Holding The Cards
Chapter 19

Lauren could not prevent a reflexive gasp and arch as Josh chuckled, vibrating his semi-erect member against her. His eyes darkened and he moved, just slightly. "Something I can do for you...Mistress?"
Her rebellious submissive. She managed a suitably unaffected look, though her body fairly screamed an affirmative answer. "Many, many things. But first, your punishment. Marcus must put you back on that cross." Her finger traced a path, albeit a trembling one, down the center of his chest, "I intend to torture you."
"What if I disobey?" he leaned down, bit her throat, and she moaned, gripped his shoulders.
"I would have to punish you severely," she drew the last word out several more syllables than proper English required, as he rubbed his knee along the inside of her thigh. So close...
She caught his hair and tugged, hard, eliciting a yelp, and made him meet her eyes. "You will obey me, Josh, because I am your Mistress. Now, get up, and go back to the cross, because I want to see you walk that fine ass of yours back across the room and lick my lips over it. And," she didn't ease her grip,
"you'll straighten my dress first, with your teeth, so you'll smell how much pleasure you bring to me."
"Cruel bitch," he said, with a smile that trembled at the edges and twisted her heart. He eased up, leaving her missing his weight, but quickly drove that from her mind.
He bent to her thigh, running his tongue over the taut muscle and making her squirm before he took the hem in his teeth and tugged. His chin and jaw scraped her sensitive skin, as he went back and forth, to the outside of each side of her hips. The wet heat of his mouth fastened on her skin here and there until he had the skirt worked over their flare and tapering down along her thighs. She rolled to one hip to help him, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare ass, and enjoyed his huffed, frustrated breath.
When he rose, his cock was fully recovered, and it was all she could do not to touch herself to relieve some of the aching pressure. He looked at her with such yearning, she almost broke again, but she managed to make an imperious gesture, an order to go back toward the cross. He nodded, acknowledging the command, but with a deferential dip of his head, he bent, slid his arms under her, and lifted her to her feet, straightening the dress with respectful hands, smoothing the fabric from waist to thigh. As she looked up at him, unable to tear her eyes away from his face, he focused on her hair, tucking it back up into the pins she had used when she slicked it back from her face. Taking care of her.
He held her face in his hands a moment, his thumbs along the jumping pulse and fragile bones of her neck. He did not say anything, but Lauren was not aware of silence. A hundred words and emotions were expressed in that look. She thought it might be the first expression on Man's face when he was first created and the whole world was a new place, with so many mysteries and wonders, places of dark and light.
He released her, turned and walked back across the room, his body moving gracefully. He stopped before the cross and hesitated only a moment before he allowed himself to be once again stretched out and strapped in. It made her eyes sting, his trust.
However, sentiment was swallowed by even stronger emotions as she watched the process of restraining him. The adjustment of hip, the tightening of his stomach, the flexing of muscles as his arms were extended. Marcus buckling the straps over his spread, muscular thighs, framing his arousal. She had him stop before he restrained the neck and forehead. She wanted Josh to be able to move his head this time.
"Cock harness, my lady?" her Egyptian assistant queried, his dark hair whispering along the white silk of his robe as he turned his head toward her.
"No, not this time. I intend to make use of it."
She came back across the floor to stand before Josh, strutting, slow, her hips swaying with her steps.
His eyes drank in the sway of her body, the quiver of her breasts, the hard points of her nipples. Last time he had been blindfolded. Now he did not have to imagine.
"Ten lashes, I think," she tapped her foot. "And if you handle that well, then you'll get a reward. Do you think that's fair?"
His hands closed into fists again. The shadows still lurked in his eyes, the residue of opening a festering wound to bleed, and she intended to wash it clean once and for all with pure, healthy lust.
"Ask me for them, Josh," she murmured. "Tell me you want my punishment."
Josh nodded. "Anything to please you, Mistress." And his lips curved up in a way that speared straight to her vitals. "Anything."
"Insolent creature. Perhaps I'll make it fifteen."
He was hard as a rock when she landed the first blow, licking the area just above his hipbone. The shuddering reaction of his skin was almost the same as if she had caressed him.
He kept his eyes locked on her, and she didn't make him cast his eyes down. She liked to see the fire build, passion destroying pain. The shadows were being chased away by an excruciating combination of pleasure and pain, a tug-of-war that was bringing a flush to his face and chest with every strike. It was as alluring as the red glow she was bringing to the skin on his thighs and ass as she switched from one side of the cross to the other. The whip snapped, pulling blood to the surface of sensitized skin.
