When she reached Club Mephisto, there were a few groups of kinky people smoking outside in their corsets and fetish gear. They called out to her, alarmed by her tears. She looked over her shoulder one last time at the man who’d been so much to her. Her first friend in a long time. She should have let him stay a friend. Now, with her meltdown and her late night flight to the doors of Seattle’s best-known fetish club, she was afraid he’d have nothing more to do with her. She felt rage and deep depression. She wished she could see his smile one last time, but no. That would be the last straw, the last tragedy she could take. If he smiled at her now, it would destroy her.
Fortunately, he didn’t. He only turned and walked back the way he’d come.
Chapter Seven: Tears
The club was full of people, full of active noisy scenes when Molly returned from her date with her friend. Idiot. Eliot. Whatever his name was. Mephisto always waited for her while she was away, felt unsettled until she was back again. It was just after midnight when Molly came in, the witching hour. His gaze found her like a magnet seeking north, and riveted on her hollow expression, her red rimmed eyes.
She tried to creep off to her room without being seen, but Mephisto wasn’t having it. He cut her off by the bar, tilting her head up although she struggled to keep it trained on the floor.
“I’ll kill him,” he said. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.” She tried to push him away, but he stood firm.
“What did he do to you? Why are you crying?”
“It’s over, okay?” She yelled at him over the club’s low, pulsing music. “You should be happy.”
Yes, Mephisto was happy—ecstatic—but he hated Idiot for making Molly cry. Not just cry, but bawl. She stumbled past him, muttering warnings for him to stay away. “Tell me what went down,” he said, dogging her steps into the back rooms. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Answer my question.”
She spun on him in the hallway. “No, he didn’t hurt me. He just made me realize something I’ve been trying to deny about myself. That I’m not a nice girl. I’m not a normal girl.” Her face twisted as she dissolved into more tears. “There’s something really wrong with me, and it’s never going to be fixed.”
Mephisto took her arms, his body tensing in fury as he pressed her back against the wall. “God damn you, how many times do I have to tell you that nothing’s wrong with you? How many times, girl, before you believe it?”
The “girl” reverberated between them like an alarm bell. Instead of letting her go, he pressed closer, trapping her with his chest, his arms. Her tears both disturbed and aroused him. He wanted to taste them. He lowered his head beside hers, brushed his jaw across her cheek, feeling the hot liquid like a burn. I burn. I burn for you. She shivered and shrank away from him.
“No. I don’t want you.”
Even as she said the words, she cried harder, her fingers curling and uncurling in the sleeves of his black tee. He felt the tips of her breasts slide like a tease across his chest. “I know, Molly. I know you don’t want me. But you need me.”
“No...”
“Nothing’s wrong with you. I know who you are. I know what you need, baby.”
She squeezed his shoulders now, ran her hands up into his dreadlocks with an intensity and violence he welcomed. He knew what she needed—what Eliot obviously hadn’t been able to give her. He took her hands, pulled them down from his hair and slammed them against the wall on either side of her head. Her sobs cut off, replaced with a stuttering breath and a soft whine. Her lips parted as she blinked up at him.
He held her wrists even tighter as he kissed her. It wasn’t a tender kiss. It was punishment for making him ache so bad, and a warning that she had about thirty seconds to save herself. To protest, to kick him in the nuts, to run off. Twenty seconds. Ten. He kissed her so hard they were both breathless. He could feel her pulse in his hands, or maybe it was his own rampaging heartbeat.
“Nothing’s wrong with you that can’t be fixed,” he growled when they finally broke apart.
He grabbed a handful of her hair. His other hand slid to her ass and squeezed hard, pressing her forward against his throbbing erection. He kissed her again, long and deep, and then he shoved her to her knees right there in the hallway. She sank down without resisting. He ripped open his fly and yanked down his jeans, releasing his painfully engorged cock and nudging it into her mouth. He gave her a moment to find balance, to collect herself, and then he surged forward, forcing her head against the wall. Her sultry moan vibrated his shaft and balls.
Her hands came around his thighs, grasping, pulling him closer. “Yes, good girl,” he crooned as he thrust into her face. “Good, good girl. Nothing wrong, is there? You just needed to be put in your place.”
