Sweet and Dirty (17 page)

With his words, he pushed a button.

“Oh.” The areas beneath the electrodes suddenly felt very odd. Alive, crawling, tingling. She looked down, and the one on her belly was making it twitch involuntarily.

“This is the low setting. Here is the next higher one.”

She jumped as the juice hit her. There was the “bite” he’d mentioned. The ropes dug into her body as she twitched. She felt the muscles beneath the electrodes spasm. The knot above her clit twisted, adding its own type of bite. She gasped. It all happened so quickly, her body moving outside of her control. But before the pain grew unendurable, Mage tapped the button again.

For the first time, he touched her with affection. He stroked her hair, then let his hand glide down her neck and chest to her left nipple. He pinched, then rolled it between two fingers. “Your body is firm, young, healthy. You are warmed up, so an involuntary muscle spasm is less likely to cramp. And, of course, you are restrained for my pleasure and your safety. I think you can take a lot more.”

She tried to concentrate around the riveting pleasure of his touch. “You like seeing women in pain,” she said, only just realizing it. “You actually enjoy it.”

“Screams, tears, they are the sweetest nectar to me,” he agreed. “Though moans of pleasure are also delightful. And now I will have to ask you to shut up. Unless it is screams and moans. Or your safe word, of course. Oh, and do not move unless I instruct you.”

“For safety?”

Instead of answering, he shook his head mockingly: Naughty Nora. He let her watch him turn up the setting. And push the button.

She gasped as the electrodes surged the juice into her muscles. Ass, belly, and worst of all into her thighs…the pain! She whimpered, trying not to move despite her muscles shrieking for her to do so, anything to relieve the lightning-stab of electricity pummeling her deeply wherever the electrodes touched.

She panted, sweat running freely. She looked at him pleadingly.

He pushed the button, and the pain was gone as if it hadn’t existed. “You see?” He yanked off one electrode. “Not a single mark. Amazing, is it not?” He gazed at her expectantly as she fought for composure. She glanced at his finger on the button, and remained silent.

Mage grinned, the first real pleasure he’d shown. “Very good! I am going to have a lovely time breaking you.”

“Break—?” Too late, she cut herself off.

Another mocking shake of the head. But this time, he took the nipple he’d fingered and applied a wire-attached clamp to it. He snapped another clamp closed on a generous pinch of pussy lip.

Apprehension surged and grew in her. This wasn’t going to feel like Master Andre’s nipple clamps. Not at all.

But her curiosity rose, gamely, to the occasion. What would it feel like on something as sensitive as a nipple? She craned her neck to watch him adjust the lower clamp. Less than an inch from the teasing rope knot.

Again, he let her watch him adjust the level—downward, this time, she was relieved to note.

But only until he pressed the button. The current penetrated her nipple, a delicious bite. It sank its electric fingers deep into her, a pleasure that magnified the sensation of mere touch by a thousandfold. It flirted at the very edge of pain. Mage knew his stuff, she thought, amazed.

Butterflies in her stomach seemed to rise to her throat, even as the sweet pain assaulting her nipple sent a corresponding message to her pussy. Her whole body trembled in Mage’s complex rope net, and feeling the resulting pleasure from trembling against the knot, trembled some more.

It seemed impossible she should be close to orgasm just from a little electrical stimulation. She let out a little moan of pleasure. The current stopped immediately.

“But you seem pleased with your chastisement. That will never do.” Mage’s silky, insinuating voice seemed to penetrate her mind as the current had her body. He brought out a small, wavy metal cylinder, coated it with lube. He meant to insert it? Wires connected it to the small black control box, she saw with a return of dread.

He wouldn’t. Would he?

Mage paused, the thing glistening in his hand. “Would you like to beg me not to do this to you?” he inquired with insane courtesy.

“May I speak?”

“Only if it’s to say your safe word.” He waited, a knowing smile playing at the corners of his mouth, while her fear battled curiosity.

When she didn’t speak, his smile disappeared, replaced by a stern compassion. Her poise seemed to bother him. “You do not take it seriously. You will, though.” Dewdrops of perspiration made his skin begin to glitter. She didn’t need to hear his savoring deep breaths as he adjusted the wire attachments to know his anticipation rivaled hers.

She shouldn’t let him do this, she knew. Foolish, irresponsible in the extreme, dangerous…Her intellect listed all the reasons she should scream out her safe word and escape not only Mage but Twisted Wood entirely. And yet…Sylvester trusted him.

