He moves with unhurried confidence, directing me without touching at first. He again orders me to step onto the overturned waste bin he brought out with him, to lean against the tree, to pull off my boots, then my leggings.
My fingers fumble with the fabric, numb from cold and fear and, fuck it,excitement.
As soon as I’m standing there in only Patrick’s sweater and my red panties, he picks up the string of lights.
“Trust me,” he orders, voice impossibly deep.
I gulp, then nod.
I’m absolutely shaking by the time he loops the lights around me, around the tree, effectively trapping me against it. It’s nottighttight. It doesn’t hurt. In fact, he ties it just tight enough that when he kicks thewastebasket away, I’m effectively trapped a good foot off of the ground.
Patrick was careful to focus on stringing the lights over and under my chest. Peering down, the lights color the pale sweater, my nipples so hard, they’re poking through. My lower half is almost completely naked, but though he tweaks one of my nipples through the fabric, earning a high-pitched squeal from me, it’s my panties that he turns his attention to next.
“Look at you, Starling. All trussed up, the perfect Christmas present. Even better, you did exactly what I told you to do. You surrendered yourself to me, and now… now it’s my turn to touch you.”
I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to. The sick thing is? I… I’m not sure I do. I never would’ve thought it would be a turn-on to be chased through the woods, ordered to stop, then tied to a fucking tree to prove that I’ll be a good girl from now on. He promised me pleasure… and maybe I should’ve resisted a little longer, but as Patrick slips his fingers under the scrap of embarrassingly soaked panties covering my pussy, it’s almost a relief that I can’t get away.
Thanks to the cold, his fingers are icicles. The instant he touches my heat, I gasp, and he grins.
“That feel good, sweetheart?” He drags two fingers up my slit, smirking a little when he can tell for himself how hot and slick I already am. When I can’t bringmyself to admit that it does, he dips the fingertip of one of them inside of me. “How about that?’
I close my eyes.
“Answer me,” he commands. That same finger thrusts into me. Not with enough force that it causes me pain, but it’s the first thing to penetrate me aside from my therapist-approved vibrator since that violent night two Christmases ago.
“Yes,” I cry out because, damn it, it feelsamazing. I’d forgotten just how pleasurable it could be when you had a lover who was content in taking his time, learning your body, figuring out how to make you react just like that.
“That’s what I thought. Now look at me.” When I refuse to, he adds a second finger, slowly fucking me until I have no choice but to obey for fear of what he’ll do next to get my attention. “Ah. There are those gorgeous eyes I can drown in… you think I’ll let you hide from me? Keep your reactions from me? Fuck, no. You will show me just how much you like it when I dothis.”
Two fingers stretching me out, scissoring me now, he adds his powerful thumb to the mix. He jabs down on my clit, providing more stimulation I can’t escape as I writhe against the Christmas lights keeping me pinned against the tree.
God, I’m so fucking hot—figurativelyandliterally.
The snow melts against my bare skin, shocking yetalmost grounding. Patrick has one hand working my pussy while the other reaches up, kneading my right tit. The sensations are overwhelming. His hands are all-consuming, and all I’m aware of is how my body is responding to him.
Worse, it’s getting ready for him.
By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me for it…
He’s right. Damn it, he’sright. If Patrick unzipped his pants, found a way to join me off of the ground, and started fucking me against the tree… I’d let him. Oh, I’d tell myself that I was simply ‘obeying’. That I had to do what it took to survive him. And while all of that would be true, so is the fact that I’m dying to know what it’s like to have his cock inside of me instead of his fingers.
I think he knows it, too, and as if he has a cruel streak of his own, he removes his hand from my panties before I can begin to climax around his fingers.
I glare at him. I can’t help it.
He smiles.
“Do you know how beautiful you look right now?” he murmurs. “All wrapped in light and snow? Shaking because your body understands what your mind is still arguing with… you need to come, don’t you, Starling?”
My breath stutters. I hate that he’s right. Hate that my thighs press together without me telling them to because I was so fucking close.
His grin widens. “You’re such a good fucking girl,” he says, barely above a whisper. “And you deserve the world. You deserve everything. Most of all, you deserve to come. So answer me, Noelle: do you want me to make you come?”
“Yes,” I explode, my voice echoing on the mountaintop. The shout is so loud, I actually knock some of the snow covering the branches off of its perch. It lands with a muffled thud a few feet away from Patrick. He doesn’t even react, all of his attention focused on me as I snap, “You tied me up like this. I could take care of myself if you left me my hands, but you didn’t. And now I’m at your mercy so, yes, damn it. Help me.”
I’m begging. I didn’t want to, and I’ll lie to myself and pretend I never did, but I’m begging—and Patrick knows he’s won.
“Very well. I’ll untie you,” he murmurs, reaching for the lights. “But on one condition. You don’t get to touch yourself. You can get dressed, we’ll go back inside, and when you want relief, you ask me for it and, because I’m feeling generous this Christmas, I’ll give you that gift.”
