by Heidi Betts
She understood him. Understood his love for his job, and didn’t freak over the fact that it sometimes put him in danger. She’d admitted that she worried about him, but had been quick to add that she trusted him, trusted his training, and knew that he’d do everything he could to come home safely at the end of the night.
She wasn’t like some cops’ wives who whined and cried and complained about the dangers of having a loved one on the force, about the long and unpredictable hours, about their husbands caring more about their jobs than they did about them.
And though she wasn’t classically beautiful, Gage couldn’t imagine another woman flipping his switch the way Jenna did.
Until he’d met her, he’d always been attracted to tall, leggy women with long hair and big boobs. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition types with more T and A than I and Q. Women who, frankly, tended to look more like her best friends, Ronnie and Grace.
He’d actually had his eye on Ronnie initially, thinking about culling her from the rest of the herd and hitting her with one of his tried-and-true come-on lines when he’d run into Jenna, and thoughts of asking out any other woman had flown straight out of his head.
She was tiny, the top of her head barely reaching his chin, her compact build looking almost shapeless and boyish beneath the plain, Bohemian outfits she gravitated toward. Faded jeans and colorful, flowing blouses. Long skirts and peasant tops.
And scarves. Or boas, as she’d recently trained him to think of them. She loved to knit long boas out of fancy, fluffy, brightly colored yarn and then wrap them around her neck to coordinate with whatever she was wearing that day.
At first, he’d thought she was using them as a shield to cover an embarrassing birth mark or scar, or maybe just some hickeys she didn’t want anyone to know about. Then, after he’d learned they were simply a part of her own personal fashion sense… and after they’d started getting hot and heavy… he’d gotten a secret thrill out of putting some hickeys on her neck himself that she really did need the scarves to cover. It had turned him on to see them and know that his sexy little marks on her body were hidden beneath.
He also enjoyed unwinding them, drawing them slowly from her neck, sometimes using them to loosely bind her arms behind her back or teasing other tender, sensitive parts of her body while he undressed her.
Oh, yeah, there were lots of fun, interesting things he liked to do with those boas.
Jenna’s slim fingers twitched where they rested on his bare chest and he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a firm kiss to her knuckles. She made a low, purring sound in her throat that went straight to his gut and squirmed against him.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, he dragged her from his side to lay on top of him, covering him from neck to ankle. She blinked like a sleepy owl, a wide, contented smile spreading across her face.
“Hi,” she whispered.
His own lips curved upwards. “Hi. Wanna get dressed and go down to the beach? Maybe grab some dinner?”
He knew what he wanted to do, and it didn’t involve food or leaving the room. But since it had been several hours since breakfast and the island offered plenty of shopping and sightseeing opportunities, he thought he should at least offer to show her as much of a good time out of bed as he was determined to show her in it.
She considered his question for a minute, her dark brows drawing together adorably over her tiny, wrinkled button of a nose.
“I’m thinking room service,” she finally responded.
His own brow quirked as he studied her. “You sure? The concierge recommended some restaurants she thought we should try. We could take the ferry over to St. John, maybe visit a few places over there.”
“Are you sick of my company already? Bored with your new bride?”
She propped her chin in the palm of her hand, her elbow digging into his pec. A small puff of air huffed from his diaphragm, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t move to relieve the pressure. He was too amused by his little wife to care about a minor twinge of pain.
“That’s not a good sign, you know. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of our married life if one of us starts feeling like the honeymoon is over during the actual honeymoon.”
“Honey,” he drawled, smoothing his hands up and down her bare arms, “I have a feeling our honeymoon won’t be over even when we’re ninety and swinging on the front porch, watching our great-great-grandkids playing in the yard.”
Her ripe pink lips pulled into an adorable bowlike moue. “You think you’ll still be up to honeymoon activities when you’re nearing the big nine-oh?”
Gage waggled his brows, cocking his hips to let her know how up he was to honeymoon activities at that very moment. “With you, I have a feeling I’ll be up to it even when I’m six feet under.”
A shadow passed over her face, but was just as quickly gone. “Let’s not talk about that sort of thing. In fact…” She slid her hands to the mattress on either side of his waist, did the same with her legs on either side of his thighs, and pushed herself into a sitting position. “Let’s not talk at all.”
His heart was pounding in his chest, his cock throbbing between his legs and pointing like a compass toward due North.
“What do you suggest we do instead?” he asked. And he was pretty sure he was only imagining the strangled wisp in his voice. He was heartier than that, right? He was a big, strong man; it should take more than a petite fairy of a woman to take his breath away.
Sitting back on her haunches, the globes of her ass cushioned on the tops of his thighs, she let her fingers trail along the tight, concave plane of his abdomen. “I think we should order room service,” she said.
With her gaze latched firmly on the path her nails were making as they raked across his flesh, she tipped her head to one side. “And while we wait for it to arrive, I think we should do dirty, naughty things that we can’t tell our friends about when we go home.”
