“Uhn!” He groaned long and low. “Greedy girl,” he repeated.

Again he drew away, depriving me. Of his skin, his flesh, his sex, his mouth. He’d deprived me of this world he’d created—where he was everything. What would he do next? How would he touch me?

I felt his mouth on my breast, trailing kisses toward my nipple. Would he torment me as he had on the plane, avoiding the tips . . . ?

Yet as he licked the globes of my br**sts, he pinched both ni**les. Hard.

Harder. Tightening down on the peaks. It was painful—blissfully so.

He rasped, “You like that.”

“Oh, God,” I moaned as he pulled on them—

Only to abruptly release them.

He leaned down, mouth and tongue wrapping around a nipple, softly suckling as if to kiss away a pang. When he released it, I twisted to arch my other breast to him.

A dark chuckle sounded against my skin, but he obliged me. Once he began tracing his lips down my torso, he left both of my ni**les aching and damp in his wake—and me already on the verge of coming.

He reached my navel, circling it with flicks of his tongue, then kissing it as if he were drinking from me. As his mouth dipped lower, he laid his hands flat over my upper thighs, his fingers stretching to my mons. Like he’d done in the cornfield.

Reading my mind, he said, “I’ve imagined that night ending differently. I fantasized that you wanted me to f**k you there, under the moon.” He pulled my lips apart with such a sure touch. I could feel how soaked I was, how my folds flared.

His finger followed my wet seam, making me shudder. “Ty takaya nezhnaya.” You’re so soft. “So beautiful here.” My h*ps thrust hungrily, my exposed pu**y empty. “How could I not want to devour you at every chance?” He cupped my bottom. With his ringed fingers splayed across my ass, he lifted me like a bowl to his mouth, then ran the tip of his tongue from my core to my clit.

“Oh, God, yes!”

One finger entered me as he licked. Then he wedged a second one inside. But he removed them too soon, too soon—

“Do you want to know what heaven is for me?” Those fingers briefly dipped into my mouth for me to suck.

My taste! My taste was heaven for him. How could that turn me on so much? Again he took those fingers away too soon.

Attention fully on my pu**y, he nuzzled me, then tugged my cl*t between his lips, nursing on it so softly. My entire body was quaking. He’d imprisoned me with his bonds—and his mouth—keeping me on the verge of coming with an expert cruelty.

When his suction finally increased, the bud swelled till it throbbed against his tongue. So close . . . so close . . .

He released it with a wet sound.

“No, don’t stop!” It was a bundle of such unbearable sensitivity, I could feel mist alighting on it.

As if it was his toy, he blew on it. He played with it. Tormented it between his teeth. “So tiny, so luscious,” he said in a gravelly voice. “And it will make you do things for me that you’ve never dreamed.”

My toes curled, my fists clenched. How long had he kept me in this misery? I didn’t know if minutes had passed or hours. “Too much!” How could boundless pleasure be so excruciating?

He drew on me even harder. At last! Should I tell him that I was about to trip over the edge? He would deprive me of my orgasm, just as he had everything else. Hide how close you are. Don’t let him know—

“If you come before I give you permission, you’ll be punished.”

I writhed with frustration. Orgasm denial, just as I’d read about. “I-I need to come. Please.”

“Say that in Russian. I love that word from you.”

“Pozhaluista!”

“Enjoy more of my kiss.” I felt his ragged breaths against my spread opening. “But do not come.”

Fierce licks over my cl*t forced a desperate cry from my lungs. Too late. I couldn’t withstand this. The wave was crashing over me—

“You’re coming?” With a growl of irritation, he sucked harder to finish me, tonguing me at the same time. My body twisted against my bonds, legs spread, h*ps bucking wantonly to his mouth. Fuck. Fuck. Sucking me so hard. Wringing from me the most powerful orgasm I’d ever imagined.

Just as he’d promised.

As before, my mind was . . . reset.

I lay, recovering from the staggering pleasure—but not sated. Instead of putting out the fire, that release had just taken the edge off, enough for my thoughts to briefly clear. The better for me to appreciate what he was doing to me.