Nora shifted, breathing faster. The real reason she would let Mage toy with her body—Mage, a man she suspected of involvement in central European violence!—was that she craved this so-called edge play. After the duty-bound predictability of her existence, the part of her coming to life in the aftermath of Ryan’s revelation wanted the greatest possible vacation from it.

She clamped her lips shut on anything that might resemble the word “red.”

Mage was on her so quickly she didn’t have time to flinch. His large, clothed body pressed against hers dug the ropes into her flesh deeply enough to make her grimace. The rough-hewn wood of the X-shaped cross pricked her shoulders and arms. With one hand he grasped her jaw, forcing her face up. With the other he gathered up strings of rope, as if pulling in a fish in a net, and shook her. Only she had nowhere to go. The ropes tugged at her flesh, vibrating the knot obscenely even as small splinters pierced her and she was given what felt like an all-over Indian burn.

Adrenaline poured into her body, and she trembled with fear at last.

The word felt shaken out of her: “Please.”

“Nice.” He shook her again. “Beg me some more. You like it rough. Loosened up, now, yes? You can take these little pains. And some not-so-little pains. I must play, too, you see.”

Nora looked into his eyes and realized what Mage meant by “play.”

But even as her mouth started to shape her safe word, his hand slid down between her legs. He crooked his index finger in a come-here gesture, stroking her slit.

The sensation felt nearly as electric as the electrodes and clamps he activated a moment later.

He touched her clit as her nipple leapt and trembled in response to the voltage, and her flesh under the electrodes crawled. “Too much,” she gasped.

Then gasped again when he pinched her clit tightly. “That? You think that is too much? It is not enough,” he declared, a look of disapproval on his face. “You open your mouth only to complain about nothing. You learn too slowly.” He cruelly twisted her clit. The pleasure spiked, on waves of electricity.

Then he released her. He cut the power with the button on the black box, ripped her electrodes off…then grinned as he let her see him grasp the wire to the clamp on her nipple. “Ready? Brace yourself.” She clenched every muscle in her body, but it didn’t help her against the sudden searing pain of Mage yanking the clamp off her nipple. She shouted. It hurt.

Craning her neck, she looked down to make sure her nipple hadn’t been ripped off, too.

Then looked up into Mage’s bright eyes. The man was obviously in his element as he closed in on her once more. She cringed, but he only massaged the hurt out of her nipple.

Then he nodded, his hand sliding up to encircle her throat. He blinked, long and savoring, as his fingers sunk into her flesh. With his other hand, he adjusted a bit of his rope, meticulous. Repairing a diamond shape to make his design more attractive, she knew, and shivered with a fear heavily flavored with lust and adrenaline. What would he do next?

She didn’t have long to wait.

“Guess where this is going?” Mage held the jelly-covered steel dildo before her. Her eyes widened, and he smiled at her reaction. His hand moved from adjusting the rope, to sliding down her body. He tapped the indentation where her labia met inner thigh. “Not here.” He slid his hand, smooth, relentless, up and over to her other inner thigh. Tapped. “Not here, either.” He stared into her eyes, clearly savoring her fear.

She shook her head. Her emotions surged—the fear he enjoyed, but also lust, helplessness, other emotions she couldn’t name—and to her amazement, she felt tears filling her eyes. She wriggled against her bonds. She tried desperately to close her legs. If the electricity did that to her nipple, what would an electrified probe inside her feel like?

A wild desire to find out warred with her sensible plan to stop Mage. Now. All she had to do was speak up.

“Don’t. Please.” She begged him, knowing her words were sincere even as she knew they only egged him on. He wanted to hear her begging. He liked it. Her tears visibly got him off. So why did her voice tremble, and her body shake with fear, when all she had to do was say “red” and everything would stop? There was something wrong with her, she thought, even as the tears spilled over to trickle down her cheeks. Something had to be wrong with a person who could revel in such treatment.

“Are you ready? Here it comes.” Mage moved the probe between her legs. She lunged away, shaking her head in an ecstasy of terror, frustration at her captivity, and a delicious sinking sensation of pleasure. There was no escape. “No!” She wriggled frantically, but only succeeded in making the ropes pinch her.

Ignoring her struggles, Mage started to push the wet probe into her. After a moment he exhaled with frustration. “Be still.” Then, “All this flinging about. I will make it that much harder on you.” With a cruel grip, he pinioned one of her legs, then shoved the probe hard up between them. She let out a cry of defeat as she felt the coldness of metal lodged firmly inside.

