Page 32 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

A smack echoes in that dark room, and I wince. He builds with the patience of a man tuning an instrument, each strike asking a question that my body answers louder and louder, heat blooming, breath going ragged. Between them, his scarred palm smooths over the sting in slow circles, and the contrast unmakes me.

Pain with aftercare built into its own rhythm.

By the tenth or more, I stop counting entirely. Sweat on my low back catches a breeze from the air conditioning. I’m dizzy and hot and so horny I could hump a tree. No thoughts, just delicious torment. By the time he stops, I’m liquid, draped over his thighs, moaning into the leather bench.

“Stoplight, pet.”

I say green so emphatically it echoes.

Then his hand comes to my throat and arranges me back against his chest. I feel his hardness in my low back, jabbing me there.In front of me, the dark, kinky room full of experiences I want to try. Behind me, the man who can make it happen.

He growls in my ear, “Still green?”

I nod with as much force as I can. It’s not much. I’m kept in place by a collar made of him. Kept breathless by that pressure. By his presence.

“Tell me what you think you’ve earned, babydoll.” He loosens his grip.

I say the only two words on my mind. “Your cock.”

Without a word, he drags a hand up my inner thigh, and when he reaches my pussy, a masculine huffed laugh tickles my ear. “So wet for me.”

I nod, trembling for him. For this.

His large hand goes back to my neck, wet this time. His other hand fiddles with something behind me until I feel him there. The thick head, notching inside as he pulls me onto him. When he knows he’s in place, he pulls me down his length with that free arm around my waist.

He never lets go of my throat. Not even as he’s fucking me. He varies the pressure, keeping me just on the edge of madness. “You are mine, pet. You take my cock so fucking good…” He rambles in filthy Russian, lost in the moment, while I’m just trying to stay in my body.

But I’m hazy. Lack of oxygen, impending orgasm building in my core, submitting to his whims, all of it has me deep in a hole in my head. It’s peaceful and warm there.

Safe.

This man breaks people for a living. The same hand, the same precision. One on my throat, and now, the other on my clit. I’m edging toward dark madness, and every degree of it, every practiced ounce, is currently in service of my pleasure. My trust in him does more for me than the hand does.

I come apart the first time, gasping, choking, flying in my skin. He eases me down through it, loosens nothing, kisses my temple, murmurs something in Russian. Somewhere in the warm wreckage of me, mid-gasp, drifting back up, my eyes catch the iron candle stand by the bench.

When I have enough oxygen and thought for words again, I pant, “Is that—wait. Is that a cotton-core wick in a high-fragrance soy blend? They’d last longer if?—”

Ivan laughs, full and helpless, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, his whole chest shaking against my bound arms. The sound is enormous and rusty and real, and I start laughing too, breathless, half-strangled with it, both of us coming apart.

“You,” he manages, against my shoulder, the laugh still moving through him in aftershocks, “are auditing the candles. Mid-scene. You are conducting an audit.”

“Someone has to, the wax is fighting the wick, it’s a hostile workplace, and that candle is the victim?—”

“Luna.”

I turn in his lap, and he lifts his head, and his eyes are bright in a way I’ve never seen. His crow’s feet have engaged, the whole face awake. “I will buy you the club. You can rewick the entire building for all I care. But do it tomorrow.”

Oh right. We’re in a scene. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”

His hand slides up my throat, tightens fractionally. The voltage returns under the laugh, and his voice drops back into the register that rearranges me. “Tonight, the only flame I’m watching is you. Color.”

I whisper, “Green, sir.”

Ivan lays me back on the low bed and takes me the rest of the way down, the charcoal silk tied above me to the headboard. Then I’m met by the slow, deep, relentless rhythm of a man with nowhere else to be. He mounts me gracefully, moving like a dancer. His eyes never leave my face, reading every degree of me and adjusting in real time.

He angles his strokes for maximum effect, and he gets my eyes rolling back in no time. The man could crush me under his weight, but instead, he keeps most of himself off of me, as if he knows he could crush me.

I don’t want Gentle Ivan tonight. “Harder. Sir.”