Claim Me: A Novel (32 page)

I gape. “Well,” I say. “That’s going to need more than a broom and a dustpan.”

He stares at me for a moment, and then his shoulders begin to shake. It takes a moment for me to realize he’s laughing. Not because it is funny, but because he is overwhelmed.

I want to hold him; I want to help him. But I can’t even help myself.

I draw in a trembling breath, and realize that my hand is curled around the end of the pink scarf that still hangs around my neck.

Slowly, I tug the end of the scarf until I have pulled it free. I wrap one end tightly around my wrist, then hand the other end to Damien. He takes it, though I see the question in his eyes.

“Tie me up,” I whisper. “Spank me. Tell me exactly what you want me to do. Do whatever you want. You want to lash out? Lash out against me.”

“Nikki—”

“Please, Damien. You can’t control the world? So what? Control me.” I meet his eyes. “Please,” I say, and I hear the tremor in my voice. “Please,” I whisper. “I need it, too.”

“Oh, Nikki.” He cocks his head, looking inside me to where all my secrets lie. “Need?” he clarifies. “Or want?”

I lick my lips, as if that will make the words come easier. “You told me once that if I ever needed the pain that I should come to you. I’ve broken that promise twice.” I point to my hair, and then the tip of my finger. “So yes, Damien. I need it. I need you if I’m going to get through this. And I think you need me, too.”

For a moment, he says nothing. Then he runs the scarf through his fingers. “I believe I told you on the phone that I had plans for this.”

“Yes,” I say.

He stands still, and looks me up and down. His gaze starts at my feet and travels oh so slowly up my body. He does not touch me, but still my body burns merely from the passing of his glance. I let myself go, surrendering to his power over me. Over my body. I want this. I want Damien and his strength. I want his touch.

Mostly I want him to make the rest of the world go away.

He continues his heated inspection, his face as dark and hungry as a wolf, and just as dangerous. He will consume me, and so help me, I want to be consumed. I want to disappear—I want to go somewhere that only Damien can find me.

My legs are weak, my sex throbbing in anticipation. Tiny drops of sweat form between my breasts, and my nipples strain against my T-shirt.

I keep my eyes on his, and my mouth goes dry, my pulse kicking up its tempo. He is no longer the Damien who jokes and teases, who holds and soothes me. This is not a man who will reveal his secrets to me or to anyone, and he is certainly not a man who will explode outward into a fiery rage.

No, the man standing before me is grace and control personified. There is power in his touch, power in the slightest look. He is a hard man who commands a billion-dollar enterprise, and right now I am simply one more thing that he owns.

I bite my lower lip. I am not disturbed by the thought. On the contrary, my body is tingling with awareness. To be owned by Damien Stark is heady stuff.

“Take off your clothes.”

I comply, shedding my jacket, then pulling the T-shirt over my head. Because we’re playing the game again, I am not wearing a bra, and when he sees that, the tiniest of smiles touches his mouth. I unzip the skirt next and let it fall around my feet. It is as if the hundreds of times he has seen me naked are forgotten. I
feel shy and awkward. But when I see the way his eyes take me in, I feel beautiful.

“Spread your legs,” he says, and when I do, he goes down on his knees. He holds my hips, then presses a soft kiss just above my navel, and that simple touch sends shivers running through me. My body is on fire, alight with anticipation. I reach down to bury my fingers in his hair.

“No,” he murmurs. “Cup your breasts. There you go, baby,” he says when I comply. “Stroke your nipples. Are they hard?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good,” he says. “I want them harder. I want them so tight that just brushing a fingertip across your nipple shoots fire all the way down to your cunt. What do you say?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

He smiles up at me, a smile of praise and promise, and then he turns back to my bare abdomen. His lips brush over me, lower and lower until he is tracing the neatly trimmed line of my pubic hair. And then lower still until his tongue laves my clitoris and I have no choice but to break Damien’s rules and grab hard to his shoulder, because if I do not, I will certainly topple over.

His tongue is merciless. Teasing me, fucking me, hard and demanding until I explode, my body a storm of sensation.

He is kind enough to keep me from falling, urging me down to my knees in front of him. “You taste amazing,” he says, then kisses me as if to prove the point. The kiss is deep, but all too short.

