Flashback (12 page)

“You do like it,” Leya said softly, and Rex
nodded reluctant agreement. She closed her hand around his erection
and caressed him, seeing how close he was to losing control.
“Doesn’t look as if you’ll have to endure it long,” she whispered
and Rex shuddered.

“It’s too long either way.”

Leya moved between Rex and Michelle, even as
she fondled him. She knew the other woman’s limits well enough to
understand that Rex’s possession of her wasn’t an option. That
Michelle had managed this much was a testament to her
determination, but Leya would protect her. She always did.

She stroked Michelle with gentle fingertips,
then smeared her juices over her own wet sex. She rubbed the
mingled juices over Rex’s mouth and he licked hungrily.

“Both of us at once,” she promised him and he
moaned a little. “But which is which?”

“I can feel the ribbon,” he said.

“What if I bind myself for you?” she asked
and Rex caught his breath.

“I want to see!”

“I forbid you to look.” Leya positioned
herself between Michelle and Rex, on her knees. She put Rex’s hands
on her waist and his fingers tightened around her compulsively. She
grabbed a length of ribbon and knotted it around her own waist. His
hands were on it instantly, his instincts so strong that he
couldn’t resist. He pushed up the blindfold on to his forehead and
Leya didn’t dare to correct him.

His eyes were blazing, his desire almost
overwhelming. He bound her arms to her back quickly. The ribbon
wasn’t as pretty as it might have been, but the bonds were secure.
Leya thought he might have stopped there, but he wrapped the ribbon
around her waist to her belly. He grabbed her ankles, knotting them
together and binding them to the front of her waist. She had more
ability to move than Michelle, but was captive, too.

And he could take her from behind whenever he
chose. He left her there in front of Michelle and walked around the
pair of them, clearly delighted with his handiwork.

“I need to see,” he said. “I want to see.” He
tugged off the blindfold and put it on Leya, tightening it around
her head.

Leya was dizzy by how quickly her focus
shifted to her other senses. She was aware of the tight smooth
satin bonds, the press of her skin where her elbows touched her
torso, the complete helplessness of her pose. She couldn’t resist
the urge to struggle.

She smiled when Rex chuckled.

“How much more can you stand?” she asked him
in a whisper.

“More than you,” he said. “I’ll bet on it.
Whoever comes first has to please both of the others in another
round.”

Leya might have answered, but she felt his
lips suddenly against her ear. She shivered at the feel of his
breath.

“Eat her,” he commanded, then his hands
locked around her waist. She felt him drop to his knees behind her,
the strength of his thighs pressing against the outside of her own.
He tipped her hips and entered her from behind, his need so great
that for once he forgot to even talk about a condom.

Leya bent forward and ran her tongue over
Michelle’s familiar snatch. She could read her lover’s moods by the
hardness of her clitoris and the abundance of her juices, and she
tasted Michelle’s relief. Rex meanwhile, opened her wide, filled
her, stretched her, and held her captive to his desires.

Little did he know how well he was serving
her own.

Leya had a heartbeat to gloat, then Rex moved
within her. He slid one hand around to caress her own clitoris and
she gasped, her breath making Michelle get wetter. They moved
together in an erotic dance, Rex setting a rhythm that drove every
thought from Leya’s mind. There was only pleasure and captivity,
scent and skin and sensation.

And a conviction that everything was going
perfectly to plan.

* * *

“It’s not going to work,” Eric said finally.
He’d been fighting the obvious conclusion all week long, but didn’t
see any reason to keep pretending.

He and Joanna were still locked into the
custom apartment that he considered to be a den of passion. She was
wearing her corset and boots, pretending to be a dominatrix.

She wasn’t pulling it off.

The proof was in Eric’s persistent erection.
She had bound his wrists together over his head and secured them to
a hook on the ceiling. She hadn’t tightened them enough - again -
but Eric hadn’t wanted to point out her failure. She was so
concerned about hurting him that she underestimated just how strong
he was.

“What do you mean?” she asked. She pushed off
her black mask and cast it aside, clearly unhappy with the whole
experiment.

