Present Day

Harper thought maybe she swam faster than she had for her varsity swim meet finals to get away from Jacob, but there was no real competition. He caught her ankle almost immediately, yanking her backward in the water. She broke the surface, snorting with laughter and wiping water out of her eyes.

“Too slow, sucka,” Jacob murmured. Seeing his smug smile, she splashed water in his face.

“Hey,” he said, brows furrowed in an expression of mock offense. He grabbed the arm she’d been planning on using to splash him again. Then he grabbed the other, bringing her closer to him. She squirmed, trying to get away and laughing at her failure.

“Stupid to resist,” he said, still grinning even wider now. She loved seeing that smile.

“Cocky bastard.” She deliberately bumped her forehead into his, clunking their skulls. She saw his eye go wide in disbelief before she took advantage of his loosened hold and heaved her body away from him. He grabbed her again on the shallow end, and she surfaced, choking with laughter.

“That look on your face,” she gasped as he hauled her against him.

“You could have really hurt me.”

“Oh, poor baby,” she crooned, rubbing his forehead as if to soothe him.

Their faces were only inches apart, their naked bodies sliding and pressing together. She circled his arms around his neck, her legs tightening around his hips. Water droplets clung to his long, dark lashes, highlighting his beautiful eyes.

“Where’d a nice girl like you ever learn how to do a Liverpool Kiss?”

“Liverpool Kiss?” she wondered, panting. “That thing I did with our heads? That’s just a basic lesson from Practical Single Woman Living in the Twenty-First Century.”

“Tough world,” he murmured, sliding his big hands along her hips, back, and waist. His eyes glittered. “Soft girl,” he growled, and something swooped in her belly.

“Don’t try to sweet-talk your way out of this,” she admonished.

“You’re the one who head-butted me.”

She grinned. The realization of just how ebullient she felt, even after the strange, stressful night, struck her. That he could make it all fade, all from a few minutes of horsing around in the water together. She shook her head dazedly.

“How do you do it?” she wondered quietly.

“Do what?” he asked, his deft fingers running up and down her spine. She shivered in pleasure.

“Make it all go away so easily . . . make me forget,” she mused, shifting her bare breasts against his solid chest and leaning back in his hold slightly, trying to get a better perspective on his face.

“Isn’t that what I told you I’d do?” he asked.

“Maybe that’s how you’re able to keep people at arm’s length so effortlessly.”

“You’re hardly at arm’s length,” he said with a heavy-lidded glance between their naked, pressing bodies.

“I mean your charm. You make us weak-minded, spineless females forget about getting too close,” she mused, her tone light, but sarcastic, as well.

His gaze went sharp at that. Her heart seemed to skip a beat as he studied her face for a charged few seconds. His mouth tightened into a hard line.

“I see. It’s some kind of tangible evidence that you want. Some kind of proof that I’m willing to get closer to you . . . to take a risk.”

“I didn’t say that, I just meant—”

“Clint Jefferies was the man I talked about that I met when I was fifteen years old. The nice neighbor, as you put it. I certainly wouldn’t.”

Her mouth fell open in shock. She’d been longing for him to open up to her, even if just a little. She hadn’t actually expected he would, though.

“This was in South Carolina, right?” She saw his questioning frown. “You told me when we first met on that beach that you were from South Carolina,” she reminded him. He must have forgotten.

“Oh, yeah. I had foster parents that eventually adopted me. They were good people—kind—but they were already in their mid-to-late sixties when I went to live with them and weren’t in the best of health. It’s not that I didn’t come to love them, but I guess their interests or energy levels didn’t match up all that well with a teenage boy’s. It was no one’s fault.

“Clint had a summer home next to our house,” he continued. “He’d bought up five properties on the lake where we lived and built himself a summer playground and retreat. Clint was everything my mom and dad weren’t. Youthful. Dynamic. Energetic. My parents were modest and struggled at times for money, while Clint was very wealthy and not afraid to show it.

“Clint was good to me,” Jacob said, frowning in memory. “I won’t deny that. There were those who were very jealous of the way he took to me. He dazzled me. That’s the embarrassing truth. I was a stupid, naïve kid. I fell for his act, hook, line, and sinker. He took me under his wing, seemed invested in my success. I wouldn’t have been able to go to college, let alone MIT, if it weren’t for his support . . . and the fact that he gave me a job, of course, working around his property, even when he and his wife weren’t in residence. I was just a chore and errand boy, but he paid me well. Gave me opportunities and connections I’d never had in my life . . . never even dreamed of.”

