Ethan
The smile slowly spread across her face as her words sank in. I pushed her back onto her chair, wiping my brow with the back of my hand.
“Don’t move,” I growled.
Her laughter tinkled out. A delighted, soft sound that didn’t make sense to me.
Symptoms.
A dull headache, increased heart rate, irritated nasal cavity, and—a raging hard-on. My shoulders sagged and I glared at her.
“It’s not pleasant being drugged, is it?” she said, lifting her spoon and cutting into the cheesecake.
This was a rare opportunity. She could have given me sleeping pills or worse, psychedelics.
“All those nasty side effects,” she continued while I catalogued her skimpy outfit.
She’d instigated the entire scenario like the chaos gremlin she was.
“Yes, side effects,” I murmured, and sat back down. “My apologies.”
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out if I was being disingenuous.
“But in my defence, it was self-preservation.”
“We’re even now,” she stated.
Not quite yet.
“We are,” I said, scooping up a spoonful of cheesecake.
The tart raspberry was perfectly balanced with the sweetness from the bottom layer of cheese.
“Although,” I said, waiting for her eyes to meet mine. “Now that you’ve got me hard, I’ll need a place to bury it.”
“I don’t see that being a problem, Dr Hammond.”
I put the last piece of cheesecake in my mouth and licked the spoon clean. Watching her ride Gareth in that graveyard still burned—she used sex like a scalpel, precise and merciless. Even the bath she’d taken the moment I freed her from the basement had been for her benefit, not mine.
“Remember those words,” I said, and set the spoon on the plate.
I stood, and the unholy light in her eyes deepened to something darker than blue.
Anticipation.
I began clearing the table.
“You cooked. I’ll wash,” I said.
I didn’t look at her again until I was almost out of the dining room. It was the first time I’d left Anne speechless, and I chuckled the whole way to the kitchen.
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I waited until she stomped upstairs like a spoiled princess before slipping into her garage and working through her toolbox until I found what I needed. She wouldn’t like what I had planned for her tonight, but that was the price of admission to this particular joint venture.
Anne had niggled at the back of my mind all day, and then she’d opened her front door in that outfit and undone me before I’d even made it inside. I checked the locks anyway on my way upstairs—old habits, even in someone else’s house.
When I stepped into her bedroom, she was shamelessly rifling through my bag.
“Why would you need this?” she asked, holding up my tactical karambit.
“I rarely leave the house without a weapon.”
She pulled the sheath off the claw-shaped blade.
“I like it,” she murmured, turning it over, running her finger along the spine until it reached the tip.
There was something incredibly sexy about watching her handle my knife. I had no doubt she knew how to use it—but it was the reverence in her hands that no one else could have understood.
She raised it and began slashing at the air in sharp, controlled movements—fast, vicious jabs that reminded me of the night she’d torn her canvas apart.
“Come over here, Anne.”
She glanced over her shoulder and slid the knife back into its sheath. It fell into my open bag, and she didn’t hesitate to walk toward me.
“Finally,” she murmured as she approached.
Her eyes latched onto my aching cock. I took the zip ties from my pocket, and hers flared at the sight of the thin black plastic.
“You’re going to let me use every single hole tonight,” I said, wrapping the first tie around her wrist before looping a second beneath it.
It was strange, leaving a finger’s width of space beneath the plastic and her skin. I usually tightened them until hands and feet turned purple.
“On the bed.”
She stepped out of her slippers and climbed onto the bed, the zip ties hanging off her wrists like unconventional bangles. I looped two more around her ankles and cinched them tight.
I raised one leg and cuffed it to her wrist with another tie. Her skirt rode up, white underwear coming into view. I did the same with the other leg, then stepped back to admire her.
I crossed to her dresser and opened the top drawer. Vibrators, carving wires, anal plugs, nipple clamps, pegs, lubricants, wipes—an arsenal, curated for an audience of one.
This was why I hadn’t minded her going through my bag. I’d been in her house too, learning everything I could. I took the largest metal plug and the lube, then closed the drawer.
I set them on the bed and began unbuttoning my shirt. All she could do was watch, her fingers gripping her own ankles.
She was spread open.
Every beautiful scar on display.
And I was going to worship each one.