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  “What?” she asked disbelievingly.

  “Just answer me. And be honest.”

  Her gaze skittered anxiously between the bullet hovering so close to her puckered nipple and his face.

  “Yes,” she gasped unevenly.

  He looked hard and satisfied at once. “And what did you think of while you touched yourself?”

  Heat rushed into her cheeks. Her head fell back on the pillow. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me say it.”

  “Say it. But only if it’s true.”

  “You know I thought about you,” she blurted out in frustration. “You know I thought of what you did to me last night on the boat. I haven’t been able to think of hardly anything else since then. Oh God,” she shouted, because suddenly his lips covered her nipple and he was sucking her into his mouth. She writhed in agony, but the positioner held firm. Her nipple popped out of his suctioning mouth a moment later. He looked up, still tonguing her erect, reddened nipple lasciviously. She groaned at the intensely erotic sight. He lunged forward, quick as a flash, and pierced her open lips with his tongue. He kissed her with the savage urgency she was coming to expect of him, yet she knew she’d never get used to it. Never stop craving.

  “Your eyes and your hair, your beautiful body,” he grated out next to her well-kissed, puffy lips a moment later while she panted, “all of those things turn me on. But your honesty . . .” Her eyes sprang wide and she jumped, because he’d just worked the tip of the vibrator between her labia and was directly stimulating her clit. Her nerves sizzled. Oh God, she couldn’t breathe—

  “I think I want your honesty most of all. Now give it to me.”

  She ignited. It felt strange and unbelievably good climaxing while restrained in the positioner, Jacob’s hungry stare on her face while she shuddered in pleasure. She felt both controlled and yet utterly in control, like she was in a free fall with a safety net always just inches beneath her. She fell for what felt like an eternity before she nestled down into the security of the restraint, coming to herself at the sensation of Jacob nuzzling her breasts and then running his lips across her ribs. He’d removed the vibrator from her clit, which must explain why she was drawing full—if erratic—breaths into her lungs. His lips brushed across her heaving belly. He hovered just above her mons and inhaled.

  “I love your scent,” she heard him say gruffly.

  She could smell it, too, the fragrance of her pleasure perfuming the air. Biting her lip, she watched as his head lowered. He kissed her labia just above her clitoris, the gesture solemn. Then he was kissing her again, worshiping the tender skin inside her knee and sweeping his lips along the inside of her thigh. This, too, struck her as sweet. Arousing. That such a strong, demanding man could also make her feel precious was a revelation. Because of the restraint, she couldn’t duck and hide, or try to reciprocate the pleasure to alleviate the poignancy of the moment. All she could do was lie there and submit to the experience of being prized.

  He ran his tongue along the top, inner portion of her thigh, that strip of skin directly next to her sex. She knew she was probably wet there from her arousal. He gathered her juices with his tongue.

  He looked up when she turned her head on the pillow and whimpered.

  “Is it too much?” he asked her, his deep voice seeming to caress her prickly, sensitive skin.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know,” she whispered miserably. How could she speak aloud what she was feeling in that moment, put words to the heavy, sweet ache in her chest?

  He reclined on the bed again on his side, his groin pressing against her naked hip. She shut her eyes at the exciting sensation. He came up on one elbow, his face hovering over her, and cupped her jaw.

  “Then we’ll use the vibrator again if it feels too intimate. But I’ll warn you, I’m not going to wait much longer before I taste you.”

  She opened her lips to tell him no, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking. It’d been the intimacy of the unfolded moment that had crowded her consciousness, not anxiety about the shocking closeness of oral sex. But then he was kissing her, more gently this time, but forceful and demanding nevertheless. He pushed the tip of the vibrator again, sliding it between her labia. The friction built so quickly. She didn’t want the mechanical caress, though. It was his touch she wanted. His fingers. His lips. His tongue. But the vibrator was nothing if not precise, and his kiss drugged her. Soon, she felt herself rising to the crest again.

