Chapter 75: The Tapping Game
The tension from the supply closet didn’t leave her. It coiled in her gut, a cold, writhing snake of humiliation and rage. For three days, Amber operated with a militant cheerfulness, overseeing every detail of the community day prep while Layla worked the legal channels. She smiled wider, laughed louder, and moved through the salon like a queen, her blinged-out nails flashing like tiny blades. But at night, in the vast silence of the Myers Park house, the snake uncoiled. It whispered about Brenda’s retreat, about the paused vendor donations, about the sheer fucking audacity of Peter Vishniac thinking he could touch what she’d built.
Kash saw it. He felt the rigid set of her shoulders in bed, the way she stared at the ceiling, her mind whirring like a trapped fly. The night before the community event, he led her not to the bedroom, but down a softly lit hallway to a door she rarely saw him open.
The sex room wasn’t just a room.It was a statement. Deep mahogany panels drank the light from low, brass sconces. The air smelled of the amber oil she loved and something darker, a hint of vanilla and leather.One entire wall was mirrored, another housed a formidable St. Andrew’s cross of polished dark wood. Plush velvet cushions in burnt umber were scattered near a low table holding two glasses and a decanter of something rich and red. The far wall was floor-to-ceiling windows, Charlotte’s skyline glittering indifferently in the distance.
“We need to break it,” Kash said, his voice calm. He poured a glass of wine, handed it to her, then took a sip of his own.“Not talk.Not plan. Break the tension so it can’t break you.”
Amber sipped the wine, felt its warmth spread. She looked at the cross, then at her distorted reflection in the mirror, her pregnant silhouette swollen and powerful.The snake in her gut hissed.She wanted it gone. She wanted to feel something so overpowering it would scorch the fear and the fury away.
“I have a game,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended.She set her glass down with a decisive click.
“Yeah?” Kash leaned against the wall, watching her.
“I want you to slut me out.” The words hung in the perfumed air.“Use everything.Do anything. Your secret goal is to make me beg you to stop, to use my safe word.” She met his eyes, a challenge sparking in her own.“My secret goal is to make you tap out first. To be so much, to take so much, that you can’t finish. That you have to stop.”
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Kash’s face.He understood. This was her battlefield, chosen on her terms.A reclamation through absolute surrender. “Those are high fucking stakes.”
“They are.” She stepped out of her dress, letting it pool at her feet. Her body felt monumental, a terrain of soft curves and hard purpose. She walked to the cross, the cool wood a shock against her back.“Tie me up.My belly stays free. Don’t be gentle.Don’t be my husband just yet. Be the thing that makes everything else quiet.”
He moved with a sudden, focused intensity. The restraints were soft, wide cuffs of black leather. He secured her wrists high, her ankles wide apart, the structure holding her upright and utterly open.Her pregnant belly arched forward, sacred and vulnerable between the hard lines of the wood. He kissed her, deep and claiming, then pulled back, his eyes gone dark.
“Watch,” he commanded, nodding toward the mirror.
He started with his hands, calloused palms skating over her skin, teasing her nipples into tight, aching peaks until she was panting. Then he picked up the flogger. The falls were soft suede, but they landed with a shocking, rhythmic thwack across her thighs, her ass, the swell of her hips. It wasn’t pain, not exactly.It was a wake-up call.Each impact was a percussion that drove the world further away. She moaned, her head falling back.
“Louder,” Kash growled, and the strikes came faster, a storm of sensation that painted her skin a warm, rosy pink. She cried out, her body straining against the cuffs.He switched to the crop.A sharper, more intimate sting. He traced the line of her inner thigh, never quite landing where she throbbed for him, then delivered a crisp, burning slap to the crease where thigh met hip. She jolted, a filthy, grateful curse tearing from her lips.
“You’re dripping,” he observed, his voice thick.He dropped to his knees, his breath hot against her core. He didn’t use his tongue.He used a vibrator, a sleek, relentless piece of engineering. He pressed it against her clit and turned it on.The vibration was an immediate, brutal assault. Her back arched off the cross, a scream caught in her throat. He held it there, unmoving, as the sensation built from pleasure into a shocking, unbearable intensity. She bucked, but the cuffs held her firm.“Please…fuck…” she begged, but the words had no direction.
