Free Jeremiah Quick by SM Johnson Page A

behind her, where her fingers bushed against something
long and thin, reminiscent of the stripes of pain along her back.
She picked it up, pulled it around to look at it. It wasn't a whip.
It was more of a… well, a switch, she supposed. Black, synthetic,
and slightly flexible, with a handle at the thicker end, and
tapering to a sharp flexible tip. She ran her hands over it. It
looked less painful than it felt.
    She wondered if her inability to trust
Jeremiah Quick made those ten strikes feel more painful than they
actually were. But she had no basis for comparison, did she? At
least not yet.
    Quick held out his hand, silently asking her
to hand the thing to him, and she did.
    He brought it to her lips. "Kiss the switch,
Sunshine, and thank me with your eyes."
    She pursed her lips and touched them to the
instrument of her pain, then lifted her head a little, keeping her
chin down, demure, and raised her eyes just enough to meet his. She
blinked slowly, deliberately. Twice.
    "Not bad," he breathed. "For a
beginner."
    And his fingers were then at her lips,
urging her to open her mouth, and there was the chocolate, rich and
sweet, and she didn't even know where he'd been hiding it.
    It flooded not just her mouth and sense of
taste, but all of her senses, started a tingle in her belly, a
shiver down her spine. Even her pussy contracted.
    He set the switch on the table beside her,
stepped in closer, and, using thumbs and forefingers, reached to
pinch both her nipples at once. Hard enough that she gasped.
    Her left nipple hardened, instant and total
arousal. But the right one was inverted, had always been inverted,
so it didn't. Pretty didn’t care. She was thirty-six years old,
looked as good for her age as she was going to, and was long over
being self-conscious about one defective nipple.
    "What's wrong?" he asked.
    Yeah, right, like she was going to fall for
that.
    And then he tilted his head, almost so he
was looking up at her, and the expression on his face was open, his
eyes clear and so light blue it was like looking into Lake Superior
on a sunny day. His long hair fell across his cheekbone, and he
looked endearing, appealing, as young as he'd been when they'd
first met. The corners of his lips lifted, and his voice was soft,
so soft it was almost a whisper. "Don't be embarrassed."
    She could have laughed. She had so many
flaws she wasn't afraid for him to see this one.
    "I'll fix you," he said, and lowered his
head.
    A prettier lie had never been told.
    He sucked gently at first, a teasing pull,
and then hard enough to make her gasp and to force the nipple to a
point. It wasn't sensitive and she knew the peak wouldn't last. It
never did, but every male she'd ever been sexual with had to
try.
    He let his teeth scrape across her nipple
before he let go, then gave her that endearing look again, peering
at her through his hair, his cocky grin so utterly forgotten, yet
immediately familiar, that Pretty raised her arms without thinking
and wrapped them around his neck, pulling him closer so she could
sigh his name against the hollow of his throat.

Chapter 6
     
     
    S he.
    Her arms are delicate around my neck, and
she smells, oh, of fear, and herself, and half-forgotten desperate
clutching, of begging me not to leave… and I forget for a little
bit of time why I'm even doing this. I should carry her to the
house and remember her properly with the sort of love-making we'd
never had a chance to accomplish. Slow and sweet; as gentle as her
lips… tender and pretty as her skin… as soft and careful as her
hair.
    Her breath is warm against my throat, and
her lips feather across my skin in an erotic dance that feels like
my name.
    I raise my eyes to the ceiling,
second-guessing myself, until I see the remains of the black scarf
tied to the rafters, the one I sawed through with a knife.
    And it all rushes back into me, then – how
important it is to recognize pain for the character-building
exercise it can be, and to know I'm the