“I’m going to fuck you, Nikki,” he says. “Right here, right now. Hard and fast, until pleasure rips through you like a cyclone. And then we’ll start again, slow and easy, letting it build and grow like a tiny seedling into a massive tree. Do you know how long that takes, Nikki? Can you imagine a pleasure that lasts for an eternity?”

My mouth is dry, but I manage an answer. “With you, yes.”

He chuckles. “Good answer. Now unfasten my jeans.”

“Yes, sir.”

I’m so turned on that my fingers actually fumble with the button fly of his jeans, but I manage, then spread the denim and stroke my fingertips over his cock, still trapped behind the cotton of his briefs.

I hear Damien suck in air, and I relish the knowledge that as much power as he has over me, I have the same over him.

“Good girl,” he says. “Now take it out and turn around. On your knees, Nikki.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, but I have another plan. I slide my hand into his jeans and over the bulge of his briefs until I find his fly. He is thick and hard and as soon as I shift him, his cock bursts out as if desperate to play, too. I know I’m supposed to turn around—and I know that I’ll undoubtedly be punished, but I can’t resist the temptation.

I lean forward and draw my tongue up the velvety length of his cock. He tastes salty and male and delicious, and when I hear him groan and say my name, my body seems to open up. I close my lips over the bulbous head, tease him with my tongue. Slowly, I take more of him into my mouth, then pull back, letting my teeth graze ever so lightly over him.

I rest my hands on his hips, and I can feel his body start to shudder. I raise up higher on my knees for a better angle. I want to take more of him; I want to make him come.

I am, however, thwarted in my plan, as his hands grasp me under the arms and he gently pulls me to my feet. “Minx,” he teases.

I smile innocently.

“Oh, no,” he says. “You are not getting off that easily.” The scarf that I had wrapped around my wrist has come loose, and
now he picks it up off the floor and knots it securely above my right hand. He gives it a tug and then leads me to the bedroom. The headboard on his bed is a solid piece of wood, and dead center is a large metal eyebolt. I’d noticed it before, but had never thought much about it. Now, he tells me to lie on my back on the bed with my hands above my head. I do, and he threads the scarf through the eye, then ties off the loose end on my other wrist. My arms now make a triangle above my head. I expect him to bind my feet as well, but he doesn’t, and when he sees my curious look, he grabs my hips and flips me over onto my stomach. The maneuver both surprises me and explains why he wants my legs free.

I realize with a jolt that I am surely not the first woman who has made the acquaintance of this eyebolt. The thought doesn’t disturb me, though, because I know two things. I am the first woman Damien has brought to the Malibu house. And more than that, I believe with a bone-deep certainty that I am the last.

“On your knees,” Damien says. I comply, and he leaves me there, my ass in the air, my arms forward, and my head bent down and turned to the side so that I can see what he’s doing.

He’s at the side of the bed, opening the door to the ornamental cabinet he uses as a bedside table. He pulls out a case that is similar to one I remember well from a delicious night at my apartment. This one, however, is bigger. He opens it, and I’m pleased that from this perspective, I can see the contents. Metal handcuffs. Candles. A cat-o’-nine-tails. A blindfold. A string of beads. And a few other things that I do not recognize.

“Handcuffs?” I tease. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“Maybe.” He takes out the cat-o’-nine-tails, a small whip with many strands of leather at one end. “But not yet.”

He moves behind me so that I cannot see his face. Just his legs and his very hard cock, and that only when I drop my head and look down between my own legs.

I don’t look for long, because he dangles the soft leather ends of the whip over my shoulders and back. “Want?” he asks. “And need?”

“Yes,” I say as the horror of the evening rushes back. I want to banish those memories and those emotions. I want to claim them and destroy them. I want to survive them. And I want Damien to be the one to help me do that. “Yes,” I say again, but my word is drowned out by the snap of the toy against the soft skin of my ass.

It stings, and I cry out, closing my eyes as I draw in the pain and cling to it. I want it, yes. And I need it, too. But with Damien delivering the blows, I can’t deny that I am getting off on it as well. “Again,” I say, as his hand rubs the spot where the whip connected. “Please, Damien, again.”

