Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe (22 page)

“This
is
going to work, my princess, but I won’t be, can’t be, gentle. Open. Open wider.”

Warily, she opened and he took advantage of her willingness. He lunged, engulfing her mouth with his and sinking his tongue between her lips while his hand wedged her mouth open at the corner. She’d have bitten off his tongue otherwise.

His touch was fire, ripping at nerves, scorching her, storming her skin with heat.

The pain: instantaneous. But he held her in place, a man of stone.

Her screams were muffled. Her desperate efforts to tear loose thwarted.

Whose idea had this been? She thrashed and found her limbs still pinned, even more so when he shifted to straddle her chest and sit on her. Her wrists and ankles burned from the rope.

But he didn’t stop.

He’d forced his lips between hers so they met her teeth. He kissed her until she tasted blood, until her lips were numb from pain overload, and her chin abraded by his stubble. He lifted away, releasing her. Her head spun. She’d forgotten to breathe for far too long.

Panting wildly, she stared at him, dazed, in fading agony, and aroused beyond her comprehension. Her nipples had shrunk down hard.

This was life and death, almost, and all her body wanted was for him to fuck her. Her mind knew better. If he fucked her, she’d be screaming, and not in a good way.

Had that been a kiss or a battle?

“Just being thorough.” He wiped his mouth with the edge of a tissue and put it aside. “I had to make sure they had the best chance to transfer to you.”

She didn’t quite believe him. If he was her prince, had she found the beast?

She paused in the middle of her internal debate.

Something odd was happening inside, stirring. The nanogeers, was it them?

Things were trickling through her, pouring, burrowing, making her fingers cold and hot, sending electricity into places that didn’t seem to be a part of her. She twitched and found her eyes had closed. Her heartbeats wound down, becoming softer, slower.

“Ella. Ella?”

The man shook her but it was too late, she was floating away like bubbles, into the sleep of a cybernetic sheep. She smiled at that.

On pause. Being updated. There should really be a sign saying
Under Construction
she thought, before everything...

Stopped.

He checked her regularly throughout the night: the pulse at her neck, her breathing and color. Ella didn’t respond, not even to his touch. This was a coma, or something similar. His message to the boys, who seemed the most likely to understand or know who to contact, had gained him a reply of
wait
, at first. They must have asked the doctor who’d treated her after she’d been poisoned, as the second reply had told him what to watch for.

At dawn, he sat up on his elbow, a little weary, and somewhat worried. If this did anything terrible to her, he’d be lost.

Like some scene from a story, thin rays of sunlight were cast across the bed, from the fretwork of holes in the wall that served as a window. She stirred. Her eyelids raised, revealing her eyes. They focused on him and he swore his heart broke into song.

“What?”

He drew in air. “You can talk?” He reached for her cheek only to stop himself.

“Yes,” she said, croakily, which prompted her to clear her throat, but she smiled too. “I can. I can talk again. The nanogeers worked.”

She remembered what he’d done. Now for the hard question. “Do you know me?”

“I know you,
more
... You’re there but fuzzy, like it was long ago. Torgeir.” Her smile spread, hesitantly. “Like an uncle I met when a child but haven’t seen for ages.”

“An uncle?”

His expression must have been sad.

“An uncle who kisses way too hard. I tasted blood. I expected a more fairytale kiss with bluebirds and crap.” She winked.

“Hmmm.” She might have been teasing him, but he thought not. “An uncle?”

“I was meaning how my memory is hazy. It’s just an analogy. You’re not really. You’re a hot uncle. Is that better?” She turned over onto her side, her black hair spilling over the pillow, and discovered the rope around her wrist. “Why is this still here?”

“I thought it best to have a way to grab you fast if something happened. Like a seizure.”

Her mouth formed an
O
.

“And I confess, I didn’t want to take it all off you.” So pretty. So decadent. A simple double twist around her wrist, with a non-slip knot, and yet it said so much.

“The rope?”

“Yes.”

Her small swallow reawakened his craving for her.

