing apart her flesh, filling her… She moaned.

“Have you ever been taken there?”

Truth? “Yes. It hurt, some of the time.”

“Then I’ll be gentle when I do it.”

When
. His words shot a picture into her head—bent over, with him covering her and buried deep inside her ass. His erection pressed into her back. She shuddered, squeezed her thighs together.

“Down.” With one hand grasping her breast, and his other hand around her upper arm, he made her kneel.

The grass crushed under her weight, and little stalks dug into her knees. She touched her upper lip with her tongue. Her mouth seemed puffy. All that kissing…and her head still seemed on the wrong way. The world was distant and muffled. With her wrists crossed at the small of her back, her relaxed fingers touched the swell of her ass.

“You’re mine to take now, Sofia, aren’t you?”

Eyelids half-lowered, she breathed her reply, quiet as a dragonfly alighting on a pond. “Yes.”
I am His.

But then her eyes focused. Facing outward meant she could see the lake and all its denizens. Fear trickled in. She lifted her head, sneaked a peek at the crocodile, scanned the water nearby, and met Dankyo’s gaze.
Eek
. She flinched. Stern, foreboding, not happy.

“Sofia.”

“Sorry. It’s just…”

“Yes?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“I know what you said, that it’s safe, but I have a thing about keeping my toes where they are, attached to me.”

“You swam here.”

“I was cross with you.”

“How were you getting back?”

She shut her eyes, then muttered, “Boat?”

He laughed. “You are so bad.”

Anxiety leaked away, and inside she smiled.

Something soft went across her eyes. When she shook her head, Dankyo grabbed her hair again and held her. “You don’t trust me. Clearly if you did, you’d not have swum here, and you’d not be looking around. You need to learn to trust me. This is a blindfold.”

“I do trust you.” She shifted on her knees. “But no one is ever one hundred percent trustworthy.”

There was a long silence. “If I pledge myself to you. I promise you I will be.”

But… “Pledge yourself?” Her heart thumped slow and even and loud.

“When we reach the shore, I will do so. If that is agreeable to you?”

So formal? So serious. The meaning hit her. She tried to see him through the blindfold but couldn’t, and felt tears wet the cloth. “Yes.” She swallowed. “That is agreeable.” The cloth pulled at her hair as he tied a knot at the back. “Why the blindfold?”

“To teach you to trust.”

He thought he could teach her about trust when he was hiding something? “Trust goes both ways,” she said quietly. “Why do you have nightmares?”

She couldn’t believe she’d asked him that. Too late to take it back, though. She twisted her hands, and the silver snake slid, cool and strangely slippery as dew on her skin. Next time she’d wait until he untied her before she asked pushy questions.

For a long while, he simply breathed. Then he answered.

“A woman. The one who died in the avalanche all those years ago. I still have nightmares about that—I rescue her over and over. Sometimes the hand I pull on to drag her free is severed and nothing more than a hand. Sometimes I dig forever into the snow but never find her. Endless variations, and all of them bad. I’m sorry you heard me. I didn’t know they were that loud. I tend to go back to sleep after they hit.”

She struggled for a reply. “Yes. Well. I don’t go back to sleep so easily. But thank you for saying.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I’m going to float you, on your back, to the shore. And you are not going to move. You are going to trust me to keep you safe. It’s not deep, and I can stand the whole way. I want to see you relax. Understood?”

But the very idea made her muscles stiffen. “Is this some sort of foreplay? Because if it is, you need some lessons. If you do this, I may not recover for a week.”

From the sounds and the shadow, he crouched over her. His lips brushed hers. “Lessons? I think such insolence earns a spanking all by itself.”

“Wait!”

But he carried her out into the lake. When she wriggled, he chided her, then pinched her butt hard enough to make her yelp and lie still. She heard the chuckling of the water as he waded out, and then he lowered her until she lay belly up with water lapping at her ears and covering most of her body. The tips of her breasts felt the breeze, so she knew they jutted up above the water line.

So strange. At one and the same time she felt terribly exposed and cocooned. Dankyo kept his hands on her, with one under her back so she couldn’t sink. Without fuss he began to move, and as he walked, he talked to her in quiet reassuring words, telling her everything he saw and all that happened. The sound of his words came through the water to her ears and seemed a long way off. The water was warm, except where her feet entered the cooler deeper zone.

Slowly she did as he wanted and let the quietness take her away to a place where only his words and his hands on her mattered. As her muscles loosened, her feet went a little deeper. He was moving her headfirst, and her bound hands trailed deeper also, with the turbulence fluttering her fingers as if it were she who caressed the lake and not the lake caressing her in its soft watery embrace.

With the blindfold on, his words mesmerized her.

They went past dragonflies and wiggling clockwork fish, tangles of weed, and a yellow hummingbird that hovered to dip its beak in the water. Here and there she registered the touch of Dankyo’s hand on her bare stomach or her thighs as if he were reminding her of her body—and making her remember he was there, by her side.

When at last they halted and only the ripples washing against her told of the journey from island to shore, she’d fallen far under the spell of the lake and of Dankyo, her lover. She would have stayed there forever if he’d asked it of her.

He scooped her from the water and placed a light kiss on her mouth. “Thank you, Sofia, for trusting me.”