  He broke their increasingly wild kiss and studied her face with a narrowed stare. His gaze transferred to her flushed breasts and tight nipples.

  “I can’t take it anymore. I want to be inside you when you come this time.”

  “Yes,” she muttered, spinning from arousal.

  He flipped onto his back and fleetly unfastened his shorts. Before he lowered them, he removed a condom from the back pocket. She lifted her head off the pillow, watching him as he jerked both the shorts and a pair of snug boxer briefs over his straining cock. His heavy erection sprung free and thumped onto his belly. Was it the restraint that redoubled her craving for him, the knowledge that she couldn’t just reach out and touch that straight, thick shaft or that plump, defined cockhead anytime she chose? It drove her crazy.

  A moment of disappointment went through her when he knelt between her spread thighs and rolled on the condom. She wanted him in her naked. She wanted to see her own juices slicking the shaft and gathering beneath the thick rim of that cockhead. God, he really had transformed her into a needy slut, to be thinking such things.

  She held her breath as he edged closer between her suspended, restrained thighs, his sheathed cock protruding from his body. He planted one hand in the mattress next to her waist. With the hand that was bound to the primary restraint above her waist, she reached with her fingers, touching his wrist, caressing his skin. It was the tiniest of caresses, but electricity tingled through her at the contact. His gaze shot up to meet hers. Had he felt it, too?

  She felt something hard and firm next to her sex. He rubbed the head of his cock between her labia.

  “Oh,” she mumbled shakily. He glided smoothly against her lubricated flesh, but the pressure was firm. It made her burn. She heard it: the wet, sucking sound of his hard cock moving in her soft, wet flesh. She grabbed at his wrist, her eyes fluttering closed as pleasure swamped her.

  “Jacob,” she moaned.

  “Was it the first time you masturbated, thinking of us? This evening?”

  She opened her eyes, bringing him into focus with effort. The vision of him hovering over her, one hand between his strong thighs as he manipulated his cock, so beautiful and powerful, and yet so focused on her: It left her tongue-tied. He stopped stimulating her clit for a moment. Her lungs unfroze and she gasped.

  “No,” she said hoarsely. “I . . .” She bit her lip, embarrassment penetrating her thick arousal.

  “You found me jerking off, Harper. You owe me this.”

  It was his small, wry smile in the midst of the unbearably intimate moment that did it.

  “I brought myself off in the bathroom at work. I’ve never done that before.”

  Every muscle in his body looked ready to break from strain. One of them flickered in his tense cheek. He moved his cockhead, rubbing her again. She grew desperate. If he didn’t give that cock to her hard and deep soon, she was going to explode. Implode. She didn’t know which . . .

  “Tell me, Harper,” she heard him say.

  She lifted her head off the pillow. “Fuck me,” she wailed. “God, if you don’t fuck me now, I’m going to—”

  She screamed. He’d given her clit one last, hard flick with the cockhead and then drove into her pussy. It didn’t hurt precisely, but the pressure was overwhelming. For a few seconds, her brain overloaded with sensation. His loud, harsh groan brought everything back into focus. He was crouched between her thighs now, both of his hand
s planted in the mattress. She watched through heavy eyelids as he thrust again, and his cock pierced her to the hilt. A snarl shaped his lips. He pumped her hard for several long, ruthless strokes. Harper screamed again, pausing only when his movements did.

  She watched him through narrow eyelids, teetering on the edge of orgasm. He lifted one hand and spread it on her lower belly. He was so big, she felt like he was palming her entire being. His thumb dipped between her labia, rubbing her clit.

  There it was. His touch. She came against it thunderously.

  Her fingers clutched at his wrist. It was the only contact she had with him, other than his cock throbbing deep inside her. She clung onto that wrist desperately as she shuddered in bliss.

  He started to fuck her again as she came, resituating himself slightly, but still allowing her to hold him. Distantly, she heard him praising her. What he said was graphic and lewd, but somehow it sounded beautiful to her, solemn . . . sweet, even. He rocked her without mercy, his possession causing the bed to shake and her body to jerk and tremble beneath him.

