It was heart-stopping.
“Mr. Godfrey!” Sheila’s chipper greeting broke the trio’s reverie, as she rushed to give Eva’s father an impetuous hug. She was sparkling and giddy from champagne and success. “You made it! I’m so glad. Have you seen it yet?”
This, despite Eva’s frantic attempts to catch Sheila’s eye and her not-too-subtle gestures suggesting throat-cutting.
“Seen what, honey? Have your parents seen these photos yet, young lady?”
“Oh, Mr. Godfrey. These are nothing compared to the last book we worked on. Besides, I think they’re pretty hardened to it by now. God, Evie,” she asked in an almost conspiratorial tone, “have you been hearing this buzz? I’m getting the word ‘visceral’ a lot. I think it’s going to be so good. The guy from the Post is already waxing lyrical.” She was practically jumping up and down with glee.
“It does seem to be going well,” Eva allowed. “Don’t you have people to schmooze?”
“I do! So many. Most of them want to know who you are, so get back to mingling, okay?”
She darted off again with a perky wave, leaving Eva with a smile frozen across her face and Mr. Godfrey looking puzzled. Drew pondered whether to stay or give her some privacy with her dad, but Eva’s fingers clenched his arm with all the strength of a vise clamp.
“So?” her father asked after a pause that included lots of significant glances between all concerned.
Eva blew out a breath then straightened herself, squaring her shoulders. “Okay. I guess at this point there’s nothing else for it. Come this way.”
They bypassed the rest of the photos, weaving around the various clumps of assembled revelers to arrive behind a small crowd gathered in front of the last picture along the long wall. There were faces they knew, faces they didn’t, but all the faces turned to Eva in recognition as she worked her way to the front of the group with Drew and her father in tow on either side of her.
Even the strangers in the crowd picked up on the fact that the three newcomers were having a Significant Moment. Without a word, they drifted away to a respectful distance, leaving the little group in relative privacy before the picture of a naked, bound Eva with a face that spoke of hypnotic sensual bliss.
Drew would have backed off with them if Eva weren’t still clutching his arm like a shipwreck victim clutches a life preserver. He risked a glance over her head to her father’s face, which was a study in conflicting emotions.
It was a long time before Mr. Godfrey spoke, and when he did he sounded more sure of himself than Drew had expected. It was as though he had made a decision about how to react and was determined to follow through.
“That’s beautiful,” he stated firmly. “I’ve never seen you look that…happy.” Turning away from the picture, he studied Eva’s face with a similar concentration. “I can’t pretend I’m comfortable looking at it, but it’s worth it to know you’ve found something you can feel that strongly about.”
Eva’s smile was watery, and Drew reached out to grab a cocktail napkin from a passing caterer’s tray in case tears followed. She held it together though.
“Is this why she threw you out?” Godfrey suddenly asked before Eva could speak. “Jesus, honey. No wonder. I’m surprised she didn’t have a stroke on the spot.”
“Something like this,” Eva admitted. “And you? She always implied you had a drinking problem, but it was this, wasn’t it? Looking back on some of the things she said—”
The older man coughed and sputtered in a way that would have been comical if not for the situation. “This? You’re giving your old man way too much credit for ingenuity, honey. Hell, I only wanted her to…” Realizing his audience, he shook his head and bit his lip as he considered how to phrase himself. “I asked her to do something I think most married people would not think twice about. Nothing like this, just something…people sometimes do for each other. She never would. She’d told me once very early on never to ask again. When I did break down and ask again, finally, after fifteen years of marriage, she told me I was damned to burn in hell as a Sodomite.”
“Um.”
“No, no. I wasn’t asking her to—”
“It’s okay, really, I’d rather not—”
“Not that kind of sodomy. Her definition was…different.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Honey, do you want some more wine or anything?” Drew was loyal up to a point, but at that moment he would gladly have chewed his own hand off to escape the conversation, and he was fairly sure both Eva and her father felt the same way but were trapped by a web of mismanaged communication.
She glared up at him and tightened her grip on his arm until he was in pain.
“It wasn’t this,” Mr. Godfrey said, making a cutting gesture with his hands that took in the picture, himself, the two of them. His eyes were squeezed shut, a grimace locked onto his face. “And it was nothing bad. She’s just crazy. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I know she’s your mother and I shouldn’t say that, but—”
“It’s okay, Daddy, I know she’s crazy.”
