“It’s not as intimidating as it looks,” he told her, setting the bunch of black padded straps on the edge of the bed and bending to remove his shoes.

“Maybe to you it’s not.”

“You’ve never been bound during sex?” he asked, removing his socks without taking his gaze off her. He looked very . . . hungry, Harper realized.

“Just my wrists with some cheap handcuffs once.”

“Metal ones?”

“Yes,” she breathed out, her eyes going wide because he was lifting his shirt over his head, exposing his cut, muscular torso. She found everything about him delicious, but his round, steely biceps made her mouth water. They were power defined. She ate him up with her stare as he dropped the shirt carelessly to the floor. His smooth, golden brown skin gloved his muscles so tautly. She could bounce a quarter off his abdomen. He possessed the perfect amount of hair on his chest—not a pelt, but just enough to come off as one hundred percent virile male. Not that a thousand other things about him weren’t proclaiming that fact, loud and clear. She recalled seeing and touching his cock for the first time in the pale moonlight. He shaved his balls. Just the memory of how round and firm his testicles were, the sensation of the long, heavy shaft in her hand, and that succulent cockhead made her shift her hips restlessly on the bed . . .

“You okay?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

She blinked and realized she’d been staring openly at the ridge of his cock pressing against his shorts. He held that black device again. His stare was locked between her thighs.

“Yeah,” she replied in a hushed tone.

She held her breath when he came onto the bed. He moved toward her on his knees. A shiver of raw excitement tore through her when she saw that his face had gone rigid as his gaze seemingly caressed every inch of her naked body.

“You’re very, very beautiful,” he murmured, pausing with one knee next to her hip and looking down at her. “Your skin is much too delicate for metal cuffs. I’d never allow anything so harsh to touch your body.”

He reached out, caressing her collarbone with a gesture that was beyond tender. It was cherishing. He slid his hand along the side of one breast. He lifted the globe slightly and examined her through narrowed eyelids.

“I still can’t get over the color of your nipples. Such a pretty pink,” he muttered thickly, as if to himself. “So fat. So sweet,” he added with a small smile as he gently pinched a nipple. She whimpered. She hadn’t known her nipples were so sensitive until the first time he’d touched her. His gaze leapt to her face. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

She rolled her head no on the mattress.

“Good. Let me just put the positioner on you, and you’ll see. I only want to make you feel good. You don’t need to move,” he said when she started to rise to a sitting position in order to assist him. “I’ll get it on you.”

He spoke truly. The contraption looked pretty confusing to her, but he manipulated it with an easy, sure mastery that amazed. It made her wary, too, to witness his expert handling of the positioner. He clearly had a lot of experience with it.

He clearly had a lot of experience with other women.

But his expertise also excited her, and that was the emotion that trumped her doubt above all else.

First, he secured a thick, padded primary strap around her back and ribs, just above her waist. Various other straps—and she realized, cuffs—came off this main strap.

“Spread your legs, bend your knees, and lift your feet into the air,” he instructed. He moved between her open legs, still on his knees. He palmed the back of one of her thighs, his warm touch making her skin pebble. “Wider, Harper. Let your legs fall open wide to the side.” His gaze dipped between her thighs. “Let me see that gorgeous pussy. All of it. That’s right,” he murmured thickly when she had done as he requested.

He attached a pair of thick, padded cuffs midthigh with a grim sense of purpose.

“Oh,” she murmured in dawning wonder when he’d finished. The thigh cuffs were attached to the primary restraint that circled her torso. When her legs were in them, it kept her bent, spread thighs open, her feet suspended in the air, with no effort on her part.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes,” she replied, giving her weight experimentally to the leg restraints. It held secure.

Next, he took her hands and slid them through a pair of thick shoulder straps. These were also attached to the primary restraint around her middle. He placed the straps around the outer curves of her breasts. When he snugly tightened both clasps on the strap, they plumped her breasts between them. A low, rough growl resounded from his throat, and Harper saw that his gaze was fixed on her straining breasts. He ripped his stare off her to continue with his task. She thought she understood his reaction. Even she thought her breasts looked like a sexy decadence, plumped as they were by the shoulder straps, the pink nipples poking upward, the pale delicacy of the globes highlighted by the stark black restraints. His rigid stare had made her recall all too vividly how excited he’d gotten on the yacht as he played with her breasts, how he’d teased and pleasured her until she wanted to scream. How much more focused would he be, given the positioner and the freedom of his skilled hands, not to mention her helplessness to move?

She was finding this almost ridiculously exciting.

“Now we just need to restrain your wrists,” he said, interrupting her unfurling fantasies.

He lifted another cuff that was attached, again, to the primary torso restraint. She lifted her head, watching him. He slid the padded cuff around her wrist, tightening it snugly. When he was finished, her elbows were bent, her arms resting comfortably on the mattress. Her wrists were restrained on each side of her body just above her waist. She tugged at them experimentally and shifted her body, her breasts heaving between the shoulder straps. Heat swept through her chest and cheeks at the graphic realization that she was trussed up . . . and good.