She murmured something around his cock. He pulled back. “What’s that?”
“Yes, Master.”
Pleasure, hot as fire, arced through him like lightning. “Say it again. ‘Yes, Master. Thank you for putting me in my place.’”
“Yes, Master, thank you for putting me in my place.”
He groaned and pulled her up by her hair. Not brutally. She was like liquid now, this beautiful slave, sliding along his jagged edges and settling into place. They were suddenly dancing, him and her, a choreography of dominance and submission that had always come to them with unexplained ease. He dragged her back to the bedroom, pushed her onto the bed and shoved her head down into the blankets. Her hands made fists beside her head as he slapped both her ass cheeks. Without thought, without pause, he drove inside her deep, fucking her hard. He slapped her thighs again, once, twice, feeling her tense around him from the pain. His hands ran up her sides, then forward to squeeze and cup the heaviness of her breasts. He pinched her nipples viciously between his fingernails only to hear her frantic cries.
She bucked back against him every bit as hard as he fucked her, searching for a release she’d doubtless needed for some time. He urged her on. “It’s okay. Let go. Be my horny little slut. My whore. I love you this way.”
Her hips twisted at his crass intimacies. She started making noises, and he felt them as intensely as he felt each stroke into her tight, hot sheath. His legs shook, his balls drew up in excruciating tension. Her hands clenched on his bed sheets and her legs opened farther. She threw her head back and wailed as she contracted around him.
He grabbed her waist and drilled her, his own orgasm seconds away. Until the end, he intended to pull out, to splash his cum over her as a claiming, a mark of dominance, but at the last minute he stayed buried inside her. It didn’t matter. He knew she couldn’t get pregnant. They were both recently tested and clean. He wanted to stay inside her, to fill her with his release, and so he did, jerking with the novelty of emptying himself in her hot, welcoming depths. By slow degrees, his fingers relaxed their hold on her hips, leaving red marks behind.
“Okay,” he whispered, running a hand up her back to soothe her trembling. “Okay. You’re okay now.”
Okay. Yes. This had been inevitable all along. Mephisto pushed her down on the bed, flipped her over. She was wide-eyed, perhaps expecting more violence, more demand. Not that she wouldn’t enjoy those things, but he didn’t feel like giving them to her just now. Instead he gave her tenderness and warmth. He slid one knee between her legs, gathering her close and cradling her. He brushed her hair back from her face and dropped kisses on her cheeks, her
chin. He nuzzled her ear and marveled at the calm that settled over him. He wasn’t sure if this was the start of something more, something serious, or just a much-needed release for both of them, but either way, he was grateful for it. Holding her was a balm. Delicious relief.
“Ah, Molly,” he whispered against her ear. “I’ve missed you so much.”
He could feel her smile against his cheek. “I’ve been right here.”
“You haven’t been here in a while. Not the Molly I remembered.” Mephisto leaned back after a moment, touching a lock of her hair, and then brushed her eyelids with his lips. “What did Eliot do to you? He didn’t humiliate you, did he? Mock you?”
“No.” Molly toyed with the end of one of his dreadlocks, then traced a meandering Celtic tattoo up and over his shoulder. “I didn’t even tell him about me. About my past, my slavery. All he did was have sex with me. He was very generous, very sweet.”
“Ah.” Mephisto nodded. “Too sweet?”
“I thought it would be fine. That being with a normal, vanilla guy would feel just as good as being with a lifestyle guy, only different. I really liked him a lot, and I was excited about being with him, you know, intimately. But it was awful. It actually upset me. It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain. I’ve been there. I’ve tried to tone myself down to be with vanilla women because I was physically attracted to them, mentally attracted to them, whatever.” He laughed. “It never works. Not only does it not work. It’s—”
“Wretched,” Molly supplied, laughing too. “Awkward. Excruciating. Weird.”
“All of the above.” He looked down at the woman in his arms. Her laughter seemed a miracle to him, after so many tears and so much frustration. If Eliot was the one who brought her to this place, he couldn’t hate the man, not completely. “So what did you tell him? Did you just leave?”
“Sort of. I guess I’ll have to talk to him like an adult at some point, give him more of an explanation.”
“You should. It would be the polite thing to do, if he was as kind and friendly as you say.”