Taking the Lead (Secrets of a Rock Star #1) Read online

  “Not the rope,” I heard myself say.

  Axel chuckled as he came back. “Definitely not the rope.”

  I felt the soft trail of leather tails brush my ass. So that was why Grant had sighed. It did feel nice! Hah, nice. I bit my lip again. It wasn’t probably going to stay nice, not if Axel worked up to hitting me as hard as Grant had Chita, but I reminded myself if it got to be too much, I could always tell him to stop.

  He started to swing the flogger at a slow pace, lightly, and I found myself swaying my rear in time with the rhythm he set. He worked one cheek, then the other, back and forth, back and forth, until I lost track of time.

  Hadn’t Sakura said “hypno” was a thing? This was even more hypnotic than watching Grant get flogged had been.

  But then Axel changed the rhythm—quicker, hitting one side only, and moving the target gradually across my butt and down my thigh, then up the other thigh …

  And then catching my exposed clit with the tips of the tails. I sucked in a breath and tried to spread my legs a little wider, trying to catch more sensation.

  He saw it and upped the ante, hitting both harder and more directly on that spot, which stung a little but oh! More! I wanted more!

  I thrust my butt back, trying for more exposure, maybe more friction, but each swat of the tails was such a momentary stimulation. Could I come this way? Would he make me? It was like drinking from an eyedropper.

  I had a sudden memory of touching myself when I’d first learned to do it. I’d heard the expression “touching yourself” and I had taken that literally, pressing my clit like a button, over and over, until I had come. That first orgasm had been such a surprise, such a pleasure and a delight—I’d had no idea my body could do that. I’d agonized over the discovery, though. Every message I had heard about masturbation up until then was that it was a shameful thing.

  That was before I was old enough to know my family had a secret sex dungeon in the basement. Well, I’d gotten over my shame about masturbation eventually.

  I supposed I’d get over my hang-ups about the family dungeon, too. Especially if it always felt this good …

  Or this bad, depending on how you looked at it. I was on the edge of coming, where I’d been so many times recently, and unable to finish off. What if there was something wrong with me? I suddenly worried. What if it was a rare medical condition or a brain chemical thing? Axel—Mr. Hawke—had said he’d flog me until I came. What if I never came? Would it go on forever? Would he be disappointed if I didn’t come?

  “I can’t!” I found myself panting. “I can’t, I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” came his voice, firm and close. He didn’t sound out of breath. “There’s no hurry, Ms. Hamilton. Remember, I’m in charge.”

  The flogging stopped and I heard the flogger hit the bed. Then his hand, at last—at last!—rubbing up and down my thighs, circling over my sore cheeks and soothing them, and then sliding up and down my very wet pussy, one knuckle rubbing over my clit again and again. I ground back against him and he held his finger in place for me to rub against. I moaned like a hungry animal.

  But it still wasn’t enough. “I … can’t,” I whispered.

  I felt his other hand on my back. “You’re so tense.”

  Of course I am! I wanted to scream. But I didn’t. I could barely rasp, “Yes, Mr. Hawke.”

  “Put your hands behind your back, Ms. Hamilton.”

  I did as he asked. I felt him grip me by the hair with one hand, the other around my wrists, and he moved me to the side of the bed, pressing me facedown over the edge. Being held so firmly by Axel didn’t feel “rough” at all—it was strangely comforting. I remembered what he’d said in the bathroom that time with the razor: I trusted him. Even when my mind was in a whirl of denials it was like my body already knew him, already knew what it wanted. Already knew to whom it belonged.

  My toes touched the floor as my cheek pressed against the silky duvet. So that was why these four-poster beds were so high off the floor, I thought. That put a person like me at the perfect height for fucking …

  Axel didn’t fuck me, though, at least not with his cock. I felt the tip of his finger toying with my wetness. Would he put it in, or was he merely teasing? My legs shook with desire and need. Did he know how he was making me feel? It seemed he did, and just at the moment I had made up my mind to open my mouth and beg, he drove that finger deep into me. I moaned in relief. He wiggled it and my moans redoubled.