“Please what?” he demanded, not moving the device.“More! God, just…more!”
He laughed, a low, dark sound, and pushed the vibrator inside her, the thick intrusion combined with the buzz making her vision whiten at the edges. He worked it in and out, a cruel, efficient parody of sex, the buzzing filling her, shaking her apart. Her first orgasm ripped through her, violent and unexpected, leaving her sobbing.He didn’t stop. He kept the vibrator buried inside her, kept the pressure on her clit, and watched as a second, weaker climax trembled through her, then a third, a shattering ripple that was more nerve than pleasure.
She was babbling, overstimulated, tears cutting tracks through the sheen of sweat on her face. “Kash…Kash, I can’t…”
“You can.” He finally removed the vibrator.She gasped at the sudden, hollow absence. He unbuckled the cuff around her right ankle, then her left, his movements swift. He turned her roughly, her belly pressed against the cool wood, her ass presented to him. He guided himself into her weeping cunt with one brutal thrust.
She screamed, the fullness a shock after the electric buzz. He fucked her with a deep, punishing rhythm, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.Each snap of his pelvis was a punctuation mark on her vulnerability. She was lost in a haze of sensation, her body a vessel for his controlled fury. She came again around him, a weak, involuntary clenching.He pulled out abruptly. Before she could process the loss, he was in front of her, his glistening cock at her lips. “Open.”
She did, taking him into her mouth, tasting herself on him. He held her head, not forcing, but guiding, fucking her mouth with the same steady intensity. She gagged, tears renewed, but she took him, her throat working around him. She watched his face in the mirror, the strain in his jaw, the feral gleam in his eye.He was close. She could feel it in the tension of his thighs.He pulled back, breathing raggedly. “Not yet.” The words were a vow.He turned her again, facing the mirror. He produced a bottle of oil, warmed it in his hands, and worked his fingers against her other entrance, slow and insistent. She was loose, wet, wrecked.“This,” he stated, his voice raw. “You get this.You take this. And you still don’t tap.”
The penetration was slow, impossibly intimate, a searing fullness that stole her breath. He waited until her body yielded, then began to move. The angle was different, the sensation a sharp, bright counterpoint to the deep ache between her legs. He wrapped one arm around her, his hand splayed over her belly, holding their children as he claimed her. His other hand found her clit, slippery and swollen, and he circled it with a ruthless precision.She was shattered.Every nerve was alive, screaming. She was sobbing openly now, her face a mess of tears and saliva, her body trembling violently against the cross and against him. She watched their reflection—a man, ferocious with love, moving in a possessed, steady rhythm; a woman, bound and triumphant in her surrender, being remade.
“Beg me to stop,” he rasped, his thrusts losing their perfect rhythm. He was fighting it, fighting his own end.She shook her head, a weak, defiant motion. She pushed back against him, taking him deeper, a final, shocking act of will.A guttural sound ripped from his chest.
His movements faltered.His forehead dropped against her shoulder blade. His rhythm broke into shallow, frantic thrusts, then stilled. He held her there, buried to the hilt, his whole body shaking.He didn’t come.He carefully, so carefully, pulled out. He uncuffed her wrists, catching her as her legs gave way, lowering them both to the velvet cushions on the floor.He gathered her against his chest, her wrecked, trembling body folded into his. He kissed her tear-stained cheeks, her swollen lips, her closed eyelids.
“I tap,” he whispered, the words breathed into her hair.“You win. Fuck, Amber… you win.”
She didn’t have the breath to speak. A profound, glowing quiet filled the space where the snake had been. She nestled into him, her body pulsing with a hundred small aches, her spirit strangely, perfectly calm. In the mirror across from them, she saw a woman who could not be broken.A man who would wage wars for her, but would surrender to her. The city lights blinked, distant and irrelevant. Here, in the amber-scented dark, they had found their center of gravity again.The fight outside the door hadn’t changed. But the people who would face it had just been reforged.
But the people who would face it had just been reforged.