He was still moving something between her legs. More rope? She was already tied so elaborately she could barely move, her arms and legs too open for comfort.

When he cinched the knot, she felt the rope tighten and ride up into her slit to nudge the bottom of the probe. She understood, then. He merely secured his toy inside her. Possibly against more expected “flinging about.”

The coldness inside seemed to radiate threat. She tried to dislodge it, but failed entirely.

In shocking contrast to the cold intrusion, Mage stroked her nipples with warm, clever fingers. In helpless response, she clenched around the cold probe.

Then he held up the small box with the dials and the button that wasn’t too much smaller than her nipple. With a sadistic grin, he pressed it.

T
he electrical pulse that surged into her pussy made her cry out with surprise. The force clenched her muscles for her, as if she were having an orgasm. Which, perversely, brought her that much closer to the edge. It didn’t feel like torture, unless delicious sensations were supposed to be torturous. She panted, looking at him with confusion and growing pleasure.

“Low power. Not intense. Boring for me.” He flicked it off. He made her watch while he slowly turned the dial up.

And pressed the button.

Every muscle in her body seemed to convulse, jerking against her ropes. She yelped, feeling as if the spasms between her legs would tear her apart. The bite of the probe was like lightning, and like an enormous cock violating her repeatedly. It was intense, and it hurt, and it frightened her…and she felt fascination even in the midst of it, at such a new sensation. Her body contracted involuntarily, her breath stolen as each new pulse hit. Her skin, slicked by sweat, danced against the ropes. She whimpered, the pain growing too much to bear.

As if reading her mind, Mage touched the button.

The stillness of her body felt like heaven. Sweat ran freely from her.

“Medium power. More intense. But it can go higher. Would you like me to turn it higher?”

She shook her head so hard the perspiration flew from her.

“But I want to. Just once.” He slowly turned the dial higher. Instead of pressing the button right away, though, he reached between her legs, fingered her clit instead. “You are doing wonderfully, and bearing it well. You are very brave. It hurts, doesn’t it? It is supposed to. But there can be pleasure in pain. I am going to hurt you even more now,” he said even as he stroked her until the pleasure was pure and explosive. “You will feel agony.” His eyes were luminous with lust, his lips parted.

“Please don’t,” she begged. “Please…”

With his touch, and her emotions on a hair trigger, her tears flowed freely as her sweat. She moaned, pressing herself against his finger. He met her urgency with a rougher touch that brought Sylvester’s visage immediately to her mind. “Yes,” she gasped, a heartbeat away from coming.

She closed her eyes.

Her world exploded.

The jolt that hit her made her shriek, her eyes flying open in shock and disbelief. The pain of her muscles contracting made her cry out in fear, and the tiny probe felt the size of a fist, the size of the biggest dildo she’d ever seen, far too big. It thrust and burrowed and tormented. The spasms stole her ability to think, even as the forced penetration assaulting her flung her dancing body against the slick knot at her clit and transformed the pain into something else, a force that would shatter her if it continued. Oddly, that make her think of Sylvester, too.

The pulsing contractions deepened, lengthened, and heightened rapidly to the agony Mage had promised.

His voice was an intrusive growl in her ear. “Say your safe word, if you want me to stop. Say it.”

“Stop! Stop!” She rode the pain, pummeled and penetrated, crying for mercy she knew he wouldn’t deliver. She couldn’t find pleasure as she knew it with this device set on maximum, could she? She couldn’t help but respond to its raw power, to explore it. It delivered pain for Mage’s pleasure, surely she couldn’t enjoy it, it hurt too much! Yet she refused to say the word “red.” Not just yet. Her entire body contracted, agonized, as her pleas grew hoarse. She stopped begging, knowing it was useless. She submitted to it, and an awful pleasure began to rise as the world started to gray out.

It stopped.

She shifted in her bonds, bereft and relieved both. She hung limply, unable to even lift her head.

Mage’s compassionate voice sounded as if it came from a great distance. “More might have damaged you.” She heard the whisper of clothing. “We are finished with this toy.” The ropes vibrated, and she felt air cool her crotch as he removed the probe. She began to breathe again, and marvel at how even the memory of pain seemed to vanish with the probe. And the memory of its pleasure. She bit back a whimper.

Mage put the probe, electrodes, and box aside. “I have one more toy for you tonight. A very special toy.”

She slit her eyes open to gaze at him. She blinked.

