The rear tires on the truck skidded as Aaron slammed on the brakes outside the largest barn on Camden Ranch.

“Why did you stop?” Her breathy inquisition did nothing to stem the tide of his wanton desires.

“Get a rope.”

Realization slowly softened the furrow of her brow. “Are you serious?”

“Now.”

Without further prompting she hopped out and returned with a well-worn round of rope. Every fiber of his being hated what he was about to do but loved her enough to do it.

Carrying the rope in her trembling hands, she managed to flip on a light switch as they entered her home and a few more on the way to her bedroom.

“Nat, look at me.”

She obeyed readily. “A few things you need to understand. There’s a give and a take between the Dom and the sub. It’s in constant flux. Back and forth. The yin and yang of it. They must always remain in balance. The desires for power and control are in all of us. It’s a universal thing. Everyone has them. Never believe for one second that wanting to tie me up and having me at your mercy is something you should be ashamed of wanting to experience. But far more importantly I need you to understand that wanting to be dominated by me, you wanting me to be in control, is a normal healthy desire. That also exists in every human being.”

“I know.”

“You’re the one holding the rope, Nat. If you know, why do you look more terrified than I’ve ever seen you?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Cradling her face in his capable hands he willed her to understand. “You’re going to allow yourself to take what you want, to explore. You’re going to leave all of the rules and other shit society tells you not to want outside your bedroom door. You’re going to fight through the fear and find the pleasure, baby. You’re going to take away the power it’s held over you for so long. You’re going to give it back to yourself and ultimately I want you to trust me enough to give it to me. Can you do that?”

A timid nod stroked his thumbs against her cheeks. “I already trust you that much.”

“Good. There’s one more thing I need you to know.” He waited on the heat of her gaze to return to his. “I do not give up my control, ever. I have never done this with anyone and I would never do this for anyone but you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“You don’t have…” She offered him the rope as her lips sealed shut.

“I love you. I will always give you anything you need. Tonight, you need to be in control. All I’m asking is that you recognize that this isn’t easy for me. Also understand there are very few physical situations I can’t get out of. I spent months in Special Forces training learning to get out of most anywhere. I sure as hell can get out of a fucking lasso. I’ll do my best but I make you no promises that I will remain bound.”

“Okay.”

“Then let’s do this.”

Refusing the haunting memories, damming every recollection of bindings on his young body, denying the knowledge of the scars her hands would touch once he was tied to her bed, Aaron took the rope from her. He tossed it on the bed. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been held. It sure as hell would be the last. “I undress you,” he informed her.

“Yes. Now.”

“Not feeling particularly gentle tonight, baby, you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t want gentle, Aaron. I want you.”

“If you want me to stop, I will. Just speak up.”

“If you need me to untie you…”

Laughing at the very idea, he shook his head. “I won’t.”

Jerking her forward, he thrust as her mound collided with his cock. “You feel how hard you make me?” She nodded. “Good. You want a ride, honey, I’m gonna let you ride. But after that I’m gonna turn you over and take you exactly the way I want. And what I want tonight is every bit as hard as I feel right now. Say you understand.”

“I more than understand. It’s exactly what I want, too.” Another one of those delectable little trembles shuddered through her.

“Good. Take your boots off.” Once again she complied.

His fingers made quick work of the pearl buttons on her blouse. Her jeans were already unsnapped so he continued his downward trek, stripping her of the denim blocking the wet heat he’d already explored.

Determination glimmered in her eyes from the lamplight. She stood before him in nothing but a lace bra, a pair of socks, and a pair of wet panties. Her shirt hung open, framing the tender swells of her breasts. Innocence personified. Everything he was about to give at odds with everything he would take away.

Tracing his fingertips along her collarbone he eased the shirt from her shoulders. Her eyes closed and she swayed with the motion. “The things I want to do to you, honey. The things I want to teach you…”

“Do them. I want them.” Her breathy vow was fervent. Her fingertips brushed over his zipper line. Her palm centering on his head and crown. His cock throbbed out its demand to be released from his jeans. A low murmured moan escaped her lips. “I want it to do that in my mouth. I want to feel it.” Certainty seemed to be erasing the hesitant doubt locked in her limbs.

“Fucking hell.” He seized giving himself one moment to rock against her hand. “Trust me, baby, my cock’s gonna love being in your mouth.” Shoving the sleeves of her shirt down her arms, he dropped it in a pile of cotton at her feet.

He heard Lulu pawing at her bedroom door. “Should we let them in?” Natalie sounded horrified by the idea of a canine audience. Aaron happened to agree.

“No. I’m not putting on a show tonight. They can come in when we’re finished.” Refocusing her on her mission, he swept his palms up her belly and wrapped his hands around her breasts. He pressed the lace of her bra to her and groped.

Her nipples obediently tightened beneath his touch. Tearing off his shirt, desperate to feel her skin on his, he stalked behind her and returned his hands to her breasts. “Feels so good doesn’t it, honey?”

