Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  “Uh . . .” I said. “Athleta. It’s a . . . catalog. Are you buying your sister a present? You know, there’s sexy two-steps-forward-one-step-back, and then there’s just plain getting a woman out of the mood.”

  He smiled, but he didn’t let go of my ankles. “Could be that I want to know for another reason.”

  “All . . . right?” I was still pretty confused. “I guess.”

  He stood up and said, “Stay there,” then went into the bathroom and came back with a plastic bag. And pulled out a thick coil of rope. It was red.

  “I don’t even want to know,” I said.

  Blue scars. Black nerd glasses. Hard body. And smolder. “And yet I’d swear you do. It’s silk rope. So I can tie you down as tight as I want to, but it won’t hurt. Could be I did some shopping as well as some swimming today, because I wanted to make sure I had everything you needed.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’m sure that’s the reason.”

  I was trying, but I wasn’t too convincing. He said, “Because pleasing you is going to make me so bloody happy. Or maybe it’s torturing you that’s going to do that. Can’t decide.” He leaned over me, brushed my hair back from my forehead, kissed me again, nice and slowly, and said, “Put your hands over your head. Right now.”

  When he wrapped the thick silken strands around my wrists, over and over again, then ran the rope between them, tightening the bonds, before he tied me tight to the head of the bed, I started breathing harder. Silk rope, it turned out, felt amazing, strong but soft. When he left the room, I tugged at it, testing the bonds, and honestly wondered how long I was going to hold out. And how long he was going to make me.

  That was before he came back with a pair of scissors.

  I said, “Jax.”

  He said, “Shh.” After that, he pushed my dress up as far as it would go, put the blade of the scissors against my skin, and started to cut. I heard the rasp as the wispy cotton fabric parted, felt the cold metal on my midriff, and shuddered.

  Jax

  I wasn’t sure how I’d made it through that dinner. Seeing the flush rise in her cheeks, hearing her trying her hardest to be saucy, to be cool, guessing how wet she was and wanting to feel it for myself. It was a bit like that fantasy I’d had about the tattooing. I’d wanted to put my hand right there and tell her to sit still, order her not to make a sound, while I made her come in front of the entire room.

  Well, I didn’t literally want to. I definitely wanted to think about it, though, so I did. By the time I opened her purse and saw the black thong in there, I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to the apartment. And right now, while I stood over her, looked at her arms pulled overhead, the red rope wrapped around her wrists, and the knot fastening it to the headboard, and watched her dress fall away? It was one of those moments when you don’t have to think about anything else, because the fantasy’s right here.

  Her eyes were closing as the scissors reached the spot between her breasts, and I said, “Karen. Look at me.”

  She shivered. And she did it. Dark lashes fluttering open, absolutely no artifice in them. Whiskey-brown eyes staring into mine, and her breasts rising and falling fast and hard. Fear, excitement, or a bit of both.

  I was holding onto the fabric with one hand now, careful, as I cut the last bit of fabric, not to nick her skin. The two halves of the dress fell away, and I set the scissors down, put my hand against her face, took her mouth in a kiss, and told her, “I’m not going to hurt you, baby. I’m going to tease you, though, until you don’t think you can stand it, and I’m going to make you come too hard. If I scare you, if you don’t like it—use your safe word.”

  “You’re not . . . scaring me,” she said. “Or only a little.”

  I smiled. If she was aching? So was I. The only thing she was still wearing was the strappy black bra, because she’d already taken off her thong for me. She’d sat beside me on that banquette without it while I’d delayed over the last glass of wine, and had finally walked home with me with the wetness all but running out of her.

  She was going to be feeling that way tomorrow, too, because I wasn’t going to be using a condom. When I was done with her, she was going to know I’d been there.

  That bra was another thing I’d wanted to take off every time I’d seen it on her. I cut it off instead, one tiny strap at a time, and she trembled more with every one. Afterwards, I brushed my hand over one breast, then the other, watched her pink nipples pebble, and sucked them for a while. For as long as I wanted, in fact, because I could. It wasn’t like she could get away.

