“No. I’m okay.”

He dipped his head and dropped a kiss on the sensitive sweep of flesh between her neck and shoulder. Then he picked up the flogger and ran it back and forth across her breasts.

Holy shit. That felt good.

Knox moved behind her and seemed to hesitate. Just as she was ready to command him, that first lash landed between her shoulder blades.

It wasn’t a hard blow, it didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t what she’d had in mind either.

His breath teased the nape of her neck. “Like that?”

She angled her head and rubbed her face against his. “No.”

He stiffened.

“It didn’t hurt, but it’s not what I expected either.”

“What do you want?”

“Tease me with it. Drag it across my skin. Just because you’re using that doesn’t mean you can’t use your hands and your mouth. Drive me crazy, Knox.” Her teeth found his earlobe and she tugged on it. “Make me arch my back. Make me writhe and rattle these chains. Show me you know exactly how to please me.”

A beat passed. Then he sank his teeth into the section of her neck that made her knees weak and pressed his hot, bare chest to her naked back. His deep, gravelly voice teased her ear. “You are so fucking hot. But, baby . . . remember you asked for this.”

When Knox stepped back, she almost whimpered at the loss of contact of his body against hers. But then he started using the flogger. Sweeping it across her upper back and arms. A slow drag and then a quick flick that felt like the pressure of fingertips on her shoulders. A ghostly caress over her ass cheeks and down the insides of her thighs.

Just on the first pass he’d turned her entire body into a mass of gooseflesh. Her heart raced, sending the blood pumping faster though her body, making her nipples throb.

Then the flogger disappeared, replaced by Knox’s big hands. His fingers traced the delineated muscles of her biceps and triceps. The underside of her arms. His callused finger teased the valley between each of her fingers and around the cuffs on her wrists. The chains shook when he grabbed on to them above where she was restrained. He fit his damp chest against her back and pressed his groin into her ass, rocking into her so she could feel his hard cock through the fabric of his underwear.

Heat spread throughout her core. She moaned and let her head fall forward.

Knox took that as his invitation to attack her neck. Torturing her with tiny nips and sucking kisses. Doing that pause thing that caused her to tremble. His hot breath floated across her nape as he built her anticipation of where his mouth would land next.

His hands slowly slid down the chains, then over her arms, then followed the curves of her body from beneath her armpits all the way to her calves.

When the feathers and leather drifted over her skin again, she jumped.

This time the tease lasted longer. The repetitive nature of his strokes brought awareness to every nerve ending on the back side of her body.

His warm, wet tongue licked up her spine, starting at the top of her butt crack and ending with a sharp nip of teeth at her hairline.

Shiori gasped. And trembled. And found it hard to catch her breath when she had no idea what he planned to do to her next.

Knox’s voice, sweetly seductive this time, reverberated across her scalp. “Please keep your eyes closed, Mistress, while I switch positions.”

He slid the braided end of the flogger handle between her legs, dragging the nubby leather from her clit to the pucker of her ass. Back and forth, building that need for release in her until she shook like a junkie in need of a fix. And then he sent her soaring, rubbing furiously on her clit as she came undone.

Before she fully regained control of her brain cells, rivers of softness floated from her collarbones to the skin between her hip bones. Another quick flick of his wrist and the leather straps sharpened the impression of impatient fingers digging into her flesh.

Earlier, in the stillness of the room, she had heard the sounds of their rapid breathing, the clank of her chains, and the whisper of his footsteps. But now all Shiori heard was the white noise in her brain as Knox overloaded her entire being with myriad sensations.

Again she jerked in the restraints when he pressed his skin to hers. The nipple clamps dug into his chest and he spread his hands across her back, forcing their upper bodies closer together.

His hard stomach muscles flexed against her belly when he nestled his cock against her mound. “Tell me when you’ve had enough, Nushi.”

“Never,” she whispered. “I’ll never get enough of feeling your hands on me.”

Keeping her eyes closed, she blindly sought his mouth for a kiss. A hot, openmouthed, frantic kiss that ramped up her desire. She shifted her head, wanting a deeper kiss. A harder kiss.