Page 77 of The Bargain

I settle back into the seat, watching her, letting her take the reins—knowing she won’t be holding them for very long. Her fingers find the length of me, already hard and ready for her, because she’s exquisitely beautiful, and because I’ve wanted her ever since I made her come with my fingers on top of her head girl’s desk—maybe even before that.

Maybe I started wanting her that night she showed up at my bedroom door, or when I made her kneel to collect her money off the floor at my feet.

Maybe I’ve wanted her since that very first time, when she stood there, unflinching, as her boyfriend threw knives at my face. I marked her, that night, with my own blood.

Like she was always meant to be mine.

“You’re hard,” Desdemona whispers.

There’s a hint of awe in her voice that sends a tendril of tenderness curling through me. I breathe out an amused laugh that tapers off into a sharp hiss as she pulls my cock free from my trousers, fingertips gliding up the smooth length in the exact same curious gesture with which she touched the telescope earlier.

The softness of her touch, the hesitation, makes me twitch beneath her fingers. My skin feels hot and alive, crawling with a heady mix of impatience and anticipation. I squirm underneath her, angling my hips, pushing into her hand.

She looks up with an expression of wonder.

“It’s beautiful,” she says in a breath. Her eyes meet mine, emotions pooling deep within. “You’re beautiful.”

A terrible emotion rends my heart, and red alarms flash through my mind, screaming danger. Desdemona wants to fall—but I don’t. I can’t. I have much further to fall than she does, and if I do, there won’t be anyone to help me back up.

“Don’t go romantic on me now.” The laughing confidence in my voice has never felt more blatantly like a lie. Pushing Desdemona firmly off my lap, I gesture towards the floor. “Kneel for me, love.”

A series of expressions register across her face: surprise, defiance, lust—obedience. Is she choosing between standing and falling? When she obeys, it’s the same way she did that night back in my bedroom: her back stiff and her chin up-tilted.

A hot rush of affection sears through me, almost indistinguishable from the surge of adrenaline. Her pride, I’m starting to realise, isn’t arrogance like I always thought. Her pride is actually defiance—just like mine.

I let out a low, breathless laugh.

“Good girl. Yes.” I take her chin in my hand, cupping it. “Open your mouth.”

Her jaw works beneath my fingers, and I see in her expression the battle that rages within her: the voice that’s telling her she’s too good for this, too good to kneel on a moss-ridden, rain-stained floor, to part her lips for a nameless nobody.

So why does she obey? What is that other voice saying, the one that’s making her look up at me with those eyes?

That’s the voice I can’t imagine, the one I’m most terrified to know about.

Her lips part with a soft, wet noise: on her bottom lip, caught on the pale pink gloss she wears, a tiny raindrop is balanced. It’s stopped raining, but neither of us has realised yet. There’s nothing in the world, right now, except for my hand cupping Desdemona’s chin, and her gleaming open mouth.

“God,” I rasp, voice thick, heartbeat erratic. “You look perfect like this.”

Perfect all the time, even when you’re not—especially when you’re not.

I draw her closer to me, guiding her with my fingers, which are still cupping her chin. She moves obediently, despite the fact she could pull away at any point. Why? It would take no force whatsoever to free her chin from my fingers. She doesn’t.

She’s choosing to stay, to part her lips—for me.

Choosing me.

Fuck. My heart is racing. And—and that raindrop on her lips is driving me crazy, so I swipe it away with the tip of my cock. Desdemona’s eyes are still on mine. She doesn’t flinch; she sticks out her pink tongue slowly, tentatively.

“Ah, fuck,” I breathe. “Yes, sweetheart, just like that.”

Desdemona wraps her lips around me, and I move her chin, guiding her to glide her mouth slowly up and down the length of my cock. I catch my breath, head rolling back, muscles straining. Putting her on her knees was supposed to put her at my mercy—put me back in control.

But I’ve never felt less in control than I do now, with her mouth on me, soft and warm and impossibly intimate.

The auditorium is so quiet that all I can hear is the wet glide of her lips, the tiny sounds caught in her throat that she’s too shy to let out. She’s tentative yet unafraid; her seeming lack of experience is balanced out by her obvious eagerness to please.

No, not quite that—not eagerness to please.