Page 61 of Bound By her Earl

“Insolence,” he chided, swatting halfheartedly at her behind. The word sounded like a compliment. “Whatever shall I do with you?”

“I thought,” she said because if they did not get this affair back on track, she was likely to combust right there on the carpet, “you had something you wished to try?”

The gleam in his eye brightened, and Emily was glad the fire still burned high enough that she didn’t miss it.

“Indeed, I do,” he said. Then he grasped her by the hips and maneuvered her so that she was sitting on the edge of her bed.

This, Emily felt, was promising.

“Stay here,” he said.

And then heleft.

Emily stared in shock at the door that connected their bedchambers which he’d left open behind him. He was going to come back. He had to come back. She was broadly inclined to follow his order and stay where he’d put her—as following his guidance had thus far been highly beneficial to her, at least in matters of physical pleasure—but if he didn’t come back, she was going to have something to say about it.

Something loud, most likely.

Fortunately for everyone involved, he returned quickly, something clasped in his hand. He came closer on silent feet, and Emily’s mouth dropped open.

“Is thatrope?”

“So it is,” Benedict agreed. There was that wicked cant to his expression again, but there was something cautious in his face, too, like he was trying not to spook her. “Here. Take it.”

Fingers trembling, she reached out and took it. The rope wasn’t the usual type—not coarse or scratchy at all. Instead, it felt like woven silk, smooth enough that Emily couldn’t resist running a short length of it through her fingers though she stilled the motion when she noticed that Benedict was watching her with a sharp spark of interest.

“Rope,” she said again, pleased when her voice did not shake.

“Yes,” he said, the word comfortingly firm. “And Emily—understand this. We needn’t do anything with that. Not tonight, not ever. I can return it to my rooms—I can cast it into the fire.” He paused. “But.”

She swallowed hard. “But?” she asked.

Benedict reached out a hand, slowly enough that it would have been easy for her to evade his touch. She didn’t. He wrapped his fingers around hers which were, in turn, wrapped around the silken length of rope.

“But,” he said, looking down at where fingers and fabric looped around and over one another, “some people find that bindings do not always limit them. Some people find, rather, that being held back physically—” His fingers trailed down to the end of the rope which he moved to snake gently around Emily’s wrist; she felt the gentle clasp like an intimate caress. “—allows them the liberation of their pleasure.”

He let her sit with that thought for a moment. Was that how she felt? Part of her wanted to cringe back against the notion. She would have to be perverse, broken in some way, to see bondage as freedom. But another part, the part that kept chiming up with its irritatingly insistent voice whenever she and Benedict found themselves in an amorous situation, thought that maybe, just maybe, he was right.

She thought of the wall at her back and her hands on the settee. She thought of her arms trapped beneath her, of Benedict’s firm hands clamped upon her thighs.

But no. She couldn’t. For surely,surelyit was unforgivably wanton.

Perhaps her husband sensed her conflicting emotions because he spoke again.

“You needn’t say yes, Emily,” he murmured. “Or you can say yes and then change your mind. I shan’t be cross with you, not at all. But know this: I do not own this rope by happenstance. You would not be the first, nor the only, to derive pleasure from such a thing.” She was looking down at her hands, but she couldhearthe wry smile in his voice. “I don’t mean to shock you, but the realm of human pleasure is…surprisingly vast. We are not at sea, my dear. We are merely dipping our toes into the waters.”

Despite the ongoing turmoil inside her, Emily felt her own lips quirk into a smile as well.

“And you would,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “look so very beautiful.”

It wasn’t his words that convinced her as much as the way he said them; his voice was nearly a groan, thick and heavy with longing. That hunger made the matter clear. If she was a wanton for finding such a thought appealing—and yes, she admitted, the mere idea made her pulse quicken and her breaths grow shallow—then surely her husband would not object, not when he seemed so wildly compelled by the very same notion.

“Yes,” she said, the words falling from her lips like a prayer. “Yes, I think I would—would like that. Very much.”

She was still looking at their hands, at the rope clasped between them, feeling half hypnotized by the sight. Thus, she startled a bit when Benedict’s fingers came under her chin, his touch gentle, lifting her gaze to his.

“Tell me to stop, and I shall stop at once,” he vowed to her, eyes bright and intense.

She nodded, swallowed, then nodded again. “I trust you,” she whispered.

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