Page 17 of Bound and Branded

He lifts a brow, reaches up, and takes his cowboy hat off his head. He’s stunning. I’ve always known that, but I try not to look directly at it. Because it makes me feel funny and wrong. Because he makes me feel like I am hurtling toward my doom in more ways than one. Because it’s so much more comfortable to hate him rather than acknowledge that there’s something much darker and more dangerous underlying my negative feelings for him.

Maybe it’s actually perfect. But I do feel antagonism toward him. Maybe it would make it hotter. Fuel it in an even more delicious way. That’s so messed up. But isn’t all of this?

“I’m an expert,” he says. “And lucky for you. Because if you’re going to do this you do not want an inexperienced rigger.”

I know enough terminology to know that a rigger is the person who does the tying and the model is the one who has the rope work done on her. And I’m very clear about which side of the fence I want to be on. I’m very clear about the fact that I want to be the one who isn’t in control for once.

I suddenly feel every bit of our age gap. He’s had years of experience with BDSM. He has this whole life away from here. I know that, I’m very aware of it, and I use it to invalidate the kind of ranch work that he does. To turn him into someone who doesn’t deserve to own pieces of our land, but I’ve never really sat with what it means. That he knows more than me. That he’s experienced a hell of a lot more of everything than me.

That he has something to teach me.

My palms are starting to feel damp, but then, I’m wet between my legs, too, and that has nothing to do with fear. Or maybe it does have a little bit to do with fear.

I’m not immune to the attraction created by fear, clearly. And for me, the two are pretty closely linked.

I have a shared language with him, and that surprises me. I might not know even a fraction of what he does, but I know it. And no one else here does. Not as far as I know, and I’m not going to go walk into a bar, throw a dart, and ask some man to tie me up. For all the reasons he just said, but also…

I look up at him.

He is the reason I feel this way. I know it. He’s a catastrophic event in my life. He changed me the moment that he touched me, and it shouldn’t have been sexual. I know that it shouldn’t. But it was. It changed something fundamentally inside of me and I don’t know how to change it back. I’ve never known that. Well, I tried.

I got with the nicest guy I could find. One that fit into my actual life. One that matched the tone. I’m the one who runs everything. I’m the one who does everything. It stands to reason that I would fit into a relationship that way, but it didn’t work for me.

There’s this deep part of myself that feels so unsatisfied. That feels so exhausted. And if I run from him now, what I might even running back to?

He’s now the keeper of my secrets. Secrets that no one else knows.

And it’s this strange dichotomy, because I don’t like him— quite the opposite. But because of that I suppose I don’t have to please him.

Liar.

Well, that’s complicated too. I want to please him. I want him to use me. I want to be used. I want him to control everything. To make me feel things. I want to not have to work. I’m suddenly so desperately exhausted by all of it that this seems like a good thing. It seems like something reasonable.

It’s different, somehow. He doesn’t have an expectation of me. When I imagine telling one of my friends about this, all I can see his judgment. And I know full well that John couldn’t have handled it. Wouldn’t have been able to do it.

But he can.

I already know. We’ve already had the conversation. The exchange.

Yeah. Make it about that, and not the fact that he’s the one you want.

I can’t deny that. My body’s response to him, especially now the shock is wearing off, is so intense it frightens me. But fear is what I’m looking for.

The sense of danger and recklessness. This intense and brilliant thing.

At least, I think it is. I think.

“Maybe we found a new way that I can pay my debt,” I say.

The idea of that shocks me, even as it arouses me.

God. Thinking about him forcing me to be with him to pay the money back… Why does that excite me like this? This isn’t a game. It’s not a chat, it’s not a fantasy, I am literally offering to trade him my body and I’m getting turned on by it. This is fuckedup in an unreasonable way, but I already said it. The words came out of my mouth. There’s nothing that I can do about it now.

I don’t want to.

I’m throbbing between my legs and my nipples are so tight and sensitive every shift of fabric over them, even through my bra, sends an electric charge through my body.

I watch as his pupils expand, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Is that what you think this is?”

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