  She was moaning again. No more saucy talk. No more scientific explanations. Nothing but surrender.

  She watched me unfasten my shirt, finally, one button at a time. Her clothes cut to pieces around her, her arms over her head, her legs still too close together.

  That wasn’t going to work. I had my hands on my belt, and now, I said, “Spread your legs.”

  She did it. Slowly. I said, “Farther. Show me,” and she closed her eyes, took a breath, and did it. I put a pillow under her hips, and then I put another one there, and oh, yeh, that was a nice look. I took off my trousers, and then I took off my leg, and she had her eyes open again to watch. I said, “If this bed had a footboard, I’d be tying your ankles to it. It doesn’t, so I’m going to hold you down instead, and it’s going to be a long, long time before I let you come. I hope you’re ready to beg, because I’m going to make you ask me for everything. You think you ache now? By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to know what aching means.”

  Twelve hours later, I drank my glass of orange juice, read a book on my phone, since Karen still had her nose in the one she’d stolen from me, and remembered what she’d looked like with her eyes screwed up tight and her mouth open, wailing out her release as her head banged against the bed, her hands pulled frantically to get loose, and she didn’t succeed a bit. I also possibly wondered, just a little, whether I’d done all that to distract myself from today.

  Probably. It had been hot as hell, though. And then there’d been letting her loose a long time later, after I’d fucked her into another long, slow, rolling orgasm that had rocked her like an earthquake, while she’d still been tied down tight for me. Kissing her wrists, her cheeks, her sweet mouth afterwards, before I’d held her against my chest, stroked my hand over her hair, and told her how beautiful she was, how much she’d pleased me—that had felt like everything. Like tenderness, and like triumph.

  And then we bumped and rocked our way down through a rainstorm into the city of my birth, and I set the memory aside, took some deep breaths, and got myself ready to face whatever came my way today.

  One step at a time.

  Karen

  When Jax stopped where he did in the airport carpark, I said, “I feel strangely vindicated.”

  “Except that you got it wrong.” He slung his suitcase and my duffel into the back of the gray Audi SUV. It wasn’t raining yet, but the sky was definitely thinking about it, with billowing white clouds doing their best to block out a sun that was still trying to shine. The air was so clean, though, it was like it had been scrubbed.

  “Barely.” I tossed in my own tote, which was all that he’d let me carry. For a guy with one leg, he was awfully bossy in the “let me do it” department. I was trying to hate that. It wasn’t working all that well. “Audi—BMW. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Except that the Audi is probably more reliable. Which you know, because you researched.”

  I could tell he was trying hard not to smile. He could be that tough guy most of the time, but he couldn’t always manage it with me, and I loved knowing it. He said, “Possibly. Could be you aren’t the only one who believes in science.”

  “Ha. I knew it.” He opened the passenger door for me like the gentleman he was and wasn’t, and I said, “This is also about the cleanest car I’ve ever seen, except for Hemi’s. And, of course, the car you were driving before this. Is there an add-on package you didn’t get on this thing?
Also, please tell me you’re not one of those guys who won’t let a woman drink coffee in his car in case she spills it. And never mind the horrors of eating.”

  He laughed before he slammed my door and climbed in on his side, which I was glad of, since that was what I’d been going for. I thought he was nervous about the appointment, which made sense, and nervous about dinner with his parents, too, which didn’t. He’d almost died. In war. After spending years defusing explosives. In what universe wouldn’t your parents just want to hold you tight and tell you how glad they were that you’d lived? Of course, it could be that I was too idealistic, since I didn’t actually have any parents, but that was how I imagined it would be.

  He said, “Nah. You can spill in my car anytime. Leather seats. I told you, my family’s in the luxury-car business. But this one, I actually paid for.” He turned the car on.

  “You say I can spill now,” I said, “but how about when the magic’s over?”