Strike fourteen, and he was panting, his eyes filled with the light of the wild animal again, only violence wasn't what he had in mind this time, she was sure. She caught the rattail end of the whip around his shaft on the last stroke, tugged before she loosed it. Even as he jumped, a male, defensive reaction, fluid leaked from the tip. He was ready to detonate, every muscle quivering and possessed by the savagery brought by mindless desire, and she had brought it to him.
The thought of that was almost as stimulating to her as the thought of what she wanted to do with that cock.
"What do you think of our beautiful man, Marcus?" she asked, coming closer. Josh strained against his bonds toward her.
Marcus was watching Josh, almost as fascinated as the bound man was with her.
"He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"Mmmm. Would you like to fuck him, Marcus?"
That snapped both men's attention to her. Lauren stepped up to Josh, aware of the charged tension that filled the air between him and Marcus. She laid her hand along Josh's cheek, made him look into her eyes. "What do you say, Josh? I've always wanted to ride a man with another man inside him." she leaned in, licked his jawline and let him strain to nibble at her temple. "I think it would feel absolutely incredible."
Marcus drew close to Josh's shoulder, meeting her gaze over the tanned curve of skin and muscle. His hand touched Josh's nape, a whisper brush down his spine. A shiver ran through Josh, but it did not appear to be one of revulsion. He brushed his lips against her face and she let herself be nuzzled as Marcus bent, and gently kissed the line of Josh's shoulders where neck and collar bone met.
"You must answer your Mistress, Josh," Marcus commanded quietly, and Lauren felt her already warm blood stir as she heard some of the Master enter Marcus's voice. "Tell her what you desire."
Josh turned his head. Lauren's hand lay on his bare chest, playing there, her hips rubbing inside his thighs, brushing his excited groin.
Josh met Marcus's gaze and something deep, lingering, was considered. "If it will bring my Mistress pleasure," his attention came back to Lauren, "then I want Marcus to fuck me."
There was still too much shuttered behind those gray eyes. She curled her hand on his neck, tightened her grip.
"It will bring me pleasure, Josh, only if it brings you pleasure," she responded. "Do you want Marcus inside of you?"
Josh gave a half-deprecating laugh. In a slight motion that took both his captors by surprise, he laid his forehead briefly against Marcus's close temple. "I believe he always has been, in one fashion or another."
Despite the seriousness of the moment, Lauren felt her cheek muscles quiver at the utter shock that crossed Marcus's normally self-possessed features. Josh might have appreciated it as well, except the admission had flustered him, and he had lowered his gaze, a light flush rising in his cheeks.
The shyness, and deference, stoked the fire in both of his admirers. Marcus's hand came up, cupped Josh's jaw, his thumb making a firm stroke over the other man's cheek, and when Josh's eyes lifted, Marcus pressed a brief kiss on the other man's lips, his brilliant green eyes locked with storm gray. No tongue, no physical outburst that might send Josh into a panicked retreat. She had to admire Marcus's restraint. After such an admission, she would have wanted to gobble him up whole.
Marcus lowered his hand, caught hers, and drew it forward. He curled her fingers around Josh's cock and the man groaned at the squeezing pressure of her heated skin.
"I'd like to see you stroke him while I prepare myself for our beautiful boy, if it suits you, my lady." he said. Not a command, not from one Dom to another, but a request she was more than willing to grant.
She nodded. "I'll be right back," she whispered, touching Josh's jaw, and turned her back to him, bending over the close chair. She coiled the whip on the seat. When she straightened and turned, Josh's eyes lifted.
"I could almost see your pussy," he murmured. "I'm glad you came to the island."
She smiled at the disjointed thoughts and touched his face, his neck.
"Me, too." She ran her hand along his arm, over the three straps that held it there above his head. "Are you comfortable?"
He chuckled, glanced down. "Not entirely."
She wrapped her other hand around him, and slipped back into a Mistress's role with the ease and joy as if she had been born in a dungeon with whip in hand.
"Good," she murmured, rubbing her breasts against his bare chest, drawing his eyes to the gather and stretch of the fabric as the full curves lifted to accommodate the pressure. "Do you like being uncomfortable for me, Josh? Do you like being so hard so long for me?"
"If it makes my Mistress wet to see me so," he made a futile attempt to catch her ear in his teeth when she rubbed her cheek against his.
"Bad boy," she chuckled, giving his cock a hard squeeze that brought something close to a whimper from him. "But I think you know your Mistress too well. We'll have to punish you for that, won't we, Marcus?"
Marcus had emerged from the dressing room with a green glass bottle. His lithe movements toward them shifted the open white silk robe, emphasizing and framing his chest, hard stomach and even harder cock, clearly molded by the soft material of the gathered pants.
