Damn, she wanted this—bad. For a dream, it was so vivid. She wanted to see her lover, ask him why he tormented her, beg for relief.

“Kata.”

The whisper was as real as the breath hot against her breast.

She flung her eyes open. Hunter knelt between her legs, his big body casting a shadow over her, his stare hot, predatory. The buzz cut of his hair made what might have been a pretty face look harshly male, throwing every dip, plane, and jut into stark relief. His washboard abs tightened above his faded jeans. They were zipped but not snapped, giving her a tease of what was behind that bulge in his fly. She nearly swallowed her tongue. Desire bloomed fiercely inside her.

With an unrelenting stare, Hunter gripped her thighs, his hands pushing their way up her flesh, back to her very wet sex. His thumb toyed with her clit.

And Kata knew then that none of what she’d been feeling had been a dream. He’d brought her to the very verge of climax and left her there to ache and twist. Just as he’d vowed that he would.

She wanted to bite his damn head off, tell him to stop messing with her. But if she said anything of the sort, he’d take her defiance as a personal challenge. There’d be no orgasm in her future—immediate or otherwise. And Hunter had done his job, as she imagined he did all things, capably and well. Thanks to his expert touch, she needed what he could give her . . . if he chose to.

“Hunter?” She raised her hips to him, begging in the only way her pride and apprehension allowed.

Verbalizing how badly she ached for him left her exposed in a way mere nudity didn’t. Admitting that she yearned to be covered, taken, powerless under his touch, seemed as smart as swimming with chum in shark-infested waters. Hunter was definitely capable of chewing through her resistance and eating her alive.

The wicked gleam in his eye, the half smile on his mouth, told her that he knew everything she felt and feared. “Want something, honey?”

Kata pressed her lips together. She was a big girl who could see to her own orgasm. She’d had plenty of practice.

But when she tried to lift her arm from above her head and slide it into her wet flesh, she found it cuffed to the bed. Attempting to move the other netted the same result. Fury and panic raced through her.

“You tied me to the bed?

“Manacled, actually. They’re fur-lined but made of steel, attached to chains, soldered into steel supports behind the headboard, and anchored into the studs in the wall.”

In other words, she wasn’t going anywhere until he was good and ready to let her go. Panic surged ahead of fury. But a fresh curl of arousal wasn’t far behind. From the moment they’d met, Hunter had been trying to control her verbally, sexually. But now he was getting really serious. Manacles and chains and steel. Oh my.

“I’m not ready for this,” she choked.

“Your body is. It’s your mind that’s fighting. We’re going to get past that. And you’ve earned these punishments.”

“So you’ve chained me to the bed and you’re going to, what? Refuse to give me an orgasm?” The thought only made her crave it more.

“Every hour on the hour, until you cooperate. Just like I promised.”

Oh, God. She already wanted him so badly, she was about to crawl out of her skin. How desperately would she need him by then? She didn’t like being controlled this way. She didn’t like being controlled, period. “Piss off.”

“If that’s what you want.” Hunter leaned over her, supporting his weight on his elbows. “Or you can learn some compliance. Then you’ll find I can be as accommodating as hell.”

Kata felt the lethal spread of his chest over hers, his steely six-pack pressing into her belly. He nudged an erection of killer proportions between her spread thighs. Her clit burned with arousal. When she tried to close her legs and squeeze her thighs together, she found them tethered, too.

A gasp slipped from her lips. Her helplessness excited her even more. God, why did she find that so damn sexy?

Above her he smiled, a flash of disconcerting white in the near darkness. “Yes, your ankles are manacled, too, attached to chains, set in titanium supports under the floorboards. I helped Logan install them, so I know.”

“You plan to keep me tied up until I give in?” Her pussy clenched at the thought.

“Nope. I want to make defiance unpleasant, but I don’t get off on forcing a woman to do anything. Once the punishment is over, I’ll release you. But since this all started with your refusal to cooperate, you can end it now by—”

“You mean my refusal to roll over and play dead?” she snapped.

Granted, she wasn’t making a strong case for that orgasm she craved, but his I’m-all-big-and-bad routine, along with his mastery of her body, scared the crap out of her. This power-trip, steamroller shit was beginning to remind her too much of Gordon. If she gave an inch now, Hunter would take a hundred miles later.

“I want a submissive woman, not a well-trained dog. And my attempt to go slow and put you at ease is getting us nowhere.”

“Get the hell o—oh!”

He drowned out her protest by laving her nipple with his tongue in a teasing glide, prodding the hard bud with his thumb. His nip was an electric jolt of pain, teeth to burning flesh, followed by a soothing lick. He paid similar homage to her other breast until both nipples felt swollen, alive with need. Kata wanted to hold out, throw his seduction back in his face . . . but she ended up arching to his mouth with another silent plea.

Hunter slid down her body, his lips gliding across the sensitive undersides of her breasts, caressing over her rib cage. His tongue dipped into her navel, swirling around as his humongous hands gripped her hips in a way she could only describe as possessive.

Kata swallowed. This “punishment” she’d supposedly earned felt more like Hunter wanting to overwhelm her senses to prove that he could command her at will.

Fear jolted her. “Why are you doing this to me?”

He froze, raised his laser-precise gaze to her. “What is it you think I’m doing?”

“Trying to show me that you’re the man and can bend the little lady to your will, no matter how much you have to trample my independence or self-esteem. You may make me beg for an orgasm because, God knows, you’ve figured out exactly how to put my body in the palm of your hand. But in doing so, you’re trying to steal my soul. And you can kiss my ass. I’m not giving it to you.”

