Mr. Beautiful (Up in the Air #4)(36)

With a savage curse, I checked her other hand.  It was the same.

I couldn't even look at her face as I darted away, rushing to grab the first aid kit.

I didn't speak as I tended her wounds, my jaw clenched hard to keep any condemning words from lashing out of me.

Finally, when I was finished, and felt I'd adequately calmed myself, I looked up at her and asked, "Did you do that deliberately?"

She just stared at me for the longest time, her face enigmatic.

Licking her lips, she nodded.

It made me feel desperate and a touch enraged.

Had I made her like this?  She'd had a clear leaning when she met me, yes, but I was worried that this was new territory, where she needed the pain with the pleasure.  Required it.

Had this always been the case, or was I just now seeing it?

It had always been there, to some degree, I realized, but was it getting worse?

I took a few deep, steadying breaths, to manage my anger.  It was a sharp anger that came from a gripping fear.

I had to be good for her, needed to be, like nothing I'd ever needed before.

But if ever there was evidence to the contrary, this was it.

My voice, when I spoke, was hard and cold with an authority that I needed her to respond to accordingly.  "You do not hurt yourself, do you understand me?  And there are things that we never do."  My tone went from cold to harsh.  "We do not draw blood.  We do not puncture.  Those are not healthy outlets for what we feel or need.  Do you understand?"

She nodded, her breath catching.  "It was just . . . it's been too long.  I've become addicted to this feeling.  I was trying to draw it out, and I went too far.  I should have done what you were doing, weeks ago, and just started getting myself off in the shower."

I didn't know what to make of that.  She always knew how to throw me.

What she couldn't understand was that it made me panicky to think I'd disappoint her in this.  She was a natural, a true purist to the lifestyle, and it terrified me.

I knew she enjoyed the sensation of pain far more than I could ever bear to hurt her.  She didn't use her safe word, so I had to be the one to judge the limit for both of us.

I was horrified by that.

And more turned on by it than any other thing I'd experienced in my life.

I set my jaw.  "Don't do anything like that again.  Understand?"

She nodded.

"Say it out loud."

"I won't hurt myself again.  I'll show more restraint."

I kept staring at her, my eyes silently chastising her.

"I swear it, Mr. Cavendish."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MY ACUTE ITCH

PAST

JAMES

I took in the room, scratching at the scars on my wrists absently.  They weren't fresh scars, had been healed over for years now, but they still bothered me.

I made myself stop, as I always did, lest I make the embarrassing marks even more noticeable.

I moved over to a particularly interesting demonstration, one of several placed throughout the room.

A man had a woman bound to a thick wooden post.  He was thrashing her enthusiastically.

It made my blood pump hard through my veins.  I'd come to the right place, I had no doubt.

I'd been fixated on BDSM for quite a while, and now that I was eighteen, I was allowed into some of the more hardcore clubs.

I hadn't done much.  Some spanking, a lot of dirty kinky talk, and a completely excessive amount of bondage.  Even the most vanilla of vanilla girls could usually be talked into letting me tie them up.

I'd done all of the usual kinky stuff.

But I didn't want the usual.  I wanted the exceptional, a much heavier dose of the thing that I'd come to obsess about—to crave.  I needed more.

It was the most acute sort of itch, the kind that made that first scratch feel so good, like nothing else, so good that once you started scratching, you scratched it raw, consequences be damned.

I was a man of extremes, and I scratched it bloody.

Inside of me was an anger, a rage, an inferno of it, one that didn't need fuel.  It never had, that I could remember.  It seemed to feed on itself.

It would never go away, but every ounce of control I exerted and maintained made it more bearable.  So much of this, of all of the things I did with my body, was about control.

There was a hot young thing standing next to me, watching the couple on stage.  It took me about half a second to notice her, and when I did, I turned with a smile, sizing her up.

She wore an interesting series of leather straps, nipple clamps, and thigh high boots.

I wasn't completely ignorant about this lifestyle.  I knew about subs and Doms, and I knew that this hot young thing was the former, and I was the latter.

It all seemed pretty simple to me.

"I'm James," I told her, leaning close.

She started, gave me wide eyes, and leaned right back, bringing our faces close.  "I'm Rose.  Do you have a sponsor?"

"Excuse me?"

"Someone to introduce us."

I shook my head, leaning closer.  "I don't.  It's a pleasure to meet you, Rose," I lowered my voice into a conspiratorial whisper, "See what I did there?  We can introduce ourselves."