“Sounds good to me.” Hell, it sounded like freaking paradise. And her hands drifting from his stomach to the Little General felt even better.
But instead of wrapping around his hard length, her hand skimmed past to gently cup and fondle his balls. Air hissed through his teeth, and any blood that had been keeping the rest of his body functioning immediately gave up the fight and headed straight for his groin.
“What about room service?” he grated, since she didn’t seem inclined to follow through with her suggestion.
“You dial,” she said in a sultry, brown-sugar voice. “I have a feeling I’ll be hungry, so order me one of everything.”
He started to lower his arm, wondering briefly how it had gotten over his head to begin with. He didn’t remember gripping the headboard, only stroking Jenna’s shoulders and arms.
She chose that moment to scoot back even farther and lower her head until her lips grazed the tip of his cock. A shock of electricity rolled down his dick and flashed like lightning through the rest of his system.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to dial, let alone talk, with your mouth on me.”
“Mmm.” She parted her lips a fraction and let her tongue dart out to lick his sensitive flesh. “That could be a problem. Maybe we should wait until after we’ve eaten to participate in more… interesting activities.”
But instead of stopping, instead of pulling away, she opened her mouth even wider and engulfed him by a full inch.
Though he didn’t know how he retained the ability to speak, he managed a wobbly, “I like the sound of that.”
Tugging once more at his arm, he tried to touch her face, tried to run his fingers through her hair, but his hand wouldn’t budge.
He frowned. What the hell was going on? Why couldn’t he move his right arm?
He gave up on the right and tried to lift the left. Same problem. Same dogged resistance.
Okay, this was getting ridiculous.
He rolled his head on the pillow, first to one side, then to the other, in an effort to see what was
holding him back. There was something there, he knew it, but his eyes wouldn’t seem to focus. And the more he tried to clear his vision, the worse it got.
He returned his gaze to Jenna, who still hovered above him. Their surroundings were different now, though. He could no longer hear the waves lapping outside the open balcony door or smell the fresh scent of the island breeze. The four walls surrounding him didn’t look like those of the hotel room where they’d honeymooned, but were darker, plainer, and closing in on him.
Mind searching for an explanation, he turned his attention back to Jenna. Something felt strange. Wrong. And suddenly Jenna didn’t just look sexy, wanton, and desirable, she also looked… guilty.
“What did you do?” he asked, brows knitting as the words came out slurred. “What did you do?”
Purl 4
Jenna didn’t know whether to continue or run off in a panic. The pills in the beer had worked just the way Grace said they would, but now Gage seemed to be coming around.
On the one hand, that was good-it meant he would be more physically able to respond to her touch.
Not that she had much doubt about him in that respect; she knew Gage’s body well enough to know he could be in a coma and would still likely react to her caressing his junk.
On the other hand, being awake and lucid meant he might begin to put two and two together, figure out what she was up to… and take the house apart in a blind rage. She’d seen Gage angry before-never at her, thank goodness-and it hadn’t been pretty. But she knew his strength, and she knew he wouldn’t take kindly to being tricked or manipulated.
Swallowing hard, she ignored the trickle of self-consciousness that niggled at her and double-checked the ties at his wrists.
“I didn’t do anything,” she lied in what she hoped was a soothing, believable whisper. “Now relax, the fun is just beginning.”
He shook his head where it rested on the white pillow, his arms pinned above him, tied to either side of the headboard with a couple of her hand-knit boas. One of them was purple and not quite finished, started with the homespun alpaca yarn Aunt Charlotte had given her before leaving. The other, and the two binding his ankles to the footboard, were ones she’d brought along from home. Grace had helped her set them up and then tuck them unobtrusively under the bedding before taking off with Ronnie, so that all Jenna had to do after drugging Gage and luring him into the bedroom was secure him with the already prepared restraints.
It all felt so bad and manipulative and… wrong to Jenna on several levels, but she and Grace and Ronnie had discussed the situation ad nauseum, with no other solution coming to mind. Add to that the nearly two years of wishing, dreaming, regretting, and basically circling around to the very same conclusion…
This might not make her a good person, but it was what she had to do in order to move on with her life rather than wallowing in sadness and regret for the next fifty years.
With that thought firmly in mind, she took a deep breath and moved on to the task of stripping them both bare. She started with herself, crossing her arms over her abdomen and lifting her blouse off over her head. Then she did the same with her long, flowing skirt, because it was easier than shifting around to get it down and off past her feet.
She sat back, perched on Gage’s denim-clad knees in only a conservative white bra and panty set. It had been so long since they’d been together-so long since she’d been with anyone-that even just the act of undressing felt awkward and naughty.
But naughty in a good way. She could feel the blood turning thick and warm in her veins, and her nipples were beginning to bud inside the padded cups of her bra.
It should be just like riding a bike, though, right? Climb on, grab the handlebars, and start peddling. How hard could it be?
Glancing up into Gage’s face, she noticed that his lips were pressed into a flat line and his intense brown gaze was locked on her. “What are you doing?” he grated.
