by Jane Graves
“Of course I have.”
“With a man?”
She pulled away again. “Will you stop asking stupid questions?”
“Sure. Just as soon as I think you’re telling me the truth.”
“Please. You’re acting like I’m some silly little virgin who doesn’t know the meaning of the word sex.”
“Nope. I can pretty much attest to the fact that you’re not one of those. I just think that up to now it’s been all give and no take.”
“Come on, Dave. Do I strike you as somebody who wouldn’t insist on having everything I thought I had coming to me?”
“You’d have to want it first.”
“And what woman in her right mind wouldn’t?”
“One who can’t bear the thought of not being in control of every single aspect of her life.”
“So now I’m a control freak.”
“You said it yourself. That’s one reason you like to fly.”
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t ever let go.”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Lie down.”
“What?”
“Do as I tell you to. Lie down on the bed.”
She had no idea what he was going for, but at least being on the bed meant they were that much closer to getting down to business.
She sat on one side of the bed, and Dave pressed her gently down to her back. Then, to her surprise, he took her wrists and lifted her hands over her head until her fingertips brushed the vertical spindles of the headboard.
“Take hold of these,” he said, wrapping her fingers around them, “and don’t let go.”
Her eyes flew open wide, and she jerked her hands away. “Are you crazy?”
Slowly, deliberately, he took her by the wrists again, then wrapped her fingers around the spindles. She snatched her hands away again. “Will you cut it out?”
He sighed, shaking his head. Standing up, he walked over to the draperies, reached for something behind them, and gave it a hard yank. When he turned around, she saw a cord dangling from his hand. He closed his fingers around it and ran it through his palm a couple of times. Lisa’s heart jolted as if a thousand-watt current had shot right through it.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
She sat up. “This is silly.”
He strode back across the room, every step he took feeling to Lisa as if a gale-force wind were blowing her down to her back all over again. She stared up at him, swallowing hard.
“What’s it going to be, Lisa? My way?” He nodded down at the cord. “Or this way?”
“Well, now,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “You’ve never struck me as the kinky type.”
“Nothing kinky about it. It’s simply a battle I intend to win.”
Her breath was coming faster. She couldn’t seem to control it. No matter how hard she concentrated, still she was breathing faster. He sat down on the bed beside her, rested his palm against her hip, leaned in, and kissed her neck.
“What if I scream?” she said.
His breath tickled her ear. “The damsel in distress thing really isn’t your style.”
“Maybe not, but I’m betting it’s effective.”
He eased his lips along the column of her throat. “Nah, I don’t think you’ll scream. See, there’s this little matter of keeping our presence here a secret. This is not the time to draw attention to ourselves.”
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Then screaming won’t do you any good, will it?”
He moved his lips over her collarbone, his voice humming against her, sending shivers all the way to her toes.
“Forget screaming,” she said. “I’ve got a pair of knees, and I’m not afraid to use them.”
He stood up quickly, grabbed the bedspread, and pulled it hard around her legs. Still standing, he put his knee down on top of it, until her legs were trapped like a butterfly inside a cocoon. She squirmed against him.
“I’m tougher than I look,” she warned. “You might have a fight on your hands.”
“A fight?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Now, I do love a good fight.”
“No way. You’re one of the good guys, Dave. Calm, cool, and sensible.”
“Maybe not.”
“Oh, really? That’s the Dave I know. What’s changed?”
“You came back into my life.” He stared down at her, his expression charged with emotion. “And that changed everything.”
Lisa felt a fundamental shift at that moment, as if that gale-force wind had whipped around and smacked her flat on her back all over again. A few minutes ago he’d asked her where this was going between them. She still had no answer for that, but she had the most uncanny feeling that she was on the verge of finding out.
With her legs still wrapped tightly in the covers, Dave sat down beside her, made a slipknot in the cord, then reached for her wrist. She yanked it away.
“Oh, all right.” She circled her fingers around the spindles of the headboard, which gave her the most heart-thumping feeling of having her body completely exposed.
“Now,” he said, “no matter what happens, do not let go.”
“If I do?”
“It’s back to Plan A. And God only knows when I’ll let you go then.”
She believed him. Every word. She flexed her fingers against the spindles, telling herself that it was no big deal, really. That she could let go anytime she wanted to.
“This is really dumb,” she told him.
“But no problem for you, right?”
“Of course not. Well, aside from the fact that the man I’m sleeping with appears to have some deep-seated bondage fantasies he’s just dying to play out. I admit I find that a little distressing.”
With a tiny smile, he rose and slowly pulled the bedspread away from her, his gaze trained on her body the whole time.
“The light,” she said. “Turn out the light.”
“Oh, no,” he said, tossing the covers into a heap on the floor. “I’ve got a really nice view here. Why would I want to mess it up?”
Her heart quickened as she waited for him to touch her, kiss her, or do whatever he had in mind that she couldn’t fathom. Instead he went to Sera’s dresser and thumbed through the drawers.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“New rule,” he told her, still fishing through the drawer. “I don’t mind you talking. But reprimanding isn’t allowed.”