He caught her stare.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. He knelt between her suspended, spread legs.

“I think so.”

His gaze coasted over her.

“You look stunning. More amazing than I’d imagined.”

His stare between her spread thighs was like a physical touch. She couldn’t hide her arousal. Her wetness. It was almost unbearable, her vulnerability to him. Her mounting excitement.

“What now?” she asked shakily.

“You tell me that you’re comfortable. And promise me that if at any point, your position grows uncomfortable, you’ll let me know.”

“I’m comfortable,” she assured. “And I will. I promise.”

His smile made her sex tighten.

“Then let’s work on showing you the benefits of the positioner,” he said quietly. He reached into his pocket and withdrew something before he reclined on his side next to her, his elbow bent and hand supporting his head, his manner that of a man who was getting comfortable himself for an interlude of leisurely pleasure. He touched her belly with his pinkie and third finger, caressing her while still holding the object he’d taken from his pocket. Her muscles jumped at the charged contact of his skin against hers. Her head came up off the mattress, trying to keep his stroking hand on her naked body in her sight.

“You’d like to watch?” he asked.

She met his stare and nodded.

He reached behind her and lifted her head gently, placing it on a soft pillow.

“There. How’s that?”

“Good,” she managed.

“You’re wondering what I have in my hand?”

“Yes.”

He moved his hand in front of her vision as if he were doing a magician reveal. She blinked, recognizing he held a small, sleek silver vibrator. It was maybe three inches long, slender, and came to a tip.

“Normally, I’d use lube,” he said, touching the point of the silver vibrator to the skin of her belly. She suppressed a gasp when he hit a button on the thick end, and the tip began to vibrate against her skin. “But considering how wet you are, I don’t think anything artificial will be required.”

Without any further buildup, he calmly inserted the little vibrator into her vagina and clicked the control button, amplifying the power. Harper’s thighs tensed at the sensation, her eyes springing wide, feet flexing in midair. But she couldn’t move; she was a prisoner to the pleasure. He pushed the sex toy in and out of her pussy twice, his manner intent, before he slid it out of her and up between her labia, directly onto her clit. Her abdominal muscles jerked as sensation flooded her.

“It’s pretty intense, isn’t it?” he murmured.

“God, yes.” A film of perspiration had almost immediately broken out on her upper lip, a product of the flash fire that tore through her body. What he was doing to her was exciting enough, but watching his rigid focus as he did those things was even more thrilling.

He suddenly lifted the vibrator, and she choked off a moan.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I was just trying to get some of your juices on it.” He lifted the vibrator over her chest. Harper saw that it was, indeed, now slick with her arousal. She held her breath as she watched him lower the glistening tip over one of her nipples, pausing a half inch away from the prickling crest. He smiled. “Look at that. Look how hard it gets, and I haven’t even touched it yet,” he said thickly.

“Jacob,” she muttered, tension and anticipation coiling in her. It broke slightly when he pressed the vibrating tip against her nipple. She gasped and rolled her head on the pillow, pleasure snaking through her. He might have been doing brain surgery, as intent as he was on his task. He leaned over her, watching closely as he stimulated her nipple until it was hard and almost painfully sensitive.

Then he moved aside the vibrator and lowered his head, sucking the nipple into his mouth. He’d moved so quickly, a ragged shout erupted from her throat. His tongue lashed and laved at the erect crest before he drew on her with firm force, seemingly intent on sucking every last nuance of her essence into his mouth. Harper forgot all sense of propriety and restraint, moaning helplessly, her head thrashing on the pillow.

By the time he lifted his head, the nipple had grown rosy and distended, and his mouth was slanted and hard from arousal. His gaze fixed on her breast, he dipped his hand between her thighs. He slipped the bullet back into her pussy, pulsing in and out of her liquid channel for a moment.

“I’d like to know what got you this wet, Harper,” he said gruffly.

“What?” she gasped, because the vibrator was distracting her.

“What got you so wet?” he demanded, pulling the bullet out of her slit. “Even before we got started.”

He watched her narrowly through heavy eyelids as he lifted the relubricated bullet toward her other nipple. She bit her lip to prevent moaning like a crazed woman.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, keeping the vibrating silver tip in her sight. “You did.”

“Did the idea of me restraining you like this excite you?”

The bullet came nearer, the tip a fraction of an inch from her beading nipple.

“Harper?”

“Yes,” she choked. She instinctively arched her back, desperate for the little vibrator’s wicked touch on her breast. He’d guessed what she’d do, apparently, because he moved the tip just out of reach of her thrusting breast.

“I’m glad,” he said, and despite her intense arousal and focus on the vibrator, her gaze leapt to his face. His expression appeared genuinely gratified. Relieved, even? Surely it was an illusion, that he seemed to care so much that her sexual turn-ons coincided so well with his.

“Were you masturbating? Before I knocked on your door tonight?”

“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 hands 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.