“What—this wasn’t atest,” she said, finally realizing what Tom was getting at.
Tom scoffed. “Of course it was a test. But the important thing is, Ipassed.” He stood up and held her face between his hands. “I said I’d do it for you. And I did. Because I’m going to keep taking care of you.”
Rose closed her eyes and let the weight of that promise sink in. She wanted so badly to believe him. Tom’s thumbs stroked her cheekbones, soothing her, and the way she wanted it to continue scared her with the intensity of the feeling.
“Was there anything else?” Tom prompted her, fingers tangled in her hair. “Was there anything else you wanted?”
His tone was such a volatile mix of pride and uncertaintythat Rose’s heart ached for him. “No, I couldn’t have asked for anything else,” she said honestly. He’d given her so much more than she’d ever expected to have.
She put her hands on his waist, just steadying herself against the solidity of his body, and he looked down at the touch. His mouth pursed.
“Oh wait,” he said. “I guess there was one more thing.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that, so she tilted her face up just as he leaned in to kiss her. His kiss wasn’t delicate or gentle in the way he often approached her these days. He held her still with both hands so that he could kiss her at his pace—a hot sweep of tongue in her mouth and the sweet pressure of his lips claiming hers. He sat down again and wrapped her in muscular arms, holding her until she relaxed into his embrace.
She could have done that for a long time. Kissing Tom was an activity that didn’t allow for a lot of extraneous thoughts, and she would have welcomed the opportunity to drown out any inner voices that told her she was doomed to be alone in the fully absorbing activity of making out with him. She couldn’t do anything else while kissing him; she neverwantedto be doing anything else while kissing him.
It stopped before she was ready. She didn’t expect it when Tom gave her a light shove against her shoulders that had her landing flat on the mattress. She gave a single surprised huff of amusement, because Tom had been treating her with kid gloves, and she’d wondered when he’d decide to reopen the question of whether she was allowedany kinky shitif she used her words correctly. She expected him to climb up onto the bednext to her and continue things on a horizontal plane, but her laugh turned into more of a gasp when Tom none-too-gently rolled her to her stomach so that she was bent over the side of the mattress.
She pushed up on her elbows to look back at him.
“Um,” she said in a skeptical tone of voice. She was fully dressed, and so was he. What was he even planning to accomplish with her in this position?
“You asked for it, Rosie,” he said calmly, hands at his belt and eyes warm on her body bent over before him. With unhurried movements, he undid his belt and yanked it free of its loops with a heavysnickof leather against cloth. Even then, Rose didn’t connect any dots until he loomed back over her and gathered her two wrists in his right hand.
“You’re going to need to scoot a little,” he said, giving her a light slap on the ass to urge her down toward the foot of the bed. “If you still want me to pin you to the mattress and rail you. In a loving way. In a respectful way. Do you want that?”
The noise she made through her nose was mostly one of disbelief, but she was seized with a sudden molten impulse of want that slid through her core like a drop of water down a hot pan. Yes. She did want that. She wanted to be the desired thing for once. She wanted the heated undercurrent of desire in Tom’s voice. She didn’t move, not sure whether she was actually supposed to.
Tom leaned back down and put his mouth next to her ear.
“Are you going to be a good girl and move, or are you going to be a bad girl and I move you?” he asked, and thank God he was an actor, because there was no way Rose could haveever delivered a line like that and not died of embarrassment, but he sounded like he’d never made a more serious offer in his life.
Rose considered whether she wanted to be good or bad. This was the choice, as Snowy would have put it, of the whole vibe. She could have Tom’s big hands gripping her hips or maybe the back of her neck. The idea behind being bad was that she could make up for it, and then she’d be good. But she wanted to be good from the start. She wanted Tom to think she was good, to whisperYou look so fucking prettyin her ear. She wanted to do it just right for him. So she moved down to the edge of the bed and put her arms straight out in front of her.
Tom looped his belt around her wrists and neatly tightened it so that it held her wrists together. He ran a thumb over the places where the leather rubbed against her skin, checking that it wasn’t too tight.
“Jesus Christ,” Rose said, blinking at the adept way he’d done that, the practice it implied.
“What, did you think I didn’t knowhowto do the kinky stuff?” he asked, sounding warmly amused. “I know. I just didn’t think our first night back together needed to be a softcore bondage scene.”
He ran his hands all the way down the length of her body from her wrists, letting her know he could touch her anywhere. His fingers lingered on her hips, cupping her ass in a possessive way before hiking the skirt of her dress up to her waist.
“I, um,” Rose said, trying to imagine how this was going to go and coming up blank. She’d never done this. She couldn’t even recall talking about this other than in a joking way. Shelaughed politely, feeling the absurd need to distance herself from this act even with her wrists tied together. “I was bluffing, really. You don’t have to do this.”
“Babe, I’m tying you up so thatyoudon’t have to do anything,” he said, hands petting her ass over the satin of her panties. “I mean, if you want to make some really good noises, I’d like that. But I’m going to take care of you. That’s what it’s about, right? Control. Having it. Losing it.”
He slipped his hand around her hip, under the elastic, and curved it in toward her core, just parting her folds with the tip of his thumb. He traced his fingertip back and forth in a small soothing orbit, his other hand tightening on her body. He leaned back in. “You’re really wet for someone who was bluffing,” he confided softly, mouth dipping in long enough to catch the edge of her earlobe with his teeth. Rose shivered violently as Tom eased her underwear down to her ankles.
She was totally exposed to him, bare from the waist down, bent over like an offering. Tom nudged her legs apart with a foot as though considering his options.
“I don’t think this is enough,” he said thoughtfully, and she felt a cool breeze on her exposed legs as he stepped away, returning in a moment with the two curtain tie-backs from the window. When he tied a loop around one foot and secured it to the foot of the bed, Rose took a deep breath and held it. Yes. She really couldn’t do anything from this position, her hands and legs tied. Tom would take care of her with his strong hands and big cock and better ideas of how to fulfill her very vague idea of doing something kinky.
“Do we need a safe word?” she asked, feeling hot and shakythrough her stomach even though he’d barely touched her. Was there anything else she was supposed to do?
“Just say stop if you want me to stop. I won’t remember what you mean if you start yelling colors,” Tom said, voice already rougher and deeper. He stayed on the floor behind her once both her legs were secured, but Rose was still shocked at the slide of both his hands up the backs of her thighs. She tensed when his palms gripped the globes of her ass.
“Up on your tippy toes, Rosie,” he said, and then she felt his breath right against her entrance. She obeyed more out of instinct than because she understood what was about to happen, but Tom’s hot, wet mouth landing over her core was a thing she both wanted with every fiber of her body and would never have been able to ask for.
