“Is it pinching you somewhere?” he asked and shifted his hands to her bound leg, carefully running his fingers over the rope and knots he’d fashioned.
“No. I didn’t mean the rope. I meant my bra.”
“Oh.” He chuckled and a pulse of pleasure converged between her thighs. So now even his laugh turned her on? She was a goner.
“Let me bind your other leg first,” he said, “then I’ll have you sit up.”
He left the free end of the rope dangle from her ankle and picked up another piece of rope to bind her other leg. She had some experience with his motions now, so instead of concentrating on where he was putting the rope and tying it and knotting it, she allowed herself to feel how it affected her body. She most enjoyed the knots between her soles and the piano keys where her feet rested, but the tightness of the ropes on her thighs directed her attention to the open and exposed flesh between them. She hoped he’d do something about that soon; she couldn’t close her legs and squirm as she’d been doing since she’d sat beside him at the breakfast bar and then on the piano bench. Even though he’d taken the edge off with that sweet orgasm earlier, she was hopelessly excited again.
When he had her legs secured the way he wanted them, he ran his hands over the ropes as if checking for flaws in his design. “Does that feel okay?” he asked.
“Feels great,” she murmured.
His lips pressed gently against the inside of her thigh. “Your scent is driving me wild. Will you be able to keep your hands to yourself if I steal a small taste?”
“Yes.” She was lying. Even before his tongue slid sensually over her inner folds, her hands were reaching for his thick, glorious hair.
He moved away before she could latch onto his scalp. He slid a hand between her lower back and the piano and eased her into a sitting position.
“Why did you stop?” she asked, her pussy still quivering from the brief feel of his tongue against her flesh.
“I know if I really get into it, I won’t be able to quit.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Do you trust me to make it good for you?”
“Yes.”
“Then let me do my thing. You still haven’t given up control yet.”
She was letting him tie her up on top of a piano. Just how much control did he expect her to relinquish?
He took the dangling rope ends from either knee and wrapped them around her waist, crossed them behind her back. When he pulled the ropes taut, the action pulled her thighs wide open.
“Ow.” She protested the pull on her muscles. She was stretched to her limit.
“Relax,” he said.
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t sitting on the edge of a hard surface with his legs spread wide in a split.
After a moment, her muscles adjusted and she sighed in relief. Forced yoga. That’s what she felt like she was doing. He tugged the ropes another inch, opening her wider still and then tied the two ropes together just under her navel to hold her in that position.
“I don’t stretch that far,” she protested.
“Yes, you do.”
He slid two fingers over her mound, against her clit and to the exposed, dripping-wet opening farther down. “I was going to put knots between your thighs so you could get your pleasure from the rope.” He massaged her entrance with two fingertips, and she tried to close her legs against the invasion, but her bonds prevented it. “I changed my mind,” he said.
“You’re going to leave me all worked up like this?” She would surely die if he did.
“No, I’m going to give you all the pleasure you can handle. A couple of ropes don’t deserve that privilege.”
She wished she could see his expression. Because it was dark, she felt comfortable in being so exposed, but she also felt she was missing out on all the cues he could be giving her.
He shifted and his chest brushed her breasts as he reached behind her to unfasten her bra. Soon her arms would be rendered as helpless as her legs, so she took the opportunity to embrace him. He stiffened but when she did nothing but hold him in her arms, he eventually began to relax. His arms tightened around her, and he just held her like that. His heart thudded hard in his chest, thumping in a rapid staccato against hers. His mouth moved against her hair.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, hugging her closer.
Her hands slid up his back, and she tilted her head, seeking his kiss. His breath warmed her lips. She parted them, her eyes closed, her body completely in tune with his.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
He released her so abruptly, she almost tumbled from the piano. Her arms shot behind her to help her regain her center of gravity.
He immediately grabbed her to keep her from falling. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t expect you to trust me with your safety if I put you in harm’s way like that.”
“Fine,” she said, glad it was dark so he couldn’t see how watery her stupid eyes had become. “You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to.”
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” he said. He found her face in the darkness and cupped it between his hands. “I haven’t been alone with a woman since Sara. I didn’t realize how much I needed Owen with me as a spotter.”
The ache in Dawn’s chest lifted, and she laughed. “A spotter? You’re not bench-pressing me, Kellen,” she said. “Just touching me.”
“But there are things a woman expects that I won’t deliver. Kissing, for example. Owen handled that part.”
“I didn’t know, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s not fair to you. I can’t expect you to abide by my weird little rules.”
“Maybe you should tell me what those rules are, so I’m less likely to break them. I’m trying to understand you, Kellen.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“Fuck.”
She stiffened, and her temper flared to life. “Sorry you find my affection so revolting.”