She smiled and lay in his arms, unmoving, as he carried her. Sound had come back. Weight had returned, but she was still his. The muscles of his hard body rolled against her. With her hands and ankles bound he could do anything. And she wished that he would. She pretended she were in another world where a man might do whatever he liked to her.

“A sofa is here,” he whispered as he lowered her.

It was soft and smelled beautifully clean. He slipped off the binding above her elbows before he let her lie flat. Her weight squashed her hands into the thick cushions beneath her body. She heard him walk away, then return. A moment later the snake unrolled from her ankles.

“I’m tying your legs apart, my dear. So I can see you. So I can take what you offer me.” She could hear the satisfaction in his voice and felt herself surface a little closer to the real warm world. Her lips curved, and his finger drew a line across the middle between them until she opened and sucked on him. “You’re very swollen down below, darling. You look so inviting. So pretty. Why do you smile, Sofia?”

Rope locked around her ankles and fastened them widely apart. He didn’t seem to need an answer. Being exposed swept heat into her body. Tightness, holding her down…
mmm.

His thighs brushed the inside of hers, and then his arms were on either side of her shoulders. His cock pushed at the circle of her entrance—soft, yet hard beneath, wanting to enter, yet patient.

She let out a long, freeing breath. Speaking awoke her even more. “I thought you were going to spank me?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Right now I want to make you mine. Nothing more. Nothing less. You’re my mermaid from the sea, and if I don’t do this now, maybe you’ll turn back into a fish.”

A giggle threatened to erupt from her. But he kissed her again and pushed inside her. His thickness parted her as surely and easily as a spear. With her legs tied down, she was trapped under him. He went in even deeper. She groaned into his mouth and attempted to open her legs more but couldn’t. She wanted to flex her back and spread her legs, wanted to surrender herself to the fullest extent, but she couldn’t. Even that he dictated.

Dankyo grunted and shoved himself all the way in until she gasped at the discomfort. He was so far in she thought his balls would be inside if he moved another half inch. She tried again to wriggle and couldn’t. She subsided, panting. He bit her neck with his mouth wide. His teeth sank into her skin, marking her for a few seconds, before he nuzzled the hurt spot, and did another small, sharp thrust. Taunting her.

“Oh!”

“You are mine, Sofia, and I am yours.”

Roughened by arousal, her words came out deep and guttural. “Yes. But move. Please!”

“Uh-uh. Shh. When I want to, I will. I’m taking you, not the other way round.”

Lord, she could feel the pulse of his member. Could feel how he fitted into and filled every space within her. She ached for him to move.
Please, please, take me.

But he held her down and thrust into her when he wanted. The raw beast-like surge of his cock in and out set a tide of pleasure coursing through her. His forearms leaned in on her; his chest pressed down on her breasts, and he raked his fingers into her wet hair and fastened her down there too.

“Oh God.” She moaned.
Harder. Deeper
. Each panting breath, each clasp of her tunnel on his cock, each fresh seep of her juices onto her thighs sent her spiraling closer to the hot cataclysm of an orgasm. So close.

Then he propped up on one elbow, slipped his hand between their bodies, and found her clit. The soft toggling of the taut nub added to the sensations—they climbed, built, roiled inside her. A last firm press over the very top of her clit sent the storm ripping through her, blowing her into that mindless void. Slowly she came down and found herself panting and limp.

“Well done.” He worked the blindfold upward, and she saw how he studied her and the way her breasts moved as she struggled to draw in air. “Beautiful.”

His thrusts intensified, as hard and forceful as a hammer driving a pile into the earth. He fucked her like any beast would take its mate, primal, grunting his pleasure, shoving himself inside her and rocking the sofa. She strived to meet him and couldn’t move. In that moment she was his possession and nothing more. The legs screeched on the tiles. His breath huffed in her ear, his cock penetrated to the top with every single stroke, and then, at last, he stayed there, and the swell of his ejaculation made her gasp and tense from the pleasure. He lay between her thighs, recovering, his face buried in her neck while his cock jerked a last few times.

She ventured some words. “I want to hug you. Please?”

“Of course.” He kissed her cheek, then rose to dispose of the condom and untie her. They lay on the sofa in the warm sun cuddling, Dankyo spooning against her back.

“And so, my dear, here it is. I pledge myself to you. I promise you I will never betray you, and that I will do everything in my power to keep you safe from harm.” He clucked his tongue. “Except when I decide to beat your cute little backside. But most of all, I want us to meet the future together, side by side. Sofia, I love you.”

Oh. She gasped and looked over her shoulder at him. He’d said those words she’d somehow never thought to hear.

It made everything right. “I love you too,” she said quietly. Contentment melted through her like the warm sun on a cold morning. “But you aren’t supposed to say the backside thing.”

“Oh yes I was. It’s part of the pledge. Now you.”

She smiled, pulled his large hand to her lips, and kissed each finger one by one as she spoke.

“Umm. I pledge myself to you. I will never betray you. I want to be by your side as we face the future. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe from harm, except when I decide to beat your—” He covered her mouth with his hand and growled.

“Not that bit.”

She swallowed her laughter, though the grin persisted. “Sorry. Ahem.”

“Apology accepted. Only because I’m too tired to beat your backside right now.”