He set his tools down and just looked at me, expression so vulnerable and open, it was like looking at twenty-one-year-old Zane again. “You’re starting to get it, aren’t you?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, so deep in subspace he owned me body and soul in that moment. Maybe he’d always owned me body and soul and it was only in that moment I could cast off all the layers of bullshit to acknowledge it.
There was no one else I would trust like this.
He kissed me and shook his head with his forehead against mine like this was just as intense for him as it was for me.
But his hand was perfectly steady when he picked up his tools again.
“Do you want me tostop?” he asked, watching me closely.
I shook my head, ready for him to stop making me think and just keep going.
“Why not?” he said.
He wanted me to form actual words, sentences even, when I was riding a high like this?
“Because I want to please you,” I said honestly, in a voice that sounded as out of it as I felt.
He smiled and gave me a deep kiss, hearing the sincerity.
“Is that the only reason?”
I shook my head, trying to find the right words. “I like the rush. I like…being scared. Nothing in my life scares me like this anymore.”
He put a knee between my thighs and let me grind against it, turning the intoxicating thrill into an erotic one.
“That’s why I like it too,” he said, blue eyes as intense as they’d been the day he told me he would give up his dreams to be with me. “The fear I might hurt one of us, the intensity. It’s a little bit like being with you. I know the risks, know exactly how much this could hurt. But I do it anyway because the rush is like nothing else.”
Before I could properly register what he’d said, he swiped the stick across the side of my breast and lit it on fire.
Facing him was so much more intimate. He looked me in the eye as the flames licked my skin and he swiped them out with his hand, caressing my breast and teasing my nipple to a taut peak, still letting me grind on his knee with my clit.
I’d been reduced to fear and sensation and arousal, all muddled together in an overpowering way.
He moved to my rib cage with the fire, then my stomach, then my hipbone…and I was losing my mind. I didn’t know how much more I could take, but couldn’t imagine stopping him. On the sensitive skin he was on now, the fire stung and I could feel the burn more, which made the anticipation and flare of the fire so much more intense.
The way he looked at me as he drew a line with the fluid across the top of my pubic bone almost made me come.
He lit it, swiped it out, then sunk down to put his mouth on me again in such rapid succession that for a brief second the sight of the flames blurred with the sight of him. I came apart instantly, coming so hard my back bucked up off the bed and he had to hold my hips down to keep licking me.
He doused the fire stick and reached to scoop me up, but had to gently pry my fingers off the handle. “You can let go now,” he said softly.
He meant that I could let go of the handle, but I let go of it all. My walls came crashing down and I felt raw and exposed like he really had burned away a protective layer.
I cried without meaning to, the telltale release of subspace pouring from my eyes.
I wanted this. I wanted him. Deep in subspace, I wasn’t sure it even mattered what I’d need to give up to have him.
“You broke our deal,” I said between choked sobs.
He held me against his chest like a child, his face nuzzled into my neck. “How did I break it?” His words were muffled.
“You said no feelings on the table, but then you ripped them out of me. How am I not supposed to feel anything for you when you force me to trust you like that?”
He kissed my neck softly. “That’s the thing about trust…can’t force someone to do it.”
Goddamn him for being so perceptive.