“Oh God,” she hummed. Using one hand to pop the clasp of the slight bra, he exposed her all for himself. She let it slip to the floor with her blouse.

“There. That’s what you wanted isn’t it?” With practiced patience, he lifted her breasts letting her nipples spill between his fingers. He squeezed. She cried out for more. Her ass rocked back against his erection, decimating any hope he had of drawing this out.

“Someday, sweetheart…” his right hand skated down her abdomen and pressed her back against him, “…someday I’m gonna take that gorgeous ass, too. There won’t be one thing on your body that doesn’t belong to me.”

“Yes.” She rocked harder. Every contact point of her back to his chest sizzled with a hunger he wasn’t certain would ever be satisfied. He’d never get enough of her, enough of this. Nothing else made sense but to take more, to take every single thing she offered him.

Making another turn, he fell to his knees before her. Impatience surged through his bloodstream. “Before you tie me up, I need another taste, Nat. I want more of that sweet cream you make so good for me.”

“Please. Now.” She hooked her thumbs in the elastic band of her panties but he caught her hands.

“Look at me.”

She obeyed.

“Who undresses you?”

“Oh God, you do.”

“That’s right.”

“Do it faster,” she whimpered.

“I love that you’re not afraid to tell me how bad you’re needing it, baby. How fucking much you want me to take you. But you need to remember who’s in charge for the moment.” Rotating the wet cotton against her clit, he listened to her moans turn to pleading. Slipping the panties slowly down her legs, his mouth watered, his eyes centered on the glistening pearl of her clit with laser-sight precision. Dragging his fingers up and down her wet curls, she begged in earnest now.

“Open yourself for me, baby. Show me where you want my mouth.”

Apprehension flashed in her eyes, but again she complied. Her hands trembled as she gently spread the lips of her pussy with her fingertips.

Blowing a quick cool breath over her, he reveled in her anguished choke of his name. Leaning in, he caressed that tiny bundle of nerve endings back and forth with his tongue. She rose up on her toes, making him chuckle.

Ever resourceful, she spread herself with one hand now, and tunneled her fingers through his hair granting herself leverage. She tried to push his face back to her pussy. “Please, please,” sang from her constantly.

“Fucking wish I’d recorded you swearing to me you’d never beg,” he taunted. Clamping his hands on her ass, he gave her two more languid laps with his tongue. Standing, he lifted her into his arms and laid her out on the bed. He spread her legs with a ragged warning. “I need more.”

Taking her hands in his own, he relocated them both back to her pussy. Remembering the two words he would never utter again, he skipped his typical statement of encouragement. “Hold yourself open just like that. Do it until I tell you to stop.”

She writhed and bucked so anxious for his mouth only amping the edgy spike of hunger consuming him. Zeroing in on her slippery clit he coaxed it into his mouth. She rocked against his mouth, pressing her thighs against his beard.

“No, baby. Open for me.” He pinned her thighs back to the bed and returned to his work. A ragged growl tore from his lungs as her juices filled his mouth. Dipping low, he drank at her inner folds then pressed his tongue deep inside her and spun it back to where she most wanted his attention.

“Oh God, I’m gonna…” she cried out in warning.

He backed off. “Say please, honey.” Slowing the strokes of his tongue, he licked at her fingers still dutifully trying to hold herself open.

“Please,” cried from her in a shudder of pure need.

Widening his tongue, he lapped at her pearl back and forth then circled until she was unable to do anything more than moan. Drawing it back into his mouth he suckled and teased at her opening with his index finger. He gently raked his teeth across her sensitive tissues.

She broke on a wail of his name. Her hands flew to her face. Her thighs clamped around his jaw. This time he allowed it. At the peak of her climax, her cream coated his chin. He wanted to drown in her flavors. Delving deeper, he feasted on everything he’d forced from her body. The sweetest confection with a liquid chaser of sin.

Standing, he ran the back of his hand over his mouth and stared at her limp with satisfaction in her bed.

He’d promised her something. As much as he would hate being bound, she needed this. She needed to own her desires, needed understand what she did to him, needed to be willing to explore.

Natalie forced herself to sit up as the last quake of her orgasm shook through her. What happened next? She was just as unable to believe that he was going to let her tie him to her bed as she was that she’d actually told him that’s what she wanted.

Her eyes flew to his package as he slowly unbuckled his belt and popped the snap on his jeans. He refused to meet her gaze as he lowered the zipper.

Wet heat had gathered in a circle in his boxers at the head of his cock. He kicked off his boots and stepped out of his jeans. His boxers were next. “Do you know how gorgeous you are?” She’d wanted to ask him a thousand times. How could he not know?

“I’m glad you think so, baby. You ready for this?” He gestured to his rope on the other side of the bed.

