Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
I step slowly around to face her, hands pushed into my front pockets, letting my eyes travel up and down without apology. If she only knew how many times I'd imagined exactly this, she wouldn't have that look on her face that says she knows she's safe with me.
The pressure wrapped around my windpipe makes every breath a battle.
She extends her fingers and wiggles them, testing her new reality. Then the corner of her mouth curves up.
"I kind of like it."
I lean in.
"Good. I think we're going to find a lot of things you like tonight."
CHAPTER 3
Elodie
Rye hasn't touched me yet, but my body is on fire from head to toe. What is happening here? This man I've known as far back as my memories go has put me in a posture collar and an arm bar inside a kink club.
I feel like Dorothy, and I am definitely not in Kansas anymore. He's not the man I thought I knew. And somehow, that only makes me more feral.
Wow. The McAllister’s perfect daughter is soaking wet for her uncle.
This beautiful, magnificent, dark version of my father has me squeezing my fingernails into my palms so hard, blood is seeping through my skin. The urge I have to reach out and grab him is the only thing being controlled by this stupid arm bar.
So much of my life has been about control. Being perfect. And now, standing here in the middle of this club, I'm giving it all up. And I feel like I've taken my first deep breath in as long as I can remember.
I'm supposed to be the one holding everything together. But all I want to do right now is beg this man to explore parts of me that have never been explored. I want him to go full Lewis and Clark on my untouched territory. Plant his flag and lay claim to my continent.
Oh my God. This collar must be cutting off circulation to my brain.
There are things going on inside my head that would make our future family holiday get togethers rather awkward.
Not to mention what's going on inside my body. Everything feels like it's been turned up to ten. My hearing. The smells. His familiar cologne.
I bite down on my bottom lip and consider using my safe word, because my knees feel like Jello. So many years of perfect movement on stage, and right now I don't even feel like I can bear my own weight.
Is Rye just keeping me safe because I'm his niece? Or are those raspy inhales coming from beside me evidence that he's also struggling with whatever this pulsing sensation is between us?
“What are you thinking?” Rye’s chest brushes my shoulder blade as we watch several of the other newbies that were fully dressed when they came in with us are now in various states of undress taking on their kinks and dares.
A curvy blonde woman is in a black leather sort of dress, but the bodice is cut under the her breasts so they are fully exposed, swaying and moving as her ‘mentor-slash-guide’ attaches a glinting silver clip to each nipple, then adds grape-sized weights to the ends, drawing her nipples longer and longer as she shudders and gasps, her hands locked together in front of her by red rope laced multiple times around each wrist.
“I’m thinking…Mom would come ten kinds of undone if she knew my stand-in father has me at a kink club, introducing me to all the sinful, naughty things a prima ballerina should not know about. The underbelly of the world she’d call it, I’m sure.”
Without turning my head, I catch Rye’s nod in my peripheral vision, the slight pressure of his chest against my back incredibly comforting as I take in the circus of experiences happening around me.
“It’s not an underbelly, Dautie.” I suck in a quick breath. He hasn’t called me that in years. The nickname he gave me the night my mother married his brother. Something to welcome me to the family he’d said. “It’s society’s puritanical judgment that drives people into the shadows. There’s nothing inherently wrong with what they want or need or desire. Sex, pleasure, and sensation are natural. Tell me right now that you are not experiencing a sense of freedom and euphoria from being restrained?”
I think for a moment, the knots tighten low in my belly coiling as Rye shifts behind me, his masculine, spicy scent swirling in my nose as his hip presses against my ass.
Part of me wants to be snotty and bratty and angry that he’s in this place with all these women who willingly would do probably anything he wants.
He’s clearly comfortable here. He knows people. He has respect here, I sense it.
But I can’t deny the floaty sense of freedom the collar and restrictions have created since he put them on me.