He complies, bringing it down hard again and again, then rubbing my soft skin, which I imagine is now red. This is better than a knife. Safer, yes, but also more real. I’m turning something horrid into something good. Somehow, being with Damien turns it all around.

“Spread your legs,” he demands. I comply, and the end of the whip dangles over my sex. I am more wet than I can ever remember being, and Damien’s moan of pleasure only makes me more excited. “I’m going to spank your cunt, too,” he says. “And then I’m going to fuck you, because dammit, Nikki, I can’t wait.”

The whip snaps lightly between my legs, and I tremble from the fast shock of it against my clit. I discovered recently with Damien how much I enjoy this particular sensation, and that feeling hasn’t lessened in the slightest. Again, then again, and I am crying out from the spectacular intensity of the pleasure.

I am on fire. I am burning up. I am a blaze burning free, and only Damien can quench this heat.

“Please,” I beg. “Please, Damien, now.”

He doesn’t hesitate. His hands take my hips and I feel the head of his cock at my vagina, and then he is inside me, deeper and deeper until I almost feel as though I cannot take it anymore. He holds me by one hip, the other hand beneath me, his finger stroking me in time with the thrusts so that I am lost in an overload of sensations.

“Come for me,” he demands, and my body tightens around him.

“Come for me,” he repeats. “Dammit, Nikki, I want to feel you come.”

And then, as if my body really is abiding by his will, a deep, quaking orgasm rolls through me. My body quivers. My muscles clench, bringing him even tighter into me. And my arms go limp. I collapse down onto the bed, breathing hard as waves and waves of violent pleasure continue to crash over me before finally settling down into the soft glow of immense satisfaction.

Damien shifts, pulling out of me and then lying beside me, his fingers stroking lazily up and down my back. “Turn over,” he says after a moment. “I want to show you something.”

Curious, I roll over. He brings the box back onto the bed, and this time, he pulls out a red taper candle.

“Damien?” I say warily. “What are you doing?”

“Something new.”

He straddles me at the waist so that I cannot move my legs, and as my arms are still bound, I am essentially immobile.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I say, but as he strikes a match and lights the candle, I can’t help but bite my lower lip.

“Liar,” he says. “Close your eyes.”

I do, and I’m certain I must look ridiculous. My eyes squeezed tight and my teeth grazing my lip.

“Relax,” he says.

“Easy for you to say.”

“Tell me what this is.”

I feel a gentle stroke along the swell of my breast. “Your finger?”

“And this?”

Soft and slightly wet, this time at my cleavage. “Your tongue.”

“This?”

It is rough and soft at the same time. “I don’t know.”

“A feather,” he says, though he doesn’t say where he got it.

“And this?”

At first I feel nothing. Then there is a sharp, hot
ping
on my nipple that quickly shifts to something cool and tight. It’s not painful, and it is more than pleasure. It is, in fact, exquisite. “I—the candle?”

“Very good. Now hold still.” I feel it again, only this time the
ping
lasts longer and is not confined to one place. I arch up to meet the sensation as what feels like long fingers tighten on the skin of my breast. Then the feeling repeats and repeats and now I am biting my lower lip not from nerves, but because of the glorious rapture that has sparked inside me, spreading out like electric shocks from my breasts to my sex. And then shooting sparks out through my fingers and toes.

“Open your eyes,” he says.

I do, and I see long strands of red crisscrossing my breasts. The skin beneath the wax is puckered and tight, and with my breasts and nipples already so sensitive, the sensation is beyond incredible.

Damien still straddles my waist, but now he slides down and gently spreads my legs. Slowly, he enters me, then he leans forward and, as he thrusts in and out, he tightens his hands over my breasts in time with his movements.

The wax cracks as my orgasm builds, and when I finally do
come, my body clenching around him to draw him farther in, Damien tightens his grip and the last of the wax cracks.

I cry out, lost in the exotic sensations that shoot through me, arching up as if I could keep the feeling from ending.

And then, when my body quits quivering, I close my eyes and succumb to the lure of sleep as it tugs me under.

I wake to the smell of bacon and discover that not only are my arms free, but I am snuggled under the covers. I smile and stretch, feeling well fucked and well taken care of.