Just in Time (34 page)

She looked up at him, and then, slowly, she got onto the bed.

When she was on her back, positioned the way he wanted, he asked, “Remember when I tied your hands in that shop, and you asked me how it looked on you?”

She drank in the sight of him standing over her holding that red ribbon. Every fantasy she’d had for the past six months, and here he was, looking more than ready to fulfill them all.

“Yes,” she said, and had to swallow against the desire that flooded her, just to say it. “I remember.”

“I couldn’t tell you then, so I’ll tell you now. It looked so good. It made me so hot, and it still does. Put your arms above your head now, because I want to see it again.”

She lifted her arms slowly overhead until they reached beyond the corner of the bed. “Like this?”

“Yeh. Brilliant.” He was breathing heavily himself, and the desire was thrumming so hard in her, she was shaking with it. She’d have done anything to have him touch her.

But he didn’t. Not in the way she needed. Instead, he was behind her, out of sight, tying her wrists together.

“Tug,” he said, and she did, but she was held fast. She couldn’t see him back there, and somehow, that made it even hotter. The hint of danger, the dark pleasure of control.

He leaned over from behind, tilted her face up to his, and kissed her, his tongue invading so deeply, his hand holding her head in place. “Oh, yeh,” he breathed into her mouth. “Looks exactly as good as I thought. But if you want to be let loose—you tell me. Or you can do it yourself.” He folded her fingers around the edge of the ribbon. “Got a bow here. You want to untie it, you pull. Or you tell me. All right?”

He’d come around to sit on the bed beside her, and she managed, somehow, to glare at him. “You do realize you’re ruining it, right?”

A low laugh, and he was bending down to kiss her again. “I need you to know we’re playing, and we’ll stop anytime you say. But you want to play harder?”

Something in his face had changed again, and she was responding to it like she was wired that way, because she was. Exactly that way. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Yes.”

And even though she knew he’d meant it, that he’d stop, that it was play...what he said next was still the hottest thing she’d ever heard.

“Then I’ll tell you this,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere today. I’m going to keep you tied to my bed for exactly as long as I want you there. I’m going to kiss you, and touch you, and tease you until you can’t stand it anymore. I’m going to make you come harder than you ever have in your life. So hard it almost hurts. And then I’m going to turn you over and…” He paused, stroked his hand over her cheek, then ran a thumb over her mouth, tracing the outline of her lips, and they were opening for him, just like that, so eager for his thumb. Closing around that thumb, sucking it, and she couldn’t help it. She needed him so much.

He smiled, and it wasn’t the Will-smile. It was something so much darker. “On second thought…I’m not going to tell you anything else. So much better if you don’t know what’s coming.”

It was as if he could see through to the secret heart of her, to her most forbidden desires, and he was giving them all to her without her even having to ask. She didn’t want him to talk anymore, though. She wanted him to do it.

He was over her at last, and she couldn’t spread her legs for him fast enough.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not getting away that easy.”

She gasped as he put a hand behind each thigh, shoved them all the way up so her knees framed her head, and held her there. So open. So vulnerable.

“Will!” She made a halfhearted attempt to squirm away, but she couldn’t escape that hard grip.

“So good,” he said. “So good, and all mine. And I’m going to be using every bit of it.”

He stopped talking then, because his mouth was at her breast, biting, sucking hard, and she was shaking again. He lingered there, making her moan, making her strain against her bonds, until, finally, when she couldn’t stand it another second, his tongue was drawing a line all the way down. To her navel, and he was staying there, too, licking in and out, teasing and playing, his hands hard on the backs of her thighs, refusing to let her squirm.

And then, finally, he was moving again. Down, and down, across the sensitive flesh of her lower belly, and all she wanted was for him to keep going. She was aching for him, needing him not to stop, and she was telling him so, and he wasn’t listening. Her hands were stretched tight above her head, her legs pinioned by his powerful hands, and he wasn’t listening at all. The more she begged, the more he slowed down.

When his tongue flicked over the sensitized nub at last, she actually screamed a little. And then he did it all. On and on, tongue and lips and even, so lightly, so agonizingly, teeth. He made her pant, and then he made her moan, and finally, he made her cry out, and she couldn’t stop.

And he refused to take her all the way there. Every time she got close, he shifted just a little, got himself barely, so frustratingly off target, while she tried to squirm and he wouldn’t let her. Over and over again, while she begged him, pleaded with him.

“Let me…” She hardly knew what she was saying. “Will. Please. Oh, please. Let me.”

“Almost. Almost.” He let go of her legs, and she lowered them to the bed and shook, and then he had his hands under her, was turning her over, the ribbon crisscrossing over her wrists, and she was desperately gripping for the corner of the mattress.

“Up on your knees,” he told her, and she scrambled to obey, her body nothing but a quivering mass of nerves, every bit of her screaming for release, for the satisfaction he was denying her.

He had her hips in his hands, was sliding inside her, and she backed into him and cried out as he filled her.

“Ah,” he sighed behind her. “Ah.” Her forehead was pressed into her hands, and she was gasping. And finally, his hand was there, and he was thrusting, rubbing, and she was almost…almost…

When he left her, she let out a cry of dismay.

