Capricorn, p.11
Capricorn, page 11
“I want to come.”
“I can leave and let you finish alone.” He nips my ear with his teeth. “Is that what you want?”
“After all these weeks, that’s your move?”
“If you want me to make you come, you have to say the word.”
“What word?” I gasp, dazed with lust. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” His pointed statement sends my mind straight to that locked door.
I do know, and it’s the knowing that winds around my windpipe.
“Please, Oliver,” I whisper, pride nowhere to be found.
“Please, what?”
“Please…” Primed and shameless, I close my eyes and succumb to the inevitable. “Sir.”
That’s all he needs. In a fluid motion, he sweeps me into his arms and carries me to the forbidden door I’ve spent the month avoiding.
“Once we step inside,” he says, lowering me to my feet, “your virginity is the only thing off-limits.” He grasps my nape. “You’ll be mine until morning.”
“The whole night?”
“At my mercy until sunrise.”
“Will you hurt me?” My voice cracks, tendrils of fear snaking free.
“I don’t give pain without pleasure.”
“That doesn’t reassure me.”
“I’m not here to reassure you. I’m offering to take you to a place where the two are intertwined. If you want to know all the ways I can make you feel, then say the word one more time, so I know you’re certain.”
My attention veers from his face to the door. Sir is already clamoring to spill off my tongue again, but my vocal cords won’t cooperate. Seconds sneak by as I swallow down my instincts, both fight and flight, before giving myself over to the unknown.
With a choked plea, I seal my fate and utter what he wants to hear.
Oliver’s smile turns dark and sensual as he keys in the code. “By morning, you’ll say it without resistance.”
18
I don’t know what I expected. A dungeon like the one buried beneath this tower, all darkness and chains, designed to strike fear into the bones of any man? Or maybe something similar to Vance’s decadent suite, where every piece of furniture teetered between practical and perverse?
Oliver’s sanctum radiates control, terrifying in purpose and opulent in design. A lavish playground for his varied…tastes.
“Surprised?” he asks, the heat of his presence pulling at me like gravity. His hands settle on my shoulders, and I catch myself leaning into him, spine brushing solid muscle.
“Not exactly surprised, but it’s not what I pictured either.”
Golden light spills across the room, each piece of equipment casting a shadowy signature on the floor. Swings, benches, and metal frames sit with purpose. At the center stands a massive four-poster bed draped in black silk, its thick posts notched and reinforced for bondage.
One wall showcases rope in bundles of every hue—deep crimson, obsidian black, earthy brown, ivory white, and all the colors between.
It’s a visual symphony of control.
“No dungeons here,” he says, fingers gliding down my arm. “But plenty of ways to bend you to my will.”
An inner alarm stirs as I take in the suspended cage in the corner. “What’s that for?”
“Bratty behavior.” One hand closes loosely around my throat, guiding my gaze to a wall of whips and canes as his other reaches for something out of sight. “Though I prefer to start with a bare ass.”
Before I can register what’s happening, cool metal grazes my shoulder, and I flinch as scissors shear through one of my lingerie straps.
“Wait!” I try jerking away, but his grip steadies me as the blades skim across my chest. The second strap gives way with a soft snap, and the fabric pools at my feet. Instinctively, I cover my breasts and press my thighs together.
He saunters into my line of sight, expression stern. “You gave up the right to modesty when you said sir. Now show me the fruits of your spa day. Or would you rather find out what I can do with a whip?”
“You said no pain without pleasure.”
A diabolical grin plays at his mouth. “A whip in the hand of a skilled master can be extremely pleasurable.”
My chest rises in protest. “For who? You?”
“Do you need a demonstration?” He lifts his chin, staring me down as if he’s counting the strikes it’ll take to prove him right.
“No.” I lower my arms, vulnerability prickling at my nape. I asked for this, but now that he’s stripped me naked, with no way to undo the choice I made in a weak moment of desire, I’m not sure I’m ready for the consequences.
His gaze travels from my breasts to the bare triangle between my legs. The reaction is immediate—a glint of reverence, a tick in his jaw, a subtle flexing of his fingers as if he’s imagining them buried deep.
For a second, I think he’s going to devour me right here.
Instead, he takes my hand and leads me to the wall of rope. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
He selects a teal shade and lets it cascade through his hands.
This space is his.
And he offers no reassurance, only an unspoken demand for blind trust as he ties my wrists together in front of me.
Somehow, the silence unsettles me more than a command ever could.
My breathing turns shallow, though I don’t know what affects me more—the glide of the rope or his intense expression. Midnight hair flops across a furrowed brow, and every few moments, his warm eyes lift to mine, scanning for distress.
But it’s not fear or hesitation making me tremble.
It’s him.
The devastating beauty in each trace, touch, and tie.
Adrenaline surges as he lifts my bound wrists, elbows angled skyward. The stretch locks my shoulders and arches my spine, thrusting my chest forward, nipples exposed with no way to shield them.
He begins to wind rope around my torso, looping under my breasts and across my ribs in firm, possessive passes.
