Nibbling on my thumbnail, I stood at the window and stared out at the mountains in the distance. It was bright outside, the sky so clear and blue, I could see for miles—or I would’ve been able to, if parts of the skyline weren’t blocked by hotels and casino marquees.

Sly had given me his keycard and I’d been in his room for the past few hours, feeling too on edge and uneasy to go to my own room, but after pacing around his room, even stripping down to the skin and doing some yoga, I was back to being as edgy as I’d been earlier.

It might have helped if Sly had walked in and found me in the middle of Downward Facing Dog again.

I’d actually kind of hoped that would happen—I’d had a few daydreams about just that, but it hadn’t happened.

Now, unable to force my mind to settle, I searched the streets below and found myself wondering again…where was he?

“You’ve got to stop this,” I muttered.

I turned around and on my next circuit across the room, I caught sight of his computer. I hesitated a moment, then went over to it. He’d told me the password if I wanted to go online and surf. He also warned me—if you’re easily offended, stay clear of my browser history…and my wallpaper is a naked woman.

“Oh…wow…” Craning my head, I studied the pose the woman was in, bent over and tied with rope. It was almost Child’s Pose from yoga, I couldn’t help but think. And her hands were tied to her ankles.

The image was shot in black and white and it was both erotic and artistic.

I wondered if Sly would tie me up like that.

No sooner had the thought gone through my mind than another thought echoed…Yes.

Hunger punched at me, hard and fast, and I hurriedly clicked open the browser to get this search over and done with so I could finally eat something. I had no idea what I was going to do—shop, maybe. But without even really making the conscious decision, I found myself scrolling through his browser history.

There were a few infrequent visits to social media platforms, to their group website.

And…a sex toy shop.

I clicked on that one, my face burning and found myself staring at a two-pronged vibrator. The ball of heat that had settled low in my belly when I saw the bound woman grew a little bit more and I clicked away, returning to the search history.

It took some scrolling, almost two weeks’ worth, although there was a visit to an erotic online photography exhibit, women…and a few men…artistically bound with rope in displays so beautiful, so sexy, I found myself squirming in my chair.

But that was nothing compared to the motherlode I found waiting a little past the two-week mark.

I knew Sly was kinky.

But Sly wasn’t kinky. He was kinky. We might even need to capitalize that.

I found myself at a hardcore BDSM site and mesmerized, I found myself clicking through picture after picture, torn between arousal and discomfort.

And more than once, I imagined it was Sly and me in the scenario.

Especially…

I sucked in a breath, leaning back in the chair, feeling a little weak at the one that filled the monitor now.

It was a woman, bound much like the one on his desktop had been, hands to her ankles.

A man stood behind her, muscles gleaming in the harsh light.

There was no artistry to this shot—it was pure, raw sex.

He had his dick half-buried in the woman’s ass.

I moaned and wiggled in the seat, my panties sliding back and forth over flesh that had gone wet.

My phone buzzed, startling me and I grabbed it without thinking.

It was Sly’s name on the screen.

Thinking about having pizza…then you. Thoughts?

I texted back.

Okay.

Then I shot a look at the screen.

When will you be here?

He responded that it would be another hour or so, so I dropped the phone, disappointed and frustrated.

I needed to quit looking at all of this or I was going to end up abusing the massaging showerhead he had in the master bathroom.

I found myself on Facebook. I logged in and thought about posting an update—I hadn’t done it in forever, but decided against it.

Biting my lip, I stared at the search icon.

Addy.

Her name popped into my head out of nowhere.

Without giving myself time to think it through, I typed in Addy O’Malley.

I had no idea what her name would be, but why not start there?

More than a few came up, but none were of the right age group.

“That’s a sign,” I told myself as I cleared the browsing history.

But I didn’t shut down the computer.

Driven now, I opened an incognito browser and set the cache to clear every few minutes.

Then…I got to work.

I had a little bit of experience in finding people—it was one of the things that had made me good at hiding—I knew how people did it. My knowledge came not from a life of crime.

Rather it came from one of my mother’s former…lovers.

One of the guys she’d spent more than a few months with, one who’d almost made her consider settling down, she’d told me, came from one of the most boring professions on earth.

