Wulf threaded the rope three times around her waist, lacing the cord together down her ribs and stomach. He yanked it tight until it indented her skin. Her tan flesh plumped around the green rope.
Since kinbaku-bi meant the beauty of tight binding, she assumed that the tightness of the rope was part of it.
The last loop settled around her hips, and he pulled it tight. Except for how terribly naked she was, the green cord looked like the structural parts of a ball gown, and against all odds, she felt pretty with the rope cinching her waist.
He glanced down at her abdomen, tied a knot in the last length of the rope, and let it dangle in front of her.
He picked up another coiled rope, scarlet this time. “Turn around.”
Trepidation crawled up her spine, but she turned.
“Position your hands like I showed you.”
She wound her hands behind her back and tried not to flinch when he eased the silken rope around one of her arms.
Wulf threaded her whole arm through a loop, pulled it tight around her biceps, and then wove the rope around her arms. Though he was behind Rae’s back, she could feel the intricate pattern that laced her arms together. Her arms’ position jutted out her breasts, and the jade rope girdling her waist and encircling her boobs made her feel unconscionably sexy. It felt like he was adorning her with jade and ruby jewelry.
Rae wanted to dance in this sexy get-up.
Her paranoia must have finally broken, like a bad fever.
Wulf finished tying the red rope around her arms behind her back, and he bent down, reaching between her calves for the long green rope dangling in front of her. He snagged it and dragged it up. It rubbed her skin between her knees and all the way up her inner thighs, until the rope nestled between the lips of her pussy. A knot rested on her clit and sent a shock of sexual heat through her.
He wound the rope through her arms in back, and she felt the noose hugging the back of her neck shift backward. The ropes pushed down on her shoulders, now more like a harness than a noose.
He pulled it taut, and the knot pressed her clit like a man stroking her.
Wulf stepped away from her, but she couldn’t see him back there.
She asked, “So how do I look?”
“Beautiful.” His voice was huskier than before.
She pivoted, turning toward him so he could see all the results of his handiwork.
He looked down her body to her legs and her feet, then back up. Rae could see the fire in his eyes. His breath was shallower that it had been.
She leaned toward him, feeling like a femme fatale. If he hated her, he could have tied her up in some hideous knot job, but he hadn’t. This was a little kinky, but it was beautiful. Every time she inhaled, her boobs strained in their ribbon harness. Every time she breathed out, her arms behind her back lowered, pulling the rope between her legs up and tightening the knot against her clit.
Lord, if she didn’t quit breathing, she was going to come.
Her rising passion made her breathe faster, and the rope ground harder against her clit, rippling her with pleasure.
He must see what it was doing to her. Surely he would make it stop. The ropes around her boobs felt like a man squeezing them, and her nipples hardened. Her eyes began losing focus with every time she exhaled, when knot lifted and rubbed her clit.
Her wet pussy soaked the rope, making it slippery.
Now, her every breath moved the knot, sliding back and forth across her clit. Her body began to tighten.
She fell to her knees, unable to stand when all the energy in her body was flowing down to her pussy, condensing and ready to burst.
Oh, she couldn’t come with him watching her like this. She bit her lip and wiggled her arms, trying to free herself, but that made the knot gyrate in her pussy, nearly sending her over the top but she held her breath to stop it.
“Are you going to leave me here, like this?” she gasped.
“Leave you here alone, so helpless, so vulnerable? No, I’m not that cruel.”
He walked around behind where she kneeled on the stone floor and yanked, unraveling the rope that tied her arms and releasing the rope between her legs. Her arms tingled as blood rushed into them. That intimate rope fell away from her clit and she nearly orgasmed as the slippery pressure came off, but passion made her crazy for him.
She jumped to her feet and grabbed Wulf around his neck, needing to touch him and his body. Pushing her bare feet to stand on tiptoe, she kissed him hard.
Just for a second, his lips didn’t move under hers.