Eric saw no reason to lie. “You can’t do it.”
He watched as her eyes widened in apprehension, but he knew he
couldn’t follow through on his threat to keep her as his captive.
Even if he was tempted to do just that. “You just don’t have it in
you to dominate.”

“But I’m trying!”

“Well, that’s just it. It’s obvious that
you’re
trying
. You don’t really believe it. You don’t really
like it.”

She propped her hands on her hips and
surveyed him. “Maybe I just don’t like you.”

“That’s the point. You should be furious with
me. You should be happy to get even with me, to have the chance to
make me pay for my sins, but it’s just not happening.”

“I am!” Joanna swung the riding crop, but she
pulled short on the blow. The tip barely glanced off him. It
certainly didn’t hurt or leave a mark.

“That’s it.” Eric shrugged and easily freed
himself from the wrist restraints. Joanna gasped, even as he rubbed
his wrists.

“You knew you could get free?”

“You never make them tight enough.” Eric
spread his hands. “You’re just too fucking nice, Joanna.”

“Or maybe I’m too submissive.” She marched
across the room, those black boots doing impossibly sexy things to
her legs.

Eric closed his eyes and begged silently for
strength. “That’s it exactly,” he complained.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you’re pretending to be dominant
because I’ve told you to be.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Yeah?” Eric pointed to his cock. “That’s
what my body thinks is going on.”

Joanna looked at him and bit her lip.

“Not helping!” Eric roared and turned his
back on her. He marched into the kitchen, hoping like hell there
was another beer. The alcohol might help him get through this, by
affecting his ability to keep an erection.

“It’ll be different with Mike,” Joanna
insisted. “I’m really annoyed with him.”

“Right. And you love him, so he’ll give you
one imploring look and that’ll be that. You’ll forgive him and
surrender to him all over again.”

Joanna wrinkled her nose as she thought about
that, and Eric had to stare deeply into the fridge. His cock was
thumping all over again.

“But I can’t do that. We have to resolve
this.”

“Right. You have to punish him. You have to
make him pay. You
know
that but you don’t believe it.” Eric
opened the beer and drank a third of it. “And that’s the
problem.”

“I don’t really see where the difference is,”
she complained. “If I can pretend, it should be good enough.”

And suddenly, Eric had had enough of being a
nice guy.

“It’s not,” he snapped and slammed down the
bottle. He started to walk past Joanna, as if he were headed for
the washroom. He eyed the distance to the coffee table, the one
that had a hinged lid and was filled with bondage supplies,
calculating how fast he could move. The tape was on top, he was
sure of it. And it was in the corner closest to him.

Joanna screwed up and trusted him in that
moment. She let him move behind her as she tapped her toe. “Well, I
have to get it right,” she said. “I’ll just have to put a little
more into it.” She reached for her hood again, but she never
managed to touch it.

Eric moved like a whirlwind. He flipped open
the coffee table and seized the roll of tape. By the time Joanna
realized he was moving and turned, he’d already stretched out a
length of it. He bound her elbows to her waist with record speed,
spinning her around so that her lower arms were caught in a spiral
of tape and secured to her waist.

“Hey!” she managed to say before he tripped
her. He tossed her over his shoulder and flung her on the wide bed,
taping one ankle to a bedpost. He moved fast and he didn’t make the
loop of tape loose. “You can’t do this,” Joanna argued, but her
other ankle was tied to the opposite bedpost before she could break
free. She sat up and tugged her legs, fighting to get free even as
Eric climbed on the bed.

She looked at his cock. “No! Not like
this!”

“Exactly like this,” Eric snarled. He
straddled her, holding her down. “Feel the difference?”

“You can’t do this. We have an agreement,”
she argued, but Eric clapped one hand over her mouth. She tried to
shout, the muffled sound only exciting him.

Her gaze fell to his growing erection and her
eyes widened.

He knelt over her, watching her struggle
beneath him, and pushed her down into the mattress. “Feel the
difference? This is exciting. There are no rules. I’m taking you,
whether you want to be taken or not. That’s what you have to do to
Mike. Not just overwhelm him, but assert your claim. Prove to him
that he’s your possession, then punish him.”