“I don’t. I find it wonderful. And tempting. And scary as hell. I like you too. More than anyone before Sara,” he said. “Or since.”
So she was in second place after a dead girl? She supposed it was a start. What would it take to climb to the top? She needed to be first. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not this week or this month. But someday. Someday she wanted to be Kellen’s number one. She just needed to not mess this up before then. Unfortunately, her mouth often spontaneously said things she regretted.
“Do you think Sara would want you to give up love for the rest of your life?”
“Now that she’s gone, I’m sure she wouldn’t care if I got a dog,” he said, “but she was incredibly jealous. She wanted me all to herself. She forced me to promise her all sorts of things and I did. And I meant every last one of those promises.”
“But shouldn’t they have ended when she died?”
“No,” he said. “They should end when I stop loving her.”
Which would be never.
“Now I’m going to have to remind you to relax,” he said.
“Relax?” she sputtered. “How am I supposed to relax?”
He lifted the heavy mass of her hair from one shoulder and gently caressed the bare skin he exposed. “First, you should stop trying to compete with Sara. You’re not her.”
“I’m well aware of that. I’m sure she didn’t have to make sense of your rules and worry that she was going to ask you to do something taboo like kiss.”
“No, I had no rules for her. But she had plenty for me. Rule one: no biting,” he said.
His teeth nipped Dawn’s earlobe. She shuddered and gasped as pleasure licked down the side of her neck. His nose brushed her throat, and she felt the warm moisture of his breath against her skin just before he nipped the side of her neck, her collarbone, her ribcage, belly, mound.
“Another rule: don’t put your mouth there, Kellen.” His tone was as feminine as his deep voice could produce. “It feels weird.”
God, it didn’t feel wei
rd to Dawn. It felt great. He might not have been willing to kiss Dawn on the mouth, but he did one hell of a job kissing her lips.
“I only want to come when you’re inside me, Kellen,” he repeated more of Sara’s words. “Looking in my eyes. Promise you’ll never come inside anyone but me, Kellen. Promise.”
Wow, that woman had his head all sorts of messed up. Dawn supposed most men would have made those kinds of promises to make their woman happy, but doubted they would have taken them to heart the way that Kellen so obviously had.
“Kellen,” Dawn said. “You don’t have to promise me anything. I don’t want you to.”
His only response was to suck her clit into his mouth and stroke it rapidly with his tongue until she exploded with ecstasy against his face. She clung to his hair, rocking her hips involuntarily as she moaned in bliss. After a moment, he dislodged her fingers from his scalp and reached for the rope again. He didn’t speak as he worked, first crisscrossing the rope across her torso and back, around her breasts and over her shoulders. He climbed to sit behind her as he bound her arms together behind her back, starting at the tops and working his way toward her wrists.
Kellen tied knot after knot, as if building an intricate rope ladder between her arms. He spent so much time on each knot that it seemed to take forever. She wished she could see what he was doing back there. What did it look like? She’d never been more conscious of her skin. Her breasts, pussy, and above her neck were the only parts of her body that were not in some way associated with lengths of rope or knots, so she became fixated on those parts, wanting stimulation for those areas too.
“I wish I had more rope,” he said when he moved away at last. “I’d really like to showcase your talented hands.” His teeth sank into a bare spot on the back of her shoulder, and her spine arched involuntarily. She found her movement severely limited by the ropes binding her. “Yet I suppose they’re beautiful enough on their own.”
She felt unbalanced when he slid to the floor and left her teetering, sitting on the edge of the piano lid, her feet and legs bound, but resting on the keys, and her arms tied securely behind her. She leaned back on her hands and felt slightly more balanced. It didn’t help that the darkness was so disorienting.
She heard the strike of the lighter just before a flame broke the darkness as Kellen lit the candles she’d brought from the kitchen. He carried the candles to the far end of the piano, increasing the amount of light near her. He stared at her in the soft yellow glow until her face burned with embarrassment.
“Don’t look at me so intensely,” she said and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I can’t help it. You look just as beautiful as you feel.”
She peeked at him from beneath her lashes as he circled the piano, sometimes touching her skin as if to ensure himself that she was real and other times gazing at her for long patches of time as if she were fine art on display.
“I wish you could see the pattern down your arms,” he said. “I’m not sure how I managed to space the knots so evenly.”
Probably because he’d taken such meticulous care that she’d thought he’d never finish. There wasn’t an inch of play in her arms. She tried to pull them away from her sides and found she was breathing hard for no good reason.
“Easy, baby,” he whispered.
Kellen’s hands were suddenly everywhere, gently caressing her skin until the ropes felt as if they were part of her.