  He’d been about to put the car in gear. Instead, he leaned over, put a hand on my shoulder and edged my frankly gorgeous silk-and-cotton cropped sweater away with his thumb, possibly so he could get to that tender skin again, and brushed his lips over mine. “The magic isn’t going to be over,” he said. “And I like this dress. Can’t believe you hadn’t shown it to me yet.”

  “Because it was my birthday present from Hope,” I said. “The dress and the sweater. It’s a good thing I didn’t show it to you, or you’d have cut it off me. But it’s not too . . .”

  “Too what?”

  The dress in question was cotton, and if it had been white, it would have looked like a petticoat, or a corset, or both, and it would definitely not have worked for me. Instead, it was the color of the Pinot Noir we’d drunk last night, which was a whole different story. I hoped. It was sleeveless, made of heavy eyelet lace lined with sheer cotton, and was fitted all the way down to my waist, where it opened into a knee-length skirt. The best parts were the matching silk ribbon that was threaded around the neckline and the waist, and the line of tiny hooks and eyes that ran all the way from neckline to hem.

  It wasn’t frilly, and it wasn’t flowered, but it sure as hell had been inspired by lingerie, and when I’d put it on this morning, I’d felt very, very female. It was a good parent-meeting dress, despite the lingerie thing. Hopefully.

  A good Jax-pleasing dress, too, judging by the way he’d taken hold of my hands this morning, said, “My job,” and finished fastening the hooks and eyes all the way up to my neckline, not to mention the way he’d held my shoulders and kissed my neck afterwards, which had resulted in us almost missing our flight.

  If I hadn’t had that IUD, I’d have gotten pregnant for sure, as many times as he’d grabbed me. Eventually, the law of averages did tend to win, once you spun the roulette wheel enough times. Good thing I did have it.

  I said, “Too sort of . . . I don’t know. Girly?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Do you look stupid in it, you mean. Like you’re trying to be something you’re not.”

  Could the guy be a little more perceptive? Expose me a little more? “Well, maybe,” I said. “Short hair and all.” I’d worked hard on my makeup, but I hadn’t regained the weight I’d lost from the whole infection thing, and let’s face it. I was still me.

  “No,” he said. “You look beautiful. And I love your short hair. You look free. Ready for adventure.” He smiled at me and brushed his hand over my cheek in that way he had, the one that basically made me want to roll over and tell him I was his. “Ready for anything. My kind of woman.”

  “We’d better go,” I said, in order not to beg him to do dirty things to me. “Also, if you cut this one off me, I’m telling.”

  He laughed. “I don’t need to. That’s what the hooks and eyes are for. It’s like it was made for me. We won’t tell your sister.”

  He’d gone online last night and ordered me a replacement dress and bra on the spot. “A hundred twenty-nine dollars New Zealand just for the dress,” I’d pointed out. “You might want to wait until I’m wearing something cheaper next time.”

  “Nah. I’d have paid ten times that to cut your clothes off you.”

  “Which sounds hardly at all like a commercial transaction,” I’d said. “Congratulations.” He’d laughed, then typed in his address for delivery like that was where I’d be, and I’d tried not to think about any of that too much.

  There wasn’t any more teasing while we drove the half-hour into Dunedin, because he lapsed into silence. I had the feeling he wasn’t even aware he wasn’t talking. I knew how it felt to try to be strong when all you felt was scared about what was coming next, so I didn’t talk, either. I looked around instead. I’d traveled a fair bit around the country in the course of family vacations, during the few years I’d been involved in them, but I’d never been here, so I might as well pay attention.

  If he was nervous about his leg, or about me meeting his parents, he probably didn’t need me to point that out. See? Tact.

  It was very green outside. Extremely green. Hilly, pastoral, and very New Zealand, like a warmer version of Ireland. Or pictures I’d seen of Ireland, since I’d never been there. I’d never been anywhere, actually, other than here, Australia, and home.