A long, quiet moment passed in the velvet dark, their breathing the only sound. Amber’s tremors subsided into a deep, liquid warmth. She shifted in Kash’s arms, her muscles protesting, every nerve ending singing a faded, satisfied hymn. She pressed a kiss to the damp skin of his chest, then slowly, deliberately, pushed herself up. Her movements were stiff but purposeful.
“My turn,” she said, her voice hoarse from screaming but utterly calm.
Kash looked up at her, his eyes heavy-lidded with spent passion. A faint, questioning smile touched his lips. “Your turn for what, baby? You just won.”
“You didn’t try to make me tap out.” She stood, her body a magnificent, aching silhouette against the city lights. “You stopped. You surrendered. That means the game wasn’t finished.” She walked to the low table, picked up the decanter of wine, and took a long, direct swallow from its neck. The liquid was cool and bracing. “Now it’s finished. Get on the cross.”
A new kind of tension entered the room. It wasn’t the coiled rage from before; it was a sharp, electric current of challenge. Kash watched her, the smile fading into something more serious, more intrigued. He saw the resolve in the set of her shoulders, the glint in her eye. This was the woman who’d built an empire from a single nail station. He slowly rose to his feet. “Amber…”
“Don’t ‘Amber’ me.” She pointed to the St. Andrew’s cross, the polished wood still warm from her own body. “You tied me up. You used every toy. You fucked me until I sobbed. And then you tapped. That was a gift.” She stepped closer, her sharp nail tracing a line down his sternum. “But I’m not feeling generous. I’m feeling like a winner who wants to collect. Now. On the cross.”
He held her gaze for a heartbeat longer, then nodded, a slow capitulation that felt like the truest form of trust. He turned and placed his palms against the wood.
She secured him with the same black leather cuffs, pulling the straps tight with a firm, efficient yank. The sight of him bound, his powerful back and arms constrained, sent a fresh thrill through her exhaustion. She walked a slow circle around him, her fingertips grazing his skin. She picked up the flogger he’d used on her, weighing the soft suede falls in her hand.
“You remember what you said?” she asked, her voice a low murmur near his ear. “You said, ‘Louder.’”
She brought the flogger down in a swift, cracking arc across his shoulders. He grunted, his muscles bunching. She did it again, and again, not with his rhythmic storm, but with sporadic, unpredictable strikes that kept him flinching, guessing. Thwack. “That was for Brenda.” Thwack. “That’s for the country club board.” A harder one, across the backs of his thighs. “And that’s for Peter Vishniac’s fucking signature on that subpoena.”
She dropped the flogger. It landed on the plush rug with a dull thud. She picked up the vibrator, still slick from her own body. She turned it on, the buzz suddenly loud in the quiet room. She didn’t use it on him immediately. She trailed it up the inside of his thigh, letting the vibration tease the sensitive skin near his scrotum. He jerked against the restraints.
“You like that?” she whispered. “You made me come three times with this little monster.” She pressed it firmly against the base of his cock, where the nerves were concentrated. A sharp gasp escaped him. His cock, which had softened, began to thicken again under the relentless, buzzing stimulation.
“Fuck, Amber,” he breathed, his forehead pressed to the wood.
“Uh-uh,” she chided, moving the vibrator in slow circles. “You don’t get to talk. You get to come.” She worked him with the device, her other hand wrapping around his length, stroking in time with the vibrations. It was a ruthless, technical assault. His hips strained, a helpless, shallow pumping motion against the air. His orgasm built with shocking speed, torn from him by overstimulation rather than passion. With a choked-off roar, he came, jets of release striping the dark wood of the cross.
He sagged, breathing hard. Amber didn’t pause. She released the cuff on his right wrist. “Turn around.”
He did, his body slack with post-orgasmic shock. She recuffed him facing out, his body on display. She knelt before him. His cock was still half-hard, glistening with his own spend. She leaned in and took him into her mouth, swallowing him deep, cleaning him with her tongue. He groaned, a sound of pure oversensitivity. She sucked him hard, using her hand at his base, her mouth a wet, demanding vacuum. She felt him twitch, felt the impossible stir of renewed arousal even as his body tried to resist.
