Page 5 of Never Bound

A squeal was the only answer I had time to give.

3

HER

Inspiredbythat,webriefly tried migrating the sessions from the desk to the bed, until we both fell asleep next to each other a couple of times. As blissful as that had been, it was also terrifying to wake up disoriented and unsure of how much time had passed, and from then on, he insisted we stay upright until the session was finished.

And then, of course, we were faced with the daunting problem of just how much sex we could get away with having without somebody catching on to the fact that we were having it at all. The answer proved to be: not much. And not nearly enough.

Just to be safe, we made a rule: one item of clothing could be shed per person per day, not more. In case of emergency,thatcould still be explained away—or so we told ourselves. Of course we also had to master the fine art of muffling every noise with my pink faux-fur blanket and cheetah pillows. Those parts fairly hummed with electricity under his practiced touch, and I got better at touching him. He learned to close his eyes and let me not only gently kiss the blister on his hand but even ever so gently curl my fingers up his back and brush them over the healing wounds, even as he would still joke about everything weweren’tdoing yet. And so, in time,Igot to see his abs up close. Andhegot to see the expression on my face when I finally saw those sublime six-pack abs tapering to a V and disappearing downward in a tantalizing trail of baby-fine golden hair, the abs I’d so far only glimpsed in one stark black-and-white photo on a site displaying them like a valuable commodity—which they were, of course, but not likethat.

But they weren’t just evidence of what nature had given him but what people had taken away. There were switch and lash marks that curled away over his shoulders and back, puckered, snakelike trails of red and white and purple, in various lengths and stages of healing. And there were burns. From cattle prods. Thank you very much, Slavery Studies 101—and let’s face it, cattle was all he was to those who had done it. Hell, these days, there were probably animal rights people around to ensure cattle got treatedbetter.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice barely a breath against his chest as I reached his waistband. He inhaled sharply as my lips grazed the scar, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “The whip,” he said, his voice low and even. “I was seven. First time. Before that, it was always a cane, which doesn’t usually break the skin. So it was my coming of age, in other words.” He answered my next question before it could leave my lips. “I wish I could say it was for some super-cool act of rebellion, but it wasn’t. I was dusting and accidentally broke this ugly china goose they had. And then panicked and tried to sweep it under the rug, literally.”

My heart clenched. It was impossible to imagine, and I knew he didn’t expect me to try. My fingers ghosted over the raised line. “I’m so—”

“Shhh.” He was smiling a little. “They did it,” he said, taking my fingers away and meeting my gaze. “And they aren’t you, yeah?”

Sure, it was long ago, and it was stupid.

But that didn’t make it okay.

Shaking, unsure where to begin, I just started, kissing a trail down his torso, my tongue hot against the sensitive skin, laving the places that lay slack and soft against his stomach, teeth gently nipping at the ones that stood erect. He shivered in response, breath hitching, and he closed his eyes. But it flickered deeply in the amber-gold—the old pain, the old humiliation. What I wouldn’t give to have been there. What I wouldn’t—

“Does it still—” I began.

“Shh. It’s okay now.” He quelled my lips with his fingers, then intertwined them with mine, guiding me down, nails scraping gently across my palm, guiding it past his waistband, trembling as they traced the scars together, to a place where there was no pain.

It was there we usually stopped.

Of course I knew parts of him were twitching to go even further, to enter and fill and infuse me with him—hell, Iknewthey were. I felt them. They came alive under my grip each and every time, as eager and excited and savage and wild as a boy who’d never even thought he’d be here, in his castoff clothes and jagged scars and metal chain, lying on a lacy, silky pink princess bed in a room reeking of camellia and pomegranate, with a girl who was actuallyaskinghim whathewanted, instead of trying toorderhim to do whatshewanted. And then I’d be left hot and heartbroken and hamstrung to have tostopfeeling them, to force him to roll over again and breathe a little and assure me he was fine, even though neither one of us believed for a second that he actually was.

But with three minutes left on the clock, it was just too risky to go on. Yes, we were young and horny and stupid, and we were self-aware enough to joke aboutthat, too. But also, we were scared. Though we tried not to remind each other of it too much—tried to pretend that what we were doing was normal—the prospect of what could happen if the door to my bedroom was ever opened at the wrong time haunted us, and the ever-present ticking reminded us that our time was never our own. So among the many unspoken promises we shared, one wassomeday soon.

But talking—that was safe. Well,safer.

Luckily, we were both good talkers—and since we couldn’t leave the room, at least not if we wanted to behave normally, we left mentally, instead. He took me to the fairy-tale mists of the Black Forest, Heidelberg Castle, and the Philosopher’s Walk. I tookhimto massive gleaming yachts moored on the ancient crystal-blue coral reefs of Eleuthera. And dark matter and string theory gave way to history, politics, religion, art, and music. My slave boy confessed to loving—of all things—neo-impressionism and French jazz.

“I don’t get it,” I said after he clicked off one of the selections he’d chosen to play for me.

“It’s like … it’s like they’re inventing their own formula, their own set of rules, and it’s up to the rest of the world to figure them out,” he said. “You know?”

“Oh,” I said teasingly. “You mean like chemistry. Why does it always have to come down to—”

“Actually, I was thinking more like us.”

I could have melted. I cuddled back into his arms as he pressed play again on the laptop set up in front of us on the bed, this time, turning up some woman with a husky voice and a French accent, singing about lovers parting on a train platform. But honestly, it could have been about anything. I just loved thatheloved something that much.

I probably opened and reopened that desk drawer about fifty times before finally getting up the nerve to offer him the pralines, ever mindful of what he’d said that night at the party.I’m not your pet to feed.That wasn’t what I was doing. I felt it. Iknewit. And yet as I stood by the bed and he stared speechlessly down at the package and its Luxembourgish printing, I obsessively scrutinized every twitch of his facial muscles, ready to snatch it back and drop it into the wastebasket if need be.

He glanced up. “Every—”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, regretting everything. “I shouldn’t have. I know you’re not—”

He laughed. Oh, thank God. “Let mefinish.Fucking hell, Lou. All I was going to say is, every other time I’ve had these, I had to do something. Either steal them or con them.”

I felt a blush creep up my neck but clung onto the package like a votive. “Well. I’m just offering.”

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