Page 97 of Reflex

“Not giving in.”He laughed.“Giving in on my terms.I liked the marks though, particularly the kaleidoscope of colours they’d fade through.For me, the buzz comes from the hiss of pain, the catching of breath.Torment.That’s why bondage is fun.It’s wound up in anticipation.”

“Rope?Leather cuffs?Silk scarves?”

“Xane likes tape.”

“We’re not talking about Xane.”

He grinned, and nodded.“Handcuffs.The sort that require a key, and don’t come off without one.”

“Right.So no safety nets.”

Another nod.“I guess not.”

“Did you cuff her, this ex of yours?”

He breathed deeply through his nose.“Regularly.Often just to stop her touching me.Always if we were doing anal.”

She stroked his face, following the line of stubble peeping through the skin of his jaw and chin, and above his upper lip.

“We did a fuck of a lot that was stupid, Alle.I did a lot that was stupid.”

“We all do when we’re young.”

Was this the girl that Marshall had meant when he’d said there were women in Spook’s past who regretted their involvement with him?How could he even know about it?In any case, it sounded very much like she’d instigated most of it.

“One time she asked me to break her wrist.”

Alle stilled, her hand poised above his head.The cascade of his hair, already fallen.Oh God!Her racing heart leapt up into her throat.That was a whole different level to a bit of slap and tickle.“Did you?”she croaked.

Spook curled up into a sitting position, his hands over his face, hiding himself.His back was to her.

He had.Oh my God, he had.

“Spook?”On her knees, Alle hugged him from behind.“Did you?”

Very slowly, he shook his head.Relief rushed through her tensed limbs.

“I dislocated her little finger,” he said.Thus putting an instant cap on her relief.“She was on cloud fucking nine afterwards.”

Alle gulped.“Dislocated.”

Spook grimaced.“I told you I was a bad man.”

Bad, would have been if he’d done it without being begged to oblige.

“How did it make you feel?”On her knees Alle circled around him, so that she could see his expression.

Spook tilted his head.“Mortified.Leastways a few hours later I was, after it all sank in.After the hospital visit and bullshit story that everyone swallowed about how she’d fallen while we were out in woods.In the moments right afterwards though, I felt like fucking God.”

His visage was a mask of defiance as she looked at him.Like he was deliberately presenting her his worst side.Sayinglook at my savagery, but behind that, right down deep in the centres of his luminous eyes was a bruised and battered soul.A man left wretched by a moment in time that he couldn’t undo.

“Spook, you know I’m never going to ask you to do that.I don’t likepainpain.Only warm fuzzy pain.”

“Thank God.”

He finally blinked.

Alle squeezed him more tightly.“I don’t think you’re a monster for having done it, or for how it made you feel.I’m well-read if not precisely experienced.Spook, there are Doms out there who’ve described exactly that kind of euphoria.You’re not the only man who’s ever got off on hurting someone.The important point was that it was consensual.”