He paused, a faraway look in his eyes, a slight frown on his mouth. Harper held her breath, worried he wouldn’t continue.

“My dad died of a heart attack when I was sixteen; my mom of a stroke just before my eighteenth birthday,” he stated flatly.

“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she whispered.

He nodded. “They’d left me their property and a little money, but if it weren’t for Clint helping me with the will and the legalities, I don’t know what I would have done. I started to rely on him more and more. I stayed at lot at his house instead of at my parents’, even on some nights while Mom was still alive. He helped me with things like applying for scholarships and giving me recommendation letters for the type of colleges I hadn’t even considered attending, like MIT.”

He grimaced, as though he found the experience of talking about his past unpleasant, but he didn’t move. He kept her clasped tight against him, his feet planted firmly at the bottom of the pool.

“I know what people say. I know they think I’m ungrateful, when it comes to Clint.”

“Did you sever things with him because of the Markham insider trading scandal?” she challenged softly.

He gave a dry bark of laughter. “Did you know that I’d just turned eighteen years old when I bought and sold that stock?” he asked quietly.

“I knew you were young, but not that young,” she admitted.

“I thought I was so smart. Turns out, I didn’t know shit.”

“We’re all idiots at eighteen,” she reminded him. Like last night at the opera, she was catching a glimpse into his inner world. It pained her to see the weight of his turmoil again . . . the weight of his past. No wonder he guarded it so vigilantly. She touched his face gently. He seemed to come out of the hole of his bitterness, making eye contact with her.

“I looked up to Clint back then. Put him up on a pedestal, thought he could do no wrong. The truth is”—he gave a cynical laugh—“I wanted a father figure so bad, I blinded myself to his faults. Until one night, he did something that tore off my blinders forever.”

She absorbed his bitterness, sensing what he didn’t say. Clint Jefferies had altered him. At least in part, Jefferies had made Jacob the secretive, suspicious, jaded man that he was today.

“He did a lot to help you,” she said, hating the self-disgust she saw on his face at the moment. “Jefferies was very accomplished. It’s natural that you’d admire him. He singled you out. Treated you like you were special, which you were. You’re one in a billion, Jacob,” she said, moving her fingertips on his clenched jaw, feeling his tension. “He did something really bad to shatter the trust you had in him, didn’t he? Did it . . . did it have to do with Regina?”

His eyes flashed at her. For a few seconds, she thought he wasn’t going to say any more.

“He hurt her,” he said suddenly, a snarl shaping his mouth. “He took advantage of her when anyone could see how vulnerable she was. But Clint isn’t the type to take care around a vulnerability. He’s the type to take advantage of it. Nurture it, even, because he gets off on it.”

Harper swallowed thickly. His southern drawl—the one she only occasionally heard sliding into his voice—had grown thicker as he spoke. His fury seemed to roll off him in waves.

“Jefferies was no better than a lot of dirtbags out there. It shouldn’t have surprised me as a kid, to see his true colors. I should have known better. That was a lesson learned: a lot of money and a big house and fancy manners . . . and yet he was just the same as—”

He broke off abruptly. Harper’s chest ached at what she saw in his eyes at that moment. Betrayal. Pain. Fury. Tears burned behind her eyelids. Had that naïve young man fallen in love with Regina, only to see his mentor, the man he looked up to, hurt her? Scar her? What had Jefferies done? Whatever it was had not only ruptured his relationship with Jacob, it had twisted the memory of it into a caustic thorn in Jacob’s side.

Harper’s mind went to rape. She cringed inwardly at the idea. Maybe she suspected it because she knew that Regina was still alive. If she’d died, the degree of Jacob’s fury might be close to what she saw right now on his face. Regina lived, however . . . and was clearly very troubled emotionally. It just seemed to fit, somehow.

“It was . . . it was something sexual, wasn’t it? What Clint Jefferies did to Regina?” she asked, dread weighting her voice.

She thought she read the truth in his eyes. A flash of nausea went through her.

“Never mind,” she whispered. She let her legs slide down his hips and touched her feet to the bottom of the pool. An image of the sophisticated, polished man she’d seen last night at the opera flashed into her mind’s eye. Jefferies was a wolf parading in a civilized man’s clothing. Why do men have to be such animals sometimes?

“I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m sorry for prying,” she said, miserable that she’d forced him to talk about a past that obviously still hurt him.

