Waking Kiss (BDSM Ballet 1)

I froze. Was that true? Of course it was. I knew all along my hang-ups were mental, but I never considered that my body could work outside of that. If I could just turn off my mind…

“But you need your mind to have really good sex,” he said, dashing my sudden inspiration. “Without your mind it’s just physical, without meaning or excitement. So turn off the boundaries in your mind and let me touch you. Let yourself feel whatever you want to feel.”

With those words he slid his fingers to the side and brushed them over one of my hardened nipples. There was an instant, potent flash of pleasure. “No fear,” he murmured. “This feels good.”

Oh, yes, it felt amazingly good. My palms slid over his shoulders as he touched my nipple again, then the other one. Each time there was a strong, bright sensation of something delicious. Chemistry. Craving. Attraction.

Lust.

Next I knew, I was gripping him by the neck and he was leaning closer to take the tips of my breasts in his mouth. That was a whole new sensation, warm and wet and tingling. Guys had done this to me before but I’d found it vaguely off-putting. I hadn’t wanted them to do it. Now I didn’t want Liam to stop.

One of his arms held me trapped as he suckled my left breast. The other hand trailed over my hip and then up to my right breast. His fingers closed on the tight nipple and pinched it. The mix of pain and pleasure caught me off guard. The moan that came out of my mouth shocked me, as did the unconscious thrusting of my hips. I pushed away from him.

“Okay.” He took my hand to stop my retreat. “It’s okay.” His lips were half open, his eyes burning with the same building passion I felt. “It’s okay to enjoy it. It feels different, doesn’t it? To enjoy it?”

I nodded, speechless. Breathless. I looked down at his jeans, at the massive hard-on outlined there, and took another step back.

“All I wanted to teach you today,” he said, “is to be aware of your boundaries, and your own power to let them up and down. I want you to be aware of your mind’s role when it comes to sex. Or in your case, your mind’s interference.”

I was aware of that now, one hundred percent. I wanted him to touch me again, to kiss my breasts and hurt them with his fingers, but my mind wasn’t ready for the sexual part of me to be in charge. But…I had a sexual part of me. It wasn’t gone. The idea of that filled me with hope.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m okay.” I swallowed hard as he squeezed my hand. “I have a lot to think about.”

He took my other hand too, watching me for a few moments. “It’s good to have things to think about. I’m also going to give you homework.”

My eyes widened. He reached out to brush his fingertips across my still-hard nipples. “I want you to touch these the way I touched them, at least once every day. I want you to do it while you’re lying in bed, and I want you to concentrate on enjoying it. Nothing else. No shame. No fear of what comes before or after. Can you do that?”

There was only one correct answer in this room. “Yes, Liam.”

“But I don’t want you to touch anything else,” he added. “Only your nipples. Only right here.” He traced around the edges, then back to the middle of the tight peaks. “No other part of your beautiful little body.” Before my eyes, his gaze went seductive and smoky. “I want you to save the rest for me. Do you understand?”

I could barely draw breath. I nodded, trying hard not to thrust my breasts against his palm.

He left my aching nipples alone and reached down to catch my fingers. “Your other homework is to get screened for STDs. I will too. It’s a pain, but you should ask every partner to be tested. No exceptions.”

“Okay. I know.” Awkward. Embarrassing. But necessary, I supposed. “I think there’s a clinic the dancers use.”

“Good. So that will be all squared away.” He scratched the side of his neck and looked very directly at me. “There’s one more thing we need to discuss before you go. Do you know what that is?”

I thought I knew. I was afraid to say it. His steady gaze pried out the words. “I—I did something wrong.”

“What did you do wrong?”

“I argued with you when you told me to take my shirt off.”

“And I specifically warned you what would happen, didn’t I? If you kept arguing?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you try a ‘Yes, Sir?’” he suggested with an edge to his voice.

I shivered. He was amazingly good at this dominance thing. “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry.”

“Okay. We improve through practice. And punishment, of course. That’s what it’s for, to teach you. You understand that?”

This was madness. You asked for this, Ashleigh. I felt scared and turned on in equal measure. “Yes…Sir. I understand.”

“Okay. We’ll keep it simple today.” He stepped away from the bed and I found myself, a moment later, bent over the edge of it, right where he’d been sitting. “Arms out to the side. Don’t move them.”