  “Keep your hands behind your back and I’ll keep going,” he said.

  Oh! They’d slipped to my sides while I’d been luxuriating in the sensation. I hurriedly returned them to position with a contrite, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hawke.”

  “No worries. You’re doing great,” he said, and I felt his approval wash over me. I could hear he was smiling and it was making me smile, too—he was making everything feel good as he corkscrewed his finger in and out of me again and again.

  And then his mouth went to work. I felt his breath before the first touch of his tongue and shivered with sheer joy. The intimacy of his mouth there made my heart flip. Axel, that man, his tenderness and thoroughness combined to wear right through to that desperately lonely core of mine. With each clever swipe of his tongue he unraveled all my knots, undid all my layers of protection, and peeled away my armor. I almost felt like crying except it was so good, all good, all Axel. If this was what he could do to me with oral sex, what would actual intercourse with him be like tonight?

  So much for the fears that I’d physically lost the ability to come. Under the steady onslaught of Axel’s tongue on my clit, punctuated by deeper forays and occasional suction, I came just fine. Twice. Three times. The third time with a long scream.

  And then he stepped back. I turned my head to see him rustling in the drawer. He came up with several handy-wipes, wiped me quite clean between the legs, dried me off, and then planted a kiss on my ass.

  “You may stand up, Ms. Hamilton. If you can,” he said.

  I straightened, wondering what was coming next. More sex? Or something else? My knees were wobbly but they held me upright.

  “Turn around.”

  I turned to find him licking his lips. He looked more gorgeously fuckable than ever, and the look in his eyes seemed to say he was thinking the same thing about me. He was wearing nothing but the leather pants now, his hair a complete just-fucked mane—I mean even more than his usual look—his lips swollen and his eyes glazed.

  Through the skin-hugging leather of his pants his erection was so visible I could practically count the veins. I wondered what was going to happen to me next. I hoped I knew. I’d tried for weeks to lock my memory of the limousine into a box, but it had been ambushing me regularly: the way he held me down to lick the erogenous zone on my neck, the way he’d made me tear open the condom for him, the way his cock had felt pushing its way into me.

  And how deeply connected I’d felt when he was inside me. Our gazes were locked now and I wondered if he could see how much I needed him. I wanted to do it missionary style so I could keep looking into those eyes. My lip trembled a little as I bit down on the words. I couldn’t quite let myself say “I need you” without prompting. He raised an eyebrow and gave a little nod, as if he’d heard me thinking it.

  The next thing he did was kneel down and snip away the rest of my stockings with the safety scissors from the drawer. He tucked the last stray bits into the tops of my boots. My mind was racing. Was that so my stockings wouldn’t chafe him while he fucked me? I could see in the mirror on the wall that now I looked perfectly presentable. Okay, my lipstick needed freshening up, and my face had that “healthy glow,” but otherwise you wouldn’t know to look at me that anything had happened.

  He gave me another floor-scraping bow. “Thank you, Ms. Hamilton,” he said. “I won’t keep you from your hostessing duties any longer, unless you would like.”

  I blinked. Unless I would like? I wanted him to throw me down and fuck me so hard it would re
gister on the Richter scale! But … but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. And he was right. I needed to return to the party.

  In fact, as sanity flooded back in I thought to myself, What kind of a mess did you just get into, Ricki? Playing with a party guest! That wasn’t supposed to happen! You weren’t supposed to get involved in this whole thing!

  When I didn’t answer, Axel took that as a sign I was done, and he opened the door. The sounds of other people spanking and flogging and having sex reached my ears. I shook myself slightly. This was my reality now.

  I at least remembered my manners. “Thank you,” I said as I pressed my hands together. “Axel,” I added, as if to make it completely clear we were done now.