She started to turn away but he caught her hand.

“Are you all right?” he asked her pointedly.

A sharp pain went through her, that he would ask about her well-being when he’d been the one recounting something that still made him ache.

“I’m fine,” she assured. She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go up to bed.”

She showered quickly in the guest bathroom and came to bed wearing the black nightgown. Jacob probably didn’t want to make love, after what had just happened out at the pool, but she didn’t have anything else to wear.

Harper, on the other hand, experienced a sharp longing to have his arms around her, to have him deep inside her . . . to have him take her places where only he could. That was just selfishness, though. She felt heartsore, thinking of Regina, thinking of Jacob . . .

Always thinking of Jacob . . .

The drapes had been drawn on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The large suite was dim and hushed. He was already in bed when she came out of the bathroom. He laid back on the pillows, elbows bent, hands behind his head, dense biceps bulging. His torso was bare. The pose highlighted his chiseled upper body, powerful chest, the mouthwatering diagonal from trim waist to broad shoulders, emphasizing his power even in a relaxed moment. He’d been staring up at the ceiling, but when he saw her coming, his gaze flickered down over her without moving his head. Her skin prickled beneath his stare. When she reached the bed, he rolled on his side and flipped back the sheet and duvet, inviting her in.

She slid between the cool sheets next to him.

For a charged moment, they just lay on their sides, facing each other. His face was shadowed, but she could just make out a few amber pinpricks of light in his hazel eyes.

“You’re like Regina.”

His lips had moved, and she’d heard his quiet, deep voice, but for a moment, she couldn’t compute what he’d said.

“What do you mean?” A horrible thought struck her, taking her breath away for a moment. “Do you mean . . . do you mean that Regina is the woman I remind you of?” she asked, aghast.

“No. God, no,” he said, his brows slanting. He reached and cupped the side of her head with his hand. “I mean that you’ve been hurt before by a man.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I could see it out there at the pool when I told you about Regina and Clint. You looked like you were going to be sick.”

She swallowed thickly. “It’s nothing,” she whispered.

“Tell me.”

She blinked at his intensity. “It’s nothing, Jacob. Nothing like what I’m imagining Regina experienced. I’ve never been raped, thank God,” she whispered fervently. “It’s just . . . men can be so . . .” She winced. “Evil sometimes to women.” She met his stare, guilt swooping through her. “I’m sorry. Not all men—”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize. What you say is true. I wish it wasn’t, but it is too often.”

A tense silence settled. He continued to stroke her cheek gently with his thumb. They just stared into each other’s eyes as a bedside clock ticked gently, so many unsaid words, so many anxieties, so much longing seeming to swirl around them. That ache in her chest swelled.

His thumb moved, now drying a single fallen tear off her cheek. The conflict inside her grew untenable: her sadness for some of the harsh realities of life clashing with her overpowering desire for him.

“I feel guilty,” she said in a shaky burst of honesty.

“Why?”

“For wanting you to make love to me the way you do, for wanting you to restrain me and take me so hard that I can’ t think of anything else. I must be sick—” She broke off when he lunged toward her, and suddenly she was crushed against his chest, his arms around her. Her face clenched when she absorbed his familiar scent. His hand delved into her hair, cupping her skull. She shuddered with emotion.

“If you’re sick, what am I for wanting to do it to you?” he mumbled gruffly against her forehead. He pressed his lips against her skin, and she sensed his urgency. “It’s not the same, though, Harper. Is it?”

“No,” she replied emphatically, hating the doubt that tinged his tone. “You never hurt me, you only make me feel . . . so much. I don’t want to be ashamed of it. I don’t want men like Clint Jefferies or . . . anyone who’s cruel and heartless and evil to make me ashamed of it. You’re not those things. You take what you want in bed, but you’re not selfish. I don’t know how you do that. You’re just . . . you.”

He rolled her back against the pillow and came over her, his face hovering above hers. He pressed close, and she could feel that he wore a pair of thin cotton pajama bottoms. His heat emanated into her skin. His groin pressed against her outer thigh. He was growing hard. His features looked shadowed. She was very confused at that moment, and yet she wondered if she’d ever seen him so clearly.

“And you’re you. Harper McFadden,” he mouthed the two words, barely making a sound but saying the two words emphatically, nevertheless. She held her breath at something she sensed in him, some unfurling power. “Do you know why I like to bind you and have you at my mercy?”

