Working Stiff(99)

Passion hummed in her blood, but being carried so easily made her feel so small, so helpless. She laid her head on his shoulder, huddling closer to him.

He lowered her, and her naked butt touched something padded. She wasn’t hanging on to his neck so she didn’t need to let go, but she adjusted herself as his arms withdrew.

Cash stroked her cheek, still looking into her eyes. “Lie back.”

She reached and touched the bench beside her thighs. Her fingers found rails along the side of the bench, and she held on as she leaned back. Cash had a small smile on his face, and he watched her, seeming to approve.

The bench-thing rose behind her lower back as she let herself lean back, but it bent down behind her as she lay back farther.

Rox glanced behind herself, unsure.

The bench curved back like a bridge, so that she would be bowed backward across it. Between her legs, the seat of the bench had been cut away so that someone could stand there, or whatever. At least the manufacturer had thought that through.

When she turned back, Cash’s eyes were inches from hers. He had leaned over and was bracing himself on the rails to stare at her. The white bandage on his left cheek glowed in the flickering lights. “Lie back.”

“Okay.” Her voice shook a little, but she inched backward, lengthening her neck as she stretched across the bench. The leather upholstery cooled her naked back. Her legs hung over the end, but she braced her high heels on tile floor. Her head fell back. Blood rushed behind her eyes, and she looked over her boobs at him.

Cash was still leaning over her, watching her lie back. His gaze traveled downward toward her boobs and waist, and a glimmer stole into his green eyes. As he looked down her body, he sucked one side of his lower lip into his mouth and bit it.

Wow.

When he looked up at her, his grin reached all the way to his eyes, and he leaned down and kissed her stomach without looking away.

Without thinking, she reached out and cradled his cheek in her hand.

He turned his head and kissed the heel of her hand, but then he held her wrist and pushed up, still gripping her wrist. “I said, don’t touch me.”

He pushed himself off her and walked around where she lay, holding her arm in the air, and pressed her hand to the rail above her head.

“Hold on,” he said, looking into her eyes again. “Don’t let go. Stay just like that.”

She nodded and held onto the cold rail.

Cash walked over to one of the cabinets, the one that was filled with twisted skeins of rope.

Rox watched him walk away. Light from the sconces shone on his bare shoulders and the bulges of his back, and his tight butt flexed under his suit slacks as he strode over to the case. She had watched that ass for years, wanting to grab it. Now that she had had her hands all over it, she knew that it was indeed as rock hard as it looked under that light wool suit fabric that always clung to the hollows of his ass cheeks.

At the rope cabinet, his fingers walked among the smaller knots on the top row. The bright strands twitched as he touched them. He picked two scarlet ropes, lifting them from their hooks, and walked back to her with them clenched in his fist.

Cash stood above her head, and she watched him unfurl the ropes.

She pressed her lips together, keeping herself from asking what the heck he was going to do.

“Anything to say?” he asked.

Rox shook her head no. She wasn’t going to invoke her safe word.

But she wanted to ask what he was planning to do with the ropes.

She didn’t have to wait long.

He lashed her wrists to iron loops that jutted out from the sides of the bench just above her ears.

When he was done, he walked past her to her feet.

The ropes held firm when Rox twisted her hands, but they didn’t tighten. If she let her hands go limp, she couldn’t even feel the ropes.

Down by her feet, Cash picked up her ankles and bent her knees to fold her legs, and he gently spread her thighs until she felt some kind of footrest through the shoes. He tied her ankles to yet more loops that she hadn’t noticed.

This felt very, very helpless. Rox swallowed hard and held down the snake of panic that had climbed into her throat.

Cash ran his hands up her legs and her thighs, stroking her.

Rox looked up at the ceiling, willing her hot eyes to stay dry. If she let a tear leak out, he would see it, and she didn’t want him to see. She wasn’t weak like that.

His hands on her legs, kneading and rubbing her flesh, that felt so very, very good.

“You’re tense,” he said.

Yeah. No kidding. She adjusted her legs as much as the ties would allow her.

He said, “For tonight, give up all your responsibility and control. Don’t worry. Let it all go. I’ll take care of everything, lieveke. I’ll take care of you.”