Darkest Love by Melody Tweedy

harder?— and she felt emotion surge into her stomach and chest.
    Annie stared at her fingers on the snifter, knuckles tight and wrist tense. It was through choking–a lock of his fingers around Annie’s neck–that Rain took his orgasms to the next level. They hid it from the world. It was their little secret, as private and hidden as her hand in this dark cupboard hollow. She gripped the glass tighter, waiting to hear if Rain spoke again. When he didn’t, Annie pulled his vessel out with a scrape and closed the cupboard.
    â€œI think it will.” She smiled, pouring his liquid with a glunk glunk , then hers. Rain took the glass and shot the gin back greedily, handsome in the pink evening light, arms delicious but pale in his short sleeved shirt. His tan had faded while he was in New York.
    Annie bit her lip, trying to think of a way to describe what she needed. Every time she slept with Rain the excitement was heightened by her sense that she was giving something up, that they were dancing a dangerous dance. I must be a filthy girl , she thought. Because nothing gets me hotter than the idea of being degraded. It was playing on that knife’s edge that was so hot. The way sleeping with Rain risked her career. The way colleagues looked at her askance, as if they’d heard something. But they never said a word. Probably because he’s too powerful.
    And maybe, just maybe, because I am powerful, too. Every time he humiliated her, it set up an icy new wall of resistance. I will never do that again, she would tell herself. Then when the wall collapsed and he hammered his way back in—brutally, instinctively—the orgasms just got hotter.
    â€œI want to do some humiliation stuff,” she said. “I want to explore some of my complicated sexual feelings. It’s nothing to do with you,” she added the last part quickly. “I mean, our sex life is hot.”
    â€œYeah.” Rain’s yeah was casual, cruel and needy all at once. Something about it made her loins tingle. Annie stuffed it down, and went on.
    â€œOur sex life is hot, and we’ve done a bit of kinky stuff already. I figure…” She winked, then shot her own gin back in one gulp, planting the glass back on the table. “I figure you’re the guy.”
    â€œDo I make you feel humiliated?”
    Annie felt a lump rising up in her throat, but she was careful to swallow it. “That’s how some men make me feel and I want to just embrace it. Explore it,” she said quietly. “It will make the orgasms really good. And…”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œI might tap into something deeper. The reason why I do it. The reason why…”
    â€œWhy what?”
    â€œThe reason why I’m attracted to jerks like you.”
    Rain laughed, but then she saw a flash of pain in his eyes. Annie knew this stuff was confusing him. She opened her mouth, but seeing the rueful curl of his lip and the way the excitement—the sexual hunger and abandon—faded from his face, she clamped it shut again. She didn’t want that to happen just yet.
    â€œOkay.”

Chapter 8
    â€œThis is going to be your homage.”
    Rain’s voice boomed. He was sitting on the couch. Annie felt a quiver in her loins already as she knelt before him. His shins were hard and scar-patterned and surrounded by bulging calves. She kept her eyes on those shins as she shifted on the floor. Her own knees were not so battle-hardened and the bumps on the earthen floor hurt.
    She was not used to kneeling. The last time she had done it was when she collapsed with Lily, crying over Rain’s indifference. The time before that was to give Rain head.
    Ouch. She almost let the sound out but stopped herself. She would have to get used to this, though every bump in her knee was crying for a rest.
    â€œRepeat everything I say.”
    Annie blinked. They had not agreed to that. Rain was clearly making the rules up