The Price of Flirtation

The house had gone quiet by the time Wren heard the latch.

She was sitting at her vanity in nothing but a thin cotton chemise, working a brush through the tangled copper mess of her hair, when the connecting door between her room and the guest chamber opened without a sound. Sebastian stepped through and closed it behind him with the care of a man who understood that a single creak could ruin them both.

"You are not in your own bed," Wren observed, setting the brush down.

"I am not." He was in shirtsleeves, collar open, no cravat. He'd brought something — a riding crop, slender and dark, tucked under his arm like a gentleman carrying a newspaper. He saw her notice it and made no effort to conceal it. "Stand up and bend over the footboard."

The air between them changed. The playfulness from the library was gone. What replaced it was heavier, quieter, and far more dangerous.

"Sebastian — the household."

"The household is asleep. You will be silent." He pulled the chair from the vanity and sat, draping one ankle across his knee, the crop resting across his thigh. "Stand up. Bend over. Now."

Wren stood. The chemise fell to mid-thigh, and she felt the cool air of the room against the backs of her legs as she walked to the tall mahogany bed and bent over the footboard. The rail pressed into her stomach. She gripped the counterpane on the far side and waited.

"Pull it up."

She gathered the chemise in her fists and drew it up to her waist, baring herself from the small of her back to the backs of her knees. She heard him stand. Heard his footsteps cross the carpet, slow and measured, until he was directly behind her.

"You flirted with Castellan," he said. "You leaned toward him across the table and let him see your breasts nearly to the nipple. You laughed at his tedious jokes. You touched his arm twice."

"Three times," Wren corrected, because she could not help herself.

His hand came down hard.

The crack of palm against bare flesh was louder than she expected — a flat, percussive sound that filled the room. The sting came a half-second later, bright and sharp, radiating across her right cheek. She gasped and bit down on the sound, trapping it behind her teeth.

"That," Sebastian said, "was for the third touch." He spanked her again, left side, harder. "And that was for correcting me."

He settled into a rhythm. Each strike was deliberate, placed with care — never the same spot twice in a row, building heat in overlapping circles across both cheeks until her skin felt tight and swollen and hot. She pressed her forehead against the counterpane and breathed through it, and somewhere around the tenth blow the pain began to transmute, each slap sending a jolt forward into the slick, aching place between her legs that had been unattended since the library.

He stopped. His hand came to rest on her ass, warm and broad, and he squeezed — a possessive grip that made her hips shift against the rail.

"You're wet," he said. Not a question. He could see it. She could feel it herself, the moisture on her inner thighs, the way her body had responded to being handled.

"Then do something about it," she whispered into the bedding.

He undid his trousers behind her. She heard the buttons, felt the fabric of his clothing brush the backs of her thighs, and then the blunt head of his cock pressed against her entrance and pushed in without preamble. She was wet enough that he slid forward in one long stroke, filling her completely, and the sound she made was strangled and desperate and muffled into the counterpane.

He fucked her against the footboard with one hand on the back of her neck, holding her down. The angle was deep — too deep, almost, his cock pressing against her cervix with each thrust, and the swollen heat of her spanked ass rubbed against his abdomen every time his hips met hers. She could feel every inch of him, the thickness and the length and the way he pulsed inside her, and her cunt clenched around him involuntarily.

"Don't," he said, reading her body. "You don't come until I permit it."

He pulled out before she was close. She whimpered at the loss, her hips still canted backward, her body chasing him. He turned her around and pushed her onto the bed, and then his mouth was on her — hot, open, relentless. His tongue spread her open and found her clit and worked it in slow, precise circles while two fingers curved inside her, pressing against the front wall of her cunt in a rhythm that made her vision blur.

She was close in under a minute. The orgasm coiled tight and urgent in her belly, her thighs tensing around his head, her fingers knotted in the sheets —

He stopped. Pulled his mouth away. Slid his fingers free.

"No," she said.

"You'll wait."

