Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
I don’t want to make eye contact with him, because I don’t want him to see my hunger. I don’t want to see that hunger reflected in his gaze. `Wanting him hurts. And I want him.
I lean into him, and he tilts my face up to kiss me, hard and desperate. He’s been as miserable as I have, and in a passion-drunk moment, I can’t remember why we denied ourselves. Tonight, we don’t have to.
He lifts his head, fingers still cradling my chin. “Do you trust me?”
I laugh. “Of course, I don’t.”
A bitter smile touches his lips. “I mean, do you trust me not to harm you?”
I do. With all my heart and soul. “If there is one thing I will never doubt, it’s your vow to keep me safe.”
His throat moves with what looks like a painful swallow. His cocky smile is obviously forced. “Good,” he says, giving my butt a playful swat. “Then you won’t mind if I tie you up?”
I was right about the cords.
“Are you going to do painful stuff to me?” I ask doubtfully, images of paddles and handcuffs crowding out my desire.
He leans close to my ear and whispers, “Not that kind of pain.”
Before I can ask what he means, he takes my hand and leads me toward the huge bed. There are implements laid out on a towel, but nothing in the whips and chains genre. They’re bizarre items: a glass vial of milky blue liquid, a paintbrush, and a two-pronged pink thing about the size of my palm that I’m pretty sure is a sex toy.
“What’s all this?” I whisper, a thrill of trepidation running through my pelvis.
“It’s for...making the most of the night.” He pats the mattress. “Go on. In the center.”
“Should I take this off?” I gesture to my nightgown. He chuckles. “Fuck, no.” I climb onto the bed as he instructed and lie down. There are padded cuffs linked to the cord running across the headboard. “Am I supposed to have a safe word for this?”
“A simple ‘no more’ will suffice,” is his ominous answer. I know he won’t hurt me. I know he won’t violate me or do anything to cause me trauma. I know it because even though I despise him, the bond between us betrays how much he treasures me.
Unfortunately, that probably goes both ways.
While I’m preoccupied with the cuffs at the head of the bed, he locks something around my ankle. It’s a rigid bar with an identical cuff on the opposite side. He takes my other, bare foot and lifts it to his mouth, sucking my big toe into his mouth. I gasp. He’s had his mouth on my pussy before, but somehow, this feels more intimate. My hips arch up, and he lowers my foot to the bed.
“That reaction is exactly—” He pauses, then fastens the other cuff. “—why we need these.”
“You don’t want me to move?” I see my pulse in the silk over my chest. He slides my nightgown up, crawling over me until the fabric reaches my waist and his face is tantalizingly close to my mound. I want to arch up, but he’s right; with the bar between my legs, my lower body is cumbersome and heavy.
“Understand now?” he asks, his breath teasing my already engorged clit peeking out from between my labia.
Trembling, I nod.
He moves away and adjusts the bar; my legs are forced open wide, and so is my most private part. I feel my wetness in the cool touch of the air; even the fire in the hearth can’t match the heat of my body. I’m fueled by my need, already burning up.
Nathan gets off the bed and takes up the cuffs at the center of the headboard. He snaps his fingers at me in silent command to raise my arms, and I do so automatically. My reaction stuns me. I should be furious, to be ordered around like this. But obeying his wordless—and rude—command makes the connection between us throb.
It makes other things throb, too.
My arms are over my head, wrists bound together, and I instantly panic. I test the bonds and try to sit up, but Nathan is there in a moment, lying beside me, his body a protective cradle around mine. He turns my face to his and kisses me, tender this time instead of hungry.
“You trust me,” he says, a statement of fact and not a question. The reminder soothes me, and I cease my struggling. The fear in me subsides, leaving only a strange exhilaration at being so helpless and exposed for him.
When I’m calm again, he leaves the bed, unbuttoning his sleeve cuffs. He removes his shirt and undershirt and tosses them both aside and picks up something from the bed. It’s another towel. He unfolds it and moves to tuck it beneath my lower half.