I feel him behind me. He takes my hair, pulls it into a ponytail behind me, and starts to braid it.
"While I like your pigtails, Anastasia, I am too impatient to be at you right now. So one will have to do." His voice is low, soft.
His deft fingers skim my back occasionally as they work down my hair, and each casual touch is like a sweet, electric shock against my skin. He fastens the end with a hair tie, then gently tugs the braid so that I"m forced to step back flush against him. He pulls again to the side so that I angle my head, giving him easier access to my neck. Leaning down, he nuzzles my neck. Tracing his teeth and tongue from the base of my ear to my shoulder.
He hums softly as he does, and the sound resonates through me. Right down... right down there, inside me. Unbidden, I groan quietly.
"Hush now," he breathes against my skin. He holds up his hands in front of me, his arms touching mine. In his right hand is a flogger. I remember the name from my first introduction to this room.
"Touch it," he whispers, and he sounds like the devil himself. My body flames in response. Tentatively, I reach out and brush the long strands. It has many long fronds, all soft suede with small beads at the end.
"I will use this. It will not hurt, but it will bring your blood to the surface of your skin and make you very sensitive."
Oh, he says it won"t hurt.
"What are the safe words, Anastasia?"
"Um... yellow and red, Sir," I whisper.
"Good girl. Remember, most of your fear is in your mind."
He drops the flogger on the bed, and his hands move to my waist.
"You won"t be needing these," he murmurs and hooks his fingers into my panties and sweeps them down my legs. I step unsteadily out of them, supporting myself on the ornate post of the bed.
"Stand still," he orders, and he kisses my behind and then gently nips me twice, making me tense. "Now lie down. Face up," he adds as he smacks me hard on the behind, making me jump.
Hastily, I crawl onto the bed"s hard, unyielding mattress and lie down, looking up at him. The satin of the sheet beneath me is soft and cool against my skin. His gaze is impa.s.sive, except for his eyes which glow with a barely leashed excitement.
"Hands above your head," he orders, and I do as I"m bid.
Jeez, my body hungers for him. I want him already.
He turns, and out of the corner of my eye, I watch him saunter back over to the chest of drawers, returning with the iPod and what looks like an eye mask, similar to the one I used on my flight to Atlanta. The thought makes me want to smile, but I can"t quite make my lips cooperate. I am too consumed with antic.i.p.ation. I just know my face is completely immobile, my eyes huge, as I gaze at him.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he shows me the iPod. It has a strange antenna device as well headphones. How odd. I frown as I try to figure this out.
"This transmits what"s playing on the iPod to the system in the room.", Christian answers my unspoken query as he taps the small antenna. "I can hear what you"re hearing, and I have a remote control unit for it." He smirks his private-joke smile and holds up a small, flat device that looks like a very hip calculator. He leans across me, inserting the ear buds gently into my ears, and puts the iPod down somewhere on the bed above my head.
"Lift your head," he commands, and I do so immediately.
Slowly, he slides the mask on, pulling the elastic over the back of my head, and I"m blind. The elastic on the mask holds the ear buds in place. I can still hear him, though the sound is m.u.f.fled as he rises from the bed. I"m deafened by my own breathing - it"s shallow and erratic, reflecting my excitement. Christian takes my left arm, stretches it gently to the left-hand corner, and attaches the leather cuff around my wrist. His long fingers stroke the length of my arm once he"s finished . Oh! His touch elicits a delicious, tickly shiver. I hear him move slowly round to the other side, takes my right arm and cuffs it. Again, his long fingers linger along my arm. Oh my... I am fit to burst already. Why is this so erotic?
He moves to the bottom of the bed and grabs both of my ankles.
"Lift your head again," he orders.
I comply, and he drags me down the bed so that my arms are stretched out and almost straining at the cuffs. Holy cow, I cannot move my arms. A frisson of trepidation mixed with tantalizing exhilaration sweeps through my body, making me wetter. I groan. Parting my legs, he cuffs first my right ankle and then my left so I am staked out, spread-eagled, and totally vulnerable to him. It"s so unnerving that I can"t see him. I listen hard... what"s he doingAnd I hear nothing, just my breathing and the pounding thud of my heart as blood pulses furiously against my eardrums.
Abruptly, the soft silent hiss and pop of the iPod springs into life. From inside my head, a lone angelic voice sings unaccompanied a long sweet note, and it"s joined almost immediately by another voice, and then more voices - Holy cow, a celestial choir - singing acapella in my head, an ancient, ancient hymnal. What in heaven"s name is this I have never heard anything like it. Something almost unbearably soft brushes against my neck, running languidly down my throat, slowly across my chest, over my br**sts, caressing me... pulling at my ni**les, it"s so soft, skimming underneath. It"s so unexpected. It"s fur!
A fur glove?
Christian trails his hand, unhurried and deliberate, down to my belly, circling my navel, then carefully from hip to hip, and I"m trying to antic.i.p.ate where he"s going next... but the music... it"s in my head... transporting me... the fur across the line of my pubic hair...
between my legs, along my thighs, down one leg... up the other... it almost tickles... but not quite... more voices join... the heavenly choir all singing different parts, their voices blending blissfully and sweetly together in a melodic harmony that is beyond anything I"ve ever heard. I catch one word -- "deus"-- and I realize they are singing in Latin. And still, the fur is moving down my arms and round my waist... back up across my br**sts. My ni**les harden beneath the soft touch... and I"m panting... wondering where his hand will go next. Suddenly, the fur is gone, and I can feel the fronds of the flogger flowing over my skin, following the same path as the fur, and it"s so hard to concentrate with the music in my head - it sounds like a hundred voices singing, weaving an ethereal tapestry of fine, silken gold and silver through my head, mixed with the feel of the soft suede against my skin... trailing over me... oh my... abruptly, it disappears. Then suddenly, sharply, it bites down on my belly.