But damn it, that was a high peak to get over.
And like last time, Dorian could feel my reluctance. He broke our embrace, almost jerking away from me. Before he turned his face from mine, I saw emotions I’d never seen before. Frustration. Unhappiness.
“Dorian…” I said. “Dorian…I’m so sorry…”
He rubbed his face with both hands and exhaled. His voice was flat when he spoke. “It’s late, Eugenie. Too late for you to leave.” He stood up and stretched, and when he finally turned around, he’d once more cleared his face of its dark expression. His cheerful countenance was also missing; he simply looked tired. “I’ll take the sofa in the parlor; you stay on the bed.”
“No, I-”
He gestured me off as he walked into the other room without a backward glance, saying only, “Take it. It’ll be the best night of sleep you’ve ever had.”
Elaborate French doors connected the two rooms. He closed them, leaving me to my own misery.
I sat on his massive bed, attempting to sort out a tangle of warring emotions. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I make this work? I’d slept with guys I liked a lot less than Dorian. Why couldn’t I cross this last line? Why keep fighting it?
I blew out all the candles and torches in the room before taking off my jeans and sliding under the covers. Dorian was right. This had to be the most comfortable bed I’d ever been in. Unfortunately, there was no way I could sleep. I kept thinking about my magical elation, alleged desire, and subsequent breakdown. My body wanted him. My mind did too. Only my instincts still fought it.
The world’s most comfortable bed must have felt insulted over all the tossing and turning that followed. At least its size gave me all the fidgeting room I could want. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness very quickly, and I could discern the shapes of furniture and corners in the partial moonlight. Outside the giant window, stars glittered-thousands more than I’d seen the night with the astronomers. We’d lost the stars in the human world, despite our success in reaching them. Humans and gentry were almost like two sides of a coin, each supplying what the other lacked.
The answer to my problems with Dorian was a long time in coming, but come it did. It was still pitch black when I finally got up and padded into the adjoining room. The doors opened silently, and I paused upon reaching him. He couldn’t quite fit on the sofa, so his legs dangled off the end. He still wore the same clothes and had pulled a flimsy throw blanket over his body. He faced the direction I stood, eyes closed. One hand draped above him, and his hair spilled onto his cheek, its fiery color indiscernible in the poor lighting.
He was a king, with thousands of people who answered to him, yet he lay crammed onto this couch because of me. I had hurt someone I didn’t think could be hurt. I stood there thinking about this in the still, dark room before finally kneeling down beside him.
I tentatively reached out a hand, but his eyes opened before I made contact. “What’s the matter?” he asked. He sounded alert, concerned.
I couldn’t talk right away. Silence pooled as thick as the blackness around us. He neither spoke nor moved as I deliberated; he simply watched and waited.
“I want you to tie me up.”
That was the great thing about Dorian. Most people would have hesitated or asked questions. Not him. He followed me out to the other room and promptly retrieved the same sashes he’d used earlier in the chair.
I settled on the bed, unsure where to position my body, but he gently adjusted me. He started to extend my arms up over my head but then stopped. Moving his hands down to my stomach, he caught the edges of my shirt and gave me a questioning look. I nodded, and he carefully pulled it off and over my head. Returning to my arms, he raised them above me toward the headboard and tied my wrists together, still incapable of rushing his careful bindings. With the next sash, he bound my wrists to the intricate scalloping of the headboard and then used another to reinforce the binding. When he finished, my arms lay somewhat relaxed on the pillows above me, but my hands and wrists were tightly secured. Weirdly, something inside of me eased upon realizing I was trapped.
The length of the tying process surprised me. I would have thought he would want to expedite things, but his patience seemed undaunted. He settled back on his knees and studied me, just as he always did after completing one of his tie-ups. Near darkness or no, I felt exposed in just my underwear and wondered if it was my naked skin or the silk sashes that so captivated him. Probably the combination of both.
He slid off the bed and stood up so he could take his own clothes off. As they fell to the ground, more and more of his body was revealed. The moonlight caught his white skin, and it practically gleamed. He reminded me of some ancient Grecian or Roman statue, all marble and smooth lines.
He crawled back onto the bed, looking down on me, and my heart started racing again. Shadows bathed him now that he was away from the window’s full light, and he seemed larger and more powerful compared to me. I had no means of getting out of this unless I wanted to attempt some crazy kicking maneuvers.
The time and tension stretched out between us. It made me anxious yet stimulated as well. Why the delay? Why wouldn’t he touch me? Why did he just keep looking at me like that?
Finally, he knelt by my feet and kissed my toes. Such a small touch, but it made my body shudder after all that waiting. He alternated between both feet, his lips caressing toes and ankles before steadily moving up my legs. Kiyo had done a similar physical examination during our first night together. I wondered if there was some sort of psychological or personality analysis you could make based on whether a guy started at the top or the bottom.
Up, up. Dorian’s mouth moved on. My pelvic muscles tightened in anticipation, and I felt wetness growing between my thighs. But then, he simply skipped past my underwear, continuing with my stomach. He ran his hands along the smooth skin, still taking his time, cautious around the healing fachan cut. When he finished there, he moved to my neck, bypassing my breasts. My neck was pretty sensitive too, and his mouth’s intensity had increased. The sensation forced my breathing into anxious, ragged gasps, but a frustrated complaint slipped out nonetheless.
“Why are you skipping all the good parts?”
He paused, just barely lifting his lips from my skin. “Do you want me to go back?”
I bit my lip. He was trying to make me dictate the terms here, but that wasn’t what I wanted. For once, I didn’t want the power here. That was why I’d asked to be tied up. I wanted the choice taken away from me. I stayed quiet.
He returned to my neck, moving his mouth along my collarbone and shoulder, then up to my cheek and ears. Our lips soon came together again, and I tried to channel my eagerness and passion into that kiss, as I had done earlier. But now he kept himself just out of reach, just enough to tease but not fulfill. I shifted my body upward, touching as much of his as I could. That, too, he held slightly away. It was frustrating, and in my need, I forgot about who was supposed to be in control.
“Okay-go back.”
He complied as efficiently and quickly as he had to my initial bondage request. His hands and their delicate fingers cradled my breasts, holding them in place for his mouth. I closed my eyes and tilted my neck back, lost in those burning twirls of his tongue as he woke the nerves in my flesh and delicately sucked the nipples. When he finally broke away, I made a soft sound of protest until I realized where he went next.
Looping his fingers through the sides of my panties, he pulled them down, stopping abruptly when they reached midthigh. For a moment, I thought it was more of his teasing until I suddenly grasped the situation.
“It’s, um, called a Brazilian wax,” I explained, voice still breathy.