I swing an arm around her shoulders and kiss her rain-slicked forehead. “Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up.”
Someone passes us a couple of towels, and we pad upstairs to my bedroom. Dree doesn’t try to go to her own room or even hesitate before stepping across my threshold. I turn the shower on hot, and we step under the spray. We kiss again, peeling the clothes from each other’s bodies and wash away the paint and makeup.
“Rush,” she whispers my name, ending on a soft sigh. “The filming is over. I don’t have to perform anymore.”
I take her jaw in my hand, needing to see deep into her eyes as she asks me this. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“I want…I need something more. Can you make me hurt? Can you completely destroy me?”
My lips skim over hers. “Sure, baby. I can do that.”
I turn the shower off and dry us off. My heart pounds hard in my chest as I go to a drawer for a length of black rope. Something I’ve been saving, just for her. She puts her wrists together for me and I bind them together, before passing the rope over the canopy bedpost and pulling it tight so her arms are stretched over her head.
Already, there’s a wild, unfocused look in her eyes and her breathing has picked up. She goes to another place when we do this, and I go, too. It’s like being drunk but with perfect clarity. Perfect awareness of her, and she of me.
I take her face in my hands, caressing the soft curve of her cheek. Then I pull back my hand and slap her across the face. Hard.
She gasps, her head hanging down, blinking through the pain.
I watch her in silence, wondering if it’s too much and if she’s going to use her safe word. When she looks up, her cheek is red and there’s a smile curving her lips. I trail my fingers down her hot skin as she breathes hard. That’s my girl. So brave. So beautiful.
“Babygirl, you deserved that.”
She nods, her brown eyes huge and liquid. Being vulnerable for me. Begging me to push her harder.
I run my fingers down to her nipples and tweak them softly. Making her wonder if I’ll give a vicious twist. But I’m gentle. So gentle. I stroke the soft plane of her belly and then delve lower, to her clit. She’s already wet with need and arches into my touch, as eager for the pleasure as she is for the pain.
Just as she loses herself in the sensation, I grab her hair and pull her head back. As she gasps, I slide my finger into her mouth and watch her suck.
I pull my finger out and run it down her cheek, marking where I’ll hit her next with a line of wetness. “Beg for mercy.”
“Please, Daddy. Please don’t stop.”
“Good girl.” I pull back my arm, and she’s poised for the slap. That look in her eyes, right there? Fucking heaven. This can’t be over.
The world can’t keep turning unless Dree is mine.
I won’t let it be over between us.
“Say you’re mine.”
She opens her eyes and gazes up at me, blinking slowly as if she’s drunk. She so deep in subspace that she’ll do whatever I say.
“Dree, say you’re mine.”
“Rush,” she whispers.
Mine.
Say it.
I yank on the rope, untying it, and she goes tumbling to the floor, landing on her knees as the rope slithers down around her.
“Look at me, Dree.” I’m deep in it, too. So deep I can’t let up until she swears she’s mine. I want to pull her so far inside myself that she’ll live there forever.
“Look at me. I need to hear you say it, little girl. That you’re mine. Only mine. Forever mine.”
Dree breathes faster and faster, her chest lifting and falling. I can feel her fighting her way toward me. I hunker down and cup her face in my hands, my thumb running over her plump lower lip. I’ll claim her mouth as soon as she promises.
Her whisper is so soft that I’m not sure I even heard it. “Fire.”
“Dree?”
She says it again. Louder. Almost screams it. “Fire.”
I fall back onto my hands. Her hair cascades over her shoulders and her nails dig into the carpet. She stays like that, unmoving, her whole body bowed as if I’ve beaten her senseless while she’s begged for mercy.
Finally, she lifts her head and her eyes are filled with tears and brutal pain. “How could you do that to me, Rush?”
17
Dree
A hand appears in my peripheral vision to help me up. Shakily, I get to my feet on my own, my stomach rolling with nausea. I’ve plunged into subspace and then been yanked out of it again so rapidly that the world is spinning.
“Dree, baby. What’s wrong?”
Rush tries to put his arms around me, but I grab the bedpost for support. “We never agreed to that. You can’t do that to someone, put them into that vulnerable place and demand what you want.”