Joanna moaned, the sound doing exactly
nothing to persuade Eric to do the right thing. He kept his hand
locked over her mouth, loving the feel of her lips moving against
his palm. With his other hand, he began to finger her hot wet sex.
“See? You do like me after all.”

Joanna groaned.

It was exactly the wrong choice.

“Or you like to be treated like a toy. The
thing is that if you want Mike to treat you like his toy again, and
to take care of you the way he should, you need to teach him a
lesson.”

Joanna whimpered. Eric watched her closely as
he slid his fingers between her labia, caressing her with a
confidence that made her visibly swallow.

She was so submissive.

He tried to keep to the high road, even
though her wet snatch was temptingly close. He owed one last
argument to Mike and their friendship. If that didn’t work, he
wouldn’t be able to defend his actions.

“Maybe it would help you to think of what you
like about captivity. Maybe it will help you to remember what makes
you feel most helpless of all. For some people it’s the blindfold.
For others, it’s the gag. For still others, it’s the conviction
that there’s no escape.”

Joanna struggled as she watched him, her eyes
wide and her cheeks flushing. She was getting wetter and slicker
beneath his fingers and Eric didn’t know how he’d hold off.

He forced himself to think of the time he’d
met Mike, when Mike had saved his ass, just how much he owed to
Mike.

Even that debt was hard to keep in mind.

Maybe that little bit of truth held the
key.

“You’re helpless, aren’t you?” he
growled.

Joanna nodded then swallowed. Wary but
excited. Liking this against her will.

This wasn’t going as well as Eric had hoped.
In desperation, he leaned closer to whisper in her ear, abandoning
her sweet snatch and bracing his hand on the mattress. That move
didn’t help much because he could smell her puss on his
fingers.

“But maybe what’s going to make it work for
you is knowing a little bit more about Mike,” he said in a hurry.
“You don’t know how we met, do you?”

She stilled, then shook her head, her gaze
wary.

“Mike and I met in jail. Yup, that’s why he
can pick locks so easily. He has a shady past. Not as dark as mine,
but I’m guessing he didn’t tell you about that little part of his
resume.”

Joanna’s eyes flashed with fury. Eric had one
second to be proud of what he’d done before she bit his hand,
hard.

“Ow!” He pulled back his hand, barely moving
out of the room in time when Joanna lifted her knee toward his
crotch.

“How dare you both lie to me?” she demanded.
“How dare Mike not tell me about that? Who the hell does he think
he is?” Eric reached out to her but she lunged and bit at him
again, twisting so violently that his cock went limp.

“I think you’ve got it now,” he said, but
Joanna wasn’t listening.

“Untie me right this minute,” she insisted,
her eyes flashing with anger. “We’re going over there now, and I’m
not going to let him go until he’s begged for forgiveness. Until
he’s earned it. Hurry up!”

Eric got off her and untaped her ankles,
listening to her fume all the while. One story had made all the
difference in the world.

And it was even true.

Once she was on her feet and free again,
Joanna seized the whip and turned on Eric. She was magnificent, as
livid and powerful a dominatrix as he’d ever seen. “You want a
sample of this?” she asked, her voice hard. She cracked the whip in
the air.

“No. Not my style.”

“Then hurry up and get dressed. I want him
bound helpless now.” She marched away to fix her own outfit and
Eric sighed as she went.

She’d been so close, but he’d done the right
thing.

No doubt about it. He was a fucking
saint.

* * *

The Count was despondent. He’d spent so much
time putting all of the pieces together, arranging his seduction
and possession of Athena, certain that it was what they both
wanted. But she was gone. His plan had failed.

And he didn’t know what he was going to
do.

It was late when someone came to the door,
but the Count didn’t care. He’d bought a lot of wine to stock the
wine cellar in this house, and he saw no reason not to drink it
all. He’d have his money’s worth in that, if nothing else.

He didn’t really pay attention to the sounds
in the foyer, just drank and stared into the fire.