His brows shot up. He looked affronted, then considering. Finally, concern settled into the sharp angles of his face. “Honey, you’re still not getting it. I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing it for us. We can’t really be together until you’re honest with me and with yourself. Your body craves domination, takes to it like surrender is the most natural thing in the world. It’s your head getting in the way. God knows, I’ve made myself clear enough that I want to be the man who grants all your fantasies for the rest of your life. But you persist in thinking that I’m trying to belittle you and break you down, rather than build us up. You couldn’t be more wrong. Explain.”

He punctuated his demand by nuzzling his lips across her low belly, then followed with another nip of teeth . . . at the same moment he brushed his fingertips across her clit. The combination of pleasure and pain was nothing short of hypnotic, cajoling.

Panic, anger, and fear collided, compounded by this dangerous arousal. Regardless of his little speech, Kata felt overtaken. Hunter had nearly crushed her free will by hurtling her to the very edge of desire again and again. She bucked, trying to dislodge him. He wasn’t moving an inch.

Really, she should refuse to bend, keep him in the dark. Except that he was relentless enough to keep her manacled to this bed until she told him everything. If he wanted the shitload of 411, that was his stupid mistake.

“I’ll tell you why. Did I ever mention that my mother isn’t allowed to choose her own clothing every day? Gordon insists on doing it for her.”

Hunter’s brows shot up, and he shrugged. “If they’re a Dominant/ submissive couple, that’s not uncommon. I don’t want a twenty-four/ seven slave like that, but some Doms—”

“I don’t know if he’s a Dom. Even if he is, the real problem is that he’s an asshole. Every day for the past dozen years he’s been telling my mother that she could look better. He started by picking her jewelry, because, according to him, he has an innate talent for such things, which she lacked. Then he started choosing her shoes, then shirts, skirts, pants. Now she doesn’t wear a stitch without consulting him because he’s convinced her that she’s a train wreck without him.”

Even in shadow, she saw the concern deepen on Hunter’s face. “Kata, I—”

“No!” How dare he suffer remorse now for pushing her to talk. He wanted this Pandora’s box opened, so he’d better deal. “That was just the beginning. He cut her off from all her friends, scheduling conflicting events, inventing ‘crises’ whenever she had plans to go out. Soon, even the friends who’d stood by her after my dad died, fell by the wayside. So Gordon convinced her that he was a better friend than all of them put together. She’d had a great career as an OR nurse, but five years ago, she and the surgeon lost a little boy on the operating table. My mom was crushed. You know what Gordon said? Maybe she wasn’t as talented as she’d thought, and that everyone would be better served if she stayed home. She fucking loved that job. Poof, it was gone. He’s made her too afraid to pursue getting another. Her driver’s license expired, and he’s been dragging his feet for two years to take her to have it renewed.”

“You’re right; he is an asshole,” he said softly.

Kata paused, stared at him in the dark. It wasn’t a line. He sincerely meant that. Somehow, all the jumble of anger, panic, and desire that had been biting her morphed into grief. Tears stung her eyes.

“Gordon calls all the shots. Since about the time I began driving, Mom hasn’t been the same woman I grew up with. She’s afraid to breathe without precious Gordon’s permission. She’s a . . . shell. Then three years a-ago . . .”

Hot tears rolled down Kata’s face. She tried to wipe them away, then realized the manacles made that impossible. Helplessness and impotent anger infuriated her all over again. God, what her mother must go through . . .

Kata paused, unable to relive the horror of the night everything had spiraled down the proverbial toilet of life. Hunter had only wanted her to vomit up the painful past so that he could unravel her. But she was already there, feeling a hairsbreadth away from giving in to something that could destroy her.

Granted, Hunter hadn’t belittled her. She prayed he would see why the amount of control he wanted to exert over her life scared the hell out of her and stop trying to make her surrender her soul.

“Three years ago . . .?” he prompted, wiping her tears away.

Kata slammed her eyes shut. As she pictured how that sentence ended, a sob buckled her chest with the horror her family lived with each and every day. The pity, the pain. No way she was sharing that so Hunter could rip her wide-open and make her even more vulnerable to him.

“Stop! God knows that, all trussed up like this, you can do whatever the hell you want with me, and I can’t stop you. You’ll probably even make me like it, but I—I’m done talking.”

“Okay. Shh.” Hunter kissed her forehead, caressed her cheek. “Thank you for sharing your mother’s situation with me. I appreciate the courage and trust that required.” His voice, surprisingly tender, soothed her. “I understand better, I think. You’re afraid that my wanting to control you in bed will spill to the rest of your life. Before me, you’d never spent ten minutes with a Dom. Clearly, you’ve been through a lot with Gordon. Your fear is fair.”

Of all the things he might have said, that surprised her most. And incited more tears. “You’re not bullshitting me?”

“No. We married quickly, and you don’t know me well yet. From your perspective, I took advantage of a drunk woman by hustling you to the altar, spent the night with you, and chased you to your hometown when you wanted space. When danger came your way, I ordered you not to return to work, which I’m guessing felt a lot like something Gordon would demand.” He cocked his head in thought. “Then I suppose you think I dragged you to Dallas, away from your family and friends, so I could isolate you. I got in your panties and your head until you gave me the information I needed so I could somehow use it against you. Do I have it right?”

Her eyes watered over again. She wanted to believe it was nothing more than exhaustion and a decided lack of the orgasm she’d so desperately craved. Or that her damn eyes leaked because she’d dredged up so much stuff about her mom that she usually shoved way down. But mostly, it was Hunter. He was so insightful, actually able to see the situation from a point of view other than his own.