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  He withdrew almost completely, and then re-pierced her from tip to balls in one stroke. Her eyelids sprung open. Their groans entwined, hers incredulous, Jacob’s harsh. Savage. He repeated the stroke, but this time, he withdrew completely. The sound of his cockhead popping out of her wet channel emphasized the movement. His turgid cock flicked upward in the air slightly, freed from the restraint of her body. But no sooner had it happened than he dipped his hips and drove back into her pussy. She screamed at the jolt of hard, relentless pressure.

  “I’m never going to get enough of your pussy.” Somehow, he sounded both amazed and bitter at his declaration.

  He continued like that for a breathless moment, using the defined rim of his cockhead to create a suction in her liquid pussy, withdrawing and driving back into her until she was mindless with excitement. She writhed and panted, but she couldn’t move, thanks to the positioner. He’d made her his fixed target. She couldn’t escape his pounding cock.

  The last thing she wanted to do was try.

  She saw that he watched himself penetrate her as he took her with those ruthless strokes. His ass and abdomen muscles flexed tight, he drove into her again and again, grunting in undisguised pleasure.

  “Never. I’ll never get enough,” he seethed after a boiling moment.

  He drew out of her again, dipping his hips, and sinking his cock into her to the hilt. This time, he didn’t withdraw. He pumped her in short, staccato strokes that jolted Harper’s body on the mattress. His eyes seemed to blaze as he watched her bobbing breasts for a charged moment, and then he transferred his gaze to her face.

  “I’m going to make you pay for this, Harper.”

  “Pay for what?” she panted as her world shook and her body tensed against his onslaught. The friction was so good. She watched him through a haze of lust, but the sensations he created in her body felt sharp and lancing, almost cruelly precise.

  “I’m going to make you pay for making me want you this much.”

  He plunged, her breasts bouncing as they crashed together. She cried out at the sensation of him swelling huge inside her. He grimaced and lunged slightly, applying pressure on her clit. He unlocked the tension that he’d built in her so surely with a hard, subtle circle of his hips.

  She ignited yet again at the feeling of him coming. She shuddered, the sound of his low, savage growl echoing in her ears.

  She panted in the aftermath. The tension left his rigid body on one ragged exhale of his breath. He slumped over her, still supporting his weight on his hands, his head bowed. Perspiration darkened the hair at his short sideburns and his nape. Harper experienced an overwhelming urge to touch him, to tangle her fingers in his hair, to slick her tongue along his hairline and taste his sweat, to feel his naked skin pressed against hers and their hearts racing in tandem.

  She opened her mouth to voice her request, but something else came out of her mouth.

  “What do you mean exactly, you’ll make me pay for wanting me so much?”

  He looked up slowly. Perspiration glazed his handsome face, chest, and bulging, muscular arms. She was reminded of his physical strength and endurance during lovemaking . . . the power he exerted over himself in restraint. His expression seemed to close off as she watched him. He hitched his hips and withdrew from her. A cry caught in her throat at the ensuing sting in her flesh . . . at the sudden deprivation of him.

  “That,” he said, sounding a little regretful. He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. She inhaled shakily, craning up to brush her lips against his. He straightened his arms and looked down at her solemnly, perhaps reading the question in her eyes. “I’m being very hard on you.”

  “I can take it,” she whispered.

  “Maybe so,” he said, rolling over on his side. He unfastened the restraint of her right hand and reached across her to do the same for the left. “I’m not sure I can, though.”

  What does that mean?

  She opened her mouth to ask the urgent question, but she realized her hands were unbound. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer. Besides, she was free now to touch him. Instead of clarifying his enigmatic statement, she reached for him, delving her fingers into his thick hair. His gaze darted to hers. Was he about to emotionally withdraw like he had on the yacht?

