Page 41 of Pandora's Pleasure

Madeline was right about the necklace. It had sent Damien over the edge. I’d never seen him behave like this toward me.

I felt our passion alighting like a dancing flame, the air crackling with electricity that sparked between us. He had loosened his tie, and his eyelids had become heavy the way they’d done back in his loft when his fingers had grazed my sex.

I tapped the chain. “Clearly you can’t handle me wearing this.”

He gave me a predatory look. “I’m going to show you what it means.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“Silence, Pandora. This is where you watch and learn. Think you can do that?” He tugged his tie off. “Turn around.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to bind your wrists.”

“No, you’re not.”

“That necklace tells me I can. Now turn the fuck around.”

I hesitated, but then turned my back on him to give him better access to my wrists.

It was happening.

He was making me his plaything.

Damien focused, following through on his threat. He yanked my wrists together with force and tugged tight, binding them behind my back.

Leaving me vulnerable.

“That’s a clavis around your neck,” he said, leaning close to my ear. “Let’s see if you know its meaning.”

My focus shifted from tying Pandora’s wrists to admiring the way she calmly breathed through the process of having her hands bound behind her back.

She was letting it happen.

Her promising reaction caused an erotic charge to surge through my veins—awakening a need in the darkest part of my psyche. I felt a spark of affection flare inside me, lowering my guard, allowing me to see her in a new way.

This wasn’t the girl I thought I knew.

She glanced back over her shoulder at me, her plump lips pouting.

“Are you even still a virgin?” I chided.

The look on her face led me to believe she might be. Still, what kind of virgin wears the clavis, the mark of a submissive? Either way, the symbol riled my diabolical side, which she was about to become acquainted with. I’d hidden that part of myself from her, assuming she’d never see me like this—now I felt hope rising for a relationship between us I’d believed impossible.

How the hell had she ended up wearing this key?

I could be over thinking the situation, but Theo had been wondering the same thing—who the hell had given it to her?

With her hands tied at her lower spine, Pandora was forced to push her chest forward and keep her back straight—the glint of diamonds at her throat assuring me of her willingness to comply with utter submission.

What she’d done was the equivalent of setting a match to gasoline and watching the flames fan around her. She gave her consent the moment the catch closed at her nape.

Her vulnerability was stirring my debauchery; it flared white hot and blinding.

It would be easy to do whatever I wanted to her in the back of this car as retribution for daring to wear what she had no right to.

Vanguardians…owning a submissive was our veritable right.