"Did you know there are eight parts to reaching Nirvana?"
Alice spoke between labored breaths. Madison, lying on the bed next to her, her arm around her waist, felt like she struggled for every breath with her. Her sister lifted a shaking hand, ticking off the points on thin fingers.
"Faith . . . judgment . . . language . . . pure action . . . the right livelihood . . ." Alice paused at that, her eyes twinkling as if at a private joke. "Spirit . . . spiritual application to all aspects of the law . . . the right memory, and the right concentration . . . meditation. Don't make a face. I know you hate meditation. But eight is a very good number, Madison. Remember that. It's the number of infinity, eternity, self-destruction. And sometimes self-destruction isn't a bad thing. It's the final moment, when everything is revealed."
When Alice turned her head on the pillow, Madison couldn't pull herself away from the intensity in her sister's eyes, as if Alice was struggling particularly hard to make this point.
She raised her other hand, showing Madison the tattoo on the inside
of her forearm. The figure eight, the symbol of infinity, was surrounded by lovely vines and scroll work. Madison passed her fingers over it, caressing her sister's fragile skin as Alice's eyes stayed fastened on her face.
"I got this a few months ago, when I realized where my path was headed."
"Oh, Alice." Madison circled her wrist, then bowed her head, her grip slipping away as Alice laid that hand on her hair.
"Don't forget, MadGirl. Eight . . . the sign of infinite possibilities. Promise me."
*
Madison had, even though she'd thought it ramblings due to illness and medication. Now she knew differently. Eight. Logan would be Madison's eighth significant relationship. He'd had Shale and Troy give her eight switch marks. Always before, she'd thought of her seven previous relationships as a map of her failures. But Alice's words suggested they'd been necessary preparation for the most important relationship, the infinite, final one. She just had to have enough faith. One more leap. One more time.
After her refusal, her declaration that she only wanted him, Logan had pulled away from her. At her moan of protest, he gave her hair a reproving tug before moving to her legs. Bringing those machines to a halt, he withdrew the dildos slowly from her convulsing body. She moaned again, knowing if he touched her clit, she'd go into mindless, screaming orgasm for an hour. Instead, he raised the table to an upright position, undid the straps. She was woozy, too messed up to sit up on her own, but he slid his arms around her back, brought her up against him.
Had she screwed up? Should she have said Alice instead, invoking the safe word? Did it fit, if it was the truth inside the scene as well as out of it? With the dildos gone, she felt how slick she was, how needy for a different kind of penetration.
"Say it again," he demanded, and though she was afraid she would be punished for it, she did.
"Only you, Master. I only want you. In fantasy or reality."
Logan framed her blindfolded face in strong hands. "Good answer," he growled, right before he crushed his lips to hers.
It was like the first taste of food after starvation, every sense heightened, everything he'd denied her now given in one sweeping, overwhelming rush. If ever she could come from a kiss alone, this one would be it. In fact, she did, rubbing herself against him involuntarily. That bare touch of her clit against his body made her explode.
She screamed into his mouth, working herself against him like a pure animal, wishing he hadn't fastened his trousers and tucked himself away, wishing he'd shove balls deep into her. However, he put a firm hand on her ass, holding her against him as she let go against rough wool, rubbing shamelessly, coming endlessly from nothing more than the overwhelming pleasure of him holding her.
Every time she was with Logan, she thought it wasn't possible for him to give her a more emotional and erotic experience than the last one. He kept proving her wrong. And apparently it was only the beginning.
*
When that climax started to ebb, eons later, he was still holding her just as tight. His lips brushed hers once, again, then he was kissing every inch of flesh exposed around the blindfold. Forehead, cheeks, jawline, down to her throat. Her head fell back into his hands, his fingers tangling in her hair as he worked his way down her throat. She didn't need restraints, only the limp state of her body to show him she was all his.
She remembered how Troy almost went lax in Logan's grip, when he'd held his throat, told him he was helpless, he had him. The message being I've got you, I have the control, there's nothing you control here, you're completely under my Dominance. Just like the fantasy she nursed so often, that she'd called to mind the very first time she pulled up to Naughty Bits, trying to find the courage to go inside without Alice.
Now she knew just how potent such a fantasy could really feel, and she was in a far deeper state of relaxation, of total surrender, in his arms. She could sense how Logan fed off of it, how deeply it met what he needed from her.
He picked her up once more, and this time when he settled her, he put her in a deep, comfortable chair, perhaps a recliner. Draping her legs over the arms so she was wide open, he pressed her back flush against the reclined upper part.
"Hands over your head. Hold on to the cushion and don't let go. Don't move a muscle unless I order it."
Sure. And she'd work on that whole water-to-wine thing while she was at it, because a moment later he was kneeling between her legs, his mouth taking over her wet cunt like a man sitting down to a seven-course meal. One he planned to spend all afternoon enjoying. He licked, sucked, nibbled, stroked, swirled . . . it was like she was made of water, all the sinuous ways she twisted in that chair. He stayed with one rhythm only long enough to have her crazed, her fingers digging into the cushions, her body shuddering at the effort not to arch up against him, grind herself against his face; then he'd switch it and build her up all over again.
He left her incoherent, sounds coming from her that meant only one thing. Mercy. But don't stop.
He shifted, put his knee against her pussy. She sucked in a breath, not expecting it, and when he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her up against him, she rubbed hard against the blissfully bare layers of muscle, the blunt cock pressing insistently against her hip. He was naked.
He took her place in the chair so she was straddling him. With his hands bracketed just beneath her rib cage, steadying her, he barked another order at her.
"Hands laced behind your head."