  Was he thinking of that other woman, the one she reminded him of?

  “Come here, Jacob,” she dared softly, urging him with her hands.

  Her heart charged in the silent pause that followed. At first, he remained unmoving beneath her pressing fingertips. His hesitation cut at her.

  Finally, he came. Did he seem resigned? If so, even his resignation came with a flash of his singular fire.

  He fused his mouth to hers, and his taste eclipsed her concern. She urged further, coaxing him by caressing and pushing on his muscular, smooth back, and then on his round, dense buttocks. God help me. He felt so good. She couldn’t get enough. Their kiss deepened. Pleasure suffused her when he pressed his entire weight against hers and she sunk into the mattress, a pleasure that was different but no less potent than the bliss he brought her while she’d lay there helpless, and he made love to her like a firestorm.

  She lost herself for minutes, indulging in the dark, sweet addiction of his kiss. Why did she feel like he lost himself, too, and that perhaps this was a novel experience for him, as well . . . as much of a mysterious awakening for him as it was for her?

  Abruptly, he parted from her and rose off the bed.

  She’d been wrong in her idyllic fantasizing. He hadn’t been feeling what she had at all. She grew bereft watching him walk away. The evolving intimacy had been too much for him. She shouldn’t have pushed him. Maybe it was for the best.

  It’d felt overwhelming for her, as well. She’d told him she thought she could handle a purely physical affair, and already, she was crossing the boundary.

  He returned, pausing next to the bed. She watched him roll a fresh condom onto his re-stiffened cock, her heart jumping into overdrive.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of his serious expression as he climbed back onto the bed and moved between her suspended legs. He unclasped the clips that were attached to her thigh cuffs. Her legs dropped down to the soft duvet. He fell over her. He caught her mouth with his as the head of his cock nudged at her entry.

  She cried out into his mouth as he slowly, but firmly, entered her again.

  They came together differently that time, more tenderly, but with every bit of the former intensity and fire. He let her touch him while they made love. And she did: everywhere, each touch, each stroke, bringing her higher into thrilling, dangerous realms.

  Afterward, neither of them spoke. Jacob held her fast. Harper lay with her cheek against his chest, wondering if it was only her that sensed
the words that surrounded them like too-soft whispers, or shouts that were too far in the distance to fully hear.

  fifteen

  Jacob awoke in the dead of night at the sound of a woman crying out in distress.

  “It’s all right, you’re okay, Harper.”

  The room was almost pitch-black. He knew from experience with insomnia that his suite only grew this dark just before dawn. Swiftly, he lunged and hit a button on the bed’s built-in console. A lamp illuminated. He twisted around to look at the woman in his bed.

  “Harper,” he said forcefully.

  There’d never been any doubt in his mind whose shout it was. A lot of women had slept in his bed, yet he’d recognized her frightened voice in an instant. There was a hint of the girl she’d once been in that cry.

  She lay on her back, her chin twisted in his direction. Her vibrant hair was spread out on the pillow. The expression of tight fear on her face made something sharp twist deep inside him. He slid closer to her, planting his elbow next to her ear. He curled his arm around her head, stroking her hair back from her temple, while he caressed her neck with his other hand. She was damp from sweat, a result of her nightmare. She moved her lips silently, fear still tightening her face.

  “Harper, honey. Wake up.”

  “He’s got a knife!”

  He started when she jerked in his hold at the same time she shrieked. Suddenly, her aquamarine eyes were wide-open, and she was staring straight at him. It only took Jacob a split second to realize she wasn’t seeing him, though.

  “Harper, it’s me. Jacob Latimer. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.” He cupped her jaw. “Do you hear me?” he demanded loudly, intent on penetrating the fog of her nightmare.

  Too slowly for his comfort, the fear and desperation faded from her expression. He caressed her cheek and leaned down to brush his lips over her temple and then her eyebrow.

  “It’s all right. You were having a nightmare.”

  “Jacob?” she muttered thickly.