26. CHAPTER 26
T onight she wanted something wilder. Dark corridors. Pursuit. She wanted to be chased. And caught.
The oak door was heavy, but it swung open without protest. Though the passage ahead was cool and dark as always, it no longer filled her with fear. She slipped through and pulled the door shut behind her.
How long would he give her? She imagined him standing in his dressing room, her note in his hand, the crease between his brows deepening as he read.
Find me. I dare you.
Cheeky. Reckless. The sort of thing she suspected the old Vivienne might have done.
She reached their room and lit the candles. The bed she had made with clean sheets the day before. Everything was ready. She ducked back into the corridor. It wouldn't do to be found too quickly. The game was in the pursuit, the finding. The capturing.
She dove farther into the tunnels. The corridor narrowed. The ceiling dropped. She pressed herself into an alcove between two pillars and held her breath. Waiting.
Silence. The drip of water somewhere deep in the stone. Her own pulse, loud and fast.
Then — a footfall. Distant. Unhurried.
He was coming .
Her stomach dropped, and she pressed deeper into the shadows. The thrill, the wanting that coiled low in her body, was unlike anything she had felt before.
He advanced with deliberate steps. The thought sent another surge of heat through her. He was not chasing. He was stalking.
She shifted in the alcove. Her nightgown clung to her thighs where the cold stone had pressed the fabric to her skin.
She heard him more clearly now — closer than she had expected.
He had not come through the kitchen passage.
He had taken another route, one she didn't know existed, and the realization that this castle held secrets she had not yet discovered made her breath catch.
The footsteps stopped.
She pressed further into the alcove. The silence was absolute. She could hear the blood in her own ears.
Then his voice, low and close, came from the direction she had not been watching.
"You gave away your position, Vivi."
She spun. He was behind her, a black silhouette in the passage she had assumed was a dead end. He must have come through another tunnel — circled around behind her while she waited in the wrong shadow.
She bolted.
Took a right turn into another passage. Stopped to listen. Was he still behind her? She couldn't hear him now, but somehow knew he was still chasing her. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. From the run or from thrill of the chase? A bit of both, she suspected. She turned and took off running again.
And made it three strides before his arm caught her around the waist. She collided with his chest — hard, warm, and the breath left her in a rush. He lifted her off her feet before she could draw another.
"Caught," he said.
She was over his shoulder before she could respond.
His arm locked across the backs of her thighs, his hand splayed wide and warm against the thin cotton of her nightgown, and the world tilted.
She felt the strength in him, the ease with which he carried her, and the sensation of being handled, claimed, sent a bolt of pure want through her so sharp she forgot to struggle.
He carried her into the room. Set her on her feet. His eyes moved over the bed she had made with fresh linen. Over the swept floor, the folded sheets, the silk ropes hanging from their hooks. Over her.
She watched his expression shift. Surprise. Understanding. A heat so intense it darkened his eyes to black.
"You prepared this." Not a question.
"I thought it would be a good idea. To have it ready… for the next time."
"You cleaned our room, made the bed." He was circling her. "And then you slipped a note under my door and ran."
She lifted her chin. "I did."
He stepped closer. His fingers caught the ribbon at her throat and tugged it loose. The nightgown sagged off one shoulder.
"Naughty of you, my pet, to taunt me and run from me."
Her breath stuttered. The word pet — spoken in that register, low, dark, and promising — did something to the base of her spine.
"Naughty girls," he said, pushing the nightgown off the other shoulder, letting it pool at her waist, "need to be caught and taught discipline." He reached for the silk rope on the nearest hook.
She stood immobile. The air was cool on her bare skin, but his hands were warm as they gathered her arms and crossed them at the small of her back.
"I am going to bind you," he said. "Is this what you came here for?"
"Yes."
He wound the silk around her wrists, up her forearms, across her chest, over her shoulders: an intricate harness that held her arms pinned behind her back and framed her breasts in bands of silk.
The rope was soft. His hands were not — they were sure and precise, pulling each strand snug, checking the tension with his fingers, adjusting where the silk pressed against her skin.