“Because you’re a sexual dominant?”

“Maybe. Partly.” He leaned down until their lips were less than an inch apart. “But mostly because of Harper McFadden.”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Mostly because that’s my fantasy,” he continued, his voice low but brimming with fierce emotion. He shifted his hips and pressed his cock tighter against her. “To have you. To keep you. To know that at least for a short period of time, no one and nothing will take you from me. To know for a fact that you’re one hundred percent mine . . . no matter what. Are you mine right now, Harper?”

Her lips parted in aroused disbelief at his stark adamancy. She’d thought that his revelation about Regina and Clint Jefferies, and Jacob’s and her subsequent admissions of their conflict about their sexual preferences, would dampen their ardor. If anything, it seemed to have amplified their need. She was confused by his intensity, but what he’d just confessed had struck her like a whiplash of honesty, cutting straight through everything else.

“Yes. Completely yours, Jacob.”

He swept down on her, taking her mouth in unapologetic hunger. The heat that swept through her was familiar, but stronger now, more dangerous than ever before. He abruptly ended their kiss and shifted his weight, straddling her. He straightened his back. Her pulse leapt at her throat when she saw his grim, determined expression. Holding her gaze, he reached for the hem of her nightgown. He drew it up over her belly and above her breasts. He examined what he’d revealed. Her skin prickled beneath his heavy stare. Lifting his pelvis off her slightly, he cradled her hip in his large hand. His thumb reached down to the top of her mons. He rubbed her skin, but he stroked something deep inside her, making her vibrate subtly with mounting emotion. “Mine,” he declared thickly, and she felt the storm building in him. He was about to rattle her world. He already was.

“All mine,” he repeated as if to himself before he grabbed her wrists and drew her arms above her head. He pressed her hands into the pillows.

She panted softly, looking up at his large, shadowed form. Whatever she experienced at that moment, it was complex, sharp . . . overwhelming. He brushed his fingertips softly against her sides, making her breath hitch and her nipples draw tight.

“I want to tie you up right now. We’re the only two who have to decide. Ours is the only opinion that counts, and it only counts for us. Is it sick, Harper?”

“I don’t think so,” she whispered shakily.

“But you’re not sure? You’re willing to take the risk of being wrong?”

She hesitated. “For you, yes. As long as you’re here. With me.”

“I promise.”

Her face pinched tight as emotion shuddered through her. She felt that sense of déjà vu again, the one that made no sense to her, given what was happening in the present. She’d never experienced anything remotely like what she was feeling with Jacob, there in that moment, so why did she have a feeling of familiarity? As if he sensed her anguish, he cupped her jaw, his thumb feathering the corner of her mouth—her scar. This time, she didn’t flinch away.

He stood after a lung-burning moment. “I’ll be right back.”

He walked toward his private office, and she knew what he was going to get: ropes. It stunned her. She would never have guessed in a million years she would willingly allow this, of all things. And yet . . . she longed for it. Ropes would declare she was his for the taking . . .

Undeniable, flagrant evidence of their bond.

His hand closed around several bundles of rope.

Why did he feel so compelled to do this after he’d exposed part of his past, and they’d acknowledged their mutual uncertainty about their sexual preferences? Maybe it was because he despised anything that kept him from Harper: even doubt.

Nevertheless, that’s what he saw on her face when he closed his office door and walked back toward where she lay on the bed, bundles of black rope in one hand, a towel and a pair of blunt-ended, EMT shears ideal for rope cutting in close quarters in the other. He sat on the edge of the bed, seeing the whites of her eyes as she looked at the shears.

“I need to cut the rope at times, and I want to do it safely,” he explained. “Besides, I’ll always have the shears on hand. If you start to have any pain or numbness from being in the restraint, or if you start to feel uncomfortable and want to stop, just say so. I’ll immediately get you out, if not from the planned releases I’ll put in the rope, then by using these. I’m pretty good at knowing where and how hard to bind to maintain good blood flow, but everybody is different. I refuse to have you marked or hurting in any way, but I need your input to make that happen. You have to speak up. Say you understand.”

“I understand.”

He nodded and set the shears on the bedside table. He saw her look down anxiously at the neat bundles of rope resting on his thigh.

“The rope ties me to you as much as it does you to me. Do you understand, Harper?”

She glanced up, her mouth falling open. She nodded. His reassurance had worked, and that gratified him. He, of all people, knew what a challenge this would be for her.

