He reached between his shoulder blades to yank the soft cotton over his head and drop it on the floor. His shoulders were heavily muscled, the hard planes of his chest hidden by a mat of thick blond hair tapering to a line that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. He worked out three times a week over his lunch hour, and while she’d resented his commitment to his exercise routine when he didn’t have time for lunch with her, at the moment she had a healthy appreciation for a hard male body.
“You don’t have much left on,” she taunted, eyeing the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs, visible above his jeans. “The rules are coming back to me. The loser plays sex slave to the winner. I’m going to be much more relaxed when we do talk.”
His eyes glinted in the shadowy darkness. “All these threats remind me of better ways to put that mouth to good use.”
She never found him again. The master strategist wordlessly yanked her from a succession of hiding places. In less than half an hour all she wore were her panties as she huddled behind the dining room drapes, shivering from the cool air and the erotic combination of fear and lust twining along her nerves. The drapes masked the watch’s warning beep so she felt sure two minutes had passed, but when Shane pulled back the curtains, startling her just as the beeping started on the watch in his hand, she knew what had taken him so long to find her.
A length of dark blue silk rope dangled from his hand.
Chapter Four
With a grip on her upper arm that wasn’t quite gentle, Shane yanked her from behind the curtain and bent her over the dining room table. Caught off guard, Natalie put out both hands to brace her fall, then gasped as he stepped into her bottom, trapping her against the table. He grabbed her right hand and slipped a loop of the midnight blue silk rope over her wrist, tightened it, then put a hand between her shoulder blades to keep her bent forward as he reached for her left wrist. In seconds both hands were secured behind her back. He’d left a length of rope between the ties around her wrists, easing the strain on her shoulders. They’d engaged in enough restraint play in the past for her to know she could handle silk rope longer than handcuffs biting into her wrists.
This didn’t bode well for her.
Ominously silent, Shane marched her upstairs, not bothering to hide his interest in the way her breasts bounced as she hurried. Her nipples were erect from cold and arousal, and heat stained her cheeks because when her husband went quiet, the whole game changed.
In the bedroom they stopped in front of the chaise. A play of light and shadows danced across his face as he added two thick logs to the fire then brushed his hands against his jeans and considered her, top to toe and back up again. She knew better than to tug on the rope. Shane learned knot-tying on his father’s sailboat. She wasn’t going anywhere in the immediate future.
His breathing was even as he came to stand behind her and rest his chin on her shoulder. The five o’clock shadow prickled her skin but it was the rope around her wrists, his breath wafting over her breasts as he looked down her body and slid his fingers into the white silk fabric stretched across her hipbones that made her bite her lip and shimmy.
“You lose,” he said matter-of-factly. He skated his palms down her hips to her thighs and her panties dropped to the floor.
The fire warmed her front body while his skin warmed her back. Her nipples tightened under his gaze, but the pleasurable consequences of losing didn’t change the emotion roiling inside her. She bit her lip again, this time to hold back the words she was supposed to say.
After a long moment passed, he prompted her. “Now you ask me what I want, Natalie.”
“No.”
His hands slid back up over the swell of her belly to her breasts, where he cupped the soft flesh, then pinched her nipples, soft, teasing pressure and tugs until she undulated in his arms. “Ask me what I want,” he repeated.
She shook her head. Her hair tumbled into her eyes, adding more shadows to her vision. Shadows upon shadows, the scent of Shane in her nostrils, blood pounding in her ears and between her legs. She couldn’t think.
He lifted his hand and tucked it behind her ear, then traced a finger along her lower lip. “Not going to cooperate?” he murmured. “I’ll take some time to remember my options, then.”
Before she could respond he wrapped an arm around her waist and sat down in the middle the chaise, pulling her face-down on his lap. Facing the fire lengthwise on the chaise, she struggled against this new level of helplessness.
“What are you doing?” she yelped. “This isn’t how we played this game!”
“Natalie, as a student of history surely you remember that the winners made the rules,” he said easily, then urged her legs apart so one foot rested on the chaise’s curved back while the other hung over the side. He ran his palm up the back of her thigh and squeezed her buttock, then did the same thing on the other side. When he repeated the motion he landed a sharp smack on the fullness of each inner cheek. A firm massage to the now stinging curve of her ass, then another smack, sharper and harder than the first.
“Shane! You’re not playing fair!”