well. Watching the give-and-take between power and surrender. Whispering hands, bodies straining and needy. A slave’s eyes glazed in lust, the Master’s expression deep in the zone, registering every nuance of a submissive’s reaction. Once stepping over the threshold of Atlantis, the shell was left behind. This was the sanctuary for the Freudian id, the primitive impulses and needs of the soul.
Impressions like those came at her in varying waves of heat, and she rode those currents like a shadow dolphin in the undersea exhibit, her attention wandering over the floor.
Then she felt something extraordinarily different. Turning her head with unerring instinct toward the source, she saw a man leaning against the bar.
Though he was all the way across the main floor, he locked gazes with her. In that brief second, he caught her breath, took it away from her with all the power of a black-and-white movie, though she couldn’t explain why or how it happened. She’d been a Dominant all her life, recognizing it quickly after reaching sexual maturity. It was something she didn’t doubt in herself, in her blood. Yet this male was no submissive.
In fact, he was pure, 100 percent Dominant in all aspects of his life. He would possess the woman he chose, body, heart and soul. Such a woman would have to be as strong as he was to hold her own and demand his soul in return. He would be satisfied with nothing less. He was looking for an equal, a Mistress. A unique, complex Mistress who would surrender to him and him alone, time and again, because it would simply be that way between them.
While all sizes and shapes of people came in here, she’d seen her share of devastatingly handsome men, both Masters and subs. With his dark eyes, close-cropped hair and powerfully built body, this one certainly had no trouble catching female attention. But she was barely aware of anything about him except his eyes in that vital first-impression moment. A moment that lengthened into a cycle of accelerating heartbeats as he straightened, left his drink and came toward her.
She was aware of every inch of her skin under his gaze. That heartbeat that slowed in the quiet hours, when Atlantis’s lights shut off, was pounding as rapidly as the rock beat on the dance floor.
He was inevitable, the most devastatingly sexy word she’d ever applied to a man. When he stopped before her, the first words he spoke made it clear he understood it as much as she did. It wasn’t a pickup line. The three words were command, intention and destiny, all at once.
“I want you.”
That yearning she felt in the small hours of the morning, the answer was this man. When the third point of the triangle came, the one who would be her slave, who would surrender and utterly belong to her, she was certain that yearning would become something even sweeter, sharper, even more impossible to describe. Fulfillment, a three-point star so powerful its light would explode inside her, bringing unimaginable emotional and physical pleasure.
Of course, on the reality of that night, she hadn’t had that clarity, but in the drifting fantasy of her dream, she knew it as truth, her desires meeting her memories.
She’d taken him to the Rose Room. It was remarkable that she’d chosen that room that night. Wall-to-floor-to-ceiling mirrors, the only prop a pedestal in the center with a vase of bloodred roses, a trail of petals scattered across the reflective floor.
He’d glanced into the room, a warrior’s caution, but it hadn’t given him pause. She’d barely crossed the threshold when his arms closed around her. She turned in that embrace, let out a small shudder of desire as he lifted her up against the wall and tore the side of her snug skirt all the way to the hip. She hadn’t worn any panties under it, because of the tightness of the garment and because she liked to feel her thighs compressing her labia as she walked, that pleasurable friction of skin on skin.
There were inviolate rules about protection, safety, boundaries. She knew there would be none of that between them. When he lowered his hand to touch her, she arched with a moan. Finding her cunt, he pushed two fingers into soaking wet heat that clamped down on him, a shuddering spasm of response.
He freed himself from his jeans. She dug her fingers into his shoulders as he gripped her hips, pushed forward and pinned her deep and hard.