Page 49

Some of them he used. Others, he didn’t. But they were there. New toys every night. A crop, a flogger, different gags, a paddle. He’d not hit her with anything. Not the paddle, the crop, or the flogger. Though she’d swear he touched her with them, ran them over her body, or rested them against her sensitized skin. She wasn’t certain she wanted him to hit her at all, that she’d find it pleasurable, but her pulse always raced when he set them out with slow deliberation, naming them and explaining their function. The pulse at her throat and the one in her clit.

And here she was again. Waking up in Alain’s bed after a night of playing Alain’s games. Last night had been another intense, new-to-her experience. Her restrained, spreadeagled and blindfolded, her hands clutching the bedpost above her head, Alain on his knees between her thighs, a set of nipple clamps on the bedside table. She hadn’t been able to see them, but he’d made sure she’d known they were there both before and after he’d put the blindfold on her. As he’d alternated between using the vibrating wand and his mouth on her to devastating effect.

Alain mumbled something in his sleep, tightening his arms around her. His teeth grazed the crook of her neck and she shivered. She never knew what to expect with him. What new toy he might produce, or position he’d command her to take, or maneuver her into. Tonight, he might switch it up and put her on her knees between his thighs. The thought excited her and terrified her. She’d never done that before. Or he might use the flogger.

She frowned at the window, the morning sun filtering through the gauzy curtain. It was all games. Erotic and intense, but games. He always blindfolded her, always restrained her. She longed to touch him. To see the desire in his eyes, like she had in Paris. The promise of the first time he’d kissed her in his apartment, now lost in a haze of commands, in dominance and submission.

There was no denying Alain had brought her to phenomenal sexual release more times than she cared to count, but that kiss, when he hadn’t known who she was, or why she was really there, kept popping up in her mind. The intimacy of it. The way he’d crowded her against the kitchen counter, the whole muscular length of him pressed in tight. His unusual eyes holding her captive. His lips hovering an inch from hers.

It’d been a few heady moments of anticipation before his mouth had descended. At first soft, then deeper, the slide of his tongue along the seam of her lips, coaxing them open. His hands caressing her body, cupping her breasts. Her palms flat against his chest. The closeness of it, two people entwined, if only for a brief moment. He’d never kissed her like that again.

Because this is what Alain did when he brought women to his playroom? They might not be in his apartment in Paris, but that’s where they were, as sure as God made little green apples. Was she one more woman in a long line of women?

Alain’s hand slid across her stomach, heading lower. A morning ritual. An orgasm before breakfast. And her body was ready for him, like it was every morning, but this time she stayed his hand, entwining her fingers in his to take the sting out of her gesture.

“Non?” His deep voice rumbled against her neck, in between nips and licks across her skin.

“Alain, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything, chérie.” His warm breath tickled her ear.

“Do you ever have…” She worried at her bottom lip. “Do you ever have normal sex?”

He went as still and as focused as he’d been when he’d spelled the gate open the first night they’d arrived. “You mean like missionary position?”

“I suppose.” Two people being intimate. “Sex with kissing and touching and embracing. Both of us. Without any toys or blindfolds.”

She didn’t belong in his world. She’d known it from the moment she’d stepped into the Cluny Museum. More so when she’d taken her first step into his playroom. A room many a more experienced woman had been in before her. Ones who were capable of not letting their hearts confuse desire with… Was it wise to examine what she was feeling?

“I used to,” he said.

The warmth that seeped into her heart when his smiles brought out his dimples.

“But I haven’t for a long time now.”

The way she relaxed into him whenever he held her close, like he was her safe harbor in the storm.

“Why not?” Because no one had meant enough to him that he’d want more than games? More than sex? Her throat tightened. She knew little of the BDSM scene, but she knew shifters. They didn’t do relationships. They did sex or mates. Polar opposites, with no option of anything in between.

Alain sighed and released her, rolling away. Keeping the sheet clutched to her chest like a shield, she turned over to face him. He was on his back, his arm behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, a muscle ticking in his jaw. What was she asking of him? What was she wanting from him?

She reached out and twirled her fingers in his chest hair.

He grabbed her hand, holding her fingers still. “I could have been the alpha, you know. That’s not arrogance talking. It’s the truth. Both Maxime and I are strong enough to be the alpha of this pack.” There was a heaviness to his sigh. “But no pack has two alphas. As a wolf and a witch, I was useful in another capacity. But that didn’t diminish the urge to dominate, to be in command. Out of necessity, I sought another outlet for that part of me, to tame it.”

Nathalie had hinted at this. “The bondage stuff.”

He nodded, running his thumb across the back of her hand. “I know this is all new to you. That it’s not something you would’ve explored on your own.”

Her cheeks heated, and she dropped her gaze, tugging at the sheet, pulling it higher.

“Believe me when I tell you, I’m tempering myself. For you.”

She looked up, startled. Tempering?

“Hey.” He caught her about her waist and pulled her up so she was sprawled on top of him, straddling him, the sheet tucked between them. “I would never do anything you didn’t want me to. I promise.” He rolled his hips, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “And I can do missionary on occasion.” His expression turned serious. “But my kink has been a part of me for a long time, and it’s not something I could ever give up. Not entirely.”

Oh. Not entirely? What did that mean?