Pushing Her Limits (Masters of Adrenaline 3)

Maybe she had an addiction to this. To him making her feel this way.

“You may not speak unless I ask you a direct question, or you need to safeword.” He shook her by the hair slightly, as though to let her know he was serious.

Fuck. She was so close to orgasm already. Just being around him all day had kept her wound up.

“Do you understand me, Mila?”

“Yes, sir.” Damn it. The “sir” had just popped out automatically—a result of the deference she had to show with superiors at work, but the gleam of satisfaction in his gaze flooded warmth through her stomach.

“You can call me sir anytime you’re feeling it, beautiful,” he replied, not seeming amused at her slipup so much as pleased by it.

He steered her into the club with that grip on her hair, but his grip became crueler the deeper into the club they went. By the time they got to the bar she was walking on the balls of her feet to relieve the pressure on her scalp.

Was he angry? It was hard to tell. He hadn’t seemed angry earlier, but his mood around her seemed to fluctuate a lot—as though he liked her but didn’t want to, and blamed her for it. If she hadn’t been ordered to silence she would have asked. Pissing him off right then seemed like a bad idea.

At the bar, he asked the bartender for something she didn’t understand and as they waited, she listened to Loke’s voice growling through the song Fitte was performing. Whatever he was singing sounded evil, but since it wasn’t English he could have been singing his grocery list for all she knew.

The music and Atlas’s mood seemed to be dovetailing, and sexual energy flowed between them. As much as she’d loved spending the day with the fun, flirtatious, intelligent Atlas, this mean side of his personality made her want to hump his leg.

Atlas took a cloth bag from the bartender and led her to an empty alcove. He sat in one of the metal chairs and opened the bag.

“Kneel there.” He pointed at the floor and she sank down to obey, not sure why she wasn’t complaining.

He pulled a plain leather collar out of the bag and buckled it on her matter-of-factly, as though he’d done this to her a million times.

God. A collar. Like a fucking dog. She was kneeling at his feet as if she’d never had an intelligent thought in her head past serving a man. For a moment she felt she was betraying every time in her life where she’d fought to be treated with dignity and respect. Had that all been a lie? Had she always known this was where she belonged?

The hollow realization that it might be true filled her eyes with tears of humiliation. How often had she called men out on their sexist bullshit? Maybe they’d just seen through her all along. Maybe everyone had.

“Stop that,” Atlas commanded, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look up at him. His blue eyes were gleaming, both wicked and calm. “Letting me do what I want is a choice you’re making. You have a word to make this stop. Choosing to submit isn’t weakness. It’s a hard thing to do, especially for a woman who’s as strong as you are, who’s fought to get to where she is.”

The words brought her some comfort, but he didn’t know how much she was yielding to him. He thought she was a marketing co

nsultant. There was nothing inherently wrong with being a submissive marketing consultant, but being a submissive police officer was career suicide. Then again, so was fucking a suspect.

He cupped her cheek in his hand, and rubbed his thumb along her cheekbone until she felt herself melting into it.

“You get to be tough with everyone else, Mila, but not with me.” His eyes were direct, hungry, intense, as he clipped a leash to the collar. She was shaking but wasn’t sure why.

“Up.” He tugged the leash and she got to her feet. Gently, he turned her toward the table and pushed her belly down on it. “Good girl.” He patted her bare thigh where her dress had ridden up, then followed her bare skin to her panties. She meant to protest, considering anyone could walk by and see in, but she didn’t want him to stop. He’d angled her away from prying eyes, though, so even if people stopped to look inside, all they would be able to see was that he’d bent her over the table.

Casually, he traced the line of her panties as though they were a magical barrier he couldn’t pass, until she was squirming with frustration.

“These are in my way,” he finally sighed. Without waiting for permission, he hooked his fingers into the waistband and drew them down, leaving them around her knees.

She felt the leash shifting beneath her, pulling taut as he drew it between her legs, between her and her underwear. Its cool metal links branded her flesh anywhere it touched as it moved slowly upward toward her pussy.

He had to stop. She had to stop him. This was going too far. How did words work again?

When it finally touched her pussy, the chain was like ice. She yelped and squirmed, but that only slid it home between her labia. He tugged it more snugly against her and it pressed into her dampness, grinding against the aching nub of her clit.

His fingers pushed the chain deeper between her labia, then he toyed at her entrance for a moment before plunging a finger into her. She cried out, too desperate to come to care about who might hear.

“Shhh, Mila. You need to be quiet before you attract an audience.”

“I can’t!” she complained.

He landed a stinging smack on the back of her thigh, and her pussy clenched on his fingers. “I told you, no talking unless I ask you a question.”