Horror boomed in her head because she had made a hideous mistake and he was finished with her, but then Wulf’s lips opened and his strong arms crushed her to him, even tighter than the jade green rope still strapped around her breasts and waist.
Her breasts pressed against his bare chest, and their skin heated together. His hands were grabbing her bare ass and the ropes cinched around her waist, and he held her pelvis to him. She stroked up his neck and felt his short hair on her palms.
They kissed, their mouths fitting tight against each other and tongues sliding. She was already so close to coming, but she wanted him inside her. She plucked at his pants’ waistband, wanting him to take them off so she could have him, but his body was pressed so hard against her stomach that she couldn’t reach his belt.
Instead, he swiveled in her grasp and his arms lifted her behind her shoulders and knees. “Don’t,” she said yet again, like she did every time he picked her up.
His bare shoulders were hot under her hands. He kept kissing her while he carried her against his wide chest over to the huge wooden chair and sat down with her on his lap. The bulge in his pants pushed against her thigh, then her pussy. She gasped and almost came, but she twisted in his hands and straddled him, kneeling on the wide chair.
Sitting beneath her, he seized her boobs, lifted them in his hands, and sucked one nipple hard. She threw her head back and cried out. She ground her pussy against his pants, still trying to figure out his belt, and finally she managed the buckle.
He flicked open his fly and pushed his underpants down. His cock sprang out, a drop of pre-cum already glistening on the top. His hands roamed over her, squeezing and lifting her ass, and she tried to position herself over his cock but he pushed her back, denying her.
“Please!” she gasped.
His hands grasped her hips, then his fingers wiggled under the ropes woven across her stomach and between her breasts. When he gripped the bindings down the center of her chest with both hands, he held her over his cock with the head just poking into her.
He didn’t let her move, even though she struggled to press herself down on him, holding onto the heavy cords on his shoulders. She could barely open her eyes. “Please, Wulf!”
His face was close to hers as he leaned forward, holding her with his fists knotted in the ropes.
Rae wiggled, trying to take him in, but he held her off for another agonizing minute.
He squeezed the rope in his fists and jerked her down onto his cock. The rope bit into her breasts and waist as he used the rope like handles to muscle her, controlling her body. She could have gone limp and he still could have lifted her off him and rammed her down again.
His cock filled her as she came down on him. She arched her back and cried out. She was frenzied for him, and she tried to pump faster. Using those ropes, he levered her up and down his cock, harder but slower than she wanted, coercing her to accept his rhythm, his need.
Her ass slapped his thighs. She writhed, trying to take him faster, and the energy twisted inside her, compressing. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as his cock breached her body so deep that he pushed a shriek from her lungs.
Her pussy clenched hard one last time, coiling tight like a spring. He dragged her down with the ropes.
Her orgasm ripped through her. She clung to Wulf’s muscled shoulders as he worked her twice more, each thrust zooming blinding pleasure up her spine, and then he ga
sped and arched under her.
His cock throbbed inside her as he came, sending her over the edge again. She grabbed his neck and held on as the orgasm quaked through her flesh.
The orgasm subsided, but she still twined her arms around his neck, not wanting this to end because she had thrown herself at him and he had resisted at first. She didn’t want him to stalk out, leaving her shattered.
Her vision cleared, and she turned her head, nuzzling him. His neck smelled like citrus and spiced tea.
Wulf pried his fingers out of the rope bindings and wrapped his arms around her. His biceps strained, holding her tightly, and his hands were bunched into fists. His voice was so hoarse that it sounded like he was forcing the words out as whispered near her ear, “All this, you let me do. Why couldn’t you have trusted me like this before?”
She took as deep a breath as the ropes around her ribcage would allow. “Lizzy was going to tell you how she felt. No one knows anything about you. I was the only one who could find out if there was a real reason to warn her off.”
“And now you know.”