“Can I start over?”
“Oh God, please do.”
He took a deep breath first and slowly opened his eyes. “This is beautiful, and if it makes you happy, I’m happy for you. And I’m proud of you for being your own person. I hated having to leave you with her, peanut. I really did, but the court was never going to give you to me and I didn’t want to make you have to get up there and testify, choose between us like that. Knowing that you can come out of that and still have the strength to do something like this and let people see it…that amazes me. You amaze me. And you,” he said, a scowl instantly transforming his face as he pointed at Drew, “that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed as hell at you for doing this to my little girl. I really do want to kick your ass all over this room right now, pal.”
The words rang around the three of them. Then Drew nodded, slowly, and held out his free hand, thankful it was the right one. Mr. Godfrey glared at it before taking it and giving it another power-shake that came very close to breaking bones.
“Understood, sir,” Drew responded, struggling not to grin as he shook the cramp from his abused hand.
“I don’t have to be consistent when it comes to stuff like this,” Mr. Godfrey explained. “Because she’s my daughter. But I’ll hold off on the ass-kicking. For now.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Eva muttered. She was blushing, the high red color topping each cheek in a vivid dash that played beautifully off the color in her dress. “I think we could probably all use some more wine right now.”
Chapter Ten
“Head. I’m pretty sure he was talking about head. So that means that the whole time they were married, she never once—”
“Drew, oh my God, please stop. Please, please stop now and never speak of this again. Please?”
“But fifteen years, honey. Fifteen years.”
“It might not have even been the rope thing,” she marveled, securing another plastic wineglass in her hand and throwing it in the trash can Drew was wheeling along behind her. “This whole time I thought it was because I was tied up, but maybe that part didn’t even matter as much as the fact that I was giving Andy head? I’ve given plenty of guys head since then, I never even had an issue with doing that.”
“I thought you never wanted to speak of it again?” He detoured to pick up a litter of flyers and napkins from the corner of the gallery’s larger room, pitching them neatly into the trash can from a distance of eight or ten feet.
“The part about my parents, yeah. I think that’s everything. The cleaning service can get anything else when they mop up.”
She put the last cup in the nearly full can then ambled over to sit on the table the caterers had been using. With a sigh of relief, she eased her high, peep-toe pumps from her feet and let them clump to the ground.
“So do you think the evening was a success?” Drew strolled over to stand in front of her, nudging her knees with one hip.
“
I do. Despite the stuff I can’t unhear.” She wrapped a stockinged foot around his leg and pulled him close enough that she could hook her fingers around his belt. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year to you, too. I have a great idea for a New Year’s tradition. I’ve been waiting all night to show you.” He lifted an eyebrow suggestively, and Eva gave him a coy look in return.
“I could probably be talked into whatever it is,” she allowed.
“Then stand up and turn around.”
He had sneaked out to his car moments before the gallery closed, and now he procured a length of rope from his pocket. He’d been keeping his back to her for half an hour or so, hiding it, pretty astonished that she hadn’t caught on. Now he ran the soft line through his fingers, letting it unwind and fall under its own weight to hang between them, waiting to be used.
Eva stood and offered her hands behind her back as if she knew what he had in mind. She hadn’t even paused, and that alone was enough to get Drew going.
It was black this time, the rope he tied her hands with. Not as long as he would have liked, not long enough to recreate the complete dragonfly weave. But he accomplished a slightly more complex version of the very first tie he’d ever bound her with. Then he leaned into her, running his hands boldly down from her collarbones to cup her breasts through the fine knit of the carnelian dress.
Drew gasped as Eva cupped him in a more meaningful way, sliding her bound hands over his cock and bringing him from half-mast to full-staff within seconds. Stopping her was its own kind of torture, but he had something specific in mind and had enough will power to stick to his plan. It was, after all, a combination of things he’d been dreaming about, developing and honing for months.
“Bend over, honey. On the table.” He pushed gently, and Eva gave a groaning laugh as she braced her legs and bent gracefully at the hips, then let herself flop the last inch or so to rest her cheek, shoulders and belly on the tabletop.
“I forgot to tell you some things about my outfit tonight,” she whispered conspiratorially, already half lost in the happy place the ropes led her to.
“Things? Like what, am I going to need special tools to get you out of it or something?” He ran his fingers between her flexed shoulder blades, over the woven knots that joined her hands over the small of her back, and then down into the red-clad cleft between her buttocks.
