When we get back to the beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s very late. Or very early, depending how you look at it. Spider and Kieran are at the front gate, rifles in hand.
I give them a little wave. Spider smiles and tips up his chin. Kieran sends me a jaunty salute, grinning.
“They seem like they’re in good moods,” I note as we drive through the gate.
Declan says, “That’s because their fearless leader has returned.”
“Aw. It must be a good feeling for you to have such loyal men.”
His voice turns dry. “I wasn’t talking about me.”
That makes me smile.
We park in the circular driveway. In front of the entrance to the house, ten more armed men await. One of them opens the passenger door before Declan is even out of the driver’s seat and helps me from the car.
I recognize him. He was one of the men in the kitchen the night I almost cut off my pinkie to save Spider’s.
Inclining his head, he says something in Gaelic.
I ask Declan what it was once we’re inside.
His smile is amused. “Roughly translated, welcome home, my queen.”
“Really? How fantastic. Can you tell all the guys to call me that?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll have Kieran tell them for me.”
He chuckles, then takes my hand and tugs me along, headed for the master bedroom. Just to tease him, I yawn. “I think I’ll take a nice long bath before bed.”
“You can take it after.”
I ask innocently, “After what?”
He throws me a smoldering look. “After I show you why you want to be my wife.”
Pushing open the bedroom door, he pulls me inside, then kicks the door shut behind him. He doesn’t bother with any other explanation, he simply grabs me and kisses me, hard.
I break away, breathlessly laughing. “Did someone miss me?”
Holding my head in his hands, he says gruffly, “Aye. You and that smart mouth and that perfect arse of yours. I almost went bloody mad. I never want to be apart from you that long again.”
My heart pounds with happiness. I look up into his beautiful blue eyes, so full of adoration, and can’t help the stupid smile that takes over my face. “I think that can be arranged…sir.”
His lids lower. A muscle flexes in his jaw. He licks his lips then kisses me again, holding my head as I wrap my arms around his waist. He drinks deep from my mouth, making a masculine sound of pleasure in his throat.
When the kiss ends, we’re both breathing raggedly.
“I have a homecoming present for you,” he whispers.
“Oh, good. How many carats is it?”
He cocks a brow. “How many carats do you want for your ring?”
“I wasn’t talking about a ring. There are plenty of other pieces of jewelry besides rings.” I smile sweetly. “Like tiaras, for instance. Have you seen the one the Duchess of Cambridge wore for her wedding to Prince William?”
He’s trying not to smile, but not managing it. “Aye.”
“Like that. Only bigger.”
“So a crown.”
“Now you’re getting the picture.”
“I knew from the second I laid eyes on you that you were high-maintenance. Come over here.”
Taking my hand again, he leads me over to the bed. Then he stands silently, watching my face as I look at the carefully lined-up display on the silk duvet cover.
A flush of heat blooming over my chest, I say faintly, “That’s quite the collection.”
He slides his hand slowly up my spine and grips the back of my neck. Bending close to my ear, he says, “Choose your favorite.”
My nipples tighten. My mouth goes dry. Between my legs, a pulse of heat blooms to match the one heating my upper body. Oh god. I’m going to pass out.
I don’t want to miss all the fun, though, so I force myself to take slow breaths as I look over the whips, floggers, riding crops, and paddles lined up from one edge of the mattress to the other.
I point at one in red-and-black leather with a braided handle and long leather tassels dangling from the end.
Massaging my neck, Declan makes a low sound of approval. “I like that one, too. Take off your clothes.”
He stands back, folds his arms over his chest, and gazes hotly at me.
Waiting.
Holy cheese and rice, this man knows how to welcome a girl home properly.
I slip off my coat and let it fall to the floor. My hands shaking, I unbutton my blouse. It’s long-sleeved white silk, one that I brought with me to New York when I first went to visit Nat, what feels like a lifetime ago. All my clothes were packed in the trunk of the Bentley that I was taken from, and Nat kept them for me at their house.