“You can’t,” he whispered, his voice ragged.
“I can,” she said, pulling off with a wet pop. She reached for the bottle of oil. She poured a generous amount into her palm, warming it, then took him in a firm, slick grip. She stroked him with a relentless, steady rhythm, her eyes locked on his. “You’re going to come again. And again. Until I’m done. Until I decide we’re even.”
“Amber, I can’t… it’s too…”
She tightened her grip, twisting her wrist on the upstroke, a technique he’d taught her. “You can. For me. You will.” She saw the agony and the fervent need war in his eyes. His body betrayed him, hardening fully again in her slick fist. The second orgasm was different—a dry, wrenching convulsion that made his whole body seize, his shout strangled and raw. Nothing came out but a pulse of helpless sensation.
Tears of overstimulation welled in his eyes. Amber leaned forward, kissing them away. She gentled her hand, but she didn’t stop. She stroked him slowly, tenderly, as he shuddered. “One more,” she murmured, like a lullaby. “Give me one more. For the win.”
She lowered her head again, taking his oversensitive cock back into the heat of her mouth. She used her tongue softly, fluttering against the frenulum, sucking gently. It was torture of the sweetest kind. His protests were weak, wordless moans. His hips gave a feeble, involuntary thrust. She took it, deep in her throat, and hummed.
The vibration from her hum, combined with the wet suction, tipped him over a final, brutal edge. A third, searing climax was ripped from him, a weak spill of fluid that she swallowed. He cried out, a broken sound, his body going completely limp in the restraints, held upright only by the cuffs.
Amber released him. She carefully, gently, unbuckled each leather strap. He collapsed into her arms, a dead weight. She lowered them both to the cushions, cradling his head against her breast. His entire body was trembling, spent in a way she had never seen. She kissed his hair, his temples, holding him as the aftershocks subsided.
A long time later, he stirred. He looked up at her, his eyes clear and utterly peaceful. “You wrecked me.”
“You didn’t make me tap,” she said softly, tracing his eyebrow. “So I had to break you instead. Properly.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Properly.” He nuzzled into her, his voice muffled against her skin. “The community day is tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“We’re ready.”
“I know that, too.”
They lay there in the quiet sanctuary, the tools of their pleasure scattered around them, the city asleep beyond the glass. The snake was not just gone; it had been annihilated. In its place was a profound, unshakeable calm. The fight awaited, with its subpoenas and its betrayals and its petty bureaucrats. But here, in the dark, they had found a new equilibrium—a balance of power so complete it felt like peace.
But here, in the dark, they had found a new equilibrium—a balance of power so complete it felt like peace. The peace lasted until the first grey light of dawn crept across the skyline. Kash moved first, his body stiff. He looked at Amber, asleep beside him on the velvet, her face smoothed of its strategic smiles. He saw the faint welts from the flogger on her thighs. He remembered the feel of her fist, ruthless and demanding, pulling a third orgasm from his spent body. A low, simmering current stirred in his gut. It wasn’t anger. It was something hotter, more possessive. She had broken him open last night. She had won. Now, he needed to answer. Not as her husband. As something else entirely.
He waited until her eyes fluttered open. He didn’t smile. His expression was flat, intense. “Get up.”
Amber blinked, the remains of her deep exhaustion clinging to her. She saw the look in his eyes and something inside her tightened, a sharp, delicious thrill of anticipation. She sat up, her body protesting. “What?”
“You wrecked me.” He said it plainly. “You told me to be the thing that makes everything quiet. Last night, you were that thing for me. Now it’s my turn again.” He stood, offering her his hand. It wasn’t gentle. It was a demand. “We’re not done.”
She took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. He led her not back to the cross, but to the center of the room, directly before the vast, unforgiving mirror. The morning light was cold and precise, illuminating every mark on their skin, every drop of dried sweat. He positioned her so she faced their reflection. Her pregnant belly, the faint bruises, her swollen sex, her tired, defiant eyes. He stood behind her, a dark pillar, his hands settling on her shoulders.
“Watch,” he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. “You watch what you did. You watch what it makes me do.”