Oh, he was awake now. Whatever effect the pills had had on him, they’d obviously run their course, leaving him wide-eyed and alert. Wary, but alert.
Tugging the tail of his shirt from the waistband of his jeans, she pushed the soft cotton upwards, revealing the gorgeous expanse of his broad, tanned chest inch by luscious inch. Since his hands were sort of… otherwise occupied… there was no way to remove the shirt without untying him, so she settled for slipping it over his head and leaving it there, caught at the back of his neck and under his arms.
It wasn’t ideal, but it would do. The same as leaving his pants bunched around his ankles would have to do.
Hmm. Perhaps she should have thought this through a bit more before tying him to the bedposts. Either that, or stripped him naked beforehand, leaving only her own nudity to worry about.
“Don’t be angry,” she told him in a hushed voice. “I know this is a little unusual, but it’s the only way I felt safe inviting you over here.”
Her fingers moved to his belt, releasing it and the top button of his jeans before slowly sliding down the tab of his zipper. Dragging the thick denim past his hips was made more difficult by his spread-eagle position, but she didn’t let that stop her. A good yank did it, and she was able to shimmy them down his legs to bunch around his calves.
The thin material of his black boxer briefs didn’t leave much to the imagination, and she could clearly see that he was interested in what she was doing to him-or at least his body was. Not throbbing, frothing, fire-poker interested, but not impervious, which made her feel a little better about the entire situation.
Climbing back into position over his thighs, she took in all the sleek golden flesh her disrobing of him had revealed and felt a flutter of longing low in her belly.
At his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbed and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. “What are you doing, Jenna?” he asked again, the words even more strained than before.
She knew what he was asking-not the what of her actions, but the why. Something she wasn’t nearly ready to confess. So she simply leaned forward, pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, and whispered, “Making love to you.”
Thankfully, three years of marriage and hundreds of bouts of hot, sweaty, ultra-passionate lovemaking had clued her in to his likes and dislikes. If not all of them, then certainly enough to move them toward that fire-poker thing and get her through this evening.
Laying her hands flat at the sides of his waist, she trailed them upwards, sliding slowly along his tight abdomen, his ribcage, over the T-shirt bunched at his armpits, and up his arms until she’d reached his hands. She enjoyed every inch of warm flesh and compact muscle, just as she had while they’d been married.
To steal a line from one of her favorite songs, Gage’s body was a wonderland. Even if he hadn’t been a cop, needing to stay in shape to keep up with the rigors of his job, she suspected he still would have been at the gym five or six times a week. Running, swimming, lifting weights. He did a bit of everything, and it showed.
And she appreciated his diligence. She always had, even if his big, muscle-bound, in-shape body tended to make her feel small and somewhat out of shape in comparison.
She’d also always loved his tattoos. She wasn’t inked herself… she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to let someone permanently mark her body with a thousand razor-sharp needles… but she could certainly appreciate the beauty of good body art on the canvas of Gage’s spectacular physique.
While they’d been together, he’d only had a couple-a tribal rope design around his left bicep and a strip of barbed wire around his right wrist. He’d talked about getting more, but to her knowledge had never started the process.
Since their breakup, however, it looked like he’d not only been busy, but perhaps spent the majority of his free time in a tattoo artist’s chair. She could see the nose of a dragon breathing fire at the top of his right pectoral. Full of bright color and angry passion, it trailed up under the black of his bunched-up T-shirt, presumably to cover the slope of his should
er. She assumed it blanketed a fair expanse of his back, as well, because the creature reappeared below the line of his waist, its tail wrapping around his left hip while the tip curled over his pelvic bone and ended just above his groin.
Licking her lips, she linked her fingers with his and leaned down to press a soft kiss on his mouth.
“You remember this, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
She rested her breasts on his chest, the rough, springy hairs there tickling her sensitized nipples. Lower, beneath her belly, she felt him stir and knew her attentions were beginning to have the desired effect.
“You remember me,” she added, and this time it was a statement rather than a question.
His fingers flexed around hers, and she couldn’t read whether it was in desire or anger.
“I remember you.” She grazed his cheek with her lips. The stubble of his jawline tickled, but in a good way, so she did it again.
“I miss you,” she murmured, feeling secure enough to admit the truth only because he was tied up and-in theory, anyway-at her mercy.
She nipped the lobe of his ear with her teeth and was rewarded with a small, low groan. Her lips traveled down the side of his neck, pressing soft, languid kisses along the way. Every once in a while, she let her tongue flick out to taste and dampen his skin.
She’d always loved the way he tasted-salty and masculine, like a man who worked hard and played hard, and wore both scents as his own personal fragrance. High-priced colognes and aftershaves had nothing on Eau de Gage.
When she reached his shoulder, she gave the muscle there a tiny love bite through the material of his shirt, almost as though she were attempting to French kiss the dragon itself. A shiver of excitement swept through her at the mental image before she moved on to outline the sharp edge of his collarbone, the base of his throat, and down to the positively mouthwatering twin rises of his pectorals.
