Free Highly Strung by Justine Elyot

idiot. I get, what you say, carried away. Too much passion. I must learn to control it.”
    “Violence isn’t passion.”
    “No. You are right, Lydia.”
    He lay down, holding her loosely, as if he thought anything tighter might snap a bone or two.
    “Forgive me. I will be better next time.”
    Lydia let her thoughts gather like clouds as she lay in his embrace.
    Evgeny likes it rough .
    A plague on Evgeny and his complicating existence. Why couldn’t Milan be a simple soul who stuck to one lover at a time? Why couldn’t love be easy?
    “I will run a bath for you,” said Milan. “For the rest of the day, I treat you like a princess. No more rough stuff.”
    Lydia made an inarticulate sound that might have been assent or resignation, and he hopped off into the en suite bathroom and began running the taps.
    She stared at her reflection in the ceiling mirror. The bite had not drawn blood, but her lower lip looked swollen and purplish. Her hair knotted and tangled all over the place and the beautiful bird of paradise on her knickers had been slashed with an irreparable rip across its plumage. Putting a hand to her inner thighs, she wondered if they would bruise—and the same thing went for her spine. Solid supporting walls were not easy on the coccyx during frantic standing-up sex, that was for sure. She would make a note of it.
    The memory of Milan’s brutal fucking was somehow much more potently erotic than the reality, and she began replaying it in her mind while her fingertips lingered at the crease between thigh and groin. Her clit, which had been so rudely ignored during the sex, began to awaken, sending its vibes of longing through Lydia’s body, tensing it up once more after the relief of the end of the onslaught.
    My turn now . She put her fingers on the swelling flesh and pressed, keeping away from the sore area below, watching herself move her other hand to her breasts, palming them slowly and rhythmically.
    “Come on in—the water’s lovely.” She heard Milan’s voice float through the en suite door. He had turned off the taps and it sounded as if he was in the bath.
    “Just a moment,” she said dreamily, rubbing and lifting her hips towards the reflective glass.
    “What are you doing? Can’t you move? Lydia?”
    He sounded concerned and she clicked her tongue in exasperation, hearing him rise out of the bath and step out on to the floor. Couldn’t he wait five minutes?
    “Hey!” he said, catching her in the act. Dripping wet, with just a towel held in front of him, he looked mouth-wateringly gorgeous and a little bit put out. He shook a finger at her.
    “No orgasms happen in here without my involvement,” he scolded. “Even if I’m only watching. Take your naughty fingers out of your pussy.”
    “Ohhh,” moaned Lydia, who had been rolling closer and closer to a sweetly anticipated climax.
    “If you like, I’ll put my naughty fingers in there instead,” he offered, swooping down close to pull her up off her back and on to her feet. “That’s quite acceptable.”
    “You live by some odd rules,” remarked Lydia, allowing him to lead her into the bathroom, where a bath topped with extravagant foaming bubbles awaited them.
    “They are my rules,” he said, unhooking the bra and suspender belt. “I can’t live by any others.”
    “Life could be hard for you, then,” she said, wriggling back against him as he put a hand over her mons.
    “It has been already. But no more. I live my way, no arguments. And in my life, my woman does not come without my cock, or my tongue, or my fingers inside her. You understand?”
    “Your woman,” snorted Lydia, but then she sighed as he found the needy clit bunched up and hidden inside the folds of her vulva.
    “Mmm, this needs attention,” he said into her hair. “But get into the bath first. We can do that later.”
    “Later!” Lydia did not think she could wait too long, but Milan’s raised eyebrow persuaded her to step into the bath and