Lauren heard Josh swallow. Her hand rested on his collar bone, so she felt the pulse jump.
"Butterflies, Josh?" she asked.
His eyes tore from Marcus and came back to her. "No," he managed.
"Good. You tell me, you tell us, if you get them, at any point." She flattened herself against him and captured his mouth in an open, hot kiss. She fisted her hand roughly in his hair and moved in, straddling his erection, sliding his aroused member along the slick channel of her clit and labia, rubbing. He rocked forward, just the small amount his restraints permitted, and groaned again as she moved over his sensitive head.
She felt like groaning herself. His brief contact on her clit was unbelievably powerful, her response as close to an orgasm from just a brief touch as anything she'd ever had. The friction of pulling off of him, going over that thick ridge of the glans, was worse. She had to tighten her grip, steady her breathing.
Fortunately, her captive was distracted from pressing his advantage. Marcus had moved around them during the kiss. Lauren smelled the exotic scents from the bottle of oill as he uncorked it. Josh went rigid, and there was a shift in his eyes, apprehension.
"Sshhh," Marcus made a gesture only Lauren could see, and she nodded, sliding her arms around Josh's waist. She turned her hand over, accepting the small pool of oill into it, the texture slippery like her own fluids.
"Just some lubricant, dear one," Marcus murmured and laid Lauren's hand, palm down, in the indentation right above Josh's buttocks.
Lauren let the liquid drain onto his skin. At Marcus's guiding touch, she slid her oiled fingers down along the inside of the curve of Josh's ass, then deeper, letting the oill follow the impression of her fingers. It flowed over and into the tight opening that fairly radiated Josh's tension. She ran her fingers around and over it, and transformed the tension of fear into the strain toward release, his breath beginning to grow rapid. She was pressed full against him, her head lifted to watch what she was doing, and she gasped as he sank his teeth into her jugular. It was a non-puncturing grip, but strong all the same. He sucked harshly on her skin. The lack of finesse tightened her own nerves, a spiral from breast to groin. She turned her head to dislodge his mouth but recaptured his lips in a damp kiss.
Her hand slid up the small of the back, and Marcus's touch smoothly replaced hers. His long fingers fondled Josh's buttocks, squeezing, a stronger, more masculine touch that she was not sure Josh noticed immediately, due to the seamless transition dance of their hands and her efforts toward keeping his attention on plundering her hot mouth, fused on his.
Marcus had changed the music when he went to get the lubricant, and the beat was building again, a deep drum rhythm at once complex and primal. It vibrated through the floor, through the soles of Lauren's feet, tingling in the contact between her palm and Josh's shoulder and neck. She pressed herself even more tightly against him, now holding his head still with her touch so she could nibble on his neck.
"I want to touch you," he muttered against her cheek.
She smiled, which did nothing to dispel the raging, aching need in her own eyes, a need as much emotional as physical. "Tough," she whispered, with a slight catch in her tone. "You'll wait for me to take you."
"God," his breath exhaled in a rush as she worked the dress up with her movements and rubbed herself along the top of his engorged head again. "Please...I'm going to explode."
Marcus had loosened the drawstring of the silken pants and they pooled around his ankles, revealing an impressive erection rising out of a curling thatch of black hair.
"First, you take Marcus," she caught his shoulder in her teeth, channeling the shudder that rippled dangerously along her skin into the fierceness of the bite to gain some control of herself, "Then, I take you. But if you come when Marcus goes in, you get nothing but my whip," she nipped sharply on his nipple and he gasped, "on your adorable ass."
"I can't..."
Lauren glanced around his arm and saw Marcus removing a condom from his robe.
"You better," she said without a break, covering Marcus's muted rattling of foil. "Because my pussy is dripping for you. Feel that," she rubbed it along his length again and managed a strangled chuckle when he let out a noise, part animal, and part inventive curse. His muscles strained so hard against his bonds she could see the flesh reddening around the imprint of the straps again, hear the material creaking to contain him. "Tell me you won't come."
"I won't." He fisted his hands as she slowly, slowly slid herself up his length again. "Jesus, fucking...Lauren, stop..."
She paused, let him feel the rippling through her sensitive tissues, revealing how close she was herself.
"Marcus."
"I'm here, dearest." He moved up behind Josh. He was somewhat taller, so when he moved Josh's hair aside to kiss his exposed neck, he only had to raise his eyelids to meet Lauren's gaze. His arms lowered, his hands coming to rest on Josh's hips, his long, strong fingers caressing the lines just below the restraining strap on his waist. Josh's thigh muscles tensed in a fascinating display of virility that Lauren admired as she slid away from him, standing back a step to lock eyes with him.