When he had finished, she could not move her arms. She could breathe and arch. She could do nothing else .
"Lie down," he said.
She lay on the bed. On her back, her arms beneath her — not painful, but present, a constant awareness of her own helplessness.
The bindings thrust her breasts up, her nipples puckering under the cold air and his scrutiny.
He stood over her, looking down, and she could see his chest rising and falling faster than his composure would admit.
He tugged off her nightgown, leaving her completely exposed. The vulnerability sent a rush of pleasure to her intimate parts. He reached for the vial of oil on the bedside shelf.
"A massage?" she said. "I thought I was being punished."
"You are." He poured oil into his palm and rubbed his hands together. The scent of almonds filled the room. "Your punishment is that I will decide how and when to touch you, and I won't allow you to rush me."
He started at her collarbones. Long strokes down her chest, his thumbs tracing the line where silk met skin, carefully avoiding her puckered nipples that begged for his attention. His hands spread wide over her ribs, pressing the oil into her skin.
When at last his hands reached her breasts, he cupped them, his thumbs circling slowly inward until they grazed her nipples.
She arched into the touch. He straddled her and kept her hips down with his own, while his hands continued the slow torment of her breasts — circling, then pinching until she arched off the bed, her legs falling open in instinctive invitation.
"Close your legs," he commanded.
"You're..." She lost the word when he pinched again, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her hips lifted off the bed.
"Stay still."
"I can't."
"Then I shall have to make sure of it."
He flipped her over, mindful of her bound arms, settling her on her front with her face turned to one side.
The silk harness pressed into her back, holding her arms. He resumed the massage from behind: her shoulders, the channel of her spine, the curve of her waist. His hands were slick and warm and everywhere, and every stroke ended at her hips, and every time he stopped she felt the absence like a dropped note.
When she undulated against the mattress, seeking friction, seeking anything that might assuage this need brewing inside, he reached for another length of silk.
"I warned you," he said.
He bound her legs together from ankle to knee — the same practiced wrapping, the same snug loops. When he finished, she was trussed from shoulders to shins. She could rock and arch. But not move her arms or open her legs.
She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.
"Well," she said, her voice rougher than she intended, "I hope you're pleased with yourself. You've made your favorite parts of me entirely inaccessible."
His laugh was low and dark. Without a word, he slid one hand beneath her hips, through the narrow gap between her bound thighs, and parted the slick folds of her sex to stroke her clitoris.
"You were saying?"
She could not say anything. His finger moved in slow, tight circles, and the oil and her own wetness made each touch impossibly slick, and her bound legs pressed her thighs together so that every stroke created friction everywhere, and —
"Oh God — "
"Not God. Your husband."
She came with her face pressed into the pillow and her whole body pulling against the silk. The climax rolled through her in waves — each one tightening the ropes, tightening her thighs around his hand, tightening everything until she was shaking and breathless and wrung out.
His hand stilled. Stayed. Held her through the last tremors until her breathing slowed.
S he was beautiful.
She was always beautiful, but flushed, bound, and spent like this — she undid him.
Find me. I dare you.
Five words. The cheek of her. The audacity, the playfulness. It was so like her — the essence of the woman he adored, the one who had always known how to cut through his defenses with nothing but nerve and an absolute refusal to be managed.
He repositioned her. Gentle with her bound arms, careful with the silk at her legs. He slid a cushion beneath her hips, lifting her backside and keeping her bound legs pressed together beneath him. She turned her head on the pillow, one hazel eye watching him. Trusting him.
"I am going to be between your thighs," he said, and his voice was gravel. "Not inside. Keep your legs together."
He slicked himself with what remained of the oil. His cock was aching — had been aching since he read her note, since he followed her into the dark, since he lifted her onto his shoulder and felt her go limp against him with a trust so naked it nearly broke his stride.
He pressed forward. Slid between her closed thighs.
The friction. The heat. Her thighs clenched around him, slick with oil, and the low moan she gave went through him like shot.
He gripped her hips. Pulled her back against him. Drove forward.
Not inside. Between. The distinction was important.