by BETH KERY
He seemed to consider what she said soberly as they swayed to the music. “Maybe you’re right. Is that such a bad thing?”
“Maybe not,” she admitted. A smile twitched his lips.
“Good,” he murmured, dipping his head and brushing his mouth against her temple. She shivered in pleasure. He moved his mouth near her ear. “Because I’m going to take you back to the house and ask you to do a few more things you normally don’t do. Not because I can.” He kissed the shell of her ear, and she trembled. “Because I want to. Because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I have to have you completely. I don’t want you to hold back. I won’t allow it. Do you understand?” he asked quietly, moving his head back and examining her face.
Alice nodded, her stare swallowed by his.
“I want you to trust me, Alice.”
“I do,” she whispered through lips that felt numb before Dylan lowered his head, and his mouth heated and softened them.
SHE was so keyed up from the magical night, she was a little surprised that she drifted off to sleep on the ride home. She awoke to the sound of the driver’s side door opening and closing. Her eyelids opened sluggishly. The passenger door opened, and she peered up at Dylan’s hard features softened by amusement … and some other emotion that made her just stare up at him dazedly.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“’Course I can,” she muttered. No sooner had she alighted than she stumbled. Dylan steadied her, and then he was lifting her in his arms. She startled at the sound of the passenger door slamming, and suddenly she was flying across the large garage.
“Stupid shoes,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. He shifted her in his arms to deactivate the security alarm, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, thrilling anew at how big and solid and male he was beneath his suit coat. When she became aware of how good he felt to her, how much she loved being in his arms, guilt wriggled into her awareness at her growing dependence on him … her helpless addiction.
“Put me down now,” she said as he opened the door.
He gave her a hard, dry glance as he stepped over the threshold and kicked the door closed.
“You’re fine where you are. I don’t want any broken ankles,” he said as he reactivated the security.
She sighed and rested her cheek against his suit jacket. She was too tired to argue.
Or she just didn’t want to.
Before she knew it, he was sweeping her into his bedroom and kicking the door closed.
“Lock it, Alice,” he said.
She recalled him saying something similar that first night they had sex here together. Excitement rippled through her as she recalled what he’d said to her during their dance. She was suddenly wide-awake, her skin prickly with awareness.
He carried her over to the bed once she’d secured the lock. He set her on the edge and immediately whipped off her new pumps.
“We’ll get you flats from now on.”
“I’ll never get used to wearing heels then,” she protested.
“You want to get used to them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. He urged her to stand in her bare feet. “Don’t men think high heels are sexy?”
“You’d learn to wear them for that?” he asked as he took her loosely into his arms. She’d grown used to wearing the heels for the past few hours and was struck anew at how tall he was, and how small she felt next to him.
“Maybe,” she hedged again, glancing up into his face. “Maybe … if you thought they were sexy.”
He cradled her chin, his thumb brushing against her jawline.
“I think that’s sexy.”
“What? Wearing heels?” she asked, confused.
“That you’d do it if you thought I liked it. But don’t worry. I’d think you were sexy in ratty old slippers.”
“Right.”
He laughed, low and rough, then sobered as he watched himself trace the line of her jaw and then her ear. “There is something I’d like to see you in.”
“What?” she asked, because she’d felt the increase in tension of his body as he asked the question.
“Cuffs, both on your ankles and wrists. And not a stitch else.”
She quickened in excitement. “You want to restrain me again?”
He met her stare. “I told you what I wanted at the Twelve Oaks. I don’t want you to hold anything back. I want your trust.”
“Sexually?”
“It’s a start.”
She studied him warily.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I’d like to do, and you can decide if you want to proceed,” he said, stepping out of her arms. She watched, puzzled, when he went over to the seating area of the suite and reached beneath a long console table behind the couch. He withdrew a stool of sorts. It was very low to the floor, thus the reason it fit beneath the table. She’d noticed it in passing, but never paid much attention to it in the past. She’d thought vaguely it must be some kind of artwork that could pass as furniture. It had a sleek, modern design. There were usually several leather and suede pillows on it.
She looked at it fully for the first time as he carried it toward where she stood. She saw that the seat wasn’t really a traditional seat, but instead two wide pieces of supple leather with about a two-and-a-half-inch-wide empty space between them. The leather strips were suspended about nine inches off the floor by a frame. The frame was on both sides, but the center portion of the stool was open. Dylan set the stool on the rug before her, and the front of it bounced ever so lightly, indicating there was a spring to the structure. Alice had thought the frame was made of wood before, but now she realized it was metal painted to match the brown of the leather.
She stared up at Dylan bemusedly.
“It’s designed to be used for sex,” he stated bluntly. “I’m going to have you sit on it and restrain you.”
Alice blinked. “And then what?”
He shrugged, his sexy smile lingering. “What else? I’m going to make love to you.”
“You mean you’re going to torture me, don’t you?” she asked suspiciously, even though her breath had grown choppy with excitement.
“I’m going to have you at my mercy,” he corrected quietly as he reached around her back and began to lower her zipper. The dipping of his hand coincided with the delicious sinking sensation of arousal in her belly and sex. “I’m going to punish you a little. I’m going to ask you to trust me enough to give me control, and I’m going to make you feel very good. Does that sound like torture to you?”