His fingers bit into her hips. He entered her in one deep, unceremonious thrust, his cock sliding into her sore, slippery channel. She gasped, her hands flying back to grip his thighs. The fullness was a shock, a reassertion. He set a hard, driving pace immediately, no warm-up, no tenderness. Just pure, piston-like reclamation. Her cunt ached, but it also wept, adapting, welcoming him back. The slapping sound of their flesh filled the sunlit room.
“See that?” he grunted, his eyes locked on hers in the mirror. “See how fucking wet you still are for me? Even after all that? Your body doesn’t lie.” He drilled into her, his rhythm brutal and efficient. One of his hands snaked around her hip, his fingers finding her clit. He pressed down, a hard, unrelenting circle. The overstimulation was instant and blinding. A scream tore from her throat as an orgasm detonated, a raw, scraping convulsion that made her legs buckle. He held her up, never slowing his thrusts.
“Again,” he snarled.
“I can’t, Kash, I can’t, it’s too–”
His fingers worked her ruthlessly. “You can. You will.” The sensitivity was agony. It was fire. A second peak, weaker but sharper, ripped through her, and she sobbed, her head falling forward. He wrapped a fist in her hair, yanking her head back up. “Watch. You watch this.”
He was a machine. He fucked her through the trembling aftershocks, his own breath starting to saw in his chest. The pleasure-pain was a dizzying spiral. She was raw, every nerve exposed. A third orgasm began to build, a terrifying wave of sensation that promised to dissolve her completely. She was panting, begging, the words slurring together. “Please… please, I’m gonna… I can’t stay… please stop, I’m gonna pass out…”
His mouth was at her ear. “What did you call me?”
She was incoherent, teetering on that black edge. “Kash… please…”
“Wrong.” He slammed into her, a thrust that touched her cervix. “What did you call me when you had me on the cross? When you were breaking me?”
The memory flashed—her power, his submission. The word spilled from her wrecked lips, unbidden, a final surrender. “Daddy.”
The effect was volcanic. A guttural roar tore from his chest. All control, all measured rhythm, shattered. His composure evaporated. “Yeah,” he spat, his thrusts turning wild, erratic, absolutely brutal. “Now you fucking get it.”
He wrecked her. He hammered into her with a force that shoved her forward, her palms slapping against the cold mirror for support. He fucked her like he was trying to reach through her, his grip on her hip surely leaving fingerprints in her flesh. The overstimulation crossed into a new realm of sensation, a white-hot totality that short-circuited thought.
“I’m gonna… Daddy, I’m gonna…” Her threat was a wail.
“Do it.” He was panting, animalistic. “Squirt on this cock. Ruin this fucking floor. Show me.”
The command triggered something primal. The climax that seized her wasn’t a pulse; it was a flood. A hot, gushing release burst from her, soaking his driving cock, her thighs, dripping onto the mahogany below. She screamed, her body convulsing violently, her vision tunneling to a pinprick of light. He fucked her through the torrent, through her trembling, through the near-syncope, until with a final, broken shout, he emptied himself deep inside her, his own orgasm wrung from pure, unadulterated frenzy.
They collapsed. He caught her, lowering them both to the floor, a tangled, dripping mess of limbs and spent breath. She shuddered in his arms, completely insensate, hovering on the edge of consciousness. He held her, his own body trembling with the aftershock. He kissed her temple, her hair, his breaths gradually slowing. The morning sun now illuminated the evidence of their battle: the slick pool on the dark wood, their shattered reflections in the glass.
A long time later, her breathing evened. She didn’t speak. She just burrowed deeper into him, a small, shattered movement. He finally stirred, his voice a ragged whisper in the quiet. “We have to get ready. OThe community day starts in three hours.”
From the depths of her exhaustion, Amber made a sound. It wasn’t a word. It was a low, visceral hum of acknowledgment. A victory. A defeat. A perfect, obliterating draw. She slowly, painfully, unfolded herself from him. She looked at the mess, at their reflection, at the man who had just carried her to the edge of oblivion and back. A slow, worn-out smile touched her swollen lips.
“Okay,” she said, her voice raspy but clear. “Let’s go show them what a united front really looks like.”