To appreciate my submissive position. My helplessness. His mastery.

As I squirmed with after-shudders, he continued to lave me, savoring. “I taste your cum . . . could lick you forever.” His voice sounded strained. “But you orgasmed before I wanted you to, moya plohaya devchonka.” That meant “my bad girl.” As in naughty or . . . wicked.

And I was. For him, I was.

He pulled away. “I’m going to have to start over, to get you wild again. Are you ready for your punishment?”

In a dim part of my brain, I recognized that he’d set me up to be punished, that it was always going to fall to this—because he played games.

Was he playing for higher stakes than I could afford to lose?

Chapter 20

“I’m ready.” I think. I didn’t recognize my whiskey voice. Gone scratchy from my screams?

I heard a rustle and my eyes shot wide behind my blindfold. Was that a venik? One of those mini leaf brooms? What would he be doing with that . . . ? My questions faded when he ran it over my chest.

The wet leaves slithered over the contours of my br**sts, the texture just this side of rough across my stiffened ni**les. With a cry, I arched up—

Slap. He’d whipped one of my br**sts! “Sevastyan!” Then the other. “What are you—”

And again! The sting continued to intensify, but my ni**les hardened even more, as if to tempt another slap—which he promptly gave.

Over. And over.

I almost demanded that he stop—but everything he’d done to me in the past had been too earth-shattering to be missed. So I gritted my teeth and took the pain for him.

While my mind struggled to assimilate my . . . my whipping, he swatted those soft leaves over me repeatedly, the slapping sounds loud in the cocoon of the sauna.

As I gasped and shook, pain began to morph into a peculiar kind of pleasure. I couldn’t . . . crave this? I’d ended up enjoying his harsh spanking on the plane, but having my br**sts thrashed with an implement was seriously upping the ante.

So why had I started rising up to meet each stroke?

He lashed me until my tautened br**sts ached, my ni**les throbbing as badly as my cl*t had.

But I couldn’t reach the brink like this. He was withholding any contact below my waist—more punishment for coming; I knew this as well as if he’d told me.

“Touch me, Sevastyan!” My inner walls clenched only emptiness. “I have to come again.”

“Do you want me inside you?”

I moaned, barely recalling why it was so important not to have sex. “Oh, God . . . I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” My lust-stupid brain spun its wheels, gained no traction.

“If you became mine, I wouldn’t let you go.” His words were clipped, as if he was biting back frenzy. “Understand me, if I’m your first lover—I will be your last.” The ringing tone of finality chilled me. “And I would kill any man who thought to touch what was mine.”

Permanent.

“Beg me to f**k you.” He lashed my right breast.

Trap!

In my mind, I saw him at the ready, about to capture me, to chain me forever. The hunter about to strike. This was what he’d awaited.

This. Why now? Why me?

“Beg, Natalya.”

Can’t think! “N-no?”

Silence. Finally: “What did you say?”

“I can’t. Not unless you can tell me it’ll only be sex. With no strings attached.”

“I said you controlled this situation.” Tone gone sinister, he grated, “But I control you. I can make you beg.”

I whispered, “I know.”

My admission seemed to temper some of his anger. “Then why deny us, milaya?”

“It’s all too much. I just . . . can’t.”

“Then I won’t f**k you till you beg me to—outside of this torment. Because I’m playing to win.” He makes the rules. “This is more to me than just pleasure.” Another slap of the venik.

“Sevastyan, I don’t . . . I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.” Just when I was about to plead for mercy—or faint—I felt pressure at my core. A warm, bulbous object nudged against my opening. Despite what he’d said, was he going to f**k me?

No . . . that wasn’t his . . . oh, dear God, was it the polished handle of the ladle? I whimpered, “Y-you can’t.” I couldn’t think—because he’d begun to slowly penetrate me. “You’re . . . you’re doing this to spite me?” Diabolical man!

“I promised you unmatched pleasure, yet you took away my most effective means. Come now, pet, you said you needed something inside you.”

