“I’m right here, you know. I can hear you.” Eva frowned and tried to flex her shoulders.
“Oh, honey, don’t try to do that right now. It looks like you’re about to dislocate something.”
Eva snorted at Sheila’s show of concern. “It feels like I’m about to dislocate something. And my nose itches.”
“Drew, scratch her nose. In fact, you know what? We’re going to take five here. We’ll text you when we’re on the way back. Come on, Danny, let’s go for a walk or something.” On her way out, Sheila gave Drew a piercing look that he struggled to interpret. Was she angry with him? Did she want him to do something?
Eva was rubbing her itchy nose against his fingertips, clearly not very satisfied with the arrangement. “Can’t you untie me?”
“No, not unless it actively hurts or something’s going numb. We’re too far into this. It would take forever to redo it, then they’d have to reset the lighting, and I don’t think Sheila’s in any mood to wait around for that. Is your nose all scratched now?”
“It’s better,” she confessed with sigh, “and this doesn’t hurt, exactly.”
Drew traced his hands over the knots and then let them trail over her shoulders, where he began to work at the taut muscles as much as Eva’s position would allow. She was sitting on the floor, knees folded neatly to one side, and when Drew sat behind her to get a better angle on the massage, her fingers brushed lightly against the crotch of his jeans.
Both of them held their breath for a moment, then released it again as he settled in behind her. They were clearly pretending it hadn’t happened, and Drew was all right with that. Acknowledging it would probably only worsen the situation. Given that he had been walking around half hard all day, he really couldn’t take having things worsened at that point. Their encounter the previous night had, if anything, made his need keener instead of easing the pressure. It was as if, rather than working her out of his system, he had only worked her deeper in.
“I can’t untie you,” he said as he worked his fingers more firmly against her, “but I could try to relax you.”
She tensed instantly, pulling away, and Drew mentally smacked his forehead for dropping such a stupefyingly obvious line. “I mean really to relax you, not—”
“I know what you meant.”
“Sorry.”
“No. You shouldn’t apologize. I know you’re trying to help.”
“Okay. So then let me help.”
She took a moment too long to answer, and Drew knew he was about to hear less than the truth. “I just want to get this over with.”
His response, given without thinking, was more forceful than he meant it to be. “No you don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
Figuring he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, Drew leaned forward and pulled Eva back by the shoulders until her arms pressed against his chest again. He could feel her wild pulse, her quickening breath, and it gave him courage to continue in his reckless course of action.
“You don’t want to get this over with. You want to drag it out.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“On the contrary, I know many things about you, Miss Godfrey. Including some things you apparently don’t want me to know.”
“Oh? Such as?”
Always one for a challenge, Drew held Eva tighter to prevent her escape, leaning over her shoulder and turning her slightly to look at her. “Such as the thing about how turned-on you get when I tie you up.”
He kissed her before she could answer, muscling his way in, giving in to the impatience that had plagued him all afternoon. They were both breathing hard when he finally let up and continued talking.
“You don’t want to admit it, but it’s true,” he went on. “And I don’t understand what the issue is. You have friends in the lifestyle. Not just hobbyists, either. You know the deal. You don’t seem to have a moral objection to it. You’re even agreeing to be photographed for a book about it. It’s obvious you love this, bad experience or not. I can’t figure out why you’re working so hard to fight it, Evie.”
A look of sheer misery crossed her normally implacable face, and Drew’s heart nearly broke at the obvious pain.
“Is that the only reason you wanted to go out with me? So you could do that?”
“The only reason?” Drew shrugged. “No, not the only reason, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about how you’d look that way. All tied up,” he clarified, as his hands wandered from her shoulders and brushed over her breasts on the way down to her waist. “From your neck to your feet, nice and tight.”