I remain in place while he’s gone, watching the city lights glittering in the darkening evening.
When Killian returns, my entire body starts prickling with awareness. He has brought something that he sets on the floor, but I don’t turn to see what. I don’t want to ruin the trance of the moment.
“Lift your hair,” he says in that same soft voice as before, coming up behind me.
Slowly, I reach back and sweep my hair up off my neck.
“Close your eyes.” He trails a finger down the front of my neck—over my windpipe.
I let my eyes fall shut and draw a deep, shuddery breath at the feeling of something wide and smooth replacing his finger. Nervous anticipation skitters across my skin as he wraps it around my neck and fastens it at the back.
“What is it?” I whisper, my pulse speeding beneath the strange thing that grips my neck in a firm embrace.
“A collar.”
“Why?” I lift a hand to touch the leather and find a ring attached to the front.
“Because it suits you.”
It feels utterly wrong. A collar around my neck.Only animals wear collars.But somehow, it feels entirely right too. Like I belong to him.
“Take off your dress,” he whispers.
A trance-like state descends upon me as I slowly get up and turn to face him—the guy I’ve been yearning for ever since the first time he took my hand in his and even through the years of taunting and derision that followed.
I reach behind me and pull the zipper down, push the straps off my shoulders, and let gravity drag the heavy skirt to the ground, landing in a pool around my feet.
He watches my every move, then rakes his eyes down my half-naked body. “Stay,” he says with a roughness that has my blood swooshing.
He steps out of my line of sight, and the soft clatter of objects marks his movements as he rummages through a bag and sets things on the floor.
Then he comes up behind me, and the feeling of something descending over my head makes me draw a sharp breath. It’s more leather. Covering my eyes. Shrouding my world in darkness as he tightens the part over my nose to a snugger fit.
His fingers come to my bra clasp, flicking it open, then slipping the straps off my shoulders. “Have you ever played with cuffs?”
“Hand cuffs?” I ask nervously. “No.” I shudder at the idea. I have only had sex once, and I’m not sure that even counts. The guy came so fast I barely realized he had penetrated.
“Me either.”
Something rattles. Cold metal snaps around my right wrist, sending shudders through my body. Rapid clicking sounds as Killian fastens another cuff around my left wrist, locking my arms together behind my back.
I pull at the cuffs to test the strength. No give. And I can’t see. Suddenly, the situation descends over me. I’m alone with the guy who has been taunting me for years. Cuffed, blind, and helpless.
“I-I’m not sure I like this,” I stutter.
“No? I happen to like it very much. You look very beautiful like this.” He drags his hand down my spine, sending a cascade of shudders across my skin and deep into some foreign place within my belly. “I want you, Jenna, bound and at my mercy. Don’t say that you don’t want this too. I’ve noticed how you’ve been looking at me all those years.”
“W-why now?”
“Because you won.”
I release a small laugh. “I honestly thought you’d be mad at me for winning.”
He kisses my shoulder. “How could I be mad at such a beautiful little thing?”
A giggle erupts from my throat as he kisses and nibbles my skin just below the collar.
“Do you want me, Jenna?” he asks in a seductive voice that has a flood of heat rushing through me and washing away the uncertainty.