Commanding her legs to support her, she stood. “If you’re sure this is okay. You don’t seem too thrilled about it.”

He reclined in the bed and propped his hands behind his head. His calm, cool position in direct opposition to the dark fire in his eyes and the tense grip of his jaw. “There are parts of it I’m going to enjoy the hell out of.”

“But the other parts?”

“Not the first time I’ve been tied up, Nat, but this is the first time for pleasure.”

Oh my God. Had he been captured? Is that what had happened to the Sevens? “You mean when you were in the army?”

“No. Leave it, baby. Just get on with this.”

“No. I’m not doing this to you.”

“You are. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as I’m ever going to be.”

“You always ask me that. If I said I was as sure as I was going to be about whatever you were asking to do you’d refuse to do it.”

“I’m sure.”

With the rope in her hands she somehow managed to forget every single thing she’d ever known about what to do with one. She’d been roping and riding since she was five. What the hell was wrong with her?

Ordering herself to get it together, she hesitantly took one of his hands in her own. Nothing about this made any sense. “I don’t know how to do this.” Judging from T’s teasing quip at Saddleback’s the other day, Aaron had tied up lovers before. She could use a little guidance.

“Here.” He took the rope. “Do you want them tied together or do you want one on each bedpost?”

“Which way would you prefer?”

His soft laughter grounded her and somehow eased the tight wire of tension that ran from his shoulders all the way to his ass. “You are quite the Domme, sweetheart. Maybe I’ll get you a whip for your birthday.”

Rolling her eyes, Natalie tapped back into her own stubbornness. Jerking the rope out of his hands she flung one end behind three spindles in the middle of her headboard and pulled it back through the other side. She brought his hands together. Laying them on a pillow, she worked a quick, effective farmer’s loop and bound them over his head. “There.”

“Very nice.” He angled his head, eyed the knot, and quirked a smile. A half-second later he settled back. All concern was erased from his features. He licked his lips and gestured to his cock slowly softening without any attention. “Believe you wanted a ride, cowgirl.”

“There’s other stuff I want to do first.”

“Take what you need, baby. I’m all yours.”

Considering for a moment, she let her eyes feast on him splayed out naked all for her enjoyment. Power surged through her. Every inch of him was perfection. There was so much she wanted to do and it was all entirely up to her.

She climbed onto the bed beside him, longing for the warmth of his skin near hers. Caressing her hands over his pecs, she traced the disks of his nipples, loving the way they tightened with need. The chiseled valley in the center of his chest beckoned her. Feathering light kisses over the smattering of hair, a close-mouthed hum of approval sounded from him.

“Do you like that?”

“Your hands and mouth are on me, Nat. Doesn’t really matter where they are, I’m in heaven.”

“I’m kind of overwhelmed at all of the stuff I want to do and to taste.”

“I’m liking this being tied up thing more and more. You can taste to your heart’s content.”

Continuing on her explorative journey, she spun her tongue over his right nipple, reveling in the way every hill of muscle in his chest and abs tensed in pleasure. Blazing a hot trail, she whispered kisses up to the cord of muscles that comprised his neck. She splayed her hands wide to cover more ground on his chest.

Summoning what she hoped was a sex cat pout, she leaned low over him and stared him down.

“You keep looking at me like that I’ll break the damned bed to get out of this tie-up and show you precisely what you’re doing to me.”

Pride welled from her soul and flowed out to her limbs. A broad grin replaced her pout making him chuckle. She didn’t care. She was doing this. She was taking what she wanted and more importantly what she needed.

Spinning her tongue at the hollow between his chest and stomach, she let the salty tang of him saturate her senses.

Slinking down his body, she hesitantly traced along the deepest scar that ran from his navel to the enticing valley between his right leg and his cock. Unwilling to keep herself from anything, she teased at the thatch of hair surrounding the base of his erection.

He growled. She giggled.

“Are you laughing at me, cowgirl?”

“Yes. I like making you growl.”

“Oh honey, I’m gonna growl for you. If you don’t move a little faster I might cry.”

“I doubt that.”

“Beginning to think you’re a cock tease.”

Going on with one of the things she most wanted, she brushed a kiss along one of his scars. “Still won’t tell me what happened will you?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Her gaze flew back to his neck and then slowly back to his eyes.

“There’s not all that much to tell you, babe. I got shot.”

“I know. Please tell me this happened when you were serving.”

“Does that make it better?”

“No. Not at all. I’m just trying to figure out your life before me piece by piece.”

“Yeah, well my life before you existed in nothing but pieces.”

Natalie lingered over his scars hoping that every kiss she painted over them would bring him healing. She’d never been the kind of girl who believed in fairy godmothers or shooting star wishes. Until she’d met Aaron, she’d refused to even believe in any kind of magic. As her lips encountered another deep puckered groove in his abdomen she would have given anything to get back all of the wishes she’d never made during her childhood. She would wish that her kisses and her love really could make things all better.