"Yes. I just saw this club here with a triskele over the door, figured what the hell, I'll give it a shot."
"If you can't take this at all seriously, you might as well go."
I flashed her a conciliatory smile. "I'm only kidding. I meant no harm. What's your name?"
She smiled back warmly. "I'm Frankie. And I'm going to do you a huge favor, James."
It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest a specific sexual favor that I wouldn't mind from her, but I held it in. "What favor would that be?"
"I'm going to take you under my wing, before you get yourself into trouble. You can thank me later."
Turns out, I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MY OWNERSHIP
PRESENT
For a long time, after the shooting, I couldn't sleep through the night.
Bianca slept like a baby most nights, like she never had before, like every worry she'd ever had had disappeared with the death of her father.
But not me. I was more restless than ever. A miracle had saved her, not me, and I felt helpless because of it.
It was not a feeling that fit me well.
In fact, it made my skin crawl in discomfort. In anger.
It had been months since the attack. She and Stephan were healed physically, and, it seemed emotionally, but I felt the wounds as though they were fresh. What had almost happened haunted me. I was a man that needed control, and I'd been shown, in the starkest way possible, that I had none.
I sat scant feet away from our bed, watching Bianca sleep. She was nude, with not so much as a sheet covering her. I'd seen to that. I watched her lithe form shift on the bed, one long leg hitching up to give me a glimpse of the pink between her legs.
I felt like a f**king stalker.
In fact, I was one, watching her for hours on end, night after night.
I tensed when I realized she'd roused. It disturbed her that I couldn't sleep, when she deserved peace more than anyone did.
She sat up, and I watched her heavy br**sts swaying with the movement. "James." Her voice was the softest utterance.
"Love," I answered, feeling the dark mood that had overtaken me lift in an instant. Just having her eyes on me could do that.
She crawled across the bed toward me. She'd always had an uncanny ability to do exactly the thing that would drive me the most wild, and she'd only gotten better at that over time. She didn't hide her body from me as she moved. In fact, she posed for me, even the exposure of her body an act of submission. As though reading my thoughts, as though even those were a command, she paused on the edge of the bed, parting her legs to let me look my fill before she rose, approaching my chair.
I stood to meet her, my body drawn tight, my c**k throbbing as though I hadn't come, buried inside of her, just hours before.
I was a statue as she leaned up to my ear, my brows drawing together in a question. Her lips touched my ear as she spoke.
"Hurt me," she whispered raggedly.
My eyes shut tight, my jaw went slack, and a shudder wracked my entire body.
I'd avoided all of the rough stuff since she'd been injured, but God had I missed it.
"We don't have to, Bianca. It's not necess—"
She gripped my hair, pulling my face down to her injured cheek. She dug her jaw into me so hard that I knew it must have hurt her badly. It was nearly healed now, but I knew it was still tender.
"I need it," she rasped into my ear. "I'll never stop needing it. Please."
I pulled back, and my hands trembled as I cupped her face in my hands, my eyes searching hers desperately for what I wanted to see. Need. Yes. She needed this as much as I did. More so.
"Get on the bed," I told her thickly.
She obeyed, backing away from me, keeping her eyes on me the entire time.
"On your back. Spread your legs. Wider. Arms above your head."
We were at the Vegas property, no fourth floor in sight, and so I only had to walk to a dresser to find what I needed.
I was uncharacteristically clumsy as I bound her to the bed. I wanted so badly for everything to be perfect, to the point that I was nervous about it.
Her arms went directly above her head, drawn together, and knotted to the headboard.
Her feet I drew wide apart, spreading her legs until I stretched her. I ran a finger across one tautly drawn inner thigh, shuddering in pleasure at the way it made her quake under my hands.
I bent and kissed the spot briefly. "So sensitive here," I murmured into her skin. I knew just where to start.
I stood back and watched her when I'd finished with her restraints, my lids heavy, my blood pounding.
Every ounce of nervousness left me at the sight. The sight of her bound both soothed and enflamed me.
She gazed back at me steadily, her body shifting restlessly, h*ps tilting, br**sts heaving, pink flesh wet and exposed.
I chose a simple leather flogger, a delicate cat o'nine, to break her back in again.
I propped myself on an elbow between her legs, dragging the flogger's thin tails along the sheets, teasing it across her inner thighs.
Abruptly, I snapped it up and back, watching her face as I struck the bed.
She jerked, giving me wild eyes when she realized I hadn't touched her.
I gave her a smile that made her squirm, back to dragging the tails against her sensitive flesh, back and forth, from knee to groin.
The torment of anticipation was every bit as sweet as the bite of the whip.
My c**k pulsed, my heart pounded.
With a wicked grin, I snapped the tails against the bed again. Hard.
She gasped, h*ps circling.
I trailed the flogger up her leg, passed it briefly over her sex, moving it toward her belly.
I met her eyes as I flipped it, suddenly and abruptly, whipping it back to lash her inner thigh with a quick flick of my wrist.
She jerked and moaned.
I swung my wrist again, catching her other thigh, then slowly, almost lazily, I began to whip it back and forth.
I never rose off my elbow, never used my other hand as I slowly tenderized her pale flesh.
It was not a punishment. We had worked beyond that. This was so much more than the usual game of bondage and submission.
Bianca was a purist of the form, a masochist that enjoyed being dominated sexually.
We needed no artifice, no little lines to justify the things we needed from each other.
I looked down at her thighs, watching the whip as I set to work on her in earnest.
Her inner thighs, from a few inches above her knees to just below her groin, were pink with lash marks by the time I finished.