And, of course, she’d met him because of me. He was a friend of Angel’s dad, a fellow lawyer and I’d interned for him one summer, which was how my mother had met him. Seduced him.

I couldn’t say we kept in touch, but I had learned some interesting stuff while working there…interesting, at least, considering how dull the work itself had been.

Probate law.

But some of it…the tracking people down? That had been interesting.

The first thing I wanted to do was find out who Sly’s mother was.

And the easiest way to do that was sitting in the palm of my hand. I went did an online search and found a copy of his birth certificate.

Seriously, people had no idea how much of their information was out there for anyone to see, assuming they had the right information and knew where to look. Sly left his wallet in the apartment and when I’d seen it earlier, I’d peeked inside. His driver’s license gave me his date of birth and I had a rough idea of where he had lived when he’d been a kid, thanks to what he’d told me earlier.

It took me less than ten minutes and I murmured a private apology to him, but I wasn’t going to stop, either. I felt driven, for some reason, pushed to hunt this information down.

Once I found her information, I started doing searches on the mom, on the stepfather, on Addy.

And while I found the date of death fitting Rick—Richard Garvey—from Plano, Texas, about the time Sly would’ve been four years old, there was no mention of the baby, or even Sly himself.

Because they were kids…minors with no other surviving family members. They probably ended up in the system. Assuming Addy was alive.

I had hit a dead end.

But I knew who could help me.

My eyes fell on the time, though, and I hissed. I cleared the history and backed out of the incognito tab, then double-checked to make sure everything had cleared, no downloads remaining, no overtly conspicuous signs that I’d been on Facebook. I logged myself out and decided…what the hell. I went back to the BDSM site, and the picture that had all but stolen the breath from my lungs.

I was still staring at it five minutes later when Sly came in.

He caught sight of my red face and winced. “I told you that you might want to avoid my browser history.”

I wasn’t blushing out of embarrassment. At least not completely out of embarrassment.

Licking my lips, I gestured to the screen as he drew near.

He held a pizza box in one hand but he put it down on the coffee table before circling around to stand beside me.

“If I said I wanted to try that, what would you say?”

His answer was to slam his mouth down on mine.

I was naked in under two minutes.

He kept me that way as he told me to walk to his room.

“It doesn’t feel fair me being naked, and you not.”

“Life’s not fair, sugar,” he said from behind me, voice rough.

My knees trembled at the sound.

Oh, man…what had I gotten myself into?

Once we were in the bedroom, he made me pick a safe word.

He wouldn’t so much as touch me without it and that worried me a little. Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “Do I have to sign a contract, too?”

He didn’t respond, just leaned in and murmured, his lips just a breath from mine, “I’m really dying to fuck you, so if you could help me out and give me a word…”

“Yoga,” I blurted out.

A smile crooked his lips as he rocked back onto his heels. “Yoga, it is.” He traced his index finger over my mouth. “You use it if I push too hard and make you too uncomfortable. If for any reason…”

“Would you just…” I floundered for the words to tell him to get a grip already. But what do you tell a guy who’s clearly into kinky and hard? Tie me up already, big guy? “Just do it already.”

His eyes lit with a hot, avid gleam.

“Gladly.”

But all he did was kiss me.

At first.

He backed me up to his bed and spilled me down on top, following me down and as I gasped from the impact of his body on mine, he sealed our mouths together all over again.

“Open,” he muttered against my lips. “More.”

He tangled a hand in my hair and cranked my head back.

The next kiss was so deep, so wet, so consuming, some part of me was left to wonder just how much he’d been holding back.

When he rolled me onto my belly, I braced myself, convinced he was going to start.

But all he did was kiss my neck and stay stretched out atop me. He rocked his hips against my butt and an aching emptiness settled inside me, one that echoed and pulsed with the rhythm of his body as he moved against me.

He caught my hands, stretching them out from my body, pinning them down. By that time, though, I’d forgotten about him getting to it.

Maybe that was his intention.

Because that was when he started. Something slipped around my wrist.

I barely noticed, arching my hips against his, driven almost insane by the spreading emptiness.

Now my other wrist had something bound to it as well.

Sly pulled back, slowly. I tried to follow but couldn’t find enough leverage. When I pushed my hands against the mattress, I couldn’t move them. A brief moment of panic twisted, then I remembered.

