Chapter 16
GIANNI
She gasps against my mouth and her hands come up to my chest—not pushing away, but pulling closer.
Her fingers twist in the fabric of my shirt, and I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the window.
The glass is cold behind her, and she shivers under my touch.
I slide my hands up her curves until I touch the bottom of her breasts through her shirt. She moans and I kiss her harder.
"Hands up," I murmur.
She raises her arms above her head slowly, watching me with those wide green eyes, her lips swollen from the kiss, her chest heaving. My cock is stiff and swollen, the animal in me on the verge of taking over.
But I hold back.
I wrap the tie around her wrists, snug but not tight. Then I loop the end around the curtain hook above the window—a temporary anchor, something she could pull free if she wanted to. She tests it.
"Good?" I ask.
"Good."
I step back, just long enough to look at her, arms stretched above her, wrists bound in dark silk, her body framed against the window with the whole city glittering behind her. I let my eyes move along her shape and it’s impossible to decide which part of her is the sexiest, where I want to start.
Her blouse has pulled loose from her skirt, exposing a strip of pale skin at her waist, and she's breathing hard, her ribs expanding and contracting beneath the fabric. Her nipples are hard, straining against her bra and her blouse.
"You're staring," she says.
"I am."
"Are you going to do something about it, or are you getting inspiration for a novel of your own?”
I grin, just a little. Her impertinence is a perfect contrast to the sight of her bound just for me.
I step forward and unbutton her blouse one button at a time. She squirms, pulls against the tie, and the silk tightens around her wrists with a sound that makes my cock throb. I savor the sight of each bit of new skin exposed with every button undone.
"In your version," I say, parting the fabric to expose her bra, "he undresses her and tells her she's beautiful."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing."
I unclasp her bra and push it up above her breasts. The sight of her tits tumbling out nearly breaks the control I’m desperately maintaining. I take her breasts into my hands, gently squeeze them. They’re large and full and all I can think about is what they’ll look like bouncing in front of me.
Then I run my thumb across one nipple and watch her whole body jerk.
"But that's not what I'm going to do."
"What are you going to do?"
I lean in and my mouth finds her ear. "I'm going to take you apart. Slowly. Piece by piece. And you're going to let me, because you’re bound just for me. And when I’m done with you, you're going to understand the real reason you wrote that scene.
Because you needed this. You needed someone to take the control away so you could stop holding everything together for five goddamn minutes. "
She says nothing, doesn’t make a sound, only stares at me with wide eyes as if she’s not quite sure I actually said what I did.
But I did and now it’s time to show her I meant it.
I kiss my way down her throat, then her collarbone, and finally to the swell of her breast. I take her nipple into my mouth—not gently, not reverently, with teeth and tongue and pressure—and she cries out, pulling hard against the tie, her hips bucking forward into nothing.
"Gianni, please."
"Not yet."
I drop to my knees in front of her and push her skirt up around her hips. She's wearing simple lilac-colored cotton underwear, and they're soaked with want, clinging to her, and the sight of it makes something primal and possessive roar through my bloodstream.
"Look at me," I say.
She does, chest heaving, desperation on her gorgeous face, her green eyes wide.
"I can't stop thinking about you," I tell her.
"Four days, Violet. Four days I sat in my office and tried to convince myself wasn’t bothered by being apart from you.
It was necessary, keeping you at a distance would keep you safe.
" I hook my fingers into her underwear and pull them down slowly. "I was wrong."
"You were an idiot," she breathes.
"I was an idiot," I agree.
I put my mouth on her. She gasps, her body tensing from the immediate pleasure. Her thighs tremble against my jaw, her wrists strain against the silk. The taste of her floods my mouth. I place my lips on her clit and kiss, putting pressure right where I know she wants it, needs it.
“Oh my God, Gianni…” I flick my gaze up to see her straining against my tie, her body jerking.
I don't stop. I hold her hips against the glass and work her with my tongue with low, flat strokes that drag the orgasm out until she's gasping and shaking.
“It’s too much,” she moans. “Or, God, not enough. More. Don’t stop.”
It’s all darkly amusing. I continue my work, spreading her lips with one hand and keeping up the pressure against her clit with my tongue. She’s shaking, right on the verge.
And then I let her come.
“Gianni… fuuuck.”
The orgasm breaks loose and she spasms on my tongue, shaking so hard I worry for a second she might tear through the fabric of my tie. I lick her through it, not relenting until every last drop of pleasure has been teased out of her.
When the tremors finally ease, I press my mouth to her inner thigh and feel her pulse hammering against my lips.
"One," I murmur against her skin.
"One?" Her voice is wrecked. "What do you mean, one?"
I stand. She's looking at me through half-closed eyes, flushed from her chest to her hairline, her body still twitching with aftershocks. I place my hand on her waist and move my touch along her curves once more.
I know what I want and I can’t hold it back any longer.
"Turn around," I say.
She turns slowly. The tie twists at her wrists, and she grips the silk as she faces the window, her forehead resting against the glass, the city spread out below her, the lights of Manhattan stretching into the distance.
I press myself against her back so she can feel how hard I am. There's no hiding it, and I don't try. My cock presses against the curve of her ass through my trousers, and she moans, pushing herself against me, saying with her body what she won’t say with her lips.
"In your book," I say against her ear, undoing my belt, "the hero takes her from behind in chapter twenty-two. Up against a wall. She can't see his face."
"I haven't given you chapter twenty-two yet," she breathes.
"I'm writing ahead."
I push my trousers down enough to free myself.
My cock springs out steel-stiff and glistening at the tip.
I run my hand down her spine, over the small of her back, and lower.
I move my touch between her thighs to find that she’s still dripping from the first orgasm, slick and swollen, and when I slide two fingers inside her pussy, she arches her back with a cry that fogs the glass in front of her.
