Chapter 7

I ’m up before Grace. She’s sleeping on her stomach, ass perfectly poked up, one leg cocked up in an L shape. No wonder she hasn’t been able to sleep; her strings would never allow her to lie like that.

I’d come in after she was asleep and unhooked the cuffs from around her wrists and ankles, freeing her so she could sleep. It was a calculated risk. Something in me felt shitty after leaving her there whimpering for me in a puddle of her sweat and arousal.

That’s new for me.

I’ve never cared before.

I sigh as I slowly work my way onto the bed and work only three strings onto her back, the one over her spine and the two next to it. Hopefully, it’s not a stupid move. But these three are the bigger hoops I pierced her with. She’d have to rip them out, and they’d be very painful.

“Please,” she begs, turning in her sleep .

I watch as she flips onto the strings attached to her back. They don’t tangle, only move with her.

Those will work much better, I think.

Still, my brain tries to determine what’s so different about her. I’ve never untethered any other woman.

Her next moan makes me crawl closer, straddling her as I hover over her fitful body.

Is she remembering what I did to her last night? Is she thinking of another man?

The second thought makes my hands fist the sheets next to her head.

She moans louder, arching off the bed. The imagry of this moment will be etched in my brain forever.

I grin.

It’s me she’s thinking of then.

I’ve never seen them react to the TENS like she had. She blows my mind at every turn. She sets my entire playbook ablaze because she’s nothing like them.

She’s something more.

Another moan passes her lips, and she wakes in a fit, head lifting off the pillow as her lips open, an exhale passing them.

Her frenzied eyes find mine.

“Hello, Grace. Good morning.” I smirk, looking over the patter of her beautiful heart that thwaps away in her throat.

“You—You’re here. Were you…” She licks her lips. “Were you touching me?”

“In your sleep? No. I would never, darling. I want to watch you as you scream for me, fully aware that I’m the reason you’re screaming.”

I lick my lips, and she follows my tongue’s path over them. “Tell me, Grace. Were you dreaming of me?”

Her pupils dilate.

“Don’t lie, either. You remember how I punish. You’ll be sent to bed hungry again tonight, and not for food, either.”

“I was dreaming about you,” she admits in a whisper.

“That’s a good little puppet,” I tell her. “Now, what was I doing to you in your dream?”

She uses her exhale to steady herself as she lifts her head off her pillow, her lips coming dizzyingly close to mine. I told her I don’t kiss.

I’ve never kissed one of them.

It’s too personal. It’ll turn the tables.

“You kissed me in my dream. Kissed me, sunk your cock into me, fucked me so fucking good. And you let me come.” Her eyes flutter closed as if she’d go back to the dreaming and visit that version of me.

My dick aches behind my sweats at her words, and my fists tighten on the sheets beside her.

“I don’t kiss.”

Her eyes open and roll, her face turning toward the board-covered window. “I know. You told me to tell you my dream. That was it. Are we done?”

Dismissal?

Who does she think she is ?

“Don’t play games with me, darling. Many have tried, and it didn’t end well for them.”

She turns her face back, something dancing in her eyes.

Recognition.

She’s just realized something.

“I’m going to die either way,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Yes.”

A tear leaves her eye, headed over her cheek towards her ear before it hits the pillow beneath her head. “So, you lied? You were never going to let me go?”

I sigh, tired of her mood this morning. It’s partly my fault; I know that. I sent her to bed with her body on fire, on the cusp of coming, with no way to touch herself and work out the tension. Had I known she’d wake up like a riled beast, I still think I would’ve done it, but I wouldn’t have come here this morning.

I would’ve saved myself the headache.

“Were you ever going to let me go?” she asks, her untethered hands grabbing my biceps and keeping me prisoner over her with the sheer power of her touch on my skin.

“No.” My admission seems to float between us, her eyes growing heated with anger.

“So, either way, I die in the end?” she asks as if she needs it spelled out.

“Yes.”

She nods a few times before she lifts her head off the pillow once more, slamming her lips to mine as she wraps her legs around my backside.

I’m flabbergasted.

I’m thrown off-kilter completely.

My lips have a mind of their own, opening to allow her tongue to sweep inside and touch mine.

My growl only spurs her on, and my hips grind, my erection grinding into her needy pussy.

I did this. This is my fault.

I pull away, wrapping my hand around her throat and shoving her back into her pillow. “No.”

“Why?” her crackled voice is full of heat, but I don’t understand.

No one wants me . They want to survive.

“Because I’m tired of your games.”

“It’s not a game…” Her heady eyes glass over as I tighten my grip surrounding her neck. “Tell me your name,” she manages.

“Why?”

“So I know what to cry out in my dreams.”

I lick my lips. “I’m master to you.”

“And when you’re not my master? When you’re the man between my thighs sucking my clit like you’re a starving man, and I’m your sustenance?”