“Will,” she moaned, lifting her forehead from her hands, trying to turn to face him despite her bound hands, but his hand was there on her upper back, holding her down. “Please. Don’t stop.
Please.”

He didn’t answer. Too many long seconds passed before he was inside her again, and his hand was back again, too, rubbing hard. The relief flooded her, the heady sensation filled her. Until he took his hand away, and she felt something else, and she was jumping.

His thumb, she realized with shock. Wet and warm. Circling, and diving, and thrusting where nobody had ever been before. Awakening every stimulated nerve ending, and her mouth was open, sucking on her own hand, biting down to try to bear it.

Pleasure. Dark and deep. So much. Too much.

It was so dirty. So good. He was filling her everywhere, overwhelming her, taking her over. Too intense, too much to take, and she was trying to get away, and backing into him at the same time. She needed it, no matter how much it was, how hard it was. She needed it
now.

The orgasm came on her slowly. Faint ripples in the distance that intensified, gathered, built into a monstrous wave, loomed overhead and hovered for long, breathless moments, while she stiffened and trembled and shook.

“Please,” she could hear herself moaning, as if her voice were coming from far away. “Please. Please.” And then the wave broke over her, so strong, so intense, and she was wailing.
“Pleeeease…”

This time, he didn’t stop. All the tension he’d built so agonizingly, torturously slowly was released in massive spasms that seized her, took her, shook her hard. She was still crying out, still rocking back and forth, the ribbon tightening around her wrists as he thrust into her again and again, taking her body over for what felt like minutes. Taking her higher, and higher still, all the way to the top and over the edge.

It was too hard. It was too rough. It was all the way to the limit. It was everything.

When he’d untied her and she was lying under the duvet with him, curled against his chest, sated and sleepy, she managed to ask, “That’s what you call ‘just having a good time, and making sure she does, too?’”

She could feel the rumble in his chest as he laughed, and there was pure satisfaction in his voice. “Reckon you bring it out in me, eh.”

“Mm. Or maybe you just weren’t sharing.”

“Could be.”

“Next you’re going to tell me that you actually
do
spank.”

“Ah. Now that, I
haven’t
done. I told you the truth about that. I knew I wouldn’t hurt a woman, but I’ve always been afraid I’d scare her.” Now, he ran a big hand over her bottom, and she shivered at the tingling pleasure of it. He gave her a hard slap there, and she jumped. “But I’m thinking,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice, “that I may not have given you enough credit for courage. We’ll wait until you’re really, really naughty, eh. And then we’ll see if you look as good bent over my knee as I was imagining that day.”

“You really were?” She shivered. She couldn’t help it.

“Oh, yeh. I really was. Couldn’t cope too well with Gretchen in that spot where she had no place being, and I was pretty narked with you, so I put you there in my mind, and…” He sighed. “I gave you one hell of a spanking, got you all pink and warm for me, and then I put you on your hands and knees, and…well.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “You know what else I did, because I just did it. But, yeh. We’ve got a fair few things we could work through before we got done with my list, let’s just say. Now that I know you’re open to it.”

“I’m open to it.” It was easier to say it against his chest, when she didn’t have to look at him.

“Well, then.” She could hear the satisfaction, the way he was all but humming with it. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Faith was relaxed to the point of bonelessness by the time she was sitting on one of the big couches next to Talia that evening, eating Thai takeaway in front of the TV. She had no idea what she was watching, but who cared?

Will had paid about as much attention to her today as a man possibly could. Right up until they’d turned on the TV, because from then on, he’d been all focus. He wasn’t even sitting with her. Clearly, this was work, not recreation, but of course it was. It was much more than a game for him. It was his job, and his entire family’s livelihood.

He’d gotten distracted once, though. He’d even laughed. It had been before the game, of course, and he’d been laughing at her, but still.

Talia had been trying to explain the rules to her in one headlong ten-minute rush as the pre-match commentary had ticked down on the screen. The girl had talked about the breakdown and the ruck and the scrum and the lineout until Faith’s head had been swimming.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Faith said at last. “I’m completely confused. Let’s start over. The English guys are wearing white, and New Zealand’s wearing black, right?”

“Yeh,” Will said. “That would be why we’re called the All Blacks.”

“That’s good. Means I can tell who’s who,” Faith said.

“Well, that and we’re better-looking,” Will said. “Because of all us brown boys.”

“Obviously,” she said solemnly. “That goes without saying. And they can only move the ball by passing it backwards.”

“Or kicking it,” Will said. “Or handing it off in the breakdown, of course.”

Faith put up a hand. “No breakdown,” she commanded. Will laughed, and she continued. “When our guys have the ball, they’re trying to get across the line and fall down, and the other guys are trying to stop them, and then it switches around because…because reasons, and everybody goes the other way. We’re ahead when there are more points for us in a little box that I devoutly hope will be on the screen. And that is all I need to know.”

Will was grinning. “Got to get you up in the commentators’ box. I’d pay money to hear that.”

She needed to know a little more than that, though, when the anthems had been sung and the men in black were striding to the middle of the field, ferocious intent in every swinging arm, every hard line of jaw.