Nervous pangs fluttered in my middle. You asked for this, you crazy person, so suck it up and take it. He nudged my legs apart a little more with his foot.

“Plant your feet and brace yourself. I prefer my submissives to be still,” he said. My breath accelerated to a thousand miles an hour. I heard the clink of his belt buckle and the swish of him pulling it from his jeans. “Five warm ups and five harder ones. You’re new at this, but you need to feel what a punishment means.”

Oh my God.

I felt his hand on my back, the whisper of leather across the fabric of my panties. It felt smooth and cold. Then… Whap! It felt a lot harder than I thought a warm up would be. I barely had time to suck in air before another blow fell, and another. It stung like hell but it wasn’t unbearable. The instant of contact was the hardest part. No, the hardest part was waiting for the next stroke to fall. Whap! One last warm up. Oww. It was a little harder than the others.

“Look at me.”

I turned at the command in his voice. Was he checking to see if I was all right? I wasn’t totally sure I was. For one thing, my pussy had grown astoundingly wet since he’d made me bend over, so wet I was afraid it would show through the gusset of my panties. Please, please, don’t make me pull them down. “These are going to be harder,” he said. “Keep your hands where they are and don’t move.”

“Yes, Sir.” The “Sir” came out automatically this time, a reaction to his stern voice.

WHAP!

I cried out in shock. Way, way harder than I expected. Not like the warm ups. Not comfortable at all. Right on the heels of that surprise, the next stroke fell. I knew this was supposed to hurt, to teach me a lesson, but…God. My ass burned like fire and there were three more to go. WHAP! I wondered wildly if Mem could hear this all the way downstairs. I felt humiliated but I felt excited and turned on too. WHAP! Okay, less turned on now. I squeezed my legs together, wanting to turn away, wanting to jump up and run away from him.

“Spread them,” he said. “One more to go.”

I huffed out a breath and made myself resume the proper position. I expected the last one to be the worst one and I wasn’t disappointed. He held me down with one hand and snapped a hard crack right against the middle of my ass cheeks. With the pain I’d already suffered, it brought tears to my eyes.

Then he touched me.

He ran a palm over both my ass cheeks and tugged up the edges of my panties. I looked over my shoulder to find him studying my skin. Assessing the damage? The act seemed more intimate than a kiss. He flung the belt down on the bed and lifted me, and then he did kiss me. I was hyper aware of a thousand sensations as his lips moved over mine…my throbbing ass, the wetness between my legs, his firm grip on my elbow, my bare skin against his. My tears had disappeared. The world disappeared, replaced by his demanding touch and his sexy male scent.

Just as suddenly he broke away from me. The savage look in his eyes was brought under rigid control. “Congratulations,” he said, stroking a fi

nger down my cheek. “You took that very well. Although that’s not exactly how it’s supposed to end.”

I searched his face. “How is it supposed to end?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw as he poked a finger toward the far wall. “Corner time. Ten minutes.” He reached for his belt and started threading it back through his jeans. “No rubbing your ass cheeks either,” he said as I reached back to soothe the sting. “I’ll let you know when you can leave.”

Chapter Ten: Liam's Girl

Liam drove me home a short time later. It seemed like I’d spent hours in that bedroom but it had barely been an hour. I got home just after two in the afternoon. My pajamas were on the floor where I’d shed them, and the curtains to my bed were still crumpled in a ball. I felt like I’d changed into a completely different person since I’d ripped them down last night. I still wasn’t the person I wanted to be, but I didn’t think I was as messed up as I’d been before.

I crawled into my new, curtain-less bed with a book, but thoughts of the past twenty-four hours kept intruding into my head. My father was dying. Cancer. Melanoma. Meanwhile, Liam had taken charge of my skittish sexuality, at least in that room. He’d given lots of orders, dominated me, and I’d submitted. He’d made me take off my clothes and he’d touched me…and I’d gotten turned on by it. Then he’d spanked me with his belt, and God help me, that had turned me on more than anything else.

When the phone rang flashing Liam’s name, I jumped on it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Ash. It’s me. I’m not going to call you every day to bother you. I’m just checking to be sure you’re okay.”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

“We had some intense moments together and I thought everything went great. But sometimes after people have an emotional session, especially newbies, they experience a drop. A blue, depressed feeling.”

I hunkered over the phone, cradling it to my ear. “I’m not depressed, but…”

“But?”

“I’m sort of confused. About what happened at the end.”