  Why hadn’t I done that? Why hadn’t I backpacked my way around the world for a month or three, during one of those college summers when I’d been sure an internship was more important to my future? Why hadn’t I eaten tapas in Seville, and pizza for breakfast in Florence, looking over terracotta-tiled rooftops and the domes of churches, watching swallows wheel and dive through the sky in synchronized perfection? Or Indian street food in Delhi, guessing spices and getting it wrong amid crowds of brightly dressed people and the odd cow? I looked out at puffy white clouds, gentle green hills, and crystal-blue sky, at the kind of scenery that soothed your heart and lulled you to sleep, and wondered why a food person hadn’t tasted nearly enough food. Or why somebody who’d almost died hadn’t lived nearly enough life.

  I’d thought New York was enough. You could get every kind of food there. But could you live every kind of life?

  I asked, “Did you like it here? Growing up? I’m trying to imagine, but I can’t quite. It’s not much like Brooklyn, and it’s even less like Manhattan.”

  “No,” Jax said, “I guess it isn’t. And, yeh. Not much not to like. I had a pretty easy life.”

  “Is your parents’ house close to the central city?”

  “Pretty close. It’s at the start of the Otago Peninsula. You’ll see.” His voice sounded choppy and tense, so I shut up and waited while he headed off the motorway and into the traffic, past an enormous building made of stone and decorated like gingerbread, with a huge clock tower.

  “As long as they don’t live there,” I said, “I guess I’m all right.”

  I made him smile, at least. “That’s the railway station.”

  We parked in the hospital garage a few blocks farther along, and he didn’t say much of anything. Not the thing again about me going to the museum or shopping, and not even a joke about how I’d stolen his book, and now the poor hero was going to be stuck up there, stranded on Mars, in his imagination forevermore. I’d have thought he’d forgotten I was there, except that he took my hand while we walked, threading his fingers through mine like he wanted to touch as much of me as he could hold. Like he needed to hang on to something warm and real, to hold himself right here so his mind couldn’t drag him away to a place he couldn’t stand to be. And I thought that I knew about that, too.

  Jax

  I thought about the fact that Karen wasn’t talking, and then I forgot about it. It was the same thing as before, the same thing as always. One foot in front of the other.

  One artificial foot, and one real one. One step at a time. This was the next step, that was all. It wasn’t a verdict on whether my life was worth living, or whether I still had something to offer the world. Things changed. You could either change with them and find something new to do that
mattered, or you could give up, roll over, and die. I hadn’t rolled over and died yet. I wasn’t going to do it now. All of this had to be for something.

  I’d tell myself that, because when you told yourself anything enough times, it became your truth.

  Inside the building, I gave my name to the woman at the reception desk and sat down beside Karen in the waiting room. She had her book open, but was looking around, taking everything in and storing it away in her furiously agile mind. She looked like a model in that dress, her face all big eyes, cheekbones, and wide mouth, her arms and legs endlessly long and slim, her shining cap of dark hair neat and feathered at the fringes. I wondered how it was that she didn’t seem to know it.

  I knew—I ought to know—that being beautiful on the outside wasn’t the only thing that mattered. It wasn’t even in the top three. But I noticed anyway.

  There were a few other people waiting. A couple older fellas, missing legs. One who looked like a farmer, sitting with his wife and looking stoical. That would’ve been an accident, probably. Caught in machinery, something like that. A young blonde bloke I recognized, barely twenty-one, his hair not quite military-short, his arm gone almost from the shoulder. And a girl, maybe six or seven, her arm ending above the elbow, wrapped in a compression bandage. She was with her mum, who was trying not to look worried and sad, and failing. The girl was holding a doll, and she was looking around, too. A bit like Karen, but there was wariness there, too. Fear, surely.

  I told Karen, “Be back in a sec,” and went over to shake hands with the one-armed fella. Paxton, his name was. It was his right arm he was missing, so I shook the left. Something he’d already be getting used to, or maybe something that was still bothering him.

  “How ya goin’?” I asked. “Good to see you. You’ll be getting the arm soon, eh.”