  “My pleasure, Ricki,” he said with a crooked grin. The cheeky rake still had my juices smeared on his face.

  I motioned toward my own cheek, signaling to him he ought to clean up. His grin only widened and he licked his face with his sinuous, wicked tongue.

  I fled before I could be tempted any further.

  AXEL

  I left the dungeon as quickly and quietly as I could after Ricki ran away from me. Sticking around seemed like it was only going to lead to trouble. I’d had no idea that there was an entire kinksters’ paradise down there! And man, how gorgeous she looked, bent over the bed while I cut away her stockings—I don’t just mean she had a nice ass and good skin; I mean how willing and pliant and needy she looked. I wanted nothing more than to plow into her right there, as if inserting my cock into her was going to magically reassert the claim I’d made—and make it stick.

  But it hadn’t made it stick the last time, and I knew all too well that sometimes when a dipstick wanted very much to be dipped, the brain would make up all kinds of rationalizations. I had her all sopping and ready, and I knew I could have just fucked her all night long at that point. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more possessive or horny or entitled than I had at that moment.

  And that’s why I made myself pause, take stock, and think about it before I went any further. Well, that and Mal’s advice had been under no circumstances to fuck tonight.

  I felt bad about skipping out if Ricki needed aftercare, but thus far I was batting a thousand with getting her to open her legs and striking out with her opening her mouth. Baffling.

  This is your own fault, I told myself while I waited for her valet to bring the Honda CR-Z I’d rented around to the front. I had resolved I was going there just to talk with her. That had been the plan: all talk, no sex. To do the getting-to-know-you stuff we’d skipped before. But when I saw her go into that playroom by herself, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  I had really thought she would either laugh it off or tell me outright to get lost. When she hadn’t done either of those things, I just picked up the ball and ran with it.

  It seemed that what I’d told Mal—about how we connected well on the dom/sub level but crappily in the real world—was still true.

  The valet left the driver’s side door open so I could get in and said good night to me with a slight bow before he went back to his station by the front door.

  I adjusted myself inside my leather pants as I got into the driver’s seat and wondered if my balls were actually blue. As I eased the car onto the main road beyond the guard house I unzipped. That wasn’t the gearshift in my hand.

  I told my phone to dial Mal.

  He picked up without saying hello. “Well? How did it go?”

  “I got it half right,” I said. “On the all talk, no sex plan.”

  “Please tell me partial success means you talked and then fucked?”

  “Nope.” I squeezed my cock and gritted my teeth. “But at least we didn’t fuck.”

  “Why do I think you’re only telling me half of this story?”

  I brushed off his question. “I think this is going to work, though.”

  “What do you mean ‘work’?”

  “Mal, it’s obvious anytime I’m with her I can dom my way right through her issues. But each time it just leads to a backlash, to a shutdown.”

  “So you said before. That’s why you were supposed to talk, I thought.”

  I should have jerked off before calling him. Too late. “Stay with me on this one. What if she really didn’t want it?”

  “Then she should say no.”

  “Then you’d think she would say that before I cut her stockings open so I could finger-bang her.”

  Mal made a frustrated noise.

  “No, seriously,” I went on. “I know she’ll do anything I say once I turn the dom power on. But I think the only way to get anywhere with her, I mean relationship-wise, is to have her ask for it. To have her ask for sex or domination or whatever. If I’m always the one who starts it, I’ll never know.”

  Mal was silent.

  “You still there?”

  “Yes.” His silence was becoming oppressive. Finally he said, “You used the R-word.”

  “The R—oh.”

  “Relationship.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’ve never heard you use that word before.”

  “Sure you have.”

  “Not about a girl you’ve only fucked twice. I told you you’re in love, Axel.”

  “It’s a little early for that,” I said, though deep down I agreed with him. Love was pretty much the only explanation for the depth of my obsession. I wondered if maybe I should turn the car around, go straight back to her mansion, and demand to see her …

  But that was the point. No more demanding. “Anyway, she gave me the cold shoulder when I got there, and then she shut me down again when we were done.”

