Every Part of You: Denies Me (#4) Page 5

  Simone opened her eyes. “Aidan…”

  “No.” He shook his head and leaned to breathe into her ear. “You don’t need this. And I don’t need it. You’ll stay where I put you, won’t you? Because I said so.”

  “Yes.”

  A mingled expression of pride and desire crossed his features. “You were always so fucking good at that. Weren’t you?”

  Simone had no answer for that, and besides, he hadn’t asked the question in order to get a reply. Aidan’s look of desire became harder. More intense. His eyes narrowed as he stepped back to take in the sight of her. His cock was hard, jutting against the front of his jeans. She wanted to pull open the button and zipper and set him free, but she didn’t move.

  “I’m not wearing a belt,” he said in an undertone, almost musing.

  At the thought of it, the supple leather of his belt coming down on her skin, Simone’s nipples tightened. He’d used his belt on her a few times. The leather had left welts, and a few times, when she’d urged him to keep going, bruises. But the belt was made for another purpose, unlike the thin, braided leather crop that existed solely for creating pain.

  Simone preferred the crop.

  She didn’t ask him for it, but when Aidan went to the cabinet in the corner of his living room, Simone let out a long, slow sigh. She closed her eyes again, jumping slightly at the click of the cabinet doors closing.

  “We’ll start with three,” Aidan said quietly.

  She wanted more than that. Three hundred might not be enough. But without protest, Simone merely braced herself, offering Aidan her body.

  The whistle of the crop through the air tensed every single muscle—she couldn’t help it. No matter how much she wanted this, how often she’d allowed it, there was still always that first few seconds before the first blow when her mind overruled everything else and forced her body to react in anticipation of the agony to come.

  The anticipation of the suffering is always worse than the suffering itself.

  “Please,” she breathed again, even though she knew that at this point, Aidan’s hesitation had nothing to do with reluctance and everything to do with drawing out the suspense.

  The first line of fire lit across her back high up, near the shoulder blades. He hadn’t demanded that she count, or give the dreaded “Sir,” after each one, and she realized that Aidan was compromising, too. This thought warmed her inside almost as much as that first, stinging sweetness.

  The pain bloomed. Hot, then almost icy as her body reacted to the pain. She breathed with it. In, out. She opened herself to it. Embraced it.

  The next came a few seconds later, perfectly aligned below the first. Then finally, the third, and Aidan gave her time to catch her breath.

  “More?”

  “More,” Simone replied.

  She lost herself in every stroke of agony. Sobbing with it, she bent her head and gave in to it. And Aidan went on and on. Every so often he’d slide his fingers between her legs from behind, dipping into her heat. Once he pushed inside her, curling upward, and Simone cried out, hoarsely, her hips bucking. Another time he tweaked her clit roughly between his thumb and forefinger, bringing her to the edge and then easing off before she could come.

  He beat her steadily and finger fucked her with equal relentlessness, until the lines between pain and pleasure blurred and there was nothing but constant sensation. Every time she eased close to the edge, either of her endurance to the agony or the ecstasy, Aidan expertly eased off until Simone began to beg.

  She heard her own voice, rising in supplication. A plea. And there was no shame in this, not the way it had been with Elliott, or at least she refused to feel it. Later, she might cringe and blush at the memory of how she pleaded with Aidan to finish her off, to let her come or to bring blood. But she didn’t think so. This was different.

  “You are so fucking beautiful,” he murmured into her ear as his fingers fucked deep into her.

  Her cunt was so wet there was no resistance. When he circled her clit, tugging it suddenly, Simone cried out, a harsh and shuddering burst of syllables that tried to sound like his name and only became a long, low sound of need.

  “Do you want my cock?”

  Simone tried to say yes, but that single word would not force itself from her lips. Aidan’s crop came down again on her back. Then his fingers inside her, moving. Thumb pressing her clit.

  He bit her neck before saying, “Simone. Do you want me to let you come?”

  That was easier to answer, with a single, sobbing noise of assent. Aidan’s hands moved over her. His mouth found hers, tongue stabbing into her. Then, softer. Stroking in time to the motion of his fingers on her needy, greedy cunt.

  At last, she went up, up, and over. Stars in a night sky. Flames. Simone exploded into pleasure.

  The pain had been better.

  “You were incredible. My god, Simone. You were amazing,” Aidan whispered in the dark. The bed shifted under his weight as he settled beside her. There was only the soft sound of him breathing when she didn’t reply. And then, with a hesitancy she’d never heard from him, Aidan said, “It wasn’t too much, was it? I didn’t hurt you too much?”

  There it was. The reason she’d left him in the first place. He’d never been able to hurt her too much.

  She had, however, been laid low by agony. Her back hurt from the attentions of Aidan’s riding crop, but that pain would fade. There was a deeper pain inside her, the aching grind of need and desire and love, and the searing ice of Elliott’s rejection. That had shredded her heart worse than any belt or crop had ever cut her skin.

  In the soft comfort of Aidan’s bed while he soothed the wounds she’d demanded he provide, Simone buried her face in a pillow that smelled faintly of another woman’s perfume and did not weep.

  About the Author

  MEGAN HART is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of many romance and erotica novels, including Switch, Tempted, Deeper, and Dirty. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and children.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  EVERY PART OF YOU: DENIES ME. Copyright © 2014 by Megan Hart. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover photograph © Juhász Péter/Getty Images

  Cover design by Olga Grlic

  e-ISBN 9781250039361

  First Edition: March 2014