“I’d like to try touching you again. Skin on skin.” He moved closer, making her shift, until he was looking down at her with his hand and forearm on her pillow. Her hair tangled with his fingers. “I never did get to see if the markings on your nipples have become less red. Your lips are definitely redder than when we first met. Do you know what that means?” He barely waited. “It means you’re still mine.”

She gave no protests, said nothing to challenge his statement. Telling. Her pupils were large and dark. Without warning her, he sneaked his finger closer until his nail rested on the side of her neck. Nothing happened, except a hitch in her breath. Satisfaction built until he consciously relaxed and let it roar in.
Mine again, soon.

“My finger is on your neck, Ella.”

“Oh.” She squirmed as if the intensity of his gaze affected her.

“And you didn’t deny my ownership.”

Matter-of-factly, he took the neckline edge of her shirt and pulled it down low until her nipple showed. He grunted, pleased at the color, and at her lack of screaming. Then he bared the other one – also red. His cock decided this was good news too and strained at his pants.

“I see I can touch you again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Though I didn’t say you could.”

Yet she stayed where she was, as if waiting for him. Of course, he had her wrist roped, but trying to leave was an option, even if he wouldn’t have let her. The bondmating insistence that she was his was rising in him, bubbling up. Tearing off her clothes would’ve happened by now if he wasn’t holding himself back.

He didn’t bother replying and, instead, drew up a loop of the rope and laid it loosely across her neck. The red of the rope against her vulnerable neck fractured thought.

“What are you doing?” she asked roughly.

“Do you know how sexy it is when you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Husky. Coarse. Low and grumbly. Like you want to have sex. Like you’re reminding me of what we have and what we are.” Her bruised lips parted. Her breasts rose and fell insistently.

If she seemed hurt or weak he could stop himself. He’d be careful. Careful enough.

“I need to claim you again, my princess.”

No words from her, but then sometimes words were obstructions that made the world impossibly logical when all you needed was your primitive urges. He could see her need in every movement of her body, in her eyes, her breathing, and the visible bounce of her pulse.

He drew his finger across her neck above the rope, feeling her softness and the hardness of the rope, then the dip beside the long muscle where her artery beat. The beat quickened as he stroked her.

He leaned in and put his lips on hers, kissing her languidly before capturing her bottom lip in his teeth, pulling it outward and releasing it. “That was your fairytale kiss. But what I want to do to you next isn’t fairytale.”

She leaned up and kissed him too. Eyes closing, sighing, she sank back to the pillow. “Fairytales can only take you so far.”

“Agreed. Right now I want to fuck you senseless.”

He drew her bound wrist above her head and held it there. That she only writhed under him as he kissed her again, pushing herself onto his thigh where he’d shoved it between her legs, it made him think, extrapolate.

“Pretty girl, I can see you’re into this, even if you say you can’t completely remember me.” He brushed hair from her eyes. “I’m going to tie you to the bed awhile. Do you need to use the bathroom?”

She nodded.

“Go then.” He undid the rope and watched her saunter to the door in that indescribably female manner.

When she reappeared, he beckoned and she came to the bed, and when he asked her, she offered him her hand. No hesitation.

“Thank you.”

With her watching his every move, he climbed from the bed, retied her wrist, and fastened the end of the rope to the bed leg. Still kneeling, he looked along the line of her arm, from wrist rope to her expectant eyes. She could have little clue as to what he intended but she was trusting him.

He uncurled her fingers and pressed his lips to her palm. “I’m going to go buy something from the shop this rope came from. I want you to stay here until I get back. You can get loose if you have to but unless it’s an emergency, don’t. I’ll bring breakfast too.”

Ella nodded.

Her lack of words when she could speak was interesting. He smiled devilishly and bit one of her fingers, then stood and rested a knee on the bed. It’d be up to an hour before he returned. Leaving her uncomfortably aroused would be entertaining. He had no devices, but still...

He found her comm in her backpack, then found his knife and cut off a good length of the rope. Without removing her shorts, he tied the rope around her waist, drew one end between her legs, and made a knot at about the right spot to rub on her clit.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“You’ll see. Don’t take this off unless you don’t want to sit down for a week.”