Mage stood, naked. One hand rested on what appeared to be a large suitcase. “I travel to all places. Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Thailand…so many places. Uncommon destinations, exotic ones. I have acquired many electrical toys. But this is my favorite.”

She blinked at his hand patting the mysterious suitcase, then fixed her attention back on his body. Without clothes, he looked thinner, younger, with whipcord muscles under hairless skin. Here and there she could see old scars marring the skin: a raised ridge encircling a divot just below his shoulder, a long white stripe bisecting the taut skin over his stomach, a generous pattern of jagged splotches on his forearm. She tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn to his penis.

No scars, just a flawless erection that would make any man proud. It jutted straight out and slightly up, the bulbous head a good distance from its root. Mage was well endowed.

The smile on his face told her he knew it. “The scars,” he said, unlocking the case, then facing her once more. “They are a roadmap of my pains. Not happy pains. A gunshot in Russia.” He touched the round scar. “A knife attack in Pakistan.” The long stripe over his belly. “A napalm explosion in Serbia.” The splotches. “Dangerous places.”

“Not a fan of Club Med, huh?”

Nora couldn’t help flinching when this dangerous, scarred man who owned such painful toys suddenly walked toward her with a large hunting knife.

“No.” He didn’t smile. But his eyes twinkled as he brought the blade to within an inch of her face. “I am not.”

Nora watched the knife. He didn’t move or change expression, only stood there with the knife—to let her view its honed edge?—before walking around the cross to her back.

She swallowed, trying to forget he held that knife. When he spoke she latched onto the sound of his voice. “I am a—how do you say—a thrill seeker. Danger is my drug. And, of course, the delight of certain agonies.” She felt the tip of the knife prick her in the middle of her back. Then the flesh of her shoulder. “You are too, Nora.” It was the first time he’d said her name. It seemed intimate coming from a naked man with a knife to her back. “And I want to give you the thrill you seek.”

The tormenting itch of Mage’s poking knife prodding her over her shoulder blades, arms, and finally her vulnerable neck both focused her and made her want to purr. He didn’t break her flesh. He wouldn’t harm her. Hadn’t he stopped the probe’s assault when it grew dangerous?

Living on the edge had its appeal.

With a skilled flick of his wrist, her ropes loosened. He pulled them from her, and helped her from the cross to the large bed in the corner of the room. Her legs unsteady, she was grateful for his support.

He held her, guiding her down. “Yes. Sit. Just sit for now. Watch. I will give you a wondrous show with my violet wand.”

He saw the look she couldn’t control, and burst into laughter.

“No, my sweet one. Not this.” He stroked himself once, bringing glistening pre-cum to the tip of his cock. “At least, not yet. It is true you have made it nearly the color of violet. The color of frustration.” He looked down at her with tenderness. “I very much enjoy that. I enjoy you, Nora.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” She rolled her hips, feeling the gentle burn of her frustration saturate her, making her limbs heavy and her skin sensitive to every stray air current.

“Yes. I know.” He grinned at her, and fetched more rope.

She watched him. He wasn’t Sylvester, but a naked Mage was a thing of beauty. She just wished he’d finish her off, sexually. Her nipples ached. Her pussy hungered. She felt compressed, sensitized, and ready for an unimaginable explosion of pleasure.

“Lie on your side, facing me. Yes, good.” She felt more of his now-familiar three-quarter-inch rope sliding over her skin. Decadent, arousing, relaxing…She let a pleased rumble vibrate her chest as Mage wrapped loops around her forearms, folding them in front of her. He crossed her ankles, and secured those, too. The crossed-ankle position left her thighs parted.

The bondage seemed skimpy compared to his earlier, more elaborate designs. She tried to free herself without success. In the ropes securing her forearms she detected a tiny amount of give, but her ankles were immobilized.

Skimpy restraints, but effective. She looked at him curiously.

“This is my violet wand.” He held what looked like a glow globe attached to a handle. He nudged a floor pedal with his bare foot. She heard a low hum. The globe sparked to pinkish purple life.

She stared at it, mesmerized by the ever-moving forks of electricity. Mage cupped his hand, moved it around the globe without touching it. The lightning extended tentacles from the glass to Mage’s palm with a snapping buzz, moving with him. The smell of ozone filled the air. His eyes glittered with reflected violet light.

In that moment he looked every inch a magician.

He nudged the foot switch, and the lightning danced more violently.

“Static electricity. When you grasp a doorknob, and get zapped? This toy offers a similar sensation, only it does not stop.”