He reached and turned on a bedside lamp.

“I want to see you better. I’ve fantasized about this. If you knew how much, you’d probably be shocked. Forget the probably,” he added harshly under his breath.

With the soft glow of the lamp, he could more easily read her expression, but it revealed other things to him, as well. The soft glow of her flawless skin, the telltale pink flush of her cheeks and lips, the hardness of her nipples. His cock tugged at him. He ran his hand over her chest, glorying in the firm swells and tight, rigid nipples. The ache in him swelled.

He slipped the silk nightgown over her head and tossed it aside.

“I’m going to turn up the air-conditioning,” he said, standing and setting the coils of rope on the table.

“Why?”

“I know it may feel chilly now. But I’m going to put quite a bit of rope on you. Things will get hot. Fast.”

He saw her throat convulse as he turned away. He thought he saw arousal in her large eyes, and prayed he was right in that assumption. When he returned he saw that her head was turned, and she was gazing at the rope. He sat down at the edge of the bed and picked up a bundle.

“Touch it,” he said.

Her gaze rose to his face skittishly before she reached. Her fingertips slid over the tightly twisted silk. Arousal stabbed through him. He lowered the bunch of rope, sliding it across her abdomen. She watched. He had the distinct impression she was holding her breath. The vision of the black rope against her pale, taut belly sent another jab of arousal through him. It was every bit as erotic as he’d imagined.

“I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do before we start, and you can tell me if you have any problem with any of it, either now, while I’m binding you, or at any time after,” he said gruffly, watching himself stroke her with the rope, knowing her gaze was on the same thing. “I’m going to have you bend your knees toward your chest and spread your thighs. I’m going to bind your shins to your thighs. I’ll be careful of your joints. The ropes won’t mark you, but there might be some compression spots left on your skin: nothing permanent, just the kind of thing from a pillow after sleeping hard on it. It’ll fade quickly once you’re free. I’ve seen how flexible you are. It should work well, but I want you to tell me at any time if you feel uncomfortable. Understood?”

“Yes,” she whispered. He slid the rope over her rib cage, and her abdomen muscles leapt. She stared at the black coils as if mesmerized.

“Harper?”

She blinked and looked at his face.

“After I’ve bound your shins to your thighs, I’m going to bind your wrists just above your knees. Your hands will be free, though. You’ll be able to exert some force on your legs. If I tell you to roll your hips back further, I’ll expect you to do it unless you’re uncomfortable. You’ll be completely open to me. I want you to know that.” He saw that she was panting softly. Was she aroused, listening to him explain what was about to happen? “I want you to hear this next part. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“As soon as you’re bound, I’m going to fuck you. Hard. And I’m going to do it for my pleasure, not for yours.”

She exhaled softly in a burst of surprise.

“I know you’ll think that’s selfish. But it’s just a fact. I’ve fantasized about this. It’s going to be very arousing for me. What are you thinking?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to say that. But . . . all right.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“After that, I’m going to make sure that you like the ropes, Harper. I’m going to make you come while you’re restrained, several times. But I just wanted to be fair, and tell you what will definitely happen first.”

Her lips parted. A pink flush had risen in her cheeks.

“I understand,” she said softly.

“Okay,” he said, standing. He quickly unfastened the twist on one bundle, and a short black length of the silk rope slithered free. “I’m going to bind your wrists temporarily while I do your legs. From this point on, you’re going to be mine.”

She licked her full lower lip in an anxious gesture.

“Put your hands like this.” He showed her what he wanted, demonstrating by putting his wrists together, palms inward and facing each other. She took the position quickly, informing him that while she might be nervous, she was excited, too. He quickly did a triple column tie, binding her wrists together. To increase her arousal—not to mention his own—while he restrained her, he placed her so that her upper arms plumped her pretty breasts, her lower arms lay on her belly, and her fingers were just inches away from her spread sex. After he’d finished with the temporary hand restraint, the anticipation in him had drawn tight, making even breathing difficult for a second. He touched one of her calves.

“Bend your knees. Spread your thighs.”

He pushed her knees toward her chest when she followed his instructions.

He began his task soberly, his cock growing heavier and achier with each pass of the rope. By the time he’d finished binding her legs, a sheen of sweat had broken out on his upper lip and abdomen. He always loved the process of roping a woman firmly and artistically, finding it an explicit slow build.

But there was nothing slow about tying Harper up, though. It was hot, spiking torture from the get-go.