When he finishes, he guides me to a padded wall, fastens my wrists to a bracket behind my head, and cuffs my ankles, anchoring them wide apart.
It’s art and ownership.
A version of foreplay I’ve never experienced until now.
In this moment, I belong to him, and it sets my blood to boiling.
“All those nights, you clung to control,” he says, peeling off his shirt. “Now you have none.”
He steps in close and drags a single finger up my slit.
It’s the first time he’s touched me there, and my pussy clenches, wrecked from too many nights of denial. I ache for pressure, friction, depth, but he keeps me perched at the edge with a featherlight graze of my clit.
“Please, Oliver,” I whimper, teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
“Please what?”
“Huh?” The sound escapes before I can catch it, my thoughts still tangled in his sensual web.
Cocking a brow, he withdraws only to pinch my nipple hard.
“Ow!”
“Still not what I want to hear.” He twists, slow and cruel, until I grit my teeth against the pain. “You’ve forgotten the one word that matters in this room.”
“I’m sorry!”
“I don’t want apologies.” He claims my other peak and gives it the same punishment. “Say it.”
“Sir!”
My chest heaves beneath his hands, our eyes locking as he holds the pressure. Finally, he releases me.
“When and how you climax is no longer up to you. I might let you come once…or force you ten times. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He bends and draws one sore peak into his mouth, then the other, pulling at the tips of my breasts until they tingle.
“Please, sir.”
“You’re beautiful when you beg,” he says, grazing my nipple with his teeth as a finger sinks into my soaked heat. I nearly come undone.
“More, please…”
He pauses, and for a moment, I think he’s going to give me what I crave. Instead, he pulls away and strides across the room.
At the glass-topped dresser, he opens a drawer lined with neat rows of gags and anal plugs that gleam like curated jewelry.
But it’s the glint of metal in his hand when he turns that knocks the breath from my lungs.
Two brutal-looking clamps, joined by a chain of polished steel.
“What are those?” My voice comes out thinner than I intend.
“Punishment.”
“No!” I tug against my restraints as he closes the distance.
“Afraid so. You’ve spent the last week driving me mad with these pretty little nipples.” He tweaks one in warning. “Now it’s my turn to play with them.”
The clamps snap shut on tender flesh, and agony rips through me. I cry out, caught between a scream and a sob.
“They’re too tight!”
“No, they’re perfect. And they’ll only get tighter every time you forget to call me sir.”
He proves it with a slow tug on the chain.
“Oh God, stop!” The words rush out in a desperate plea I’m not sure he’ll honor.
Because there’s no safety in protest, only the faint hope of mercy, and I’m clinging to it with everything I have.
“I’m not God, Novalee.” He cranks the vises on my nipples, and I can’t help but scream what he wants to hear.
“Sir!”
Without warning, he lets go of the chain and sinks to his knees.
Instantly, I’m on fire in a different way.
“You have a gorgeous cunt,” he says, leaning in, his breath stoking the coals of arousal as he teases my mound.
I’m so desperate for his mouth that my hips jerk forward. My nipples blaze with constant torment, and an impatient whine breaks loose.
“Every sound you make gives you away.” A kiss brushes my inner thigh. “Every breath and whimper.”
Another moment passes before he drifts closer to where I ache for him. I’m hot and wet, legs forced apart and shuddering, blood thundering through me. My muscles burn from the strain of bondage, yet it pales next to the sight of his lips hovering inches from my pussy.
“I know how you squirm when you’re close, and I know the rhythm of your need.”
“I need you to touch me!”
“Oh, I know you do, sweetheart.” He gives the chain another yank, and my whimpers shatter into sharp cries. “But we’re not on your timeline, are we?”
“No,” I gasp.
He increases the pinch. “How can I make you come if I’m too busy punishing your disobedience?”
“Please, sir. I’ve denied myself for weeks.”
Weeks of unimaginable grief battling primal need, all undone in a single night by the man on his knees.
Yet I’m the one begging, even as he makes me groan in pain.
“All this time, I’ve been watching you.” His gaze drowns me in the ocean of his control. “Or did you forget?”
“How could I forget, sir?”
“Then you already know I can keep you like this for as long as I want.”
“You can, but I’m begging you not to…sir.”
The devious curve of his smile speaks of triumph, promising my downfall.
And that’s when he parts my slick folds.
His tongue finds me, all sinuous heat sliding into intimate flesh, and those licks ricochet clear to my toes. My body bows into the pleasure, straining against the rope as he edges me like he’s been watching for weeks.
Because he has.
Each suck and lick ignites new sparks, as if he’s memorized every dip, fold, and hidden place on the map of my desire. He’s mastered the art of the tongue, knowing exactly how to use it to make me sing in his language.
“Sir.” The title escapes on a breathless sob, my voice the only part of me that can break free. So I open the floodgates and let the sounds spill.
Moans and whimpers.
Groans and cries.
Desperate pleas.
And the chant of his favorite word…
Over and over again.
Oliver has dissolved me into a state of incoherence, where thought slips through sensation and all I can do is feel.