He swept the thin straps of her dress over her shoulders and the fabric fell to her waist. Dylan moved his hands along the side of her rib cage, making her skin roughen and her nipples tighten. He cradled her breasts and whisked his thumbs over her nipples, watching his actions the whole time.
“God, you’re beautiful. I’ve been waiting to do that all night,” he said, a slight snarl shaping his mouth as he stared at her breasts in his hands. He pinched her nipples lightly. She tightened her thighs to ease the sudden sharp ache that flared at her sex. “Answer me, Alice,” he insisted, because her lungs had frozen at his touch. “Does my plan sound like torture?”
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. He continued to play with her breasts, and she shivered in pleasure. She trusted being in his hands. She loved it. “But for the most part, it sounds really dirty. And potentially extremely nice,” she added very quietly.
His gaze zoomed to meet hers. She gave a dubious shrug, and he smiled, the flash of white teeth against his face breathtaking and a little dangerous. Her heart leapt beneath his stroking, knowing fingers, but then he was dropping his hands.
“Take off your dress and panties then,” he directed. He waited for her to follow his instruction, his gaze unwavering.
She swept the dress down and off in an instant. It’d been exciting to be nearly naked beneath the sensual, soft fabric all night, but it was exponentially more thrilling to take it off while
Dylan watched her like a hawk. She laid the dress on the upholstered bench at the foot of his bed and turned back to him. He glanced down pointedly at her silk briefs, and she obligingly drew the panties down and stepped out of them, tossing them on top of her dress. When she turned back to Dylan, he hadn’t moved. Alice felt her heart expanding until it felt like it was pressing against her rib cage, his stare on her was so hot.
So possessive.
Surely he was about to throw her down on the bed and ravish her.
Instead, he blinked once and turned away.
From inside a bedside chest of drawers, he withdrew several cuffs. As he walked toward Alice, she saw that they were different than the ones he’d put on her the other night to restrain her arms to the bed. First of all, there were four of them. They each contained a padded leather wristlet or anklet portion attached to an adjustable strap. Alice eyed them with mounting anxious excitement as Dylan placed the restraints on the bed and swiftly removed his suit jacket, tossing it aside. He glanced over at her as he began to remove his cuff links from his shirt.
“Come here,” he said.
He seemed very stern all of a sudden, and Alice experienced a flash of shyness walking toward him naked. It escalated her arousal. Everything felt very exposed and vulnerable, her thighs and belly and breasts. Her mind. Her nipples tightened in a rush, resulting in a slight pinching sensation. She paused a foot away from him, watching warily as he loosened his tie. She wished he’d look at her with that amused, warm gleam in his eyes that she often saw mixing with his raw lust. But he was different tonight, his authority and seriousness somehow just as natural and exciting as his fondness and undisguised lust as he’d sexually guided her in the past.
He dragged his gaze off her and turned away. He withdrew something else from that forbidden treasure chest next to the bed and slammed the drawer shut.
Alice’s eyes widened when he placed her new crop on the bed next to the restraints. Arousal shot through her like a jolt of adrenaline mainlined into her blood. It had embarrassed her, how wild she’d become when he spanked her the other night, how she’d transformed into a hedonistic wild thing she barely recognized.
Just the vision of the crop brought it all back in a rush. This was more serious, though. It looked like it’d sting. She resisted an urge to touch her ass. The nerves already seemed to prickle, as if in anticipation of what was to come.
“So that you know what’s going to happen before you agree to let me restrain you,” Dylan said, nodding pointedly at the crop. He unfastened his shirt and whipped it off his shoulders with a distracting flex of bulging muscle and gleam of smooth skin. The truth struck her full force. He was strong—much more powerful than her. He could subdue her anytime he chose. Instead, Dylan was asking her to give him the reins of her own free will, to trust him enough to submit, to understand he would keep her safe while she did.
The idea made her anxious, but aroused her almost unbearably as well.
She ate up the vision of his naked torso while her pulse began to throb at her throat. He reached for one of the restraints and held it up expectantly, his dark, sleek brows arched in a silent question.
Alice licked her lower lip nervously, eyeing the crop, and held out her wrist.
SEVENTEEN
The cuffs were made of padded leather, supple and strong. There were silver loops and hook fasteners on them. Dylan stood after attaching the last two to her ankles, his hooded gaze moving slowly over her as she stood there wearing only the four cuffs. She almost said something joking to lighten the intensity of the moment, but then saw his jaw clench with tension. Her ability for sarcastic flippancy evaporated. He took her hand and led her over to the stool.
He’d said it was designed for sex, but she only understood dimly what that entailed. “Sit down on the front part,” he said, and Alice realized she was about to find out.
She lowered with Dylan’s guidance, her knees bent in front of her, her butt coming to rest on the leather seat. The thick leather straps were taut but springy, suspended as they were between the flexible metal frame. Dylan knelt before her, his knees on the carpet.