She looked down at her naked body. The candlelight gave a soft glow to her skin. She couldn’t believe how exposed she was. Her legs were wide open. She could feel that they were, but seeing them like that was quite a shock. So that’s what her pussy looked like. She’d seen glimpses of it while grooming, but she’d never stared at it before. Was he staring at it too? She was too timid to find out. She forced her attention to less erotic visions, but discovered that he’d transformed every inch of her body into something visually appealing. Erotic.
Kellen had used the blue rope on her right leg and the tan on her left. The knots were not only used to hold her limbs in a certain orientation, but to decorate. At her waist, the two ropes came together. She wasn’t sure how he’d manage to combine the two colors into a contrasting design of diamonds and small rings when he couldn’t see what he was doing, but it was beautiful. The way the ropes supported her breasts made them jut forward, proud and bare. It was as if he’d showcased them with his rope work, drawing attention to the light pink tips. She turned her head to try to see the work he’d done on her arms, but those knots were out of her field of view. She’d never felt more sexy in her life. Or more trapped.
Her hands were free, so she repeatedly clenched them, and her toes were capable of curling under, but that only managed to remind her of the knot in the instep of her foot which kept her nipples hard for some inexplicable reason.
“You’re shaking,” he said, moving to stand before her. “Don’t fight it.”
“I’m not,” she said breathlessly. She looked at him, strangely not embarrassed that he had an unfettered view of every private part of her body. She felt separate from herself. Like an observer of her own form.
“Not physically fighting it. Mentally.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How do you feel?”
“Trapped.”
“Are you sure?” He held her gaze, his dark brown eyes intense and deep.
She couldn’t look away. “Actually, it’s more like someone else is trapped and I’m watching her with envy.”
“Are you allowing yourself to feel the ropes, Dawn?”
“I don’t know.” She honestly wasn’t sure what she feeling. She was new to this. What was she supposed to be doing? What was she missing? She tried thinking about the ropes pressed into her flesh, forcing her into a position she would never be able to hold on her own. Keeping her there. Holding her completely stationary. Can’t move. Can’t move. Suddenly, it was as if a fist reached into her chest, squeezed her heart, and robbed her lungs of air.
Kellen stepped between her thighs and held her gently so that her forehead was resting against his shoulder. His hands felt so soothing against her shoulders that she practically melted. “Don’t panic,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m not sure I like this.”
“Do you want me to release you?”
He’d worked so hard to tie her this way, and she felt a million times better now that he was near. “Not yet. Just hold me a while longer.”
“I probably should have tied you on your bed your first time. You would have felt more secure. More stable. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how sexy you’d look on the surface of your piano.”
“I feel secure as long as you’re close,” she whispered. She angled her face and kissed his neck. He tensed slightly, but didn’t move away. She prayed that this wasn’t one of those triggers that sent him fleeing, because once she started, rubbing her lips against his throat, nibbling, licking, sucking and kissing, she couldn’t stop. If her hands had been free, she’d be plunging them down his boxer shorts right about now. God, she wanted his cock in her hands, her mouth, her wide open pussy. She was suddenly thankful that he’d tied her, so she wouldn’t attack him.
His ragged breathing stirred her hair. His hands went from holding her shoulders to provide comfort to massaging her breasts to provoke excitement. He kneaded them gently in his palms while she desperately sucked on his neck, his shoulder, his collarbone, wishing she could reach more of his flesh. She wanted so much more of him. When he began to rub her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, desire ignited deep inside her. She moaned in torment.
“Find your balance,” he said gently.
She had no idea what he meant until he started to slide down her body and she teetered forward. She leaned back slightly, catching herself on her hands.
Kneeling on the floor between her wide open thighs, Kellen looked up at her as he tied his hair back with a leather strap he’d tugged from beneath the
cuff on his right wrist. There was no hesitation at all as he shifted forward and plunged his tongue into her quivering hole. He traced her opening repeatedly, drawing her fluids into his mouth with each swipe. She could see it. She could see everything. When he’d collected most of what she’d had waiting for him, he nibbled his way up one swollen lip and then latched onto her clit with a tight suction. His tongue worked the swollen bud as he sucked and sucked, drawing her higher, higher.
“Oh God,” she cried.
Two long, thick fingers slid deep into her clenching pussy. A third pressed against her ass, but didn’t enter. Her hips bucked involuntarily as she exploded in bliss. As soon as the pleasure began to recede, Kellen began to thrust his fingers and rotate them in wide arcs inside her. She moaned for mercy as he kept her pleasure heightened far longer than she’d even known was possible. When her legs began to tremble from overstimulation, he slipped his fingers free and released her clit so he could slide his fingers into his mouth.
She watched him suck her fluids from his fingers with her mouth hanging open. She’d thought the sight of him between her thighs had been sexy, but that… that made her pussy quake with the tease of