Chapter Twenty-Four
Isabella stood in her living room, Danny’s chest pressed lightly against her back. Rain tapped against the windows. The romance novel rested in his hand, opened to a dog-eared page she’d reread more than once, where the characters were engaged in activities she’d never dared try.
Was afraid to try.
Miran Hassan had abducted her when she was only twelve. Put zip-ties on her wrists and ankles. Locked her in a storage unit.
She thought she was past the trauma. Or most of it, at least.
But certain fears still lived beneath her skin.
What if surrendering to Danny meant reclaiming parts of herself she’d locked away?
Her fingers trembled as she took the book from him. Flipped through the pages until she got to the scene she wanted.
Held it up. “This.”
Behind her, Danny’s body went rigid.
Silence.
“Are you sure?” His voice had dropped to a rasp.
She licked lips gone dry. Her heart banged in her chest.
Excitement?
Fear?
Maybe both.
“Yes.”
His hand slid down her arm to tangle with her fingers, the paperback falling to the floor. He tugged her up the stairs.
Inside her bedroom, he stood in front of her, attention locked so tightly it was as if he were trying to read her thoughts.
“We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”
She drew a careful breath, even as a raw, aching need loosened her limbs.
Her choice.
Her decision.
Not his.
He opened her nightstand drawer and took out the vibrator she kept there.
“How did—?”
“I guessed.” His grin was pure sex. Predatory. “A woman who reads the kind of books you do has to have a toy hidden somewhere. Bedside table was the most obvious place.”
The glint in his eyes appraised her.
“Any other hidden toys you’d like to show me?”
“No.” Because she wasn’t that interesting.
He searched her room, stopping at her spacious closet. “Scarves?”
Heat crept to the tips of her ears and behind her eyes. Her mother had given her several, purchased during trips abroad. Ones she rarely wore. Opening the top drawer of her painted dresser, she pointed to several neatly folded swathes of silk.
“Perfect.” Danny selected two long, skinny scarves—one in a deep rose pattern and the other a navy-blue floral. Then he picked up a third scarf—this one a square-shaped leopard print. “These will do.”
He placed them on her nightstand next to her vibrator.
“Come here.” Taking her hand, he led her to the bed, and when she sat, dropped to his knees between her legs.
Her fingers itched to dive into the silken strands of his hair. She stretched out her hand.
Danny captured it. Brushed his lips across her knuckles.
The intensity of his gaze held her immobile. “Before we do this, I want you to think of your consent as a traffic light system—if I ask you how you’re doing, green means all good. Yellow is slow down or you need a break. If you tell me red, that means I stop, immediately.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “I know you value control and it can be a difficult thing to let go of.” The blue in his eyes shifted from sky to sapphire. “But I’m going to take care of you.”
God, his voice. That low, sexy rasp, laden with both promise and threat. Heat rushed to her core.
Butterflies fluttered their wings, sharp and fast, beneath her ribs.
“Okay.” Her voice was thready, as if she’d run a sprint before answering. This man was on his knees before her. That alone was a major turn-on.
He could touch her any way he wished.
As long as he touched her.
Danny stood. Stepped back. “Take off your clothes.”
Quiet. Confident. Dominant.
A swipe of her tongue did little to moisten dry lips. But when his gaze tracked to her mouth, her ebbing confidence returned.
She could do this.
Her hands found the hem of her T-shirt. Keeping her gaze locked with his, she slowly raised it over her head and dropped it to the floor.
When he said nothing, just continued to watch, she shimmied out of her black tennis skirt, leaving her in a black lace bra and panties.
“Keep going.” His voice stayed level, but with him standing and her seated on the bed, she had an eye-level view of his body’s reaction.
Power—heady, feminine, and unfamiliar—settled inside her.
He might be in charge, but she was choosing to put herself in his hands.
Because she trusted him.
She tried for a sultry smile but couldn’t still the tremor in her lips as she reached behind her and unhooked her bra, sliding the straps down her arms. Standing, she hooked her fingers in her panties, then turned her back on Danny and bent slowly as she slid them down her legs to drop at her ankles before lifting each foot free of the material.
A hand caressed her newly exposed flesh.
