Page 47 of Take Me Tender

“Jay,” she whispered. “Look at me. I’m okay.”

“Yeah, baby. I’m looking. But we’re not done yet.”

He moved over her and she arched for his kiss, but he ignored her proffered body to grab the end of the scarf attached to her right wrist. Leaving plenty of play between them, he tied it to his left one.

“What?” Her heart slammed against her breastbone. The skin covering her belly jittered. “Why?”

His free fingers snatched up the extra length attached to the knot on her left. He wrapped it around his right wrist and used his teeth to yank the fastening tight. Though there was enough free fabric between them that his hands could roam freely, the two of them now were—

“Attached,” he said, satisfaction glittering in his eyes. “Both of us tied up, Nikki. Tied together. Connected to each other.”

No. No. She wanted to say it out loud, but the sound she made was half-wordless plea, half-moan. This wasn’t what she wanted!

This was what she was truly frightened of.

Connection.

Words, arguments, refusals struggled to form inside her, but they didn’t coalesce beyond mere whimpers. And then he went further. Then he kneeled between her thighs and pressed the knee of her bent leg toward the mattress. Opening her to him. Opening her body that was attached to his, opening it to his gaze. His fingers separated her folds, holding them apart so that the most secret, inner part of her was exposed to him. Even when so vulnerable, heat washed over her and more liquid rushed to the place where he was looking. It trickled wetly onto her thigh.

She felt his eyes on her there, avid with desire, and then his mouth found her, kissing her in a way so erotic and intimate that she could only whimper again.

Oh, God. He was melting her with every swipe of his knowing, expert tongue. Her heart started slamming against her breastbone as he kept up the amazing, experienced torture. His tongue thrust inside her. “Jay.”

He didn’t let up, instead drawing closer so that the looped ends of the Jay-blue scarf brushed like gentle fingers against her inner thighs. Endless rounds of goose bumps chased after previous sets of hot-cold chills as she yanked on her wrists so she could do something…

Push him off?

Pull him closer?

Retreat?

Advance?

But his knots held firm, held her as much as fear had imprisoned her so long ago while her muscles tightened in expectation of climax. But could she let go when Jay held her down like this? When she’d been powerless before