One positive thing that had come out of what happened was that I’d managed to completely clean and organize the store. I’d also put together tins of tea until I’d run out of ingredients.

That had been twenty minutes ago, and now I didn’t have anything else to do. Case in point, I’d been cleaning the same spot for the past five minutes. When the bell over my door rang, I turned, relieved to have someone to distract me. I would’ve been happy with anyone at that moment.

A church group coming in to ask me if I wanted to give up my Wiccan ways.

A new mom wanting to know if I had something to help her baby sleep and then offering to show me hundreds of pictures of said baby sleeping.

The hot recluse I’d fucked more than once and had inadvertently fallen in love with–

Shit.

“Blake?”

Shit! Seriously? Shit!

What the fuck was he doing here?!

“Before you tell me that I’m an asshole and I need to get out, please let me say what I came here to say.”

I’d had a million things I’d wanted to say to him, a thousand different ways I’d imagined this conversation going, but I couldn’t think of one. He looked as ragged as I felt, and someplace deep inside me, I hoped it was because of me. He’d managed a complete sentence without yelling at me, so I supposed that was him trying. I might as well hear him out.

“Go ahead,” I said. He locked the door and then started toward me, but I didn’t walk around the counter to meet him. I needed to keep something between us until he’d finished.

At least we didn’t have an audience here. No matter how this went, we’d be able to have a complete conversation. We’d get to the end of it, one way or the other. While my stomach twisted at the thought of what it could mean if things went badly, another part of me just wanted it all to be over. I just wanted it to be a clean break.

When I was nine years old, my parents and I had gone skiing. I’d insisted that I’d known what I was doing, but they’d made me take the bunny slopes. I’d been furious, and I hadn’t really understood why. It hadn’t really been about wanting to ski on the bigger slopes. It’d been more about the fact that I hadn’t wanted anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do. Not even my parents.

Of course, that’d meant I’d had to sneak away and try one of the bigger slopes. I’d managed just fine until some bigger kid had skied into me, knocking me into a bunch of trees. I broke my tibia and fibula, but the doctor said it could’ve been much worse. At least it had been a clean break. Those always healed the best.

“I was an asshole.”

I folded my arms. An extra bit of protection. “Go on.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “You were getting too close, too far under my skin. Not in a bad way. Or at least what wouldn’t have been a bad way if I wasn’t such a closed-off prick.”

That was more honest than he’d been about anything other than wanting to fuck me.

“Your brother came to see me,” I said.

“I know.”

I’d guessed as much, but I knew I needed to give him something honest if I wanted him to be honest with me.

“Jax told me that he told you about what happened to my parents and sister.”

He looked away, but I didn’t call him on it. I couldn’t imagine how painful all of that had been, still was. No matter how annoyed I could get with my parents or our untraditional family, I couldn’t imagine living without them. Especially losing them at a young age…the thought alone made me want to walk around the counter and hug him.

“You should have heard it from me.”

That surprised me. “I wasn’t expecting you to tell me something so personal after such a short time.”

“If I’d told you anything personal at all, it wouldn’t even be an issue.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not good with words. Never have been. And I’m definitely not good with talking about my emotions or anything real.” He turned his eyes toward me, his expression earnest. “I don’t want to lose you, Brea. It took my brothers calling me on my bullshit to admit that I’d made the wrong choice when you gave me the ultimatum.”

I could feel my heart pounding faster with every word. This was what I’d wanted from him. Something real. Something that told me I wasn’t in this alone.

“I can’t promise that I’m going to be an open book from here on out, but I can promise that I’ll be honest and that I will do my best to let you in.” He reached across the counter, his hand open in invitation.

“Can I ask you something?” He started to pull his hand back, but I grabbed it. “Please.”

He nodded, his fingers curling around mine.

“I have no problem taking things slow,” I began, “but I need to know if you see this going somewhere. If it’s never going to be more than casual, I need to know now, cut things off before I get any more involved.”

His eyes warmed. “How involved are you now?”

I had two choices here, I knew. I could be vague and possibly save myself some embarrassment, or I could put it all out there and hope that him being here meant he felt the same.

I took a calming breath that didn’t really do much in the way of calming me, and then I took the leap.

“I’ve fallen in love with you, you idiot.” I managed a watery smile. “So, I’m in pretty deep.”

He smiled, his entire face lighting up. “I am too.” He came around the counter, his grip on my hand tightening. “In deep. Falling in love. All of it.”

We both moved into each other, our bodies colliding even as our mouths came together. His urgency mirrored mine, desire burning through me, around me. I almost unzipped him right there, but if this was going to be our new beginning, I wanted us to do it right.

Not that I intended to send him away, so I didn’t repeat the sex before a date thing. I wasn’t that patient. No, we were just going to go somewhere more comfortable first.