I make a mental note to ask Declan later what happened to the Betsey Johnson pink tulle skirt I was wearing that night, then clear my head of all thoughts and slip the blouse off my shoulders.
My bra follows it to the floor.
Declan stares at me with avid eyes as I unbutton the fly of my jeans and pull the zipper down. Licking his lips, he watches as I take them off. When I shimmy out of my panties and kick them aside, he does nothing for a long moment but stare at my naked body.
Then he walks an excruciatingly slow circle around me.
From behind, he brushes my hair off my neck. He kisses the nape, then moves his mouth to the side of my throat and gently bites me there, sliding his other hand around my front and down between my legs.
Standing behind me, he growls hotly into my ear, “This is mine. Say it.”
His big hand covers my sex and squeezes.
Breathing hard in anticipation, I whisper, “It’s yours.”
I get a light slap between the legs for my omission.
I jump and blurt, “It’s yours, sir.”
“Aye, baby. Mine. And these.”
He slides his hand up my belly to my left breast, which he also squeezes, then the right, thumbing over my nipples until they’re aching for his mouth.
“Yes, sir. They’re yours.”
A low, pleased growl rumbles through his chest. He slides his hand up to the middle my sternum, pressing it flat over my throbbing heart.
“And this,” he whispers, nuzzling my neck. “Is this mine, too, baby?”
I inhale a hitching breath and close my eyes, leaning back against his chest. My entire body thrums with electricity. Emotion courses through my veins like fire. My skin is so sensitized, I think I can feel every fiber of his suit jacket against my shoulder blades.
“Yes, sir. All of me, sir. All of me is yours.”
He exhales a rough breath against my skin. Fisting one hand into my hair and winding the other around my throat, he pulls my head back and kisses me.
I open my mouth and let him take and take and take, feeling his erection jut into my ass, knowing that soon he’ll give me what I need and barely being able to contain myself from begging for it.
When he breaks the kiss, he says, “Don’t move, or you’ll be punished.”
He walks around to the dresser on the left side of the bed and opens a drawer. He leans down and removes something from it. Turning back to me, he’s holding a pair of handcuffs in one hand and a black velvet blindfold in the other.
“On your knees.”
His voice is so hot and dark it makes a shiver run through me. It’s his Alpha voice, the dominant one. I react to it like Pavlov’s dog and start salivating as I sink to the floor.
He strolls over to me, taking his time, knowing the longer he makes me wait, the more my need will grow. I don’t understand how no one before him, not a single man, ever understood this about me. I didn’t even understand it about myself.
He’s unlocked doors inside me I didn’t realized were closed or were there in the first place.
“Give me your hands.”
I lift my arms and present my hands, wrists together. He snaps the handcuffs around them, cinching them tight. Then he bends down and slides the blindfold over my eyes, adjusting the elastic in the back so it’s snug and I can’t see a thing.
He steps away, leaving me shivering on my knees, swallowing convulsively, blinded.
“Perfect,” he murmurs.
Between my legs, I’m soaking wet. I want to reach down and touch my clit to see if it’s as swollen as it feels, but he hasn’t given me permission to, so I simply wait and tremble, feeling gloriously alive.
I hear the slither of fabric. The zizz of a zipper being drawn down. He’s taking off his clothes. It’s taking him forever.
I’m so turned on, I’m in danger of exploding.
Then his voice is near my ear. “I’m going to fuck you while you’re bound and blindfolded, sweet girl. But first I’m going to eat your pussy and turn that perfect arse of yours bright red.”
My exhalation is a moan.
“If you come before I allow it, I won’t be pleased. Do you want to please me?”
I blurt something. Babble it, more like. I think it’s an affirmative, but I honestly couldn’t say for sure until Declan replies, “Good girl.”
How those two simple words make me shake. How they make emotion expand inside my chest until it’s painful.
