Page 7 of Never Bound

He paused for a moment, then said seriously, “I’d never let that happen.”

Well, if anything was insane, that was. But for now, I was willing to go with just about anything to make sure he started tonguing my neck again. I almost cried out from the sensation it created, fire and ice all at once as he growled into a kiss, his tongue forcing its way past my lips and inside my mouth, tasting of the pralines we’d shared earlier and something more, something like clear autumn skies and green Luxembourgish meadows, like we had all the time in the world. I wrapped my legs around him and moaned into his mouth, feeling him grind against me, his erection throbbing through his jeans.

He wanted to go inside me.And for one single, solitary, unhinged second, I considered letting him. It all surged through me, greed and lust and some other base emotion I couldn’t even name, but I didn’t care because he was here now. Finally, this beautiful man I wasn’t supposed to be touching was in my bed and—

“We can’t,” I said.Fuck me.“We really can’t.”

“Tu as raison.”

You are correct.If we were at the desk, I would have loved to hear that from him. In bed, I just wanted to explode.

Still, he didn’t stop, thankGod. Instead, my beautiful genius seemed to get, of course, an idea. He ground his hips against mine, his hand finding my clit and manipulating it through my panties as he bit my earlobe gently. He pulled away and reached for the hem of my shirt, lifting it slowly, inch by inch, over my head, his cool lips trailing down my neck and across my collarbone. I arched into him involuntarily but kept my hands busy, yanking at his shirt, too eager to see those abs again after all those days I’d had to go without. And all of a sudden it was there, thatbody,so lovely and maimed, a priceless canvas slashed, filling my whole rarefied, limited world, as he traced me through my panties, outlining my folds so gently I wanted to scream. Instead, I only dug my hands deeper into his scarred shoulders.

He sank down between my legs and licked me through my black silk panties, slowly teasing out the wetness with his tongue until I felt like I was floating apart. My hips bucked off the bed and I gasped loudly, feeling the head of his cock as he ground it against my entrance for just a moment through the fabric before he pulled back. And the idea of that—ofhim,the shape and size, the weight of him, and how close I was to feeling it all, so close and so far—was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

“Tu veux que je te fasse plaisir?”

I nodded frantically, unable to speak, and I wondered what Madame Pelletier from senior year French would be more horrified to know: what he was saying, or that my mind had gone too blank to translate it. Though I couldn’t answer through the haze of pleasure, I somehow managed to nod again. Then he was tearing my panties off me, tossing them aside along with theone article of clothing at a timerule. He innocently tongued his fingers and then two of them were inside me, stretching me open as his thumb pressed against my clit. And then there was his tongue, lashing against me, driving me up the wall, making me arch off the bed once again.

“Fuck,” I moaned, my voice strained and needy. “Please.”

He pulled his fingers out and rolled onto his back, his golden hair spilling over the pillow, and grabbed my hips again. I straddled him before he could change his mind and he hitched me up and positioned me over his face while he kept moving his fingers in me, in and out, matching the rhythm with his tongue on my clit. It felt incredible, gentle and rough and innocent and dangerous at the same time, a bundle of infinite contradictions, just like him. I groaned again, my knees thrashing from side to side on the pillow. He sucked and inhaled the nub as he pushed them deeper inside me, probing, tunneling, causing a deluge of pleasure so intense it burned through every nerve ending I had. He thrust his fingers in and out of me slowly at first but then faster, harder, until I was clawing at the sheets in desperation, silently cursing and begging and screaming, though no sound left my mouth at all—I was getting good at that—until my body tensed and I shuddered, rocked to my core in a thousand different ways. I clutched his shoulders tighter as my climax shattered me a billion more. And no, I couldn’t say his name, but all of a sudden, a name was there just the same, arriving in a silent, unspoken litany in my head and on my lips.

I’d never tell him.

When it was over, I collapsed on top of him, burying my face in the crook of his neck, breathless, spent, complete.

And utterly terrified at the gift I held in my arms.

Down the hallway, a million miles away, the landline in Daddy’s office rang. Soft, insistent, and cut off in an instant when he presumably answered.

“We’re gonna die, you know,” I said, feeling the shoulders I rested on tremble slightly. His eyes flicked up at the ceiling, for a second, then back. He brushed a damp curl from where it clung to my lips. “It was worth it to see you like that,” he murmured.

I think for him it really was.

“Oh God,” I breathed suddenly, arching into his touch because he wasstillworking magic—or science, or religion, or all three—between my legs, even as I shook with the force of all that release. “Again?”

He glanced up at the clock and then back at me like I was crazy. “Of course. We’ve still got five minutes before the hour is up.”

I smiled serenely and collapsed on my back on the mattress.

If anybody knew how to make the most of what he’d been given, it was him.

The next day, I caught him curiously examining my bookshelf—only with his eyes. I didn’t think he’d ever actually touched anything I hadn’t given him permission to touch. And even though it might have started out as some arbitrary rule about how a slave should behave, it wasn’t anymore. Besides, everything Ihadgiven him permission to touch, he’d ravaged.

Anyway, we started exploring. Though way above average for a foreigner, his understanding of Shakespearean English was not as thorough as mine, though it didn’t prevent him from trying to enthrall and horrify me with his dramatic interpretations ofTitus Andronicusbaking Tamora’s sons into a pie. But beyond that, he seemed curious about the book of Plautine and Terentian comedies I’d read in my classics course. After he promised me he had a good hiding spot for it, I gave him that to read during his hours off next Sunday, as long as he agreed to read aloud my favorite verses fromLes Miserables, in the original French, of course. As he did so, I was so absorbed in how beautiful the words sounded coming out of his mouth that I almost forgot to think about what they meant. And if he did—well, he kept those thoughts to himself.

Nous vivions cachés, contents, porte close

Dévorant l’amour, bon fruit défendu;

Ma bouche n’avait pas dit une chose

Que déjà ton coeur avait répondu.1

HIM

The day before the exam, Louisa sat in her usual swivel chair, gazing out the window at the distant mountains she’d seen all her life, her body present, but her mind clearly miles away.

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