He laughed again, couldn’t remember a time he’d enjoyed himself quite this much. And all he’d done was kiss her. So far. “As I said, I like to build anticipation.”
“Hell, you’ve had months of it, years for all I know. Why waste more time?”
“You in a hurry?”
She sighed. “You’re impossible.”
“But worth the effort.” He moved in again, framed her hips with his hands. “Like you, I imagine.”
She let him playfully pull her close. “So what exactly is it that makes you want to push me around, tell me what to do? You have control issues?”
“Me? None. I’m usually a willing slave to women.”
“And I’m an exception why?”
He lifted her chin and dipped his head, keeping his eyes on hers this time. “I have no idea. But I’m dying to figure it out.” He dropped a quick kiss on her lips, then another, then another, before finally sinking into her for a long, wet mating of tongues that had them both breathless when he finally came up for air. “And just as soon as I do, you can be in charge. For as long as you like.”
She grinned and he saw the gleam of intent in her eyes as his hands slid downward. So he flipped her around and bent her over the island, pressing himself snugly against that sweet, tight backside of hers. “But not until I’m done,” he said against the side of her neck. He ran his tongue up to her earlobe, tugging it between his teeth for a quick nip. Her hips jerked in his hands and he felt her indrawn breath. “And I plan to take a long, long time.”
7
SHE’D ALWAYS BEEN ABLE to handle anything. And she’d handled a lot. Liza knew she could handle one Dylan Jackson. Uniform or no uniform. She’d let him get good and confident, thinking he had her at his mercy…then find the right moment and have him however she wanted him. Until he begged for more. All she had to do was wait for her opening.
However, the extremely nice pressure of that hard bulge of his, pressing between the backs of her thighs, was making it a bit hard to think clearly at the moment. Her hips had a mind of their own and they wanted to grind back against him, hard, push up a bit more so that rigid length could press…just…right…. Dammit.
He’d pulled her upright when she’d been a twitch away. Keeping her hands in his, in front of her waist, he shifted just enough so that she could no longer feel him pressed against her. She felt the pinch of his teeth on the nape of her neck.
“You’re pretty sneaky,” he told her, amused.
“Your loss,” she replied flippantly. But her breath was rapid and shallow as she wondered what he had in store for her next. She was only playing this little game because it seemed to interest him, she told herself. It was arousing her because it was arousing him. That was all. She was still in control. In her mind, she was allowing him this little fantasy play.
Then she heard the rasp of steel and chain.
Her breath stopped. Her thighs clenched.
“What—what do you think you’re doing?”
“Freeing up my hands.”
She felt the cold metal brush her wrists as she looked down. And it wasn’t her own bracelets. “Where did you get those?”
“Standard police issue.”
“I mean right now.”
“A good cop is always prepared.” He slid one of the cuffs around her wrist.
“Dylan—”
“I like it when you say my name. Now hold still, this won’t hurt a bit.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say. Listen, I’m not sure this—”
“Tell me one thing,” he interrupted. “Were you, just now, planning to take advantage of this situation at the earliest possible moment? Truth.”
Why was it that his ability to climb inside her head was as arousing as it was threatening? Arousing enough for her to ignore the warning bells. “We’re a lot alike,” she said. “We both enjoy calling the shots.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He snapped one bracelet shut and she felt a spurt between her legs. Dear God, what was she getting into here? Out in the middle of nowhere, with a man she’d just met, letting him—
“I’m going to give you the key,” he said, snapping the other bracelet on, then pushing them just tight enough so that they didn’t slide off her wrists. He pressed a small key on a leather loop into her hands. “If you need help, you only have to ask me.”
“Why not just tell me what to do and leave my hands free?”
He blew a soft breath along the back of her neck, stirring the hair there…and stirring her, as well. Not being able to see his face as he spoke, as he shackled her hands, was affecting her enormously. She was so ready for him she could barely stand upright. Never in all her wild escapades—and in her former line of work, she’d had more than a few—had she ever put herself in this sort of scenario. At least not with the cuffs on herself. So why let him do this?
Because I’m so damn hot I can hardly stand it.
That, and her curiosity was engaged. Both powerfully persuasive elements.
“Are you done figuring this out?” he whispered, nipping at her earlobe, then the side of her neck.
Dammit, she’d never been this obvious to anyone. “You know, if this is the only way you can get women to do what you want, it’s no wonder you’re so hard up for a date.”
He pressed a soft kiss to the nape of her neck, then another along her collarbone. The tenderness of it, along with the bite of steel at her wrists, made her shudder. With pleasure. Dammit.
“Actually,” he said, quietly amused as he continued dropping hot little kisses here and there, “I’ve had women beg me to lock them up. I have to say you’re the first one who’s ever actually compelled me to do it, though. Probably something to do with the fact that you’d be the last one on earth to ask in the first place.”
Damn him, he made her laugh.
He slowly turned her around and looked her directly in the eyes. “Do you want me to take them off?”
She swallowed hard, the smile gone from her face now. She could say yes, he’d take them off, and she was still pretty sure they could end the evening with some amazing sex. But there was something in those hot, candy eyes of his. Something pretty close to that wild, primal feeling he’d ripped to life inside her.
This was arousing him in a new way, too. And if she wasn’t mistaken, despite his casually confident manner, he was just as surprised by it as she was. Which made her want to say no, and very possibly find herself somewhere she’d never been before.
After all, she was on a journey of self-discovery, was she not?
“It would have been easier if you hadn’t asked,” she said finally, unwilling to simply hand him the victory. “I have the key, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She merely looked at him. She’d tacitly given her consent, and that was all he was going to get from her. After all, he didn’t want this to be that easy. It wouldn’t be fun for either of them then.
He stared into her eyes and she into his. This is just about sex, Liza, she reminded herself, fighting the sensation that she could easily wallow in all that warm, caramel brown.
His grip on her hips tightened for just a moment, then he slowly turned her toward the stainless steel end of the center island.
She resisted just enough to turn her head and look at him. “And I get my turn later.”
He grinned then, only rather than relieve the tension now screaming between them, it only served to jack it up another level. “Oh, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
She turned back to the table, grinning herself. He wasn’t so tough. Besides, how long could all this “anticipation building” last, anyway? Sooner or later he’d want inside her. Her smile turned wicked. And that would be a perfect time to start her turn, now wouldn’t it?
She was merrily sliding down that quite satisfying little mental path when he abruptly raised her locked wrists and slid her shirt up over her head. Before she could pull her head free, he’d popped the front clasp of her bra.
She was still gasping at the sudden shift in action when, with her arms still held above her head, he slowly pressed her forward, his hips once again snugged up against her backside. The return of that rock-hard bulge to her now intensely sensitized inner thighs distracted her momentarily from her suddenly bared breasts.
Which made the shock of cold steel coming up against her engorged nipples a real surprise.
The rear juncture of her thighs all but burned with the heat of him pressed so intimately there, even as the cold island top sent numbing tingles all through her upper body. She was still sucking in air, unable to do more than simply feel the riot of opposite sensations he’d set off, when she felt a new one.
His tongue, his very warm tongue, sliding slowly down the ridge of her spine. He drew his big, warm hands slowly along her arms, brushing them down either side of her body, making her want badly to push up so he could cover her hard, cold nipples with those wide, warm palms of his. But he kept her pressed down…and kept his hands sliding down until he gripped her hips.
Just when it occurred to her to struggle, to try and pull her arms in so she could push up on her elbows and at least free her nipples from the shocking cold, he pulled her hips up, so that her toes just left the floor…and her slings dropped off her feet. She had to scrabble at the far edge of the table with her fingertips to keep from sliding forward.