“Cain,” I whisper, leaning into her further without understanding her power over me.

I have to be careful. She could be the one to kill me, the one to play the game better than me .

“Cain,” she whimpers as I grind into her again to hear it on her lips.

“That’s right, darling, whimper for me.”

Nudging her to turn her face, I sink my teeth into her neck, tasting her flavor as it invades my senses.

One of her feet slides down my ass, shoving upward to coax me to grind into her again.

And I oblige.

“Please, Cain.”

“I left you so needy for me last night, didn’t I, darling?” I whisper in her ear, tongue teasing its shell.

“So fucking needy,” she begs, her hand tangling in my hair before fisting it and lifting my head.

Before I realize what’s happening, her lips are on mine again, and we’re inhaling one another, breathing one another like we’re the oxygen the other needs to feed their bloodstream.

My hand sinks beneath the front of her panties. “Is that what you need, my beautiful puppet?”

She breaks our kiss, choking on her next moan.

She’s dangerous to me. Already I’m giving her things I normally wouldn’t.

Her power is filtering beneath my skin like radiation, and I can’t escape. I’m captive.

I sink two fingers into her wet, swollen pussy, fervently fucking her with them and watching her arch for me.

“Cain!” She’s gone, lost inside the swirling covetous hunger I left her with last night being sated .

“Oh, pretty darling, look at you. Fuck, you’re so mesmeric to watch.”

Her hands come up and free her breasts, her fingers tweaking her nipples softly as she puts on a show for her master.

“Cain, please,” she begs, her carnal eyes gobbling me up as I lick my kiss-bruised lips.

“I’m here, puppet. I’m giving you what you need. Let it wash over you.”

She shakes her head frantically. “No! More. Please.”

She’s grinding on my fingers to the best of her ability, eager and needy for something more than I’m offering.

“What do you need, puppet? Your words.”

She only whimpers and writhes. She’s too delirious.

I remove my fingers, and she cries out in such a melodic tone I feel it in the tip of my cock that’s leaked all over my sweatpants.

Wrapping my hand around her delicate neck again, I ground her, finding her eyes with mine.

“Use your fucking words. What do you need?”

I don’t know why I need to hear her say it but fuck me, I do.

“Fuck me. Sink inside my pussy and make me come. I want to feel your cock in me. Your fingers aren’t enough.”

Fuck, ask, and ye shall receive.

And my puppet always delivers.

“You sure you don’t just want my tongue on you, darling girl?” I make like I’m going to slide down her body, and she quickly sinks both hands into my hair, fisting to the point of pain.

Her eyes are feral.

“No,” she growls.

I think I underestimated the state I left her in last night, and now it has her a bit ravenous.

I usually leave fucking for the end. I fuck them as I bathe in the blood that spurts from their veins. It’s my beautiful finish.

But I can’t help but consider giving her what she wants. Fuck, just look at her.

Her cheeks are a beautiful rouge, her lips swollen from kissing me, her eyes are heady, her pupils blown wide. Her perfectly peach-colored nipples are hard and begging to be suckled. The rest of her thick, curvy body is slick with sweat, pheromones practically leaking out of every one of her pores, calling to me like cat nip.

I heave in an inhale, which is much needed. The space is so charged it’s almost dizzying.

“Take what you need, little puppet.”

One of her small hands unfurls my hair and slides between us. She yanks down the front of my pants, and all the while, our gazes are locked.

Her hand slides over my cock slowly, not pulling it out, only teasing.

“And does master want to fuck me?” she asks.

I hiss as she continues to torment my cock with her maddening strokes. “Would it matter what I wanted? You’re fucking feral for me, puppet.”

She squeezes the head of me before pulling me out.

My mouth drops open.

“It matters, Cain. I don’t want to take what isn’t offered freely. You can’t feed me because I’m hungry. I want you to feed me because you want to. Because you want to be my meal.”

Just when I think she’s going to let my dick go, she grasps the shaft and runs the tip through her wet, swollen mess of a pussy.

“Fuck, Grace.” It’s an unholy plea from my lips that even I have never heard.

It’s like I’ve broken her psyche down enough where she’s on my level, and God, I wish she could stay there. I never want her to leave.

I want to fucking keep her.

It’s illogical. It can’t happen.

“Do you want to feed me, Cain?”

I reach between us, yanking her hand off my dick, and in one thrust, I’m deep inside her.

I pause, eyes frantic as I realize what I’ve just done.

I’ve played her game and lost. She flutters around my shaft as her eyes grow heavy, and a moan spills from her perfect lips.

“Yes, feed me, master,” she pleads, and my body takes over where my mind is still reeling.

She’s so fucking voracious, starving for me and only me, and it gives me something I’ve never had before. Something I’ve been chasing from here to hell and back for years.

Power.