He smooths a hand over my hair. Kisses me softly on the forehead. Tweaks my hard nipples until I’m panting. Then he pulls me to my feet and helps me over to the bed. He pushes me flat on top of the collection of sex toys and holds me down with a hand pressed against the middle of my back.
His voice rough with emotion, he says, “You own me, Sloane. Every corner of my worthless black soul. Every piece of my corrupt black heart. You own it all, and you always will. I’m your slave, not the other way around. Never forget it.”
Then he gives me such a forceful whack with the leather whip, I scream.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says through gritted teeth, and whips me again.
My moan is loud and broken. My ass burns and my pussy throbs. My nipples are tight and tingling. “More,” I beg. “Please, sir. Again.”
He says something in Gaelic, something that sounds like praise. I get another blow, and another. Pain sears along my backside, followed by heat, followed by a powerful pulse of pleasure.
I might be able to come with this and nothing else but his words.
He rolls me roughly to my back, forces my thighs apart, and shoves his face between my legs, latching on to my engorged clit with his greedy mouth and sucking.
Arching, I groan and bury my hands into his hair.
He slides a big finger inside me and fucks me with it while he eats me and I writhe helplessly against the bed.
“So fucking beautiful,” he growls, pausing to bite the tender flesh on the inside of my thigh. “My beautiful girl. Say you need me to fuck you.”
“I need you to fuck me, sir. Please, please, please.”
He goes back to licking and sucking my clit, reaching up to pinch my nipples as he does. It feels so good, I cry out his name.
He rolls me back over to my belly and whips my ass again. The slim leather straps crack over my skin with a sharp, whistling noise that sounds like the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.
Desperate for relief, I break and start to grind against the bed.
Abandoning the whip to the floor, Declan drags me up to my knees and spanks my ass and upper thighs with his bare palm. He stops only to fondle my drenched pussy and tweak my clit before spanking me again.
I’m sobbing. Begging. Crying out deliriously, trying so hard to be good and not come. Trying to please him because at this moment, it’s all that matters to me in the world.
He’s my world, and everything in it.
The bed dips with his weight. He grips my hip in one hand and guides his hard cock to my entrance with the other.
Breathing hard, he commands, “Ask your master nicely to let you come, sweet girl.”
I whisper brokenly, “Please let me come on your beautiful hard cock, sir. Master—master—please—”
He shoves inside me with a grateful groan and starts to fuck me fast and deep, pulling me back into his cock with every hard thrust of his hips. It sends shock waves of pleasure through my body, starting in my pussy and spreading everywhere, fast. I’m breathing in short gasps, my face buried in the duvet and my breasts swinging. His grunts of pleasure ring in my ears.
When he starts to spank me as he’s fucking me, I climax.
Bucking and crying out, I come so hard, he curses. He reaches around and strokes my clit, making me convulse even harder around his cock. He’s buried so deep inside me, he feels every pulse and squeeze. He groans, dropping his forehead to my spine as he continues to fuck me through my orgasm.
Then he’s coming, too, bent over me, driving into me with chest-deep grunts, propped up on his elbows with his hands tangled in my hair.
Shuddering, he gasps my name.
And it’s like a dam breaks inside me. A lifetime of built-up emotion just cracks through my ribs and blows me apart.
I burst into tears.
“Angel,” he says, panting and alarmed. “Baby, why are you crying?”
I wail, “I’m crying because I love you!”
Incredibly, the man starts to laugh.
It’s a soft chuckle at first, but it quickly builds to genuine, chest-shaking laughter. Laughter that just might get him killed.
He withdraws, rolls me to my back, and settles himself between my thighs. He pushes inside me again with a low moan. Then he pulls the blindfold off my face and kisses the tip of my nose.
Gazing deep into my watering eyes, he says, “That’s the first bloody thing you’ve said that makes any sense.”
Then he kisses me and tells me he loves me, too, and I cry even harder.