I did. And I wanted it deeper, but he merely thrust with shallow pumps, until my head lolled. He avoided my cl*t completely—more punishment. Still, I was about to come.

Slap. Even as he f**ked my pu**y with the handle, he whipped my tender br**sts. At that moment, I couldn’t decide which stimulation I would kill for most.

I did crave the brand of pain this man delivered.

“Bend your will to mine.” The strain in his voice made my toes curl. He lashed me; he thrust into my clinging channel. He maddened me. “When I order you to come, obey.”

Thrust, thrust, thrust to the staccato sounds of my whipping.

I sobbed from the intensity. Gone light-headed. Euphoric. “Sevastyan, oh, God, please.” A keening moan burst from my lungs.

“Ah, woman, your sounds! Come for me. Now.”

I plummeted over the edge. Core-deep contractions made me scream with abandon, made me jerk against the ties as my body spasmed.

Lost in the throes, I heard myself confessing things: how I dreamed of him f**king me. How much I hungered to take him with my mouth. How I’d masturbated to fantasies of him.

Each admission was punctuated by his ragged groans.

When the pleasure finally subsided—even more heart-stopping than the orgasm before—I was left senseless, struggling to catch my breath. To process what he’d just made me feel.

With a loving kiss against my thigh, he gently removed the handle, leaving me empty once more. Yet I realized I still wasn’t sated, that this need had only grown. Where would this insanity end? How could he make me into this mindless creature?

While he kept demonstrating such control, I was a slave to sensation. To him.

And hadn’t he told me he wanted to make me his slave?

I felt him untying my blindfold. “Look at yourself,” he commanded.

I blinked down. Didn’t recognize myself. This was a stranger’s body. Her pale skin was bright pink and slicked with sweat. Locks of stark red hair snaked over heavy br**sts, coiling around lewdly protruding ni**les. Her little clitoris was so swollen it jutted from her mons.

This stranger was a picture of wicked need. She looked like she’d been used. Just as Sevastyan had said.

Not a stranger.

Me.

Revelation. The blindfold had come off—and I had been revealed, a new me that I hadn’t known could exist. I gazed at my abused ni**les in wonderment, staring as if in a trance.

When his groan broke my stare, I twisted my head toward him.

He was revealed too. Just as my body had changed, so had his. His muscles were impossibly larger, corded with tension under his mist-slicked skin.

But nothing could compete with the view of his magnificent cock. His shaft was engorged, as if begging to be buried within hot flesh. In the firelight, moisture glistened atop the plum-colored head, making my mouth water.

He was . . . a god, with skin burnished by fire.

When I could drag my gaze from his body, I drank in the sight of his face. His lips were thinned, that scar a razor slash of white. His wet hair tangled over his lean, flushed cheeks. His noble face was filled with pain.

Pain earned while delivering my pleasure.

And in his smoldering eyes was his own madness. A bone-deep yearning that called to mine.

With his accent thick, he bit out one word: Obsessed.

I didn’t know if he was talking about himself or me. Didn’t know if it was a question or an answer. Imagining it was the word foremost in his thoughts, I replied with the one foremost in mine: Revelation.

His brows drew tight, and he hissed, “Yes.” When he reached for the tie at my wrists, his c*ck slid across my sensitive belly and streamed pr**um from the tip. It was like a taunt, a reminder of what I’d been denied, stoking my lust even more. I was still sizzling inside, seething like him.

“And we’re not through,” he promised. He loosened the knot—enough for me to eventually free my hands?—then stepped away. Leaning back against the nearby wall, he began to masturbate his mouthwatering cock.

I was transfixed by the erotic sight: a god, thrumming with need, self-pleasuring.

Then I realized he meant to deprive me yet again. “No, stop!” Crazed for him, I struggled to free myself the rest of the way—while he watched me with golden eyes.

Always watching me.

As he slowly f**ked his fist, a shining bead welled from the crown. My eyes followed it as it slid down to the edge of his hand, and I wanted to cry. I strained harder, panic making my hands clumsy. “Please stop!” I was ravenous for him. Wild with hunger. I bit down on my lip, trying to stave it off.