“Spread your thighs,” he murmured, and she realized his stare was on her pussy. She obliged, opening herself further. He put his hands on her hips and urged her sideways on the seat slightly.
“Oh,” she muttered in surprised understanding, because her pussy had just slid between the two leather straps, exposing it from below. Her body weight on the taut straps spread her sex wide.
Dylan gave a small, knowing smile at her exclamation. He drew her wrists behind her to her lower back. Her spine arched slightly, her breasts thrusting forward. She felt him fasten the cuffs together, restraining her hands behind her.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Put your feet to the side of the stool.” He gently maneuvered her left leg so that her knee was bent and the top of her foot rested on the soft carpet, the inside pressing against the metal frame of the stool. She heard a metallic clicking sound. She pulled on her foot experimentally. It was bound.
“You restrained me to this stool? Like this?” she asked, referring to her splayed, wholly vulnerable position.
“I told you,” he said gruffly, standing, “I want you at my mercy.” He walked to the other side of her. He must have noticed her anxious expression because he paused and touched her cheek. “Do you want to stop?”
Alice swallowed thickly and shook her head. Staring into his eyes, seeing whatever mysterious but nevertheless incredible thing she saw there, pushed away her anxiety. He just nodded and knelt, restraining her other ankle to the metal frame.
When he’d finished and stood, she perched on the stool, her legs spread as wide as possible and restrained, her sex and buttocks parted and suspended in the gap between the leather straps, her naked breasts thrust forward and heaving slightly as she panted shallowly in mounting excitement.
By the time he rose and came around to the front of her, she was staring at him in wide-eyed amazement. Her position was blatantly lewd, and suggestive of any number of sexual possibilities, each one dirtier than the next.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“Comfortable?” she repeated, stunned. She was way too aroused and anxious to call her state remotely comfortable.
“I mean are you in any pain or discomfort,” he said, caressing her shoulder. Her nerves tingled beneath his touch. Her nipples pinched tight.
“No,” Alice said honestly.
He nodded. She met his steady stare, her heart starting to throb faster, the sensation amplified because of her stretched, exposed torso.
“You have to tell me at any time if your joints start to get uncomfortable, or if you cramp up, anything.”
Alice just stared at him, speechless.
“Alice?” She blinked. “I mean it. At the slightest twinge, call out. Do you understand me?” he repeated fiercely. “I don’t want you to suffer a pulled muscle or something. Agree to it, that you’ll speak up if you get uncomfortable or have any pain from the restraint, no matter what’s happening. I’m trusting you to do that, as much as you’re trusting me in this.” He nodded at her bound body. “Do you understand?”
“Okay,” she agreed.
His rigid expression relaxed slightly. He walked over to the bed and picked up the crop. Alice’s already escalated heartbeat seemed to redouble. A protest flew to her throat, but she stifled it at the last minute as Dylan walked toward her, the crop hanging by his side. Yes, she was unbearably exposed and vulnerable, but he was so commanding in that moment, so beautiful and exciting. He still wore his suit trousers, but nothing else. She could tell by the bulge at his crotch he’d become aroused by restraining her to the stool.
But it was the hot, possessive gleam in his eyes as he stepped toward her that silenced her protest most effectively.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly, and Alice realized he’d read her anxiety despite the quashing of
her misgivings. “I told you I’d keep you safe.” He lifted her new crop and ran the leather slapper down the side of her ribs to her waist, and then back up again. Alice gasped and shivered. The leather was cool and soft, the feeling of it on her sensitive skin exciting. Dylan had stepped closer as he rubbed the slapper against the curve of her hip and the expanse of her belly. She watched his progress, spellbound, but then he slid the crop to her lower back. She lifted her head, only to stare directly at his crotch just inches away. He stood close. She could see the column of his cock as it slanted upward and at a diagonal to the left, trapped between his body and briefs. Longing overwhelmed her. She craned forward instinctively.
Pop.
“Ouch,” she exclaimed, stunned. He’d lifted the crop and slapped the top of her right buttock.
“Don’t stretch forward. I don’t want you to hurt yourself, since your hands are bound,” he said, now using the leather slapper to rub the stinging spot on her ass.
“Fine,” she muttered, throwing him a miffed glance. He smiled.
“You know I’m going to use this crop on you. Why are you acting mad because I did?”
“Because I don’t need to be lectured while you’re doing it,” Alice mumbled distractedly, because he was running the slapper all over the tops of her buttocks now, even dipping it into the spread crevice of her ass. Meanwhile, his taut abdomen and crotch took up almost her entire field of vision. She could only look, not touch.
“I won’t lecture you if you do as I say,” he growled. He ran the slapper up the side of her body, sending a ripple of excitement through her. She moaned when he slid it over the globe of her breast. He covered her nipple with the leather slapper, pressed, and circled very subtly.
Liquid warmth rushed through her. She bit off a moan. It felt forbidden, but the vision of him holding that crop and pressing it against her nipple was downright dirty. Exciting.
“You like your new crop,” he said warmly, swishing the leather between the valley of her heaving breasts and stimulating her other nipple. Her nipples pinched tight, making her grit her teeth.