“I saw the pictures. That’s all.” Her throat clenched around her voice. “Why did you tell me your name if you didn’t want me to know?”
His arms tightened around her, and she squeezed her arms around his shoulders, holding him close. His breath trembled on her bare shoulder. His voice didn’t quaver. “That first night, you didn’t know I was The Dom or Wulfram Augustus or anyone. You didn’t know anything, and you didn’t want anything from me. You saw me, as a man, and I could not stop myself.”
Rae didn’t understand, not really, but she held him close and stroked his neck.
“I don’t make mistakes like that. I don’t let information slip, and I don’t accidentally divulge things.” The harsh tension in his voice sounded angry, not mystified. “I don’t lose control.”
She stroked the back of his head down to his broad shoulders, trying to soothe him. Her hands shied away from that soul-rending scar.
He said, “You were funny, and bright, and ambitious, and aggressive to the point of recklessness. I knew you were struggling to stay in college and build your clinic.”
She nodded to let him know she was listening.
“I lied to you that night. I said that I must have you for the Devilhouse. Even then, I wanted you for myself.”
But she had ruined all that because she hadn’t trusted him.
Inside, her whole body trembled, on the verge of tears. “But you should want someone like Lizzy, not me.”
“Why would I want her?”
She summoned all her fears and laid them out. “Because she’s pretty, and thin, and blond, and she would kneel naked at your feet and call you Master, and I won’t.”
His derisive tone surprised her. “Submissive women are as common as muck.”
“Because she wouldn’t pry. Even when she was mooning after you, she didn’t even try to find out anything about you.”
Wulf pried her arms from around his neck and lifted her off of him, standing her on the cold, stone floor. He arranged his pants and walked over to his white shirt hanging like a ghost from a hook by the door.
Rae covered her breasts with her arms, trying not to look naked and pathetic.
Pulling his shirt over his shoulder and the black tattoo around the deep, twisted scar on his back, Wulf said, “A submissive woman wouldn’t pry, that is true. Perhaps I should not have fallen for a natural-born Dominatrix.”
Wulf’s flat tone had been filled with regret, not sarcasm, and it struck Rae cold in the heart even as she latched onto his words, that he had fallen for her.
~~~~~
Abby Psych
Rae’s phone buzzed in her jeans’ pocket, vibrating against her thigh.
At the front of the lecture hall, her abnormal psych professor was pointing to a graph on the huge projector screen and had her back to the class.
Rae eased the phone from her pocket and glanced at the glowing screen. The text from Wulf read, We will arrive at your dorm at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.
Rae glanced up, her stomach clenching. Noontime sunlight shone hard through the windows and onto her cramped handwriting in her notebook on her tiny, student desk. Her chair was like a movie theater seat, except made out of hard, curved wood, with a clipboard attached to the right armrest.
Her abnormal psychology professor might notice if Rae texted back. Dr. Robbins was a stickler for cybermanners, which meant no texting in class, even though a hundred other students were scribbling notes in the echoing auditorium, too.
Rae dropped her hand to her lap and tried to text with just her left thumb while she took notes with her other hand. She typed, U don’t have to go.
She took notes on the disorder of the day, Trichotillomania, which is compulsive hair-pulling, for a few minutes, trying to pay attention. The professor clicked her projector remote that she had clipped to her jeans’ belt loop. An ascending graph drew itself on the screen, visible despite the glaring sunlight, and Rae copied it even though she would download the slides later.
Rae’s phone, which she had wedged between her thighs, buzzed, sending shivers up her legs.
Wulf’s text read: Mulligan might try something. It is settled.
Thank you, she texted back, surrendering the argument because Wulf was righter than he knew, despite that she would have done just about anything to keep Wulf and her family at least a hundred miles apart.
The drive to Pirtleville would take five hours, and the last three hours were nothing but an unobstructed view of cacti, scrub brush, rattlesnakes, and dirt.
