Page 62 of Unlocked Dive
He sends me to my room with the slightly ominous promise of gathering “supplies.” And I climb the steps slowly, trepidationand excitement beating feathered wings in concert behind my ribs.
Gabe never wanted to top me, and at the time, I never questioned it. Knowing him now through Echo’s eyes, I think his bravado couldn’t risk appearing less than perfect, or how it might have changed the way I looked at him to fall short of his own demands. The only guy who ever did ask—a two-week hookup on tour in Germany—I turned down, too unsure of what we meant to each other to offer up that vulnerability, even in my curiosity. But Echo…Is this what love feels like when it’s bound with trust?
He enters the room already naked, because,god,this man was built to be bare before the angels that made him. He has a blue TheraBand—medium weight—dangling from the fingers of one hand.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, still in my jeans and T-shirt, hands fisted in the covers at my sides.
“Nervous?” he asks, amusement and something else, something predatory, alight in his cobalt eyes.
“A little.” I give him every truth I can, poor penance for the one huge secret still hidden.
Soon.
After the evaluation. We can’t hurt him until he’s free to choose.
He moves to stand between my thighs, dropping the TheraBand on the mattress and slipping his fingers up under my shirt.
“Arms up.” He strips me like a child. Like a lover. Slow and gentle, with his eyes locked on mine and his hands brushing lightly over each inch of newly exposed skin. I shiver under the weight of his attention, chills along my flesh warring with the mounting heat inside. When I’m fully exposed, he kisses me—a soft press of satin lips against my trembling mouth—and steps back with a smile.
“On your stomach,” he commands, still in that gentle tone, so at odds with the blue flame of his eyes. “Arms over your head.”
I obey. I don’t think I’ll ever say no to him again, my well of resistance drained dry in the futile battle against his fire. I press my face into the pillow and close my eyes as he climbs up my body to kneel astride my shoulders. When he leans forward and reaches for my hands, his dick drags through the loose tumble of my hair, and we both moan.
“Fuck,” he whispers, losing himself for a moment to grind against the back of my head. The pillow smothers me under the pressure, but I don’t fight it, my own hips rolling into the rough linen duvet, chasing friction over breath. When he releases me to begin binding my wrists in the thick elastic TheraBand, I turn my head, sucking in air and staring at the smooth slope of his inner thigh, inches from my head.
He uses a simple figure eight to capture both my wrists and then loops the slack through one of the slats in the headboard and ties it off. There’s enough stretch in the band that I can pull my arms down about six inches before the loops on my wrists get tight enough to cut off my circulation, and the thick rubber is smooth and cool against my skin. It’s improvised and barely restrictive—if I wanted, I could use one hand to free the other and be loose in seconds.
And yet, somehow, it changes everything.
My breath is coming quick and sharp as he slides back down my body, this time teasing every inch with his heat and hard muscle.
“You okay?” he asks, a low purr against my ear. His hands stroke along the undersides of my arms, soothing and barely shy of tickling with the slightest brush of his blunt nails.
I want to ask him to go easy on me.
I want to beg him to wreck my body like he’s already wrecked my heart.
All I can manage is a nod.
“Need a safeword?” Now the amusement is clear in his voice.
“Do I?”What the fuck is he planning?
“Probably not. This is onlypractice, after all. But I should warn you, I’m gonna edge you until you can’t think straight before I let you come around myfourfingers. And thatispunishment for depriving me these last couple of days.”
“Oh fuck.” I bury my face in the pillow again, and my cock leaks onto the linen.
“That’s a terrible safeword,” he teases. “It’s supposed to be something youdon’tnormally scream during sex.”
“Brat,” I grit out, but my shoulders shake with a suppressed chuckle.
“I can work with that.” He sits up and smacks me on the ass, not quite hard enough to sting but enough to turn my mirth into a moan. “Really?”
I’m glad my face is hidden so he can’t see me blush. The second spank is harder, leaving heat behind like a brand, and even as I flinch, I’m already arching back into the promise of his touch.
“Oh, Byrd.” The next sensation is the soft rasp of his stubbled jaw along the pinkened flesh. “Maybe we really do need to get you a safeword.”
I shake my head.Too much. He’s barely started, and it’s already too much. It’s like the day he climbed into my lap in the truck and all my walls evaporated in half a second of blue hair and the pressure of his hand on my thigh. “Break for me,” he whispered, and I did.