Sebastian stood and picked up the crop. He brought it down across her ass with a sharp, singing crack that made her jerk forward on the mattress. The sting was thinner than his hand, more concentrated, a bright line of fire that bloomed across the fullest part of her cheek. He struck again, the other side, and then again — four, five, six strokes, each one precise, each one landing on skin already sensitized by his palm until her entire ass felt like it was radiating heat.

Then his mouth again. His tongue on her clit, his fingers inside her, building her back up with a patience that was its own cruelty. She got close — closer than the first time, her whole body rigid, a sound building in her throat that she had to physically swallow —

He stopped.

"Sebastian, *please* —"

"No."

He flipped her onto her stomach. She heard him retrieve something else from the guest room — a flogger, the leather tails whispering against each other. He brought it across her back first, a broad, sweeping stroke that was less sharp than the crop, more of a deep, spreading warmth. He worked down her spine, across her lower back, and then lower — the backs of her thighs, where the skin was thinner and the sting was vicious. She bit the pillow. Her muffled cries filled the down and linen, and her cunt throbbed with a need that was becoming genuinely unbearable.

He dropped the flogger. His mouth found her again from behind, his tongue pushing into her, then dragging up to her clit, his fingers spreading her open. She was shaking. The orgasm was right there — right there, coiled at the base of her spine, ready to break —

He stopped.

The fourth time nearly broke her. She was crying now, silent tears soaking the pillow, her body strung so tight that every nerve felt raw and exposed. He turned her over and looked down at her, and his face was composed but his breathing was ragged and his cock stood hard and dark against his stomach, and she could see how much this was costing him too.

"Tell me why," he said. "Tell me what you wanted tonight, and I'll let you come."

Wren looked up at him through the tears and the tangled fall of her hair. Her body was burning. Her ass and thighs were hot and sore, her cunt was swollen and slick and clenching on nothing, and she was so far past shame that the truth came out of her like a stone dropping into still water.

"I wanted you so worked up that you'd forget yourself," she said. "That you'd lose control and come inside me."

Sebastian went still.

She watched it hit him — the realization, the shock, the dark flare of arousal underneath it. His jaw worked. His cock twitched against his stomach. He stared at her with those blue eyes gone black and said, very quietly, "You know the risk."

"I know exactly the risk. That's the point."

"Wren."

"You asked me what I wanted. There it is."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the last thread of his control had snapped — she could see it, the precise moment it gave way, something feral and unrestrained moving into his expression like a tide coming in.

He pushed her knees apart and entered her in a single, brutal thrust. She was so wet that he buried himself to the root, and the fullness of him — bare, hot, pulsing inside her with nothing between them — was so different from anything she'd felt before that the sound she made was barely human.

"Come," he said, his mouth against her ear. "Come now, and I'll fill you."

The orgasm broke over her like a wall coming down. Her cunt seized around him in waves, clenching and releasing, and she felt him groan against her neck and then his hips lost their rhythm entirely — he slammed into her, once, twice, three times, and then he pressed deep and held, and she felt the pulse of his cock inside her as he came. Hot and thick and flooding her, spurt after spurt, filling her cunt with his spend while her body convulsed around him and pulled him deeper.

He didn't pull out. He stayed inside her, softening slowly, and she could feel the warmth of him leaking out around the seal of their joined bodies, running down between her ass cheeks onto the sheets. His forehead rested against hers. Both of them breathed in ragged, uneven gasps.

"You planned this," he said finally, his voice wrecked. "From the moment you touched Castellan's arm."

"From the moment I invited him to dinner," Wren corrected, still trembling beneath him.

Sebastian laughed — low, exhausted, incredulous — and pressed his lips to the damp skin of her throat. "You are the most terrifying woman in London."

"Yes," Wren agreed, her fingers threading through his dark hair. "But you'll marry me now, won't you?"

He lifted his head and looked at her. The expression on his face was caught between fury and wonder and something that looked, despite everything, like surrender.

"I suppose I must," he said. "You've left me no choice."

"I never do."

He kissed her then, slow and deep, and neither of them moved to separate until the candles guttered low and the risk of being caught became, for the first time that night, the lesser of the things they had to worry about.