Revealing Us

“Hands over your head,” he orders, and inally hearing his voice is sweet honey. It pours over me and into me, and my heart slows its pounding beat.

I willingly lift my arms, aware of how my br**sts are now eye level and thrust closer to Chris. He steps onto the sill with me, in front of me, his big, perfect body cradling mine as he backs closer to the glass but not against it. His touch arouses me even more, and I’m already on ire. My ni**les nestle in the crisp hair of his chest and I can’t stop the arch of my body into his, or the soft moan that escapes my lips. I’m so lost in how much I need him that I’m barely aware of him knotting the cord around my wrists.

He steps of the sill, leaving me aching from the loss of his body, and I’m certain he’s about to tease me and drive me wild.

Then an anxious thought takes over. How many women have been here like this for him? Has Amber?

Chris wraps his arms around me, molding me close. “No to what you’re thinking,” he says. “I don’t bring anyone else here.

Only you.”

My lips part. “You . . . you knew what I was thinking?”

“Yes.” He traces my jaw. “I knew.” His lips brush mine, a gentle whisper, before they caress over my cheek to my ear, then to my neck. The tenderness of his touch is unexpectedly erotic. Goose bumps gather on my skin, and my ni**les tingle and tighten.

I thought this was about control—and it is; I’m tied up. But it’s a softer shade of dominance. He vibrates with desire, his lips traveling to my shoulder, his hand to my breast, my nipple, and back down my waist to my backside. He is touching me everywhere, kissing me everywhere. Tender, wonderful nips and bites and licks that travel lower and lower, until he’s on his knees pressing his mouth to my belly.

He lingers there and his eyes lift to mine, promising me delicious pleasure. His hands divide and conquer, the ingers of one tracing the intimate seam of my backside, the other stroking between my thighs where I’m slick and aching.

“Do you have any idea how wild it drives me, to know you get this wet so easily for me?” he asks, his voice laden with desire. For me. Because of me.

I try to laugh, but it comes out choked. “It drives me pretty wild, too.”

He smiles, and it’s as beautiful as watching him latten that room of stufy suits at the embassy. His tongue dips into my belly button, teasing me with where it will go next. I moan when his hand irmly cups my backside, before he lifts one of my legs, and then the next, over his shoulders. Caressing a path from one of my knees to my backside, he orders, “Hold them there.”

I nod and swallow hard as his thumb teases my clit, licking it gently before his ingers press inside me. Gasping, I squeeze my eyes shut. His mouth closes down over me, and aah—I can’t think. Everything seems to go into kind of a soft haze of pleasure.

My head drops back and I have a leeting out-of-body moment where I see myself in the window, my hands tied above my head with my legs wrapped around the neck of Chris Merit, while he does delicious things to my body. I laugh in disbelief that this is my life. His tongue is doing something incredibly perfect to me, and his ingers . . .

I gasp and arch my hips, shocked as my sex clenches around his ingers without warning. Ripples of pleasure radiate to the rest of my body, and Chris uses his skillful ingers and tongue to bring me from the peak to the valley. Slowly, the scream of pleasure within me becomes a hum, and I’m panting from the impact.

Chris kisses up my thigh to one of my knees, then gently lowers my legs to the loor. He wraps his arms around me and presses his cheek to my stomach, holding me there as if he feels like he’s about to lose me.

As seconds tick by, he starts to scare me.

“Chris?” His name is a whispered plea.

His hands begin traveling upward as he stands, cradling me to his body. “I can’t breathe without you, either, Sara,” he says, in a low, gravelly voice, replying to what I’d said in the bar. “And that’s the problem.”

“Just stop trying,” I whisper. “Untie me. Please. I need to touch you.”

He kisses me instead, unwilling or unready to give away control, but there’s a softness about him, about how his tongue caresses my mouth. I taste his passion, his hunger, but there’s something more. Something that still tastes like good-bye.

I stroke his tongue with mine, trying to kiss it away, but it doesn’t work. I try to burn it away with heat and ire, but it won’t fade. So when he tears his mouth from mine, I don’t give him time to speak.

“I’m not going anywhere. You can try to send me away, but I came here for a reason. I believe in us and I’m not going away.”

His hands frame my face. “If you tried, I’d come after you.”

His rough-edged tone is delicious friction to my nerve endings. “No matter what you show me or what happens, I won’t leave, Chris. If that’s why you want to leave, it’s the wrong reason, and the wrong thing for us.”

He stares down at me, the seconds ticking by, his expression unreadable, before he steps up onto the sill and unties my wrists.

Before I have time to lower my hands, he’s stepped of the sill and is walking away to the other side of his canvas. He returns with a shirt in his hand.

“Put this on or we won’t talk, and we need to.” He holds it up so that I can slide my arms. Disappointingly, it smells of fabric softener, not Chris.

He leans on the wall and pulls me against him, his hands gliding up my back and molding me to him. “I don’t want to leave.”