  “With the finger-banging?”

  “Yes. That was as far as it went. I never even took my pants off. I figure that was as clear a signal as I could send that the ball is in her court now. Don’t you think?”

  “You mean, you’re playing hard to get?”

  “I think it’s a bit more sophisticated than that, but I suppose so. I mean, look at you, Mal. You have women all the time who get obsessed with you after one fuck.”

  “How is that similar to your situation?”

  “They get obsessed with you because you tell them flat out that you don’t ever do a girl twice.”

  “I believe it’s because my skills as a lover are much more highly developed than those of the cretins these women normally associate with.” That was how Mal always talked. He was a vampire guitar god but he sounded like he taught English Lit at a British boarding school. Probably because he’d attended a British boarding school.

  It made him hard to argue with. “What I’m saying is that sometimes when something is just out of reach it’s really tempting. Okay, you’re right. I’m playing hard to get and we’ll see if it gets me anywhere.”

  The truth was I had no idea how Ricki was going to react to what I’d done. Hopefully she was at least intrigued by the move? Or maybe there was something primal about leaving things unfinished that would nag her underneath?

  “Are you wanking while driving?” Mal said with a disapproving tone in his voice that said he knew perfectly well what I was doing.

  “I’ll be home later,” I said, and hung up.

  Masturbating while driving was not the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Not the brightest, either, but at least I did not wreck the car.

  I did, however, make sure I’d come to a full and complete stop before I tried to clean up. And I waited until I was back on the road to make another phone call.

  Miracle of miracles, Sakura picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “Are you still at your rehearsal?”

  “Tech setup is still going on. Haven’t even started the walk-through,” she said with a sigh.

  “Sounds par for the course,” I said. “Got some time to talk about what happened to me tonight?”

  “Why don’t you come down to the theater? Bring me some takeout while you’re at it. Get pizza.”

  “Do they let runway models eat?”

  As usual,
Sakura had an answer for everything. “Get thin crust.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KNOCKOUT

  AXEL

  I’d never been to a fashion show before. This one, I gathered, wasn’t the norm, but I couldn’t tell you what was. The show was in a funky modern theater space where the audience sat in four banks of seats around a central stage with a long runway from backstage that kept going on the other side. The backstage area was complete chaos, as five different designers each worked to get dozens of models ready. Makeup, clothes, accessories, shoes. And this was only the dress rehearsal.

  The vast majority of the models were women, and most of the designers, too, which made sense since this was all a fundraiser for that group Christina was always going on about, Women in Empowered Media or whatever it was called.

  Sakura hustled me into one section of the backstage area that was divided from the others by two rolling racks hung with outfits and costumes and a row of folding chairs. “Diff! Dara!” she yelled to two people talking to another designer a few sections over.

  The woman, Dara, was tall with spiked platinum blond hair except for the parts where it was long and jet-black. Her eyes were heavily lined in black, and she was dressed simply, in a plain black T-shirt, yoga pants, and slip-on shoes. “This the rock star you said was coming over?”

  “Axel Hawke,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Dara shook it. “Dara, and this is Diff.” She turned but her partner hadn’t followed her. “Diff! Get your ass over here!”

  The guy hurried over, waving good-bye to someone he’d been talking to as he tiptoe-ran the agility test of chairs and people. He had a measuring tape over his shoulders. Like Dara he had short blond spikes in his hair, but they were softer, possibly more natural, and he was also in a plain black shirt, black jeans, and Doc Martens. “Diff,” he said as he shook my hand. Then to Dara, “Who’s this again?”

  “Sakura’s pet rock star,” Dara drawled.

  “Ooh. Well.” He kissed the back of my hand then and bowed and I laughed. That was my shtick! “Welcome to our humble duchy.”

  “I won’t get in the way, I promise.”