The Architect (Nashville Neighborhood 3)

Clay’s voice was all-knowing. “What are you smiling about?”

“I’m thinking about how this could be the other way around.” My ankle cuffs were currently hooked onto the sides of the chair, but . . . “It would also work if the sub was beneath and their hands were attached.”

“Yes. I could put you like that and if you’re not rimming me to my satisfaction, I could correct you with a riding crop against your tits.”

I jolted at the visual. It sliced down through me and poured lava inside. “Holy fuck.”

“What?” His tone was patronizing and sexy. “Do you like the sound of that?”

I was wound so tight I was going to explode, so I said it the same way I’d murmur a yes. “Maybe.”

“Interesting.” Even with the blindfold on, I could picture him making a mental note.

He saved the St. Andrew’s cross for last, because of course he did. He knew I wanted it, so he had to drag it out.

There’d been a longing ache in my body, and once he had me splayed out on the cross—the cold, padded vinyl pressed against my belly—relief swept through and uncorded my muscles. There was just something about the position I hungered for. It whispered of darkness, of something old and basic and carnal.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to use any of these pictures,” he said.

I went on alert. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Do you have any idea how fucking hot you are? No one’s going to look at anything else but you. I know I can’t.”

I grinned. He made me weak, and I was glad for the restraints on my wrists that were pinned up. I couldn’t collapse even if I wanted to.

His words were so distracting, I wasn’t ready when the feathery tails of something played over my back. I flinched. It hadn’t hurt; it had just startled me. The sensation was pleasant.

Clay’s mouth was abruptly right by my ear. “This is a flogger.”

The heat of his body vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and his next strike was more intense. Not painful, but attention-getting.

As he had E do with the spankings, Clay warmed me up. All the wispy tails of the flogger stroked and whipped against my skin, and since I was still blindfolded, I focused in on it. He built in speed and force, moving around so he didn’t hit the same place twice.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you would.”

Immediately, there was a loud whoosh as the leather cut through the air, and this time, he wasn’t playing around. I sucked in a sharp breath as thirty tiny whips hit me. I didn’t get time to recover because he did it again. Pain bloomed across my skin, and beneath my blindfold, my eyes fluttered shut.

It hurt in such a good way.

I whimpered with pleasure and sagged in my cuffs as he settled in, finding a pace, and creating fire that spiderwebbed across my nerve endings. It made me contract after each blow and pulled gasps of breath from my lips.

He’d talked about euphoria, and as the pain got stronger, the absence between his blows—the microsecond before the flogger struck me again—was heaven. I shuddered with bliss when he paused to unhook my bra and expose all of my back to his tool of pain and pleasure.

And in these moments of quiet, I pictured E there too, standing in the shadows as he watched the scene unfold.

There came a thud like the flogger had been dropped, followed by rustling, and then a zipper going down, tooth by tooth.

“I’m so goddamn hard, I have to fuck you.”

“Yes,” I cried.

His warm, bare chest flattened against my back, which was scorching from the flogger, but I didn’t care. He was naked, and pushed his cock between my legs, rubbing himself against the crotch of my panties in teasing strokes. It made me tremble.

One of his hands pressed on the small of my back, urging me to arch and jut my ass out back toward him so it’d be easier to bring us together. He hooked a finger in the side of my panties, lined himself up, and pushed in.

My moan was guttural but muffled under his louder one. It felt like he’d made me wait years for this, so did he feel like he’d been waiting his whole life?

He was thick and hard, and satisfaction grew as he continued to advance.

I’d expected a rough fuck, and he didn’t disappoint. His hands were mean and intrusive, and nothing was off limits. I bowed and stretched and struggled, wanting more. Lust was a drug that I couldn’t get enough of when I was with him.

I pictured us in my head as his violent thrusts racked my body, but the cross didn’t budge an inch. I imagined how his ass flexed and contracted as he drove into me. Sweat dampened the temples of my hair, and when he grabbed a handful at the back of my head and yanked me toward him, I groaned my approval.