From the twitch of her eyebrows, the minor threat had aroused her curiosity.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Try me.”

Her wry smile then head shake and sideways look made his heart kick up a notch.

“You liked me threatening you with spanking?”

“Uhhh. I’m not sure.”

Torgeir chuckled.

He knotted the piece that ran between her legs onto the front of the waist rope, adjusting the tension until the rope squashed the crotch of her panties and rode up into her slit. To see if she could feel pleasure, to let her know this was what he wanted her to feel, he ran his finger along and over the rope, from her nether hole area to her mons, pressing and toggling the rope to and fro. Then he tip-tapped his fingers on the reverse path, walking the rope, while watching her face.

“Oh. That’s...” When he found sensitive places, she gave little grunts and twisted on the bed.

“I’ll leave your comm here with the alarm on. When it goes off, I want you to wriggle against this.” He hooked his finger under the rope and pulled, making her squeak, then he slipped aside the edge of her panties and found her entrance. Already her moisture was leaking out onto her panties and shorts. “I want this rope wet by the time I get back.”

She frowned. “That seems so dirty.”

“Exactly. Dirty is good. Keep thinking like that.”

He gave her one last, hard kiss while finger-fucking her only to the depth of his first knuckle.

Before he let the front door close, he heard an exasperated sigh come from the bedroom. At least she couldn’t see his grin.

The shop assistant processed his order quickly, apart from trying to sell him the rest of the shop. It was the trek up and down the stairs and shafts that took the most time. He slipped in the door carrying his goods, and left the bags on the table in the living room. The huge stone beam that ran across the ceiling had the pierced metal work he recalled, and Mimi was perched above the door. Spread flat like a pancake, but it was her.

How long had she been up there? Never mind. He shook his head then went into the bedroom to fetch Ella.

“Did you do as I said?” He asked her this as he walked to the bed. She looked aroused to him – flushed, her lips and breasts seemed fuller, but what he wanted had to be checked by hand...or fingers.

“Yes.”

“And?” He sat down. Where the rope rode up into her cleft, it was soaked. He released her wrist rope from the bed leg then stripped the rope harness from her crotch and waist, placing small kisses as he worked, on her exposed belly where the shirt had gathered and bared her.

“What do you think?” Then she added, as if she were embarrassed to admit it, a soft, “Yes.” She sat up against the pillow and bowed her head, watching him through her hair. “I’m not sure why, but this feels much dirtier than just tying me up.”

“You don’t like being my wanton, dirty princess?” Just to make sure she got the answer right, he put his hand between her legs.

“A dirty princess?” She sighed. “I could...should swear at you but yes, mister stranger, I guess do. Like it, that is.”

“I’m still a stranger?” It was disturbing on one level, but they desired each other and she did remember him. He could deal with that.

“I don’t know how to describe it. My memories have been messed with twice now, that I know of.”

“Oh? I don’t think you told me that before.”

“I didn’t?” Ella had that little wrinkle on her forehead but she let out a long breath and leaned in to kiss his chin and hold his wrist momentarily, as if to check he really did have his hand on her pussy. “Maybe I didn’t but for now, I really,
really
, want to see what you were about to do.”

Her words were enough to make him refocus on sex...and rope, and all that he was thinking of seconds ago.

“Later then, Ella, you will tell me more later.”

She nodded and he answered her
with a grim smile. “What did I plan? To tie you to the ceiling outside so I could do whatever I wanted to your sweet luscious body.” He looked under his brows at her. “That suit you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Come then.”

He led her out to the living room, hand in hand, though her one wrist was still bound and he held the coiled rope. He had a fierce need to both care for her and see what he could do to her. To make her orgasm and scream. It was disconcerting and also intensely appealing.

By inviting him to tie her up, even if it was in that old note, it seemed she’d undone a lock on needs he’d kept suppressed. Now they were out, he didn’t know how to lock them in again.