He’d gone off the deep end. That was the only explanation. Most people got dysentery when they drank Mexican water. Dave turned into a sexual deviant.
“Ah. Here we go.” He closed the drawer and turned around, and she was surprised to see him holding a pair of scissors.
“What do you intend to do with those?” she asked.
He sat down beside her, opened the jaws of the scissors, and slid them over the hem of her shirt.
“What are you doing?” she said, squirming away from him. “You’ll ruin my shirt!”
“I’ve got no choice. See, you can’t let go of that headboard.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll buy you a new shirt. Maybe a couple of new ones. Of course, I’ll be the one picking them out.” He paused, staring at her. “And you know, now that I think about it . . .”
He placed the scissors on the bed next to her, then hooked his finger into the scoop neck of her T-shirt and slowly pulled it down until it met her cleavage, his finger teasing her skin lightly all the way down. “I think it should be a little lower here.”
He considered that for a moment, then passed both hands slowly but firmly over her breasts, pulling the fabric snug against them. “And maybe a little tighter here.”
Lisa quivered at his touch, her nipples tightening in the wake of his hands. He held the fabric taut and stared down at her.
“Dave. Come on. This is silly.”
“Don’t interrupt.
I’ve got a nice fantasy going here.”
As he mulled that over for an eon or so, her nipples grew more erect with each passing second. He was going to stare at them forever. Boldly. Blatantly. And for some reason, that made her feel hot as hell and more exposed than if she were naked.
“I think,” he said, in that maddening contemplative voice, “that I’m going to slip into that store dressing room with you when you’re wearing one of those tight little low-cut shirts.”
“Men aren’t allowed.”
“I’ll bribe the salesgirl.” He slid his hands along the sides of her rib cage until they reached her waist. “I’m going to turn you around to face the mirror.” He slipped his fingertips beneath the hem of her shirt, meeting bare skin. “Then I’m going to stand behind you, put my arms around you, and slide that stretchy little shirt up until I get a really good look at what’s under it.”
He moved his hands up, taking her shirt along with it. It tripped over her nipples before finally gliding away to reveal her breasts. Lisa’s heart leapt.
“You’re going to buy me shirts just so you can take them off me?”
“Mmm. It sounds even better when you say it.”
Dave stared down at her with total appreciation, his gaze lingering. And lingering. And lingering.
“Dave?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking what a beautiful sight this would be in a three-way mirror.”
Lisa felt a sharp tingle between her legs. She flexed her hands against the spindles, her back arching almost involuntarily, desperately wanting him to do something besides stare at her.
Touch me. Please. Your hands. Your mouth. Anything. Everything.
Slowly he lowered his head.
Yes. Yes!
He placed a gentle kiss between her breasts. She waited, waited. . . .
He rose again, pulling the shirt back down to her waist.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she asked, a little breathless.
He picked up the scissors.
Yes. Cut it off. Get rid of it. And do it quickly.
She closed her eyes as he parted the scissors at the hem of her shirt again, but quickly didn’t appear to be a word in his vocabulary this evening. He cut as if he had all night to do it, forcing Lisa to endure the steady snip, snip, snip of the scissors as they slit her shirt, along with the feeling of the cold, hard steel inching its way along the skin from her navel to her neck.
Dave reached for the neckline of the shirt and gave it a final clip, then performed the same slow, maddening cutting action along both sleeves. Finally he laid the scissors down, grasped the shirt, and pulled it away from her body. Tossing the tattered remains aside, he stared at her naked breasts. Just stared, long and hard, until Lisa thought she was going to go crazy.
“Now it’s your turn,” she told him, flexing her fingers against the spindles.
“Excuse me?”
“Your shirt. Off.”
He looked at her admonishingly. “I’m sorry, Lisa. You’re in no position to demand anything.”
“Okay then, how about I reach up there and rip it off you?”
“That would require you to let go of that headboard, and I told you already . . . I wouldn’t advise that.”
He curled his hand around her rib cage, kissing the upper swell of her breast once, twice, moving at such a leisurely pace that she wanted to scream at him to get on with it. He moved up to kiss the base of her throat, then the side of her neck.
“But if you’d like to ask instead of demand,” he said, “I’ll take your request under consideration.”
“Now I’m an impolite control freak?”
He gave her a tiny knowing smile. Tightening his hand along her rib cage, he flicked his tongue against her earlobe, then nipped it gently. Suddenly her jeans felt way too tight, way too confining. She could actually feel the area between her legs growing hot and swollen. And damn it, if it took a private consultation with Miss Manners she was determined to get him out of that shirt.
She turned her head and whispered against his cheek, “I’d like it very much if you took your shirt off.”
He backed away and stood up, unbuttoning his shirt and taking it off, and not getting in any hurry at all to do it. Finally he tossed it down, and one word formed in her mind: wow. She could live to be a thousand and never get enough of looking at him. And touching him. Which she was dying to do right now.