Her pulse stumbled, then raced like the devil was after it.
She inhaled air into her lungs, then faced him.
“Remember the traffic lights. Where are you?”
“Green.”
His hand grazed her cheek. “Then get on the bed.”
With a casual brush of his hands, he knocked her decorative pillows away, then yanked down the floral duvet.
Silken bamboo sheets met bare skin as she lay in the center of her bed, arms over her head, palms braced on the headboard, careful not to disturb the fairy lights with their soft yellow glow.
Danny’s fingers went to the buttons on his white dress shirt, working his way down, exposing smooth, carved skin and tattoos she wanted to run her tongue over.
He undid the cuffs and shrugged the material off his shoulders.
His trousers fell next, leaving her hungry gaze on the carved lines of his hips as they disappeared beneath black boxer-briefs.
The evidence of his desire surged upward beneath the cotton, thick and firm.
One of the skinny scarves he wrapped around her right wrist.
Anxiety hit, squeezing her throat. “Not tight.”
His hands stilled instantly. “What light, Bella?”
Breathe.
In.
Out.
“Green.”
The silk binding at her wrist loosened enough that she could easily slip out of it if she wanted. He secured it to the bedpost, then repeated his action with her other wrist.
“Still good?” He dangled the leopard-print scarf from his fingers.
“Yes?” Her reply came out with a clear question mark attached to it.
“Bella…”
“Green.”
He covered her eyes, and the world turned gray.
Her body went rigid.
For a second, instinct screamed to fight.
It’s Danny. You can trust him.
She wasn’t a scared child.
She was safe.
“Traffic light, honey.”
More breaths. Tension seeped away. “Green.”
“Now, you can’t see. You can’t touch.” His breath whispered across her lips. “Focus on what you can feel.”
Feel? Soft, firm lips tasting her. A tongue requesting entrance to her mouth, which she eagerly gave, their mouths fusing together.
She’d never enjoyed kissing as much as she was enjoying this kiss.
Ravished. That’s what a romance novel would call it.
Danny ravished her mouth, and she responded in kind, tasting and claiming him as her own.
Hands cupped her breasts and squeezed. She arched into the touch. His mouth left hers, planting a trail of kisses down her neck to her collarbone. Moist heat surrounded one tip, then a sharp stab of sensation made her jerk as his teeth bit down.
A gasp. Or was it a moan? Pleasure or pain. Her brain couldn’t decide, but her body reacted with a zap of electricity straight to her womb.
Another nip. Sharp. Electric.
Fingers trailed across her stomach. Over her hip. Down her legs to her ankles. Without sight, his touch was magnified, raising goosebumps on her skin.
Lips surrounded her toe. His tongue swirled before he sucked, then let go. “I fucking love that pretty pink polish.”
The sexy throb of his voice melted her insides even as pleasure fisted every muscle below her stomach.
His palm glided up the smooth skin of her leg to one hip, then the other, before drifting to her mound.
He found her clit. Her body, already hypersensitive, arched as he rubbed the sensitive bud.
Sparks burst behind her eyelids.
Forget his gun, Danny’s fingers should be classified as a lethal weapon. Slow and firm, then faster and lighter. The alternating strokes kept her body off guard as everything clenched and built toward—
His touch disappeared.
“Danny?” Her legs shifted, restless.
He wouldn’t leave her like this—hovering at the edge, every part of her coiled and waiting for release.
Lips replaced his hands.
Only they were in her hair, not where she wanted them.
A whimper escaped.
Danny gave a low chuckle, the sound vibrating the sensitive skin behind her ear.
“Patience, baby.”
He licked, suckled, and nibbled, retracing his path down her body. The tension that had been easing in her core jumped to where his mouth branded her skin.
“So soft. So sweet.” Everywhere Danny’s mouth went, it left a trail of fire. Over her breasts, down her stomach. His tongue rimmed her belly button, and she had the insane wish she’d had the nerve to pierce it.
Shifting, he moved between her legs, his broad shoulders holding her open.
Without her vision, her other senses took over.
Ocean breezes and driftwood.
The stubble on his jaw, chafing her inner thighs.
Her breathing. His low murmurs of approval.
No control.
Just sensation.
And trust.
