“Fuck, Sloane, you turn me inside out,” he murmurs, his tongue licking at me again, tasting me. I don’t know whether his statement is a good or a bad thing, but from the size of his hard-on, I’m guessing good. Hoping. He carries me into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. I don’t register a single element of my surroundings. Those brown eyes, searching mine, peering deep into me, are the only thing I see. We move from the main room to another, smaller room—a bedroom—and Zeth throws me down on the bed. Our hands frantically scrabble at each other’s clothing. This—our joint desperation, to see, feel, taste, touch each other—makes this different to any other time we’ve been together. We’re coming to this as equals, and for once I feel like Zeth is as out of control as I am.

That doesn’t last long of course. He tears himself away from me and rips down his jeans, kicking them off with a dark, seductive look on his face. The excruciatingly beautiful man in front of me, naked as the day he was born, then takes hold of my ankle, lifts my leg, and kisses me on the arch of my foot. “Wait here,” he tells me. And then he disappears out the door.

I know where he’s going. I know what he’s going to come back with. My blood is charging in my veins, lighting me up. He left me in my bra and panties, but I don’t want to remove them myself. I want him to take them from me, the same way he takes everything else: roughly. He’s not gone long enough for me to regulate my breathing. My chest is still heaving when Zeth reappears in the doorway with his black duffel bag held tightly in one hand.

“Get off the bed. Get on your hands and knees,” he commands.

I oblige him, my body prickling with anticipation. I want to suck him. To lick him and bite him and make every inch of him mine. Zeth places the bag on the edge of the bed and rifles inside, completely oblivious to how perfect he is. His body is flawless symmetry, muscles taut and knitted together, shoulders, legs, buttocks, back—every single part of him is expertly put together. As someone who’s studied human anatomy for many years, I can safely say that Zeth is the owner of the most perfect body I have ever seen.

When he turns to face me, his cock still rigid and erect, he’s holding a length of material in his hand. “Close your eyes,” he says.

It’s almost unbearable that I have to block out the sight of him, but I still behave. Once my eyes are closed, Zeth brushes the material against my cheek, down the slope of my neck. Across the swell of my cleavage. The fabric is sensuously rough, the threads catching at my skin. I start to shake when Zeth rubs it ever so gently across my lips. I open my mouth, almost begging him to do what I think he’s going to do. To feed the length of raw silk between my lips and gag me. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he ties it around my eyes, tight enough that I can’t see a thing. I sense him moving away from me.

When he comes back, he does exactly as I hoped he would. He removes my underwear, and he is none-too-gentle. He takes hold of my bra straps first, and he slides something cold and hard against my skin. Something sharp. The straps ping loose as he cuts them one at a time. My panties are next. He grabs the material at my left hip and slices it, and then my right, ripping the material from my body.

“Pain is a strange thing, Sloane,” he says softly. “People have entirely the wrong idea about it. From birth, children are coddled and panicked over when they hurt themselves, so they grow up believing it’s a bad thing. As soon as their nerve endings start sending feedback to the brain, their fear receptors kick in. They freak the fuck out. What do they teach you in medical school about pain?”

“It’s a survival technique,” I whisper. 

Zeth moves closer—I can sense him standing before me. All I need to do is reach up and touch him, but I know I shouldn’t. It’s not my role. “Right,” Zeth says. “But that doesn’t mean we should be afraid of it. We should embrace it. Relish it. Know the limits of our pain, and understand what we can tolerate.” Something hard presses against my cheek, and my hands, pressing into the carpet, automatically curl into fists. “I know what you can tolerate, Sloane. I’ve told you that before, and you’ve trusted me. Do you trust me now?”

“Yes. I trust you.”

My lips tingle as he kisses me, then. A soft, light, barely there kiss that causes heat to pool in the bottom of my stomach. “Thank you, Sloane,” he whispers. “I’m going to hurt you now, but I promise you’re going to like it.”

A promise from Zeth means something. If he promises I’m going to enjoy this, I have absolutely nothing to worry about, but that doesn’t stop the swell of nerves that rise through me. I can hear him moving around me, pacing, as though he’s observing me from all angles, trying to decide where to begin. He doesn’t keep me waiting long.

Something pointed traces the curve of my spine, starting at the base of my neck and traveling slowly down until it reaches the curve of my butt. I have no idea what it is. Not cold, so probably not metal. Not sharp, so not the knife.

“You grade pain in hospital, don’t you?” Zeth whispers, his voice thick with lust.

“Yes.”

“Tell me how it works.”

“We…we ask the patient to tell us how much pain they’re in on…a scale of one to ten.”

“And does that help you?” Zeth trails whatever he’s got in his hand across the tops of my shoulders, and I feel more of it against me. Something long and thin, solid and almost warm.