“Please?” Zeth says softly.

I nod. “Please.”

“You’re very good to ask so nicely, angry girl.” Zeth takes a step forward, keeping the tension on the strap taut, but it’s still not close enough. I still can’t get to him. He slows down his movements, drawing them out and squeezing his hand around his cock hard enough to make himself shiver. I want him. I want him so badly, and I want him now. My arm is throbbing, like a pulsating live wire of electricity, but all I can think is that I need this man. Nothing else is important.

“I’m going to put my dick in your mouth now, Sloane,” he says, his voice breathless. “And I want you to be a good girl and suck it.”

I nod, curling my hands closed so that they’re gripping at the over-starched, crinkly covers. Zeth takes that final step forward and closes the gap between us, and I am finally able to take him into my mouth. Never, ever before in my life did I think I’d be the type of girl to crave this. Giving a guy a blow job always seemed faintly scary—how the hell do you do it right?—but now that I’m literally face to face, or rather face to cock with Zeth, I can barely control myself. I’m not thinking about technique or what I’m doing with my tongue. I don’t care that I can barely breathe or that the tip of him is grazing the back of my throat, triggering my gag reflex. All I’m thinking about is how absolutely amazing it feels whenever his breathing quickens or he makes a choked gasp, and I know I am the one responsible for eliciting those responses.

Zeth grabs hold of a handful of my hair and tugs my head back, and there he is, towering over me, looking me in the eye as I slide his cock in and out of my mouth. The smile that spreads across his face is perhaps the wickedest one he’s treated me to yet. A spike of courage courses through me, and I apply a little teeth, though nowhere near as much as last time back at Julio’s place. I don’t want Zeth to throw me across a room; I want him to come. I want him to come really badly.

At the slight pressure from my teeth, Zeth lets out a tortured hiss. His head kicks back, and I get to watch the muscles in his throat work as he chants something over and over again under his breath.

“Oh fuck. Fucking perfect, Sloane. You’re fucking perfect.” I’m so hungry for him I don’t stop when he gently strokes my hair and tells me he’s going to come. “Sloane, you’d better—oh fuck. Ahhh, screw it!”

He gives the belt a firm but controlled tug and breathing becomes next to impossible. A second later, Zeth’s coming in my mouth and my head is bursting with black pinprick fireworks. The belt instantly eases, and I swallow the fluid at the back of my throat, not quite sure what to expect. Pippa always said it was disgusting and it was much better to spit it out, but when it’s right at the back of your throat, there’s not much to taste. The texture’s sure not pleasant, but the expression on Zeth’s face makes it one hundred percent worth it. Every ounce of tension and pressure has vanished from him, and the blissed-out, heavy-lidded look he turns on me sends a wave of pride through me.

“Shit,” he sighs. “You’re—that was…” He can’t seem to decide on what he wants to say. “Get on your back, angry girl. Time to return the favor.”

I’m on my back in a heartbeat. Maybe another girl would feel awkward about receiving head from a guy once he’s already come—the situation becomes incredibly one-sided—but not me. Not right now. I want to feel his tongue on me. I want to feel like I’m sliding off the face of the earth.

Zeth climbs up onto the bed and prowls up my body so he’s hovering over me on his hands and knees. I always thought guys lost their erections once they’d released but Zeth, once again, appears to be the exception to the rule; he’s as hard as ever and coming straight for me. He unties the belt from around my neck, takes hold of my hands, loops the leather around them once, twice, and then secures them to the wrought iron headboard above my head. He’s tied me up before, but looser than this. My hands are already burning, my sore arm screaming from the pressure and lack of blood supply by the time he positions himself over my body and stares me straight in the eye. Do I stop him? No, I don’t. I can live with the pain—it seems a fair trade for the exquisite bite of pleasure coursing through my body at the same time, muddying both sensations so that I can’t differentiate between the two. All I feel is alive.

“If you make a single sound, Sloane, I will stop. I will stop and I will leave you here like this. Do you understand me?”

I open my mouth—how the hell am I supposed to not make a single sound?—but then I see the warning look on his face and I close it right back up again. He’s not kidding; he really will leave me here trussed up and naked like a Christmas turkey if I so much as squeak.

“Do you understand?” he asks again. “We can’t continue until you let me know that you do.”

I nod, because it’s the only way of giving him an affirmative answer.

“Good.” He leans down and places a kiss directly onto my forehead, right between my eyes. He’s almost in a push-up position, holding himself up with his arms, hovering no more than an inch over my body, and the heat rolling off him is enough to make me dizzy.

From my forehead, Zeth kisses my temple, my jaw, my neck. He lowers himself ever so slowly, his weight increasing, increasing, increasing until it feels like I’m drowning in this huge man on top of me, and it feels like the best way to die. His hands are all over me now, all over my breasts, my hips, my thighs. Between my thighs… I gasp, inhaling quickly at the sudden contact of his fingertips against my clit, and he freezes, eyes narrowed at me. “Careful, angry girl,” he growls. “That almost counted.”