"Remember," she said softly. "You can't come until I say so. Forget, and you'll feel my whip." She moistened her lips, watching his glazed, frantic expression take in every curve of her body, the jutted hips, the tilt of her tight breasts, the light play of her fingers along her thigh. She inched the fabric up, up again exposing only the very tip of what she was offering him, a cloven fruit, the ripe, succulent inside exposed to his gaze, just out of reach.
Marcus's eyes were very green and alive, and yet very much in control. It could not help but elicit the greatest admiration of another Dominant, or make a sub go weak with obedience. Lauren thought she could have simply stood back and watched him with the quiet joy of watching a master of any type of art work his magic.
His chest pressed against Josh's shoulders. "Lay your head against my jaw," he ordered, the command delivered in a voice like a sensual caress. Josh obeyed, tilting his head. He bucked, startled, when Marcus's hand reached around, closed around his cock.
While Josh had thus far demonstrated an amazing level of control that she suspected was the result of a successful artist's discipline, Lauren knew that what Marcus was about to do could in fact cause Josh to explode, despite his best efforts to hold himself back. The only thing that might prevent it was the fact this would be a virgin fuck, so to speak. His nervousness, and the unusual feel of it might combine to keep him from losing the grip.
"Easy, love," Marcus crooned, tightening his grasp in delightful conflict with his soothing words. "Mustn't disobey your mistress. What a fucking, gorgeous tight ass you have. You want me in it?"
Josh nodded, one jerk of his head. "Tell me," Marcus said sharply.
"Yes." Josh was panting and Lauren saw a convulsive ripple under Marcus's slowly stroking fingers, resulting in a small explosion of fluid. A slight smile curved her lips and she picked up her whip. Josh's eyes jerked to her. "No," he protested. "I won't."
She nodded, flicked it around his feet. "I know you won't, Josh. You'll take every inch of him, but you'll save all that for me, won't you?"
He nodded, almost beyond speech. He wasn't going to make it, despite his best intentions. Lauren thought if she had touched herself at this moment she would go off herself. Lord in Heaven, she had never had the opportunity to experience the sexual high this type of power could bring, power based on trust and emotional bonds. What she thought she had with Jonathan did not even compare.
"You need the harness, Josh."
"I don't, Mistress," he promised her, a fierce light in his eyes. "Only for you. Please don't. I'll wait for you."
Her heart tugged at the ragged fierceness in his voice. His vow was like a knight's oath of absolute fealty and protection to his lady, a promise fate could easily overturn. But it was not the success of the vow, but the intent of it, that mattered.
"I didn't make it a question, Josh," she said.
Marcus removed his hand, and Josh groaned as she retrieved the harness and buckled it around his shaft. Se made it tight, holding in all the juices that wanted to flood themselves in her. Lauren stood back, fondly caressing the recaptured cock with her fingers as he twisted and squirmed in futile torment. She couldn't wait to feel his orgasm explode inside her.
"Take him, Marcus," she said.
Marcus's grip had risen to Josh's shoulder during her ministrations. Now his fingers shifted, closed on Josh's throat. His gaze on hers, he drove himself in, his fingers tightening, creating pain with pleasure.
Josh cried out, a guttural noise close to a scream as the sensation swept from prostate to scrotum, nipples to cock in a wide, sweeping tidal wave. Lauren watched with wide eyes and parted lips as Marcus slid out, then back in, a slow rhythm that took the wave down, then built it back up, and up. The music of Josh's rasping breath mingled with the hard slap of male flesh against male flesh, the bass of the music playing, and she felt light headed. She kept her eyes on them though, physically unable to look away.
Josh began gasping, then moaning, then he was snarling like an animal, his eyes locked on her face.
Marcus pumped harder into him, whispered into his ear. Both men were sweating now, all muscles straining. They were like two powerful stallions, too mesmerizing to express in words.
Josh flung his head back against the wood piece behind him, but she didn't think he even registered the blunt impact. Marcus's skillful strokes were teasing the bundle of nerve endings within in the manner intended to drive a man to release. For Josh, it was a drive to insanity, an explosion for which there was no release in pressure. He jerked futilely in his bonds and spoke Marcus's name, a snarling plea.
Marcus gave a harsh moan, his fingers flexing, and emptied himself. He sank his teeth into Josh's shoulder, drawing blood, but Josh's head lay tense and helpless against him.
His aching, needy eyes fastened on the clear fluid trickling down her thigh, her involuntary reaction to watching them, and she knew they had waited as long as they could bear. It was time to reward them both.