Free A Hard Bargain by Ashe Barker Page A

wetness.
    The juicy, wet sound of his fingers working me is unmistakable evidence of my intense arousal. He withdraws his hand and lifts it to cup my chin. My own juices are now spread across my face, the wetness cooling my cheek in the warm room. He holds me still and brushes his lips over mine.
    “So scared, so confused. Do you still trust me, sexy, randy little sub?”
    I gulp, chew my bottom lip—a nervous habit of mine, one he’s no doubt noting—and I nod. Despite it all, despite how nervous he makes me feel, how much he intimidates me, I do trust Nicholas Hardisty.
    “Good. Let’s get on with it then.” His brisk, business-like tone belies the sensuous trail of his fingertips from my chin along my shoulder and down the outside curve of my right breast.
    Carefully not disturbing the clamps, he feathers his thumbs, I think it’s his thumbs, across the small portion of each nipple not tightly clasped between the grips. I tingle once more. The tortured peaks are rock hard, the blood trapped there making them ultra-sensitized to even the slightest touch. His tongue replaces his thumbs, the soft flick across the distended little buds achingly, unbearably tender.
    He repeats the caress, both nipples at once this time. I gasp, jerk back, causing the weights to swing and the clamps to bite me even harder. Not his tongue then. And not his fingers either, too soft. Again, that feather-light almost touch, almost not. I’m desperately trying to imagine what he’s using, what he’s touching me with. It doesn’t hurt, and it’s too light, too delicate, to be truly arousing. Isn’t it?
    He draws that light ‘something’ across both my nipples once more. Slowly. It’s fluid, muted, incredibly intense. And so very arousing. I remember his instruction not to come, and I wonder how long I’ll be able to hold out. A while. Maybe, as long as he doesn’t…
    I gasp as he turns his attention—and his feather-like implement—to my clit. Oh, God, not good. So good. I can’t bear this, I have to come. I need to come. Now. I’m shaking, almost sobbing under the cruel duress of fighting my out-of-control arousal. Of trying desperately to tamp it down. I need the release, and it’s coming soon—I know it. I can’t fight it for much longer, but I’m too scared of his reaction if I disobey him. I can’t let him down, can’t disappoint him. But I need…
    “Are you thinking about coming without permission, greedy, disobedient little sub?”
    His low voice is like a splash of cold water, reminding me who’s Master here. I shake my head violently, grinding my teeth as I squeeze down hard on my inner emptiness, clenching everything at my core in a last, desperate attempt to obey him.
    And merciful at last, he decides to help me out. I flinch as a sharp flicker of almost-pain shoots across the front of my right thigh. He waits a moment before the next stroke, which connects with my left thigh, just under that little hollow where my leg meets my groin. It’s some sort of a lash, like a whip but not quite. It falls again, this time across my stomach, and a little harder now. It is pain. Not the searing pain of the paddle across my bottom earlier in the evening, but definitely uncomfortable. And getting worse. He adds a little more bite with each stroke, each lash carefully placed and accurately judged to lay exactly the right sensation on my body. I’m quivering, jerking each time he flogs me. He moves to my breasts—already throbbing and unbearably tender, still cruelly gripped in the nipple clamps—and delivers several lashes to the undersides before moving to the upper curves. He’s ramping up the pressure now, each stroke stinging a whisker more than the last, and they’re coming at me thick and fast. The pressure builds as he lays the flogger across my breasts, my stomach, my abdomen, and back to that vulnerable, sensitive, undefended space between my legs. And he gentles his touch again. Just when I expected,