If It Flies (Market Garden, #3)(36)

Spencer closed his eyes and took a deep breath, centring himself. “Safeword is still ‘Bonaparte’?”

Gentle fingers ran over his hair. “Still ‘Bonaparte.’”

The safety net was still there. Of course it was. Nick would never put Spencer up on a wire without one. In spite of the money that had been exchanged—the way the business transaction should’ve kept this superficial and fake—Spencer had always trusted Nick. If the pain got too intense, it was in Spencer’s power to stop it. If there was anything left he was afraid of, deep down, more so than getting in over his head with the pain, it was Nick getting scared again and calling it off.

Bonaparte. Nick’s voice echoed in his ears.

If the two of them could get through a scene like this without that word being spoken again, then maybe . . .

maybe this ran deeper than sex and cash, deep enough to go all the way.

“Well?” Nick urged him, his tone teetering between impatient and the slightest bit uncertain. “Single-tail? Or not?”“Yes.” Spencer swallowed. He turned his head towards the sound of Nick’s voice. “Yes, I want to.”

The breath Nick released was heavy and long, shuddering a little, like the damning evidence of a shiver he’d tried to keep out of sight. “Stand up and strip.”

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This time, it was Spencer who shivered, and he didn’t even try to hide it. He stood and started on the buttons of his shirt.

Anticipation made his mouth water as much as apprehension made his hands shake. He didn’t care if Nick noticed. Nick got a charge out of his nerves, a thrill from putting him off-balance, so Spencer didn’t hold any of it back.

As Spencer undressed, Nick unzipped the bag he’d brought with him. Spencer was used to the sounds of a search within that bag: clinking, rustling, clattering. As he set his neatly folded clothes on top of the dresser, he glanced at Nick, and it was at just that moment Nick found what he was looking for. He withdrew it, stood, and looked at Spencer.

Spencer couldn’t decide what turned him on—and freaked him the f*ck out—more: the long, black whip coiled in Nick’s hand, or the sadistic, predatory grin that curled those thin lips and crinkled the corners of his narrow green eyes. Fuck.

With the whip, Nick gestured at the floor in front of the footboard. “On your knees.”

Spencer hesitated.

“Now. ” The word came out as sharply as a whip crack, and Spencer damn sure obeyed.

Naked. In front of the footboard. On his knees.

Waiting.

Ready.

He glanced behind himself from the corner of his eyes, and how Nick held the whip struck him. It seemed oddly fluid, graceful, hip-high, arm relaxed and shoulders down.

Nothing vicious about it, which seemed incongruous with the whole concept of whipping a man. Whipping him.

Nick swung it twice into empty air, and it cracked on the second one, which made Spencer almost safeword. But hell, 120

fear was always worse than the pain, wasn’t it? He’d learned that much.

The whip touched his back. Spencer understood why people said “licks”—it was a long touch, almost languid, drawing a sharp line across his back. Not horrible. No different from, say, a flexible cane. Maybe more pleasant.

The second hit was much the same, just from the other side as Nick mirrored the motion and the strike. Spencer shuddered, but this was all right. The worst about this was what he imagined people might be thinking if they knew— Crack.

Spencer jumped, but managed to stay on his knees when the whip hit him hard high up on the arse. The pain was actually bad. Really bad. An explosion of pain like getting zapped by a Taser, minus the drooling and cramps.

“Kneel up, hands on the footboard.”

That would bare his arse, his thighs, even the backs of his knees to the whip.

Spencer nevertheless obeyed when the whip cracked in the air, right next to his ear, it felt like. Damn, but Nick’s precision did impress him, though it freaked him out. What if Nick missed?

The tail bit him on the arse, hard, like an indignant, tangible response of Miss? I beg your f*cking pardon? A second later, as if for emphasis, it hit the exact same spot on the opposite side.

Then his shoulders. Left one, then right. Intense beads of pain, red hot spots and stripes, formed everywhere the tail met, everywhere Nick decided to form them.

The stars are coming out. Spencer closed his eyes as his mind started sliding into that dark delirium, where the only 121

light seemed to come from the glowing red constellations that Nick brought to life one bright snap at a time.

His only connections to anything besides Nick, the whip, and the pain were the carpet beneath his knees and the cool footboard he occasionally arched into, brushing against it and drawing himself back to earth for a second or two at a time.

Those returns were short-lived. All of them.

Another strike—shoulder, arse, thigh, he never could predict where or when or how hard—would draw him right back into the dark.

Nick wasn’t holding back. Either Spencer’s sense of time had slipped, or there were fewer seconds between hits now.

Enough time for the initial bite and the deeper pain that followed each time, but the next strike always came quickly.

Sometimes two or three in rapid succession, so he couldn’t grab onto a single one of those fiery focal points.

His grasp on the footboard weakened. Muscles simply didn’t know what to do anymore. Sweaty palms didn’t help.