He suddenly moved it near her belly. The lightning seemed to latch onto her skin with a buzzing snap. She cried out as the electrical whip struck her, tried to wriggle away. His free hand restrained her. “Be still. Feel. It is not that hurtful now. Some people find it soothing.” She stilled, and found he was right. It sounded worse than it was. Though she would hardly call it soothing.

“When skin touches the glass, there is no sensation.” He touched the cool globe to her, and the angry buzz faded again to just a hum as the sensation stopped. “It is only in the gap”—he demonstrated, moving the globe slowly away from her again—“that the current finds you and punishes you. It must jump the gap. Farther away, it becomes more intense….”

The angry buzz grew angrier as the lightning licked at her with its sharp heat. She hissed. The pinpricks of pain increased.

Mage continued. “A bit more painful, until finally, the distance is too great and the electricity cannot jump the gap.” The buzz broke off when the globe gained enough inches of distance.

“Unlike the Eclectrik EL-321, my violet wand zaps just the surface of the skin rather than the muscle.” He demonstrated, bringing the globe near her right nipple.

The moment the electricity surged across the gap and touched her, she jerked back at the sensation: stinging bees and scraping teeth and pulsating fire. It hurt, but the pinpricks of energy seemed to tease each individual nerve ending, blending pain and pleasure until she couldn’t distinguish one from the other, and it all became pleasure. Delightful!

She almost didn’t notice the angry buzzing, but the sight of the steady yellow current of lightning affixed to her nipple disconcerted her. “Will it burn?”

When he frowned at her, she remembered he didn’t like her to speak while he tortured her. But he answered. “Not permanently. At worst, it can be similar to a sunburn.”

He massaged first one nipple then the other with the lightning, around in circles, occasionally inflicting its bite directly on her tip. When the electricity struck the tips, the sharp shock of it made her suck in her breath. “That’s intense.”

He nudged off the current and announced, “I will gag you now. When you wish to communicate ‘red,’ open and close your fist five times.”

As he inserted a small ball gag into her mouth and buckled its soft leather strap behind her head, she realized something. He’d said “when” not “if.”

What did he have planned that made him so confident she’d utter her safe word?

She watched him replace the globe with a rake-shaped attachment instead. Its pronged edges drew her gaze.

Without any explanation, Mage nudged the floor pedal. As the machine buzzed to life, she noticed his erection hadn’t faltered. Then he was holding the rake over her heart. He smiled without humor as he drew an X. Then he pulled the electricity sideways, over her shoulder, down one bound arm, onto her lower belly. The streams of electricity from the edges of the rake drew agonizing parallel lines. She made a muffled sound, trying first to shift her arm, then to suck in her belly to protect her skin from the casually inflicted pain.

Mage gazed at her, slit-eyed. “The skin is a sensitive organ.” He grasped her bound forearms, turned her onto her other side with easy strength. A second later, she felt the rake on her lower back. She protested and wriggled from it.

He slapped her on her buttocks, the first time he’d struck her. “Be still.”

She tried, as the static electricity fried the skin over her spine, her neck, her ass, but when he drew the rake over the side of her back, she convulsed—half tickled, half stung. He slapped her ass again, and trained the buzzing electricity on her nipples again.

His cock felt large, warm, and incredibly inviting against the crack of her ass, and she wriggled against it.

“Bitch!” He slapped her ass again, repeatedly, as he electrified her nipples. “One simple command. Be still. I tie you, pleasure you. I give you good pains, and still you do not obey. You will wish you had obeyed.” His clever, intrusive fingers burrowed lower into the damp hair, delved into her slit to find and stroke her clit. Tickled it. She gasped at the sensation of his long fingers teasing her, the same fingers that had held a knife to her minutes ago. The electricity trained on her nipples buzzed and popped, sending delicious pinpricks of pain into her. His voice, honeyed with compassion, didn’t fool her. She knew him now, knew a compassionate Mage was a dangerous thing. He was about to hurt her.

She still couldn’t help trying to hump his fingers. After the hours of his rope bondage, the slow teasing and relaxing, binding and releasing, she was burning up.

Mage’s fingers flicked, making her squirm and writhe. “You are very disobedient.” His voice sounded oddly rough in her ear, low and rough, almost like Sylvester’s. He flipped her onto her back, making her feel like so much meat, a package, nothing remotely resembling the travel-marketing executive she’d been upon arrival at Twisted Wood.