His fingers press into the curve of my ass, holding me firm under his relentless mouth. The clamps bite sharper each time I move, layering pain atop pleasure until I’m strung tight, seconds away from shattering.
As if on cue, he backs off, leaving me keening at the edge of climax.
“Don’t stop!” I blink as the ground of denial rushes up to meet me. “Please, sir.”
“You’re getting too close.” With infuriating composure, he stands and drags the back of a hand across his lips.
“What are you do—?”
“Shh.” He frees me from the wall. “I want you silent for this next phase.”
“What? Why?”
He gives the clamps a final tug before removing them. Intense pain storms through me, and I lose my breath and my ability to make a sound.
“Trust me, Novalee. I promise it’ll be worth it.”
But when he leads me to a leather bench and bends me over the end, it isn’t trust that keeps me there.
It’s surrender.
19
I should have never surrendered. Silence is agony, forced on me by a large ball gag stretching my lips. Like the wall, the bench welcomes my body in luxurious leather, robbing me of all mobility. Though my wrists are no longer bound behind my head, they’re tied together in front of me. The cuffs on my ankles remain.
Oliver has me bent over, feet planted wide and fixed to the floor. The position tilts my hips above my shoulders, sending too much pressure to my battered breasts.
Now it’s my ass that burns while the rest of me strains from the vibrator secured between my thighs.
Anytime I get too close, his thick paddle finds its mark.
It’s a dance between purgatory and nirvana, of which Oliver Whitney is a ruthless virtuoso.
The tension builds faster than I can bear, and my lungs seize around a scream I can’t release.
Crack!
Pain flares across my backside as another blow lands.
Then another.
Five in total, each more savage than the last.
The sting spreads in a blaze of red that drags me from the edge. Before the ache fades, he dials the instrument of my destruction higher, and I grind against it, chasing a climax he won’t grant.
Sweat beads along my spine.
My heart kicks at my ribs.
Heat swells, ready to boil over.
No, no, no.
I lunge for it anyway, bracing for the inevitable fallout.
Crack!
A fresh set of strikes cut me off from the tipping point. My legs tremble as the impact throttles my muffled groans, even as pleasure carves itself from pain.
He alternates between the two until I can’t tell which is which.
And that’s how this next phase goes.
Torment versus rapture.
Frustration versus arousal.
A crescendo I never reach.
And a fiery descent that won’t extinguish the flames of my desire.
Oliver pushes me to the brink again and again, only to yank me back with another rapid succession of blows. I want to plead for mercy, but my silence holds, locked behind the gag and the last fragments of pride I haven’t let him take.
I’ve lost all sense of time.
Only sensation remains.
I’m beyond exhausted, every nerve lit, tears and saliva slipping from my face. Fear begins to creep into my thoughts, and I’m wondering how much more I can take—how much more he’ll make me take—when he suddenly removes the gag.
“You’re doing so well, sweetheart. Your body knows how to obey.”
“Please, sir.” The entreaty scrapes out through clenched teeth. “No more.”
“Who owns you right now?”
“You do, sir.” As much as I despise that fact, it’s undeniable. There’s a hierarchy in this room, and he’s on top.
“And what about your orgasms? Are they mine or yours?”
“Yours, sir.”
“And your pain. Is that mine as well?”
“Y-yes…sir.”
Though my mouth stutters the answer he wants, I hand him over to the murderess in my mind. I’m so caught up in imagining his slow, tortured death that I don’t realize he’s releasing me from the bench.
He cradles me in his arms, every part of me bent to his will, and carries me into the en suite bathroom. After turning on the water, he guides me to the marble counter and positions me in front of the mirror.
“Look,” he says, angling a handheld mirror at my backside. “This is the color of your need. Isn’t it beautiful?”
I gulp at the sight. Beautiful isn’t the word I’d use, but it’s a testament to his mastery that he can etch such a brutal signature on my body and still leave me drenched. My skin glows crimson, mottled with the imprints of his discipline. Each mark tells the story of my submission.
The massive jacuzzi tub fills beside us, steam curling through lavender-scented air. Oliver strips before lifting me into the water and sliding in behind me.
“Lean back,” he says, arranging me between his thighs.
I sink against him and let the warm water ease my screaming muscles. Bubbles cocoon us in silken clouds as his hands glide over my shoulders and breasts, soothing the ache while heightening a different kind. When his fingers dip into the suds and find the apex of my sex, I whimper, throat raw from screaming and crying.
“Please, sir.”
“Shhh.” His lips brush my temple. “Relax, close your eyes. I’m going to take care of you now.”
His fingers burrow into my folds, holding me at the pinnacle, coaxing pleasure from a place of transcendence. I arch into his touch, toes trapped in a continuous curl.
I want to let go, but after weeks of denial, followed by the excruciating hours of his dominance, I cling to the edge by a frayed thread that refuses to snap.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” He hooks a finger into me, stroking a spot I can’t resist, while his thumb circles my clit. “You’ve earned this.”
