“Beg, Natalya.”

Can’t think! “N-no?”

Silence. Finally: “What did you say?”

“I can’t. Not unless you can tell me it’ll only be sex. With no strings attached.”

“I said you controlled this situation.” Tone gone sinister, he grated, “But I control you. I can make you beg.”

I whispered, “I know.”

My admission seemed to temper some of his anger. “Then why deny us, milaya?”

“It’s all too much. I just . . . can’t.”

“Then I won’t f**k you till you beg me to—outside of this torment. Because I’m playing to win.” He makes the rules. “This is more to me than just pleasure.” Another slap of the venik.

“Sevastyan, I don’t . . . I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.” Just when I was about to plead for mercy—or faint—I felt pressure at my core. A warm, bulbous object nudged against my opening. Despite what he’d said, was he going to f**k me?

No . . . that wasn’t his . . . oh, dear God, was it the polished handle of the ladle? I whimpered, “Y-you can’t.” I couldn’t think—because he’d begun to slowly penetrate me. “You’re . . . you’re doing this to spite me?” Diabolical man!

“I promised you unmatched pleasure, yet you took away my most effective means. Come now, pet, you said you needed something inside you.”

I did. And I wanted it deeper, but he merely thrust with shallow pumps, until my head lolled. He avoided my clit completely—more punishment. Still, I was about to come.

Slap. Even as he f**ked my pu**y with the handle, he whipped my tender br**sts. At that moment, I couldn’t decide which stimulation I would kill for most.

I did crave the brand of pain this man delivered.

“Bend your will to mine.” The strain in his voice made my toes curl. He lashed me; he thrust into my clinging channel. He maddened me. “When I order you to come, obey.”

Thrust, thrust, thrust to the staccato sounds of my whipping.

I sobbed from the intensity. Gone light-headed. Euphoric. “Sevastyan, oh, God, please.” A keening moan burst from my lungs.

“Ah, woman, your sounds! Come for me. Now.”

I plummeted over the edge. Core-deep contractions made me scream with abandon, made me jerk against the ties as my body spasmed.

Lost in the throes, I heard myself confessing things: how I dreamed of him f**king me. How much I hungered to take him with my mouth. How I’d masturbated to fantasies of him.

Each admission was punctuated by his ragged groans.

When the pleasure finally subsided—even more heart-stopping than the orgasm before—I was left senseless, struggling to catch my breath. To process what he’d just made me feel.

With a loving kiss against my thigh, he gently removed the handle, leaving me empty once more. Yet I realized I still wasn’t sated, that this need had only grown. Where would this insanity end? How could he make me into this mindless creature?

While he kept demonstrating such control, I was a slave to sensation. To him.

And hadn’t he told me he wanted to make me his slave?

I felt him untying my blindfold. “Look at yourself,” he commanded.

I blinked down. Didn’t recognize myself. This was a stranger’s body. Her pale skin was bright pink and slicked with sweat. Locks of stark red hair snaked over heavy br**sts, coiling around lewdly protruding ni**les. Her little clitoris was so swollen it jutted from her mons.

This stranger was a picture of wicked need. She looked like she’d been used. Just as Sevastyan had said.

Not a stranger.

Me.

Revelation. The blindfold had come off—and I had been revealed, a new me that I hadn’t known could exist. I gazed at my abused ni**les in wonderment, staring as if in a trance.

When his groan broke my stare, I twisted my head toward him.

He was revealed too. Just as my body had changed, so had his. His muscles were impossibly larger, corded with tension under his mist-slicked skin.

But nothing could compete with the view of his magnificent cock. His shaft was engorged, as if begging to be buried within hot flesh. In the firelight, moisture glistened atop the plum-colored head, making my mouth water.

He was . . . a god, with skin burnished by fire.

When I could drag my gaze from his body, I drank in the sight of his face. His lips were thinned, that scar a razor slash of white. His wet hair tangled over his lean, flushed cheeks. His noble face was filled with pain.

Pain earned while delivering my pleasure.

And in his smoldering eyes was his own madness. A bone-deep yearning that called to mine.

With his accent thick, he bit out one word: Obsessed.

I didn’t know if he was talking about himself or me. Didn’t know if it was a question or an answer. Imagining it was the word foremost in his thoughts, I replied with the one foremost in mine: Revelation.

His brows drew tight, and he hissed, “Yes.” When he reached for the tie at my wrists, his c**k slid across my sensitive belly and streamed pr**cum from the tip. It was like a taunt, a reminder of what I’d been denied, stoking my lust even more. I was still sizzling inside, seething like him.

“And we’re not through,” he promised. He loosened the knot—enough for me to eventually free my hands?—then stepped away. Leaning back against the nearby wall, he began to masturbate his mouthwatering cock.

I was transfixed by the erotic sight: a god, thrumming with need, self-pleasuring.