Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 72901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
As his breath quickened, he drove her relentlessly toward a rapid climax with the perfect rocking of his hips. She coiled tighter and tighter, the pleasure now nearly unbearable.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” she heard someone panting, taking a moment to realize it was she. Then, all at once, she came undone, the coil springing free. She dove headlong into a powerful orgasm that took her breath away and nearly stopped her heart.
A moment later, he stiffened above her and then, with a small, strangled cry, erupted in a series of spasms that sent lovely aftershocks through her being.
He collapsed down beside her, both of them breathing hard. Reaching up, he released her wrists from their cuffs, bringing her arms to her sides. Then he reached out and swept a lock of hair from her cheek, the tender gesture bringing tears to her eyes.
“Rowan,” he breathed. The way he said her name sent sparks across her skin.
“Eric,” she murmured back, losing herself in those sea glass eyes.
They smiled foolishly at one another. Their lips met once more for a kiss as the fire reignited between them. After all, the night was young, and so were they.
Chapter 21
Rowan lifted her hand to her mouth in a reflexive gesture. She’d been about to nibble on a nail as she struggled to control the rising anxiety in her gut. She caught herself in time and lowered her hand to her lap.
As Eric and she drove along the NY State Thruway in the borrowed van, she reminded herself John no longer had control over her. No one did. She was her own woman. She’d forgotten that while caught up in the thrall of their Master/slave relationship, but she would never forget again.
“You okay?”
Rowan glanced over at the sweet, sexy man beside her. “Yeah,” she replied, pleased to realize it was true, despite her lingering trepidation at having to face John. “I’m good.”
“You can say that again,” Eric replied with a silly waggle of his eyebrows.
Rowan’s cheeks warmed with pleasure. “You’re not so bad, yourself,” she retorted.
They’d stayed up until nearly dawn the night before, making love, dozing off and on and talking late into the night about any and everything.
“Tell me about this tattoo,” she had asked at one point as she traced her finger over the feathers in the exquisitely wrought wings. “What made you get it?”
“Let’s see,” Eric had said, smiling down at her, his face silvered by the moonlight streaming through the window. “I wanted something that represented the power and freedom of the lifestyle. I know this guy who’s an amazing tattoo artist and we came up with the design together. As you probably figured, the wings symbolize freedom. First, the freedom within the BDSM community to express your sexual orientation without fear of judgment. But more than that, I wanted to honor the submissive experience of flying, and the way it gathers the Dom into the process, lifting us both to a higher plane.”
He had chuckled self-deprecatingly as he added, “Incredibly corny and pretentious, I know. But hey, I was only twenty-two.”
“I’m only twenty-three,” Rowan had retorted, laughing too. She loved how he didn’t take himself too seriously, as so many guys she’d met in the scene seemed to.
“Yeah, well,” Eric said, still grinning. “Girls mature faster than boys, right?”
“Jury’s out on that one,” Rowan had replied with chagrin. “Seriously, though. I think it’s really cool. And just from an artistic perspective, it’s quite beautiful.”
“It is, right?” Eric had agreed. “A tattoo that size normally costs a fortune. Luckily, the guy is a friend of mine. I didn’t have much cash back then—this was before I got into BDSM training—so we bartered for it. I refurbished some really awesome Herman Miller pieces he’d inherited from an aunt, which he went on to sell for some serious cash. And in exchange, he worked on my tattoo over the course of an entire week, fitting me in around his day job.”
Rowan had run her fingertip over the triskelion at the center of the tattoo. While the wings were drawn with finely traced black ink, the perimeter and spiraling spokes of the emblem at their center were inked in a metallic gold. The tiny dots in the middle of each of the spokes were blood red.
She had read about the various meanings of the BDSM triskelion. The three chambers could represent the three divisions possible within the acronym—bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. They could also indicate the community bywords of safe, sane and consensual, or the three orientations within the scene—tops, bottoms and switches.
“I know about the symbolism of the emblem,” she’d said aloud. “Except what about these dots in the middle?”
“My understanding is that the holes represent the incompleteness of any single individual within the BDSM context. There’s a void within each of us that can only be filled by a complementary other. Basically, you can’t really experience BDSM without the connection to another.”