Free Surrender to Temptation Part III: Tempted to Obey by Lauren Jameson Page B

core, I wanted to obey and please him. Was even excited by the idea.
    I just wished I had assurance that striking him would bring him peace.
    Cringing inwardly, I lifted my head and held out the whip. “You’ll have to show me how.”
    His breath rasped out of his lungs in a harsh burst, and I realized that, dominant or not, he was as uncertain about this as I was.
    Uncertain, but still aroused. As he reached out for me, helped me off the bed, his cock hardened swiftly. The hot silk of it brushed my hip through the gap in my towel, and as conflicted as I was in that moment, everything in me tightened with desire at his touch.
    “Like this.” Pulling me against him, my back to his front, he helped me position the handle of the whip in my hand and covered my fingers with his own. “The power comes from your body, not your arm or your wrist.”
    Lifting our twined arms, he brought them down swiftly, and I felt the ripples through the muscles of his torso. The braided leather of the long, serpentine whip carved through air that was thick with tension, its harsh crack muffled only somewhat by the soft carpet that it bit into.
    Air left my lungs in a heated rush; my nipples tightened, and moisture slicked my inner thighs. I was still so uncertain, but at the same time I saw with startling clarity the relationship between pleasure and pain. Wielding the whip felt powerful, decadent. Dangerous.
    What would it feel like to stripe skin with the scarlet kiss of the leather? Or to feel that touch, myself?
    Every person that I knew in my old life would have been appalled by how much I was drawn to idea. I battled with the shame, myself. I knew that my participation was mostly for Zach, but I couldn’t sort out in my brain what was drawing me in otherwise, like a moth to brilliant flame.
    Trying to clear my mind, I breathed in, then out. With wide eyes I twisted and looked up at Zach. The pain was still there in his eyes, but so was hunger—hunger for me.
    “Again.” He rasped the word out hoarsely, lifting my arm with his, swinging them together. It cracked against the floor again, and then again.
    My breathing became faster, and I pressed back against him, craving his heat. After three practice lashes, Zach tenderly untangled his fingers from my own and stepped back, leaving the whip trailing from my hand.
    With one finger he traced a warm path from the nape of my neck and down to where my skin met the edge of the plush towel. Inserting a finger between the cloth and my back, he tugged gently and the towel tumbled to the floor around my ankles.
    He continued to trace the path down, his finger sliding over the contours of my body, all the way into the cleft that divided my buttocks. My mouth was dry, and my tight grip around the handle of the whip became damp with sweat.
    “You’re ready.” I inhaled sharply when his finger moved swiftly down the entire length of my cleft until it pressed against the engorged nub of my clit. My hips pressed against his touch instinctively.
    He moved in front of me, and I shivered at the loss of his heat against my back. Striding to the large wooden chest of drawers from which he had removed the whip, he placed his palms flat on its varnished surface and bent at the waist, allowing me full access to feast upon the hard planes of his shoulder blades and back, narrow waist, the lean hips and taut ass.
    Although the erotic encounter had aroused me, I didn’t want to mar his burnished skin, and hesitated to lift the whip.
    “Devon. Now.” Even bent in supplication, his voice was layered with dominance, and I itched to obey. “You won’t hurt me.”
    I would hurt him, though, and that was what he was counting on. I blinked, my vision clearing as my hand faltered before I lifted the whip even halfway.
    He was asking me to do this because he wanted to be punished, punished for whatever demons had danced through his dreams.
    I couldn’t, not when he was clearly unwilling to share those demons with