“What do you see when you look at me?” he asked.
I looked at him. His face wasn’t well-lit, but I let my eyes trace down the lines of his eyebrows, his nose, his chin.
Emeralds.
No, not emeralds. Something less… elegant.
Uncut gems.
“I see the green in your eyes,” I said. “Deep. The more I look, the darker they get.”
Brilliant stones, raw and unpolished. Hidden in the depths of the earth, where fires burn.
“You see the darkness.”
I didn’t know what he wanted from me. Standing so close to me, he took my focus away from the art on the walls. His eyes…
Yes, the darkness.
I inhaled, aware that I had been holding my breath. It seemed to snap him out of his reverie.
“Come,” he said. That one word, nothing more.
He took my wrist and led me to the bed that was in the middle of the room. I could feel his fingers burning on my skin, sending tingles of anticipation through me.
This was it. I steadied myself and stood ready. Ready, I thought, for whatever came next.
I wasn’t ready, though. I wasn’t ready at all.
“Jake?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said blankly.
“Sorry.”
“Take off your dress.”
There was a strange look in his eyes. A thrill went down my spine. He was going to take me. He was going to get me naked and then have sex with me and I would no longer be a virgin. The thought of it made my heart leap with fear and desire both.
I slipped off the straps of the dress. It puddled around my feet and I stepped out of it.
“Now your bra,” he said.
He wasn’t touching me, but it felt like the whole room had hands on me as I reached back and unclasped my bra. I wetted my bottom lip and let it fall to the floor.
He nodded, inhaling slightly.
“Your panties.”
Jake inhaled slightly as I bent down and pushed down my panties to my ankles, stepping out one foot at a time.
He patted the middle of the bed and I crawled over. Naked, on my hands and knees, I had never felt so vulnerable.
First he took one of my hands. A vision popped into my head of him kissing the back of my hand like Prince Charming. It quickly evaporated as he lifted my arm and clicked one of the handcuffs securely around my wrist. Then another handcuff on the other wrist.
“You wanted to know who I am?” he said flatly. He pulled at the chains at the bedposts and my hands were yanked upward into the air. I yelped as the cuffs stretched my arms out wide. I was on my knees, in a grotesque imitation of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
“This is who I am,” he said. His voice had dropped to a low whisper, but in this room it sounded as loud as anything. My heart was pounding in my ears.
He let his suit jacket drop off of him, catching it with one hand. He tossed it over one of the bedposts and walked around behind me. I craned my head but couldn’t see him anymore.
Crack! It was the sound of his hand on my ass that made me jump, before the tingles of pain shot across my skin. I cried out, and as my mouth opened he brought his tie around, gagging me with the fabric. I felt his fingers knot the tie roughly behind my head, and I whimpered.
All of a sudden, the weight of my decision, of my acceptance, came crashing down on me. I was tied up, and he was going to use me however he wanted. My breaths came fast through the gag, and I tried not to hyperventilate.
At the same time, his spank had woken up part of me that I didn’t know existed. Heat surged through my body and a throb of desire made its way even through my fear.
“You’re about to find out more about me than you might have wanted to know. You might find out something about yourself, too, Lacey,” he whispered in my ear. I shuddered as he ran a finger down my spine. And I knew when he spoke, knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was smiling.
“Let’s get started.”
Chapter Nine
He ran his hand down my back, feeling everything. His hands moved down, over my hips, past where I was hot and throbbing. They moved down over my legs and my calves. His touch was a caress, but it was a possessive touch. As though he was examining a piece of property that he’d just bought. I supposed that was kind of true. He’d bought me with a few kind words and a decision.
No. There was something else about him. Something that I couldn’t see now, but I knew was there. It was the way he’d looked at me in the art gallery. Underneath the Kage painting.
“When I first saw you, Lacey, do you know what I saw?”
I shook my head.
“I saw your feet. Barefoot. Vulnerable.”
His hands moved now to the bare soles of my feet. I twitched as he cupped my foot in his hand, his thumb caressing the arch there.
“I thought that’s what you would be. Just like all my others. Young and innocent.”