Then he ran his fingers over that spot again, then his entire hand, with a dawning grin.
“Oh, holy fuck, have you been dressed like this all night and I never even realized?” With a lot less ceremony than he had originally intended, Drew jerked the soft folds of her skirt up around her waist and made a gurgling, incoherent noise of pleasure at what he found.
A black garter belt, clipped to a wide band of lace atop each slim thigh, topping the sheerest black stockings ever. And above that, perfectly outlining each deliciously curved hip and cheek, a lacy black pair of the fabulous tanga panties. Only a thin strip passed between her legs, and that was easily pushed to one side. He tucked it carefully down next to her pussy and then just stood, admiring for a long moment.
He ran his hands over every place that lace met skin, avoiding only the one place Eva obviously wanted his hands to be, until she was begging and writhing toward him.
“No, honey,” he said sweetly, soothingly, pressing a hand carefully over her helpless wrists. “Be still, let me touch you.”
“I can’t be still,” she whimpered. Her voice sounded as disheveled and sexy as the rest of her, and it was nearly as effective as a tongue running over Drew’s cock. “I need you.”
He bit his lip and ran a possessive hand over the curve of her ass again, finally letting one thumb trace along the shining wet opening that beckoned him. Then an index finger, and then two fingers, tracing down to circle her clit as slowly as he could force himself to go.
When she bucked into his palm, he gave up on patience and freed his cock within a few seconds flat, barely getting the condom rolled over the tip before working himself into her welcoming heat. She shuddered, and he scrolled the band of latex higher on his length and stroked a little deeper, astonished by the pang of need that stabbed at him.
“Drew, please! Now, please now!”
Need, and something more, as the condom finally sheathed him and he finally sheathed himself fully in Eva’s body. It was horrible and wonderful and absolute, a kind of madness. It felt like he could never get enough, but he couldn’t help trying. One hand on her hip, the other on the rope around her delicate wrists, he lunged into her as deeply as he could, startling a sharp breath from her.
“Deep,” she moaned, but didn’t tell him to stop. He did it again, wishing it could be more, wishing he could somehow merge the two of them, and experiencing something like pain at the knowledge that it was impossible. Another thrust and Eva came, pressing a scream into the table beneath her. Her hands grabbed at the air, then found his sleeve and clung tight, as her pussy clung tight around him, and Drew lost his mind to the pounding that swept him into his climax long before he was ready.
And then it was over, but it wasn’t. He was still inside her, still holding her, and she was still coming down from her orgasm in a series of clenching tremors that made Drew’s balls pull up tight in an almost painful spasm of remembered arousal. He leaned over, resting on his elbows, covering her and pressing kisses to her shoulders as her trembling eased.
He was in a room full of pictures of her, tied up and all but naked, but none of those images stood up for even a second against the real thing. The pictures were sexy, but Eva was…everything.
“I approve of this outfit,” he finally said, his lips against the vertebra at the very base of her neck. Her laugh made her move under him, reminding him to keep his weight off her arms. He stood up reluctantly, expecting her to stand as well, but to his surprise Eva didn’t move. She shifted her cheek against the table, turning her head just enough to look at him.
“Drew?”
“Yes?”
“I’d definitely say the evening was a success.”
About the Author
After earning two graduate degrees, practicing law awhile and then working for the public school system for over ten years, Delphine finally got a clue. She tossed all that aside and started doing what she should have been doing all along, writing novels! In hindsight she could see the decision was a no-brainer. Because which sounds like more fun? Being a lawyer/special educator/reading specialist/educational diagnostician…or writing spicy romances?
When not writing or doing “mommy stuff”, Delphine reads voraciously, watches home improvement shows, noodles around with html and css coding, and plays computer games with her darling (and very romantic) husband. She is fortunate enough to have two absurdly precocious children and two rotten but endearing rescued mutts.
Delphine and her family are all Texas natives, and reside in unapologetic suburban bliss near Houston.
Delphine welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
Tell Us What You Think
We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at [email protected].
Also by Delphine Dryden
1-800-DOM-help: Roses and Chains
Snow Job
Truth & Lies 1: How to Tell a Lie
Truth & Lies 2: Art of the Lie
Truth & Lies 3: Naked Truth
When in Rio
Xmas Spark
Print books by Delphine Dryden
Snow Job
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
www.ellorascave.com
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