When he finally put his mouth on her sex, her body shot skyward, held in place only by the calloused fingers clamped around her hips.
“Oh, God.”
“Oh, Danny, you mean.” He licked her—a long, slow lick, as if he were enjoying an ice cream cone on a hot summer day.
Her body clenched low in her abdomen.
He settled in, each pass of his tongue ratcheting up the sensation until she could feel herself nearing the edge again.
Then he stopped.
Again.
Sweat beaded her forehead, her body on a knife’s edge. “What the hell, Danny?”
“Such language.” Amusement in his sexy drawl.
“Are you trying to torture me?”
She needed—
Oh, God, she needed—
To come.
“Sometimes, the most intense orgasms require—”
A kiss on her inner thigh.
“A slow—”
Another on her hip.
“—build.”
He raised his body over hers, sucking her lower lip between his teeth.
Isabella’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. “I really, really want to touch you.” He had reduced her to begging.
Her fingers gripped the edges of the silk bindings. They were loose enough that she could get free.
But she’d asked for this.
And she’d done it to prove to herself that her past could no longer cage her.
If the heroine in her book could allow her lover to tie her up—if she could surrender her control to him and still be the strong, kick-ass woman he loved—then maybe Isabella could be that kind of woman as well.
For herself.
And for Danny.
His chest brushed against the hypersensitive tips of her breasts, and she felt it in her core.
There was a familiar buzzing sound, starting low, then growing more intense.
Her vibrator.
She went rigid.
One touch and she’d likely explode into a million pieces.
A light press to her clit.
The air in her lungs froze.
“Breathe.” Danny’s voice was a snap of command she instantly obeyed.
Another touch, this one longer.
He used the vibrator like a master artisan, seeming to know just how long to press it against her, and when to remove it before she tipped over the edge.
She bit her lip to stifle the moans working their way from her chest to her throat—a mindless, begging, wanton mess.
“Traffic light, Bella.”
It was too much. Too much.
She could stop it. One word and he would.
“Green,” she gasped.
“Such a good girl.” Low. Seductive. Dangerous. The approval in his voice sent more liquid heat to her core.
He brought the toy back and increased the speed.
Her body was a bowstring pulled tight. She’d snap in two when her release came.
The wave built. Too big. Too powerful.
Her pulse raced. Anxiety hummed beneath her skin. “It’s too much—”
“You can handle it.” Danny ravished her mouth with a deep kiss. “Let go for me, Bella. Give me everything.”
He brought the vibrator back and held it to her.
The orgasm raced through her with such strength and speed that she screamed, her body bowing hard with the contractions.
A pleasure-pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
Frightening.
Addictive.
“Take it away,” she panted. “It’s too much.”
“More.” Danny. Guttural. On edge.
A second wave dragged her under, screaming.
Danny shifted, placed himself at her entrance, and thrust with a force that knocked what little air remained from her lungs.
But, oh, sweet heaven, he filled her with an exquisite pressure, a fullness she craved.
“Bella.” Her name seemed torn from his chest. Another powerful snap of his hips had her seeing stars.
Tears shimmered. Slid into her hair. Without her vision, her other senses reached out to decipher everything he wasn’t saying.
The emotion in his voice.
The desperation in his thrusts.
The way he worshipped her body, protected it, even as he took control of it.
He’d stripped away her defenses.
I love you.
It hovered on the tip of her tongue.
But she wasn’t ready to give him that much power.
His thrusts quickened, became erratic. Then, with a shout, he poured himself into her, hips jerking once, twice, again, before he stilled.
The mattress on either side of her head dipped beneath his palms. His chest heaved against her breasts.
She welcomed the weight, even as her lungs fought for air.
Trembling lips, cool to the touch, caressed her forehead. Down her nose. To her lips. “No one will ever hurt you again.”
Except you.
Her lashes flickered beneath the silk blindfold. Where had that thought come from? He’d just given her the most mind-blowing sexual experience she’d ever had.
And as far as she was concerned, they’d just begun. “I want to touch you.”
His lips brushed hers. “Not yet. One more adventure.”
Her post-sex blissful haze evaporated. Her fingers tightened around the bindings.
Something in his voice had changed.