“I can do all sorts of things with my hands,” she told him, easing her voice down into the provocative range. “You might be interested in some of them.”
“Thank you for your input. I’ll take that under advisement.”
He circled around to the foot of the bed. His gaze traveled the length of her body, from her feet to her head and all the way back down. That staring again.
“Dave, I’m starting to feel a little silly here. Can we get on with it?”
He shook his head sadly. “You’re an impatient person, Lisa. A minor character flaw, but a flaw just the same. You need to work on that.”
She exhaled with frustration. Right. And he seemed to be more than willing to give her all the “hands-off ” training she needed.
Finally he took hold of her ankles, and after a lengthy caress he pushed them apart. He rested his knee on the bed between her thighs, dropped a palm on either side of her hips and leaned over her, the muscles of his shoulders and arms standing out in sharp relief. He pressed a kiss just above her navel, sending a thrilling little shudder shooting right up her spine. Rising again, he unfastened the buttons of her jeans, stopping after each one to tease a fingertip over any newly bared skin.
Yes. Now we’re getting down to it.
Once the last button was undone, he slid his hands all the way from her hips to her calves, finally catching the legs of her jeans near her ankles and pulling.
“Maybe you’d better help a little,” he said. “Which is not permission to let go.”
“Then how . . .”
He waited patiently.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
As he pulled, she lifted her hips, squirming left and right. His tiny smile said he was enjoying the show, and his sudden inability to pull a pair of jeans off a woman said he was creating the show on purpose. Finally he pulled just enough that they skimmed over her hips and down her legs. He tossed them aside, then eased her panties down over her hips, her thighs, her calves, and finally past her feet. And a glacier could have thawed in the time it took him to do it.
She was naked. He wasn’t. That wasn’t the order she generally strove for. But at least they were making progress. Come on, baby. Let’s rock.
To her surprise, he walked to the door of the bedroom.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“I’ll only be a minute.” He pointed an admonishing finger. “And remember what happens if you let go.”
He left the room, and she heard his footsteps on the stairs. What in the hell was he doing?
This was completely insane.
Get up. Take control of this outrageous situation. Get him naked and get on with it.
Then she glanced down at the drapery cord still lying on the mattress beside her.
Better stay put.
A minute later, she heard his footsteps coming back up the stairs. He came into the room holding a large bowl. What in the hell was he doing?
He sat down on the bed beside her again, setting the bowl on the nightstand. He reached into it, and what he extracted made her heart go crazy.
A lime.
Dave grabbed a knife from the bowl and flicked through the lime, separating it into two halves.
Lisa’s eyes widened. “Oh, you have got to be joking.”
“Those Lozanos. Gotta hand it to them. They really know how to kick a party up to the next level.”
“Dave, no. This is insane. I’m going to let go. I swear—” The first frigid drop hit right at the hollow of her throat. If he’d released a lit match on her, she couldn’t have felt it more. E
ven though the lime juice was cold, it seemed to sizzle against her skin, and she had to clamp her mouth shut to keep from gasping.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said between clenched teeth. “You know that, don’t you? You’re completely out of your mind.”
He ignored her, squeezing the lime half until it dripped into the hollow of her throat, then moving it to either collarbone, down to her breastbone, and circling her nipples, letting each drop fall slowly and singularly. He blazed a path of lime juice down her stomach, into her navel, as she watched with rapt disbelief. She had no idea just how intense a Chinese lime juice torture could be.
Then he moved lower, and she nearly gasped when she realized how far he intended to take this.
She immediately pressed her thighs together. He countered by teasing his fingertips in a tickling motion along the crevice between her thigh and pelvis. As she twisted away from him, her legs fell open, and he took the opportunity to squeeze the remainder of the juice of the lime half right between her legs.
“You play dirty.”
That smile again.
Then he reached into the bowl again and produced a saltshaker.
Not in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she’d be making like a head-to-toe tequila shot tonight, or that the slightest sprinkle of salt along the same path as the lime juice could make her practically jump out of her skin.
“I’m taking it easy on the salt,” he said, shaking lightly. “Gotta watch the old blood pressure.”
Which meant he intended to taste every bit of it, and the thought of that made Lisa’s heart rate shoot through the roof.
“Don’t tell me you found the tequila,” she said.
“Not a drop in the house,” he said, eyeing her body from head to toe. “But I have a feeling that in just a minute I won’t give a damn about that.”
He set the saltshaker down and stood up, and she finally got at least one wish she’d made tonight. He stripped completely, and she saw to her immense relief that he appeared to be as ready as she was to get on with this.
But still he was in no hurry.
He began by licking at the hollow of her throat, his tongue moving gently against her, waking up nerve endings she didn’t even know she had. Then he teased his tongue over her collarbone in a slow, sensuous back-and-forth motion. She wanted to scream. Centuries turned more quickly than this man was moving.