They would have time to talk, because surely the emotionally reclusive Dom of The Devilhouse was too sophisticated to have fallen for anyone, let alone a backwater country girl from the unfashionable southern side of the wide, snake-infested desert.
~~~~~
Driving South
The black SUV drove up to the dorm’s front door at eight o’clock sharp. Rae had been waiting in the lobby since seven-thirty, knowing Wulf’s penchant for punctuality.
Rae hoisted her backpack and trudged over to the SUV, ready to throw her stuff in the far-back and sit up front with Wulf. She had only brought clothes for the ride home tomorrow because she would wear stuff that she had left at her parents’ house to church.
When the driver’s side door flipped open, one of Wulf’s staff members, Dieter, emerged and reached for her luggage. “Good morning, Ms. Stone.”
“Hi?” She handed him the backpack.
“He wishes you to ride with us.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s fine.” It wasn’t fine but she didn’t know what to do about it, and they were here already so it would be rude to put them to so much trouble and then bunk on them.
Dieter held the back door open for her, and Rae climbed into the frigid car’s empty rear seat. The skin on her arms tightened into goose bumps. They must have had the air conditioning blasting the whole way from Wulf’s house to her dorm.
She glanced up to the shotgun seat, expecting to see Wulf there, but yet another man on Wulf’s staff nodded at her. She was pretty sure he was the guy who held her car door open for her in Wulf’s enormous garage. “Goot morning, Ms. Stone. I am Hans.”
“Good morning, Hans. Please call me Rae. Um, where’s Mr. von Hannover?”
“He will be following us. He prefers to drive whenever feasible.”
Well, if Wulf didn’t want to be cooped up in a car with her for five hours, so be it, and she certainly wasn’t disappointed that they wouldn’t have a chance to talk it out. If he didn’t want to, fine.
Dieter drove the SUV out of the dorm area and headed for the freeway.
Rae glanced behind her into the way-back area of the SUV, which was filled with black duffel bags and long cases. “You guys know that we’re coming back tomorrow morning, right?”
“Yes. The plan is to be on the road by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Rae had always been jibed about girls
packing too much stuff for just an overnight, but all those bags were ridiculous.
Well, when you have that big of a house, you must have a ton of stuff.
A small black sports car, not the silver Tesla but something else, sped past them, and Rae caught a glimpse of Wulf’s bright blond hair in the low car. He didn’t look up, but tinting shadowed the SUV’s windows so he couldn’t have seen her if he had.
Another black SUV trailed them, obviously riding in convoy.
“So how’s Ms. Keller?” Rae asked Hans and Dieter. She felt like she was already home, reciting the obligatory question of general concern after greeting someone, And how’s your momma?
“Busy. She ist very busy,” Hans said.
“Well, she has that big house to run. I imagine that’s a big job.”
“Yes, but the household, we are moving.”
Rae grabbed the seat back as if the road had bucked them off. She couldn’t seem to breathe. Her head buzzed like radio static.
She had to say something. “Where are you moving to?”
“Mr. von Hannover told us that we would be going back to Deutschland or Helvetica for a few months, then elsewhere. Singapore, he mentioned.”
She needed to know. “Why on Earth would he want to move?”
“I would not presume to ask.”
His prim tone admonished her.
Wulf was leaving. He was leaving her.
She had screwed it up, and it was really over.
It was better that she knew rather than make a fool out of herself.
She clutched her phone, hard, and waited for them to say something else, anything else, like the move was tentative or they had assumed they were moving, but the guys didn’t say anything.
She sat back and, keeping her eyes wide open so nothing squeezed out of them, opened her phone and caught up on all her “With Friends” games in about half an hour, trying not to think because her thoughts were a riot of self-recrimination and heart-ripping loss.
Her cousin Craigh had beat her at crosswords.
Red Hot Obsessions: Ten Contemporary Hot Alpha Male Romance Novels Boxed Set Page 197