“Are we good?” Sly asked from behind me as he began to twine whatever it was around my wrist, looping it again and again.

It took me a few seconds to squeeze out an answer.

Sly didn’t bother to wait.

He’d told me the rules and I guess he was trusting me to follow.

“I’m…good,” I finally managed to say.

He shifted his attention to my other wrist and I carefully wiggled around. He’d tied that first hand completely up to the crook in my elbow. There was more give in the room now, though and if I tried, I could bring it around some. The second I realized it, the give disappeared and Sly swatted me lightly on the ass. “None of that, sugar. You want free, you know what to say.”

I groaned without thinking about it. Something that hadn’t occurred to me—I wouldn’t be able to touch him in this scenario.

“What’s wrong?” Sly asked as he finished whatever it was he was doing with my wrists. He slid around to peer down at me. “Second thoughts?”

“No. I just…how am I going to be able to touch you?”

That familiar, saturnine grin came and went. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you a chance to do that.”

And he did, in the very next moment. He swept me off the bed and deposited me on the floor next to it. Then he slowly dragged down his zipper. Under the heather gray of his boxers, his cock was erect. My mouth watered a little.

Was he…

“I know you hadn’t ever had sex before me, but tell me something…how far have you gone, Emmy?” he asked, cupping my face in one hand, while he freed his cock with the other. “Ever had anyone go down on you? Ever gone down on anybody? Any high school sweethearts or college boyfriends slide his hand inside your panties and get you off?”

“Just me,” I whispered, staring up at him.

“Maybe I’ll have you show me,” he said, voice going raw and gritty. His eyes locked on my mouth and he asked, “So what you’re saying is that you’ve never put your mouth on a man’s cock before?”

“No.” I stared at his, suddenly desperate to do just that.

To him.

Like this, with my hands bound and me on my knees in front of him.

“I never thought I’d be someone who cared much about whether or not I was the first to venture where no man has gone before, as the saying goes. But I’m definitely looking forward to this.” The hand on my face slid into my hair and he tangled his fingers there. “Open up, Emmy. You’re going to take my cock now.”

I shivered, the words wicked and hot and so damn sexy, I found myself pressing my knees together to still the ache inside.

But I did what he said, opening my mouth and leaning forward just a little. “Take what you can,” he said in a raspy voice. “Go deep, or don’t. You’ll figure it out.”

That’s exactly what I did, listening to the ragged edge of his breathing as I set about exploring him. He tasted salty, like he’d been sweating. I swirled my tongue across his head, then pressed it to the underside where I’d seen that thick, heavy vein.

Sly groaned as I pulled back, then slid back down on him. The hand in my hair tightened to the point of pain, but I didn’t care. Moving a little faster, I tried to take more of him in my mouth, but he hit the back of my throat. Frustrated now, I pulled off him and sucked in air, already starving for it.

Then I went back.

I barely noticed when Sly began to guide me, both hands framing my head, slowing the rhythm until I moved at a slower, easier pace. It made it easier to breathe and I found I could draw in air through my nose when I timed it right.

The fat, swollen head of his cock completely filled the back of my throat and each time, I tried to take him a little deeper. Once, I gagged on him and he fisted his hand at the base of his cock after, so I couldn’t go any deeper.

My nipples ached, burned.

My clit did the same.

I wanted so badly to touch myself, but there was no way I could.

Ragged breaths escaped him as he began to rock against me and some dim part of me realized he loved what I was doing. That made me greedier. Humming around him, I tried to go faster, take more.

He’d let go of his cock again to grab my head, thrusting shallowly into my mouth and this time, when he hit the back of my throat, I swallowed—it was instinct. Saliva had pulled in my mouth and it was about to gag me, but as I swallowed, I took the tip of his cock down my throat.

He swore above me and stopped, jerking back and pulling me to my feet. I cried out, disoriented.

He boosted me up onto the bed, hips at the edge.

Then…he spanked me. “Trying to drive me crazy already, fucking hot little witch,” he panted. “Is that what you’re doing?”

He spanked me again. “Answer me.”

I didn’t know how to, or if I even could. My butt burned where he’d touched me and I shivered, breath locked in my throat. Hardly able to move, I opened, then closed my hands into fists.

