Page 109 of Bound

Of hungry mouths as they moaned and tasted. Greedy fingers as they groped and penetrated. Slick skin as it glided and undulated, smacked and fucked…

Brickham.

Brickham!

For the first time in four weeks, she couldn’t battle the word on her lips anymore. It spilled from her lips as heavy tears brimmed from her eyes. The drops poured down her cheeks and then salted her lips.

And once it was there, spoken into existence in this dark and beautiful place, she never wanted to stop it again.

She sobbed it. Pleaded it. Snarled it.

But most of all, loved it.

Over and over again.

Until she fell to her knees in front of the desk, unable to stop saying the perfect, powerful syllables of the perfect, powerful man who had left this island and taken her whole damn heart with him.

Clang.

She startled but gave in to no shriek. Whatever had fallen to the floor in front of her was not that large. Probably an ill-fastened part of an overhead light. She was grateful for it, actually. The owner of this place was owed a visit from his royal family that did not start with his princess in a blubbering heap on the floor.

But as she rose to rest on her haunches, still swiping beneath her eyes, her vision finally cleared.

And her breathing fully stopped.

As she recognized the exact source of her bizarre sensations from outside.

She had been summoned by a force of nature.

The towering, devastating mountain of a man who loomed over her, giant hand still outstretched because of the object he had allowed to tumble from it.

A heart-shaped cookie cutter. With a hand-scribbled note now taped securely to it.

Steel hearts were meant to be filled by those they cut.

Her note. The one she had tucked into his suitcase along with their special memento.

“Brickham.”

It was her most wobbly inflection of the whole litany, but she cared not. It was the last time she planned on saying it, and the earthquake in her voice felt like a perfect fit with this surreal fantasy. Part of her expected to wake up any second, still back in the town car, being nudged into consciousness by Requiemme. But that brought an odd sense of freedom.

If this was her dream, then she could say and do whatever she damn well wanted.

“Oh…Sir.”

And oh, how she truly wanted to say that.

Just before she indulged the doing part.

She began by hooking her first two fingers into one of the holes in his sinfully soft black jeans. When she found a perfectly placed rip in one of the legs, she curled her other hand into it. She now had leverage to inch her way up his body. All of his hard ridges and mighty muscles felt so blissfully hard and real, enough that she pressed herself as tightly against them as she could during her sensual climb.

As was the way in wonderful dreams, he wore no shirt at all. So once she climbed high enough to explore him there, she did. The molded ridges of his torso became trembling response zones to her splayed fingertips. His snags of breath puffed out in matching time, wordless urges for her to keep touching him like this. So she did. Endlessly. Greedily. Marveling, over and over, at the perfection of him. The flawless magic of this.

“Creator’s glory.” She found air of her own to mold into words. “Brickham. My Sir,” she worshipfully uttered. “You are so—”

And then, even words were impossible—as her mouth was suddenly smashed beneath his, taken in a torrid kiss.

Taken? Oh, no.