"You're so wet," I tell her. "You've been like this for days, haven't you? Every time I walked past your desk. I bet just thinking about me is enough to get you soaked.”
"Yes," she whispers. "You asshole. Yes."
I withdraw my fingers and replace them with my cock, positioning myself at the warm, wet folds of her entrance. One slow, controlled thrust buries me to the hilt. My legs shake from it. She’s so tight and wet and warm.
“Fucking hell,” I growl.
She's tight and hot and trembling around me, and the small, desperate sounds she’s making are doing things to me that I didn’t know could be done.
I start to move. I’m slow at first, plunging into her with long, deep strokes that push her against the glass with every thrust. Her bound hands press flat against the window above her head, the tie tautens, and she pushes back into me, matching my rhythm.
I watch her ass bounce against my cock, watch my thickness disappear into her again and again.
"I thought about this," I say, my voice low and rough against her ear. "Every night for four days. You, exactly like this. Your hands tied and your body against mine. The sounds you'd make when I made you come over and over.”
I pull back and push into her hard, bottoming out completely.
“Fuck!” The word shoots out of her mouth.
I lift my hand and bring it down hard on her right ass cheek, the sharp sound of skin on skin filling the air, a red hand print lingering. She gasps and immediately clenches around my cock.
“But you’re so good at staying in control.” I slide out of her and then back in. She squirms, shaking.
"I'm not—" she gasps as I thrust harder "—trying to control anything."
"Wrong. I see you—always trying to stay in control, never letting anyone know what you want, what you need." I wrap my hand around the front of her throat. I’m not squeezing, just holding, feeling her pulse against my palm. “That’s over. You don’t need to be in control, not anymore. Just let go.”
"I can't."
"You can. Let go, Violet."
I shift the angle so it’s somehow even deeper. My free hand slides around her hip, finds her clit, and presses in tight, focused circles. She cries out, loud, broken, her whole body clenching around me.
“I’m so close,” she moans.
“Come for me,” I growl into her ear. “Right now. Come all over my cock, Violet.”
She obeys, coming with her face pressed against the glass and her walls clamping down on me so hard I nearly follow her over the edge. But I grit my teeth and hold, because I'm not done with her yet.
"Two," I say.
"Oh God," she whispers. "You're counting."
"I'm counting."
I pull out of her. She makes a sound of protest that does terrible things to my self-control. My dick is glistening with her juices.
I untie her wrists from the curtain hook—the silk has left faint pink marks on her skin, and I press my lips to each one but don't unwrap the tie just yet.
I turn her around. She's boneless, barely standing, her eyes glassy and her lips parted and her entire body flushed and trembling. She’s so goddamn beautiful it hurts. It makes me feel things I’m not ready to think about.
"I can't feel my legs," she says.
I slip both of my hands under her thighs and lift her up and against me in one smooth motion.
Her legs go around my waist on instinct, her ankles locking at the small of my back, her bound wrists slipping around my neck.
Her face is level with my own, her eyes inches from mine.
The position is almost too intimate to bear, like there’s nowhere to hide.
It feels as though she sees me in a way I’m not ready for.
"Hi," she whispers.
Just one word. But her nearness and her tone and the need and the warmth in her eyes make something twist inside me.
"Hi," I say.
I slide into her again, and this time it's different.
This time it's slow, and it's deep, and it's the kind of sex that isn't about heat or urgency or the need to consume.
It's about the way her breath catches on every thrust. The way her forehead drops against mine.
The way her bound hands tighten behind my neck, pulling me closer.
"Don't stop," she says. "Please don't you dare stop."
I move inside her with everything I have, and she takes all of it and meets it with her own, her hips crashing against mine.
"Come for me," I tell her. "Look at me and come for me."
Her eyes lock on mine, open and unguarded. And I see the exact moment she gives in to my command and clenches around me, her juices dripping down my shaft, the third orgasm, more powerful than the others, taking hold of her body.
Her lips part, her body tightens, and she comes undone in my arms with her eyes open and her gaze on mine with these perfect little whimper-moans pouring out of her mouth. She leans forward, resting her head on my shoulder as the climax courses through her body.
I follow her over the edge, burying my face in her neck and let go of every ounce of control I've been holding onto. For a few seconds, the world narrows to the feeling of her around me and the sound of her breathing and the pulsing of my cock inside her.
I feel a strange warmth in my heart that I’ve never known before, a feeling that’s too much and just right all at once, a feeling that’s too difficult for me to even consider in those moments.
We stay like that, with her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck, my face in her hair.
"Three," I murmur.
She laughs. A real laugh, exhausted and slightly hysterical. "You're impossible."
"I've been called worse."
I carry her to the bedroom. There, I set her down on the bed and finally unwrap the tie from her wrists.
The pink marks will fade by morning, and I kiss each one before laying down next to her.
She curls against me with her head on my chest, her hand over my heart, her breathing evening out as the adrenaline settles and we both shift into quiet.
"I won't let anything happen to you," I say. "Not to you. Not to your son. Do you understand?"
She pulls back and looks up at me. Her eyes are wet, and for a moment I think she might be crying. But it’s not that. She’s overwhelmed, full of something I recognize because I feel it too.
"I don't trust you yet," she says.
"I know."
"But I think I might want to."
I press my lips to her forehead, hold them there, and close my eyes. "That's enough," I say. "For now, that's enough."
She stays the night. As she predicted, not in the guest room.
In the morning, I watch her sleep, and I think about the man who was following her. I think about the boy with the toy dinosaur, and this woman who wrote me into her fantasies.
I think about how she’s running, how there’s no doubt in my mind there’s more to her situation than she’s letting on.
But it doesn’t matter.
Whoever she's running from, they'll have to come through me first.