“Sly?”

He swatted my butt again, but it was lighter. Almost playful. “You’re too fucking new to be playing these games, so how come you’re so good at it?” he murmured, coming up against me and rocking his hips against my butt.

I moaned and lifted for him. “Please.”

“In time, Emmy. Just give it time.”

He shifted me around on the bed again, forcing me to my knees. It drove my shoulders into the mattress and I whimpered as he trailed his fingertips across the area where he’d spanked me. “Your ass is all red now. All pretty and red from where I spanked you. Did you like it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to do it again?”

He waited, clearly wanting to know the answer.

And I realized, I did.

“Yes…please.”

“Good girl.” He brought the flat of his hand down on my ass, bringing a gasping sort of moan to my lips.

The next sound was a scream, because he was licking me.

He had his mouth on my pussy as I knelt over in front of him and he licked me. He growled against me when I tried to pull away, thrown by the sheer intimacy of it. It didn’t matter that I’d just been kneeling in front of him as I took his cock in my mouth. This was…different. He was practically feasting on my pussy while I had my ass in the air.

And it was delicious.

That one thought rose from the morass of emotion and chaos tangling inside me, growing until it had shoved everything else aside.

It was so good.

He thrust his tongue inside me, then used two fingers to massage my clit.

And it…

I wailed as he brought me to a mind-blowing climax.

“I don’t want to think about another man ever doing what I just did to you,” Sly said, as he caught my ankle in one hand and lifted it up. “That’s my pussy, Emmy. Understand?”

I couldn’t even think about what he was saying. I just knew he wanted an answer. “Yes.”

Still quivering from the climax, I struggled to haul in air as he tied my ankle to my thigh, then shifted to the other side.

“We’re taking it easy on the bondage tonight,” Sly said as he finished doing…whatever he was doing. “What you saw online is some seriously advanced stuff and first, you aren’t ready to spend two hours getting tied up. I’m also not waiting two hours to fuck you. This is a hogtying. You can’t move your feet or your hands, and I’m going to fuck you like this. Are you sure you still want it?”

“Yes, damn it!” If he didn’t fuck me soon, I thought I might die from sheer, aching need.

He laughed, the sound a little shaky. Something landed on the bed next to me. Vaguely, I realized it was his shirt. If I closed my eyes and breathed in, I breathed in him. That made my nipples ache and tighten even more.

He slid his hands down my sides, adjusting me.

“I can’t think for wanting you,” he told me.

Then he was inside me. Trapped as I was by the ropes, I felt impaled on his cock, utterly under his control.

He withdrew, then slammed into me again.

Again.

Again.

I cried out his name and he swatted my ass.

Then he swatted the other side. “I love seeing this ass blush for me,” he muttered, the words all but lost under the sound of my rapid breathing and the wet, hard sounds of him taking me.

Then everything was lost under the sound of me crying out his name as I came harder and stronger than I’d ever done before. It was so intense, black dots swam in front of my eyes and the strength drained out of me. It was only his hands that held me up.

* * *

“I found her.”

I almost dropped the phone.

I was going to blame it on the fact that my body still didn’t seem to want to obey me after the mind-blowing sex I’d had with Sly a few hours earlier, but honestly, it was just surprise.

“You found her?” I lowered the phone to stare at it, then raised the handset back to my ear, hardly able to believe that I’d heard her right. She had to be joking.

She being one of the top finders at the probate office back when I’d interned there. Her name was Ellie Hampton.

When I’d called asking for tips on how to find someone, she’d asked for whatever information I had and I’d given it to her, told her who I was trying to locate.

That had been just over an hour ago.

Sly had been gone two hours.

The moment he’d shut the door, that crazed feeling of being trapped came back over me and I’d resumed my search for his sister, determined to stay occupied and focused on something other than Topher.

But I’d run into one dead end after another.

And now Ellie had found her?

“It’s not that hard once you know the tricks, Emmy,” she told me, laughing. She gave me the information and the girl’s date of birth. A name and a date of birth. “If you want me to keep looking, I could probably track her location down for you, but it might be tomorrow before I can find it.”

“No,” I said, scribbling the name and date down. “I’ll see what I can figure out.”

I had to have something to do with my time now that Sly wasn’t there.