She shivered. “Cut into my skin?”
He nodded, watching her closely as he unhooked her bra, letting her breasts free. “The air is good for your nipples. While you’re home, you should just go without a top and bra. You’ll heal faster.”
His finger slid over the top curve of her breast and then traced one of the many strawberries. “The strap, the various floggers I’ll use, none of those would make a real mark on you like this whip would. This would make a slice into your skin. I could make it just a slight one, or deep. I have to have absolute control.” All the while, his eyes never left hers. “I can do all kinds of things with different whips, baby. The point of all this practice is not to cut your skin. If you look at the mannequins, the paper is cut, but not the material under it. Hopefully, I stay in control and raise welts, striping you with my art, but not actually breaking your skin.”
She couldn’t look away, mesmerized by him, mesmerized by the whip he had somehow coiled in his hand again. It seemed an extension of him.
“What kinds of things?”
“You’ll find out, baby. Some you’ll love, some not so much, but in the end, you’re going to be screaming for more. Just like last night.”
“Are you finished practicing? I want to watch you.” She touched her tongue to her lips, trying not to breathe too deep, but her breasts rose and fell in time to her rapid pulse.
He hooked his palm around the nape of her neck and slid first the handle and then the leather tails over her mounds. “It’s arousing, isn’t it?” His voice was a soft, mesmerizing velvet whisper that played over her skin like a touch. “Do you wonder what it will feel like when I wrap your tit in pure fire? When it spreads straight to your pussy? When I put my name into your skin?” Each word was a sin. A temptation. His lips moved against her jaw. Small little kisses. His teeth nipped her throat. “I can do that, you know. Burn my name into your skin with my whip. Right there on your bare little mound.” He sounded like pure sensual enticement, taking her down a dark path without using much more than his voice.
He scraped the shadowy bristles on his jaw across her breasts, a slow burn, sending darts of fire, little spears of lightning, straight to her sex. The handle of his whip was suddenly between her legs, moving, sawing back and forth in a steady assault on her senses.
“Answer me, Seychelle. Are you wondering right now what it would feel like to have me strip you naked and tie your arms up, legs wide, your body at my mercy? What would I decide to put on your skin? What would you do for me, baby? Would you take every single thing I wanted to give you? Would you say no? Enough? Would you want it all? What no other woman has ever had from me?”
She shivered, that velvet whisper slipping inside her, wrapping her up, until she knew she wanted to hear his voice asking those questions to her over and over. He was waiting. His eyes those twin blue flames she couldn’t resist. “Yes. I can’t help but wonder. It’s both alluring and terrifying.”
He cupped her cheek gently, his thumb sliding softly over her lips. “You’re not nearly there, baby. I love that you want to go there with me. Thank you for that. Been working on a new pattern for about three years now. Nowhere near satisfied yet, certainly not enough to try on you. Stay up here on the deck. You tend to be distracting. This takes concentration.”
She stuck her chin out at him. “You didn’t look like you were concentrating all that much before when I came out here. You turned and hit that mannequin precisely where you wanted to without looking.”
His gaze burned through her like two hot flames. She refused to look away, staring right back at him. A slow smile finally touched his hard mouth, nearly melting her resolve, but she wasn’t going to let him charm her. She didn’t want to stay on the porch. She wanted to watch his every move. It was sexy. It was all Savage. This was the real man. She could see inside him when he used that whip, and he knew it.
“I knew where my mark was. That’s the point of practicing like this. I always have to know exactly what I’m doing in order to be absolutely certain I will never permanently mark you—unless, of course, we both agree to putting my name on your skin.” He threw the last out there casually.
She drew in her breath as he stepped off the porch and walked toward the mannequins, shaking out the whip as he did so. He was extraordinary. He moved with that sexy, silent, predatory gait, muscles rippling like a jungle cat’s. The way he said permanently mark you, as if he could do it whenever he wanted to, put his name into her skin for eternity with his whip.