“And that person might say to the other person,” he whispers, “pick your poison, angry girl.” His tongue flicks out and licks at my top lip, sending a chorus of vibrations humming through my body. My nipples are so hard, they’ve started to ache. God, this is so messed up. I have to have him.
“What—what might a person’s options be?” I’m barely in control anymore. My hands are sweating, desperate to take hold of him. Zeth stares me down for one long second, and then he carefully lowers his mouth, barely touching his full lips to mine.
“Pleasure,” he whispers. There’s a ball of heat twisting into a burning knot in my stomach. That heats explodes into an inferno, burning up inside me when he takes my lip in between his teeth and tugs, hard. The surprise of the sensation makes me gasp. “Or…pain,” Zeth tells me.
My head is spinning. From the need in Zeth’s eyes, I know this isn’t a game. This isn’t a theoretic conversation. I am meant to choose now, and I know which option Zeth wants me to pick. For once, there’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind. I want what he wants.
“Pain, Zeth. I want the pain.”
Zeth growls low in the back of his throat. There’s no way he’s holding himself back. Adrenalin zips through me as he crashes his body into mine, hands reaching under my thighs and hoisting me off the ground. I wrap myself around him—arms, legs. My heart. I wrap my heart around him as I cling on for dear life. He kisses me, his lips finding mine, and I don’t need to breathe anymore. His mouth on mine is all I need. His hands holding me tight is all I need. Just him. He is everything.
“Fuck, Sloane, you turn me inside out,” he murmurs, his tongue licking at me again, tasting me. I don’t know whether his statement is a good or a bad thing, but from the size of his hard-on, I’m guessing good. Hoping. He carries me into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. I don’t register a single element of my surroundings. Those brown eyes, searching mine, peering deep into me, are the only thing I see. We move from the main room to another, smaller room—a bedroom—and Zeth throws me down on the bed. Our hands frantically scrabble at each other’s clothing. This—our joint desperation, to see, feel, taste, touch each other—makes this different to any other time we’ve been together. We’re coming to this as equals, and for once I feel like Zeth is as out of control as I am.
That doesn’t last long of course. He tears himself away from me and rips down his jeans, kicking them off with a dark, seductive look on his face. The excruciatingly beautiful man in front of me, naked as the day he was born, then takes hold of my ankle, lifts my leg, and kisses me on the arch of my foot. “Wait here,” he tells me. And then he disappears out the door.
I know where he’s going. I know what he’s going to come back with. My blood is charging in my veins, lighting me up. He left me in my bra and panties, but I don’t want to remove them myself. I want him to take them from me, the same way he takes everything else: roughly. He’s not gone long enough for me to regulate my breathing. My chest is still heaving when Zeth reappears in the doorway with his black duffel bag held tightly in one hand.
“Get off the bed. Get on your hands and knees,” he commands.
I oblige him, my body prickling with anticipation. I want to suck him. To lick him and bite him and make every inch of him mine. Zeth places the bag on the edge of the bed and rifles inside, completely oblivious to how perfect he is. His body is flawless symmetry, muscles taut and knitted together, shoulders, legs, buttocks, back—every single part of him is expertly put together. As someone who’s studied human anatomy for many years, I can safely say that Zeth is the owner of the most perfect body I have ever seen.
When he turns to face me, his cock still rigid and erect, he’s holding a length of material in his hand. “Close your eyes,” he says.
It’s almost unbearable that I have to block out the sight of him, but I still behave. Once my eyes are closed, Zeth brushes the material against my cheek, down the slope of my neck. Across the swell of my cleavage. The fabric is sensuously rough, the threads catching at my skin. I start to shake when Zeth rubs it ever so gently across my lips. I open my mouth, almost begging him to do what I think he’s going to do. To feed the length of raw silk between my lips and gag me. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he ties it around my eyes, tight enough that I can’t see a thing. I sense him moving away from me.
When he comes back, he does exactly as I hoped he would. He removes my underwear, and he is none-too-gentle. He takes hold of my bra straps first, and he slides something cold and hard against my skin. Something sharp. The straps ping loose as he cuts them one at a time. My panties are next. He grabs the material at my left hip and slices it, and then my right, ripping the material from my body.