“You do realize how completely unfair this is, right?” I asked as I scowled up at Blake. My question didn’t do anything but make that stupid, smug grin of his grow. He’d used socks to tie my arms above my head since I didn’t have ties or belts, and it should have been ridiculous, but it wasn’t.

I tugged at the restraints, and his gaze dropped, eyes darkening at the way my struggles made my breasts jiggle. He was still dressed, the bastard, but I was completely naked, my body alive and humming from the attention he’d given it while getting me into this position.

“Haven’t you heard?” he asked. “Life’s not fair.”

“Jerk,” I muttered.

He laughed, and the sound turned my insides to mush. “Patience.”

I wanted to point out that he was the last person who should be chastising me for lack of self-control, but he was taking off his shirt, and I got distracted. I was only human, after all, and he was all hard muscle and lickable skin. My eyes traced the defined lines down to his belly button, then followed his hands as he removed his pants. Deep v-grooves at his hips and a trail of dark hair pointed straight to a long, thick cock. It curved up toward his flat stomach, and I caught my breath as he wrapped a hand around it.

“See something you like?” he teased.

“Everything.”

And I meant it. Not just his Adonis-like body, but the way he let me see how much he wanted me, the warmth in his eyes, the smiling and teasing and laughing. It made sense to me, that he’d expose his feelings here first. We’d been great together physically from moment one.

He slowly fisted his cock, running his thumb over the head to gather the moisture beaded there. My hands opened and closed, wanting something to touch, to dig my nails into. I squirmed as a rush of arousal made me wetter, then pressed my thighs together to try and give myself some relief.

“Brea.” My name held a warning. “You don’t get off until I say you can.”

I lifted my chin defiantly and continued moving my legs. In one quick move, Blake’s hands were on my ankles, and he was yanking my legs apart. I gave an undignified squawk, and that earned a chuckle, but there was no mercy in that sound. He was going to make me pay for disobeying him, and damn if that thought didn’t turn me on even more.

He leaned down, bracing himself on the ankles he still held and gave me a long, slow lick that made me cry out.

“I think you deserve to be punished for that,” he said as he straightened. “What do you think?”

Thoughts of spankings and whippings danced through my head, but I didn’t have anything here he could use for that. Unless he decided to get creative, and I wouldn’t have put that past him.

“Where are your toys?”

My face grew hot. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about my sexuality, but I’d never had someone be that blunt about it before. The guys I’d been with in the past had known I had a vibrator since I didn’t exactly hide it, but it hadn’t been something we’d used together. Not like Blake and I had before.

“In the top drawer of the bedside table,” I said. “But I only have the one.”

“We’ll do some shopping together sometime,” he said. “Do you have any clothespins?”

“Bathroom,” I answered automatically, even as I puzzled through the request. “Bottom drawer under the sink. There’s some rope in there too. I hang up my ‘delicates.’”

He laughed again. “You couldn’t have remembered the rope before I used socks?”

Despite how badly I wanted him right now, I couldn’t help but join in the laughter. “I wasn’t exactly thinking laundry when you said you wanted to tie me up.”

He walked out of my bedroom, giving me a mouth-watering view of his perfect, tight ass. I tried my best to not be shallow, but Blake had the most magnificent body. The things I wanted to do to it…

“These will do.” He came back into the bedroom with two plain clothespins. “I think we’ll start with just a couple minutes. Don’t want to damage anything.”

I had a pretty good idea of what he intended to do with those things, but that didn’t calm the butterflies in my stomach much. He climbed on the bed, settling between my legs. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I hadn’t closed them, but little things like that didn’t matter when he was leaning over me and taking one of my nipples between his lips.

He didn’t ease me into it, immediately sucking hard on the sensitive flesh. My body jerked, back arching, but he put a hand on my waist, holding me in place. His teeth worried at my nipple, holding on just a bit too tight, pulling on it. I cursed at the sharp jolt of pain that went through me but didn’t ask him to stop. Finally, when my nipple was tight and hard, he raised his head.

“Two minutes,” he said. “Just two minutes.”

Two minutes wasn’t that long. I didn’t know why he felt the need to reassure me. I gasped as he fastened one clothespin to my nipple, but after the initial shock wore off, it was far from the most painful thing I’d ever experienced.

He lowered his head to my other nipple, repeating the process. Except by the time he was ready to put on the other clothespin, I felt like my entire breast was on fire. I squirmed, but the motion only made things worse. It should have been time to take it off. We had to be way over two minutes.

“Almost there,” Blake said. He ran his hand over my stomach, letting his thumb tease across the curls I kept neatly trimmed.

I wanted his fingers lower, but I didn’t think I could manage an articulate request at this moment. My other nipple was starting to hurt now, the pain traveling down my breasts and into the tight coil of pleasure that sat low in my belly. Instead of chasing the pleasure away, it mixed, mingled, and became something else. Something deeper, more intense.

Something I hadn’t realized I’d wanted until now.

What we’d done before had been a little different, and I’d liked it, but part of me hadn’t understood just how much I wanted this sort of thing to be an option.

“All right,” he said. “One’s done.”

I was so focused on getting the clothespin off that I hadn’t taken the time to think what it would feel like to have the pressure released.

When I was young, I’d been playing in an area where my parents had been building something, and I’d tripped. I’d fallen on a strip of sandpaper that had abraded the skin from my elbow to half-way down my forearm.

Having the first clothespin removed felt something like that.

The second was worse, making my eyes water.

“Fuck!” I writhed on the bed, no longer caring about whether I was moving toward or away from Blake. I just needed to move, to do something, anything, to distract me.

Then his tongue was there, soothing my flesh, distracting me. My breath caught in my throat, air escaping in a near-soundless whimper. His hand moved between my legs, fingers finding that slick bundle of nerves, and I lost the ability to think about anything more than how he made me feel.

“Fucking gorgeous.” He pressed his mouth against my throat and slid two fingers inside me. “You smell amazing. Like…pineapples.”

I would’ve laughed if he hadn’t chosen that moment to curl his fingers and rub against that spot inside me. A lightning strike couldn’t have matched the electricity that coursed through my body as I came. I screamed, and part of my mind was functioning enough for me to be grateful that I didn’t have any neighbors close enough to hear.

“Damn,” he growled. “That’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard.”

He covered my mouth with his again, his tongue plundering, exploring, claiming. He slid his body along mine, skin against skin, and I pulled on my restraints again, desperate to touch him, to mark him as mine.

Because he was mine.

I smiled, and he raised his head, his expression puzzled. “I’m hoping that’s a ‘great kiss, Blake’ smile, and not a ‘that’s a funny kiss’ smile.”

“You’re mine,” I said.

He took my bottom lip between his teeth and gave it a tug before releasing it. “And you’re mine.” A shadow passed across his face. “You are, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I said. “I’m also getting a little chilly.”

Blake lowered his body onto mine, and I shifted to get him to settle more comfortably. I loved the way our bodies fit together, not just in sex, but like this too. I already knew we were great in bed together – sometimes figuratively rather than literally – but we needed more than sex if we were going to make things work between us. This gave me hope. Lying like this, comfortable in our own skins, smiling and talking.

He brushed hair back from my face. “We don’t have to go any further than this. If I can lay here tonight with you, hold you, I’ll be happy.”

I tried to reach for him, but my hands were still stopped short. “If we don’t go any further, I’m not sure I’ll be happy.”

He laughed, and I loved the feel of it almost as much as I loved the sound. “Let’s get you untied.” He reached up and tugged on one sock, then the other, and they both came free easily.

My fingers tingled as the blood flow returned to normal, but I barely noticed. I was more concerned with touching. His face, his hair, his back. The scruff on his face was rough against my palms, and I couldn’t wait to feel it against other, more sensitive, parts of my body.

“Condom?” he asked.

I didn’t even need to think about it. “I’m on the pill.”

He kissed me hard, then went up on his knees, his cock jutting out in front of him. His hands slid from my hips down my legs to my knees, then over my calves. He lifted my legs, raising them straight until my ankles rested near his shoulders.

“Is this okay?”

I nodded. I’d feel the burn soon, but I’d always been quite flexible. What I hadn’t counted on was how tight this position would make me. I was wet, but as Blake pushed inside me, my eyelids fluttered. He groaned, the sound vibrating through me, adding a whole new sensation.

“Fuck, Blake.” I grabbed my blanket, twisting it in my hands. I was too full, stretched too much, but it wasn’t bad. It was good. Too good. “Fuck! Fuck!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

I opened my eyes and glared at him. “If you can talk, you’re not doing–”

The word became an inarticulate shout as he leaned forward and started pounding into me. My knees were almost to my chest, and the backs of my thighs screamed in protest, but the pain was only in the background, adding to the other sensations that Blake was causing. I was dimly aware that I was begging, but I couldn’t feel even a little self-conscious, not when he was saying my name over and over.

He dropped my legs, leaning down to capture my mouth. As his tongue tangled with mine, I locked my ankles around his waist, pulling myself up to meet his thrusts. Our bodies slammed together with no pretense of gentleness. We caught ragged breaths between kisses, both of us racing toward climax. I grabbed his ass, digging my nails into the firm flesh, and he retaliated by biting my lip. Sex with him somehow felt a bit like fighting, but it was a whole different form of fighting.

A sexy one that I liked a whole lot more than the other kind.

He came first, the feeling of him emptying inside me triggering my own orgasm, and we rode the waves together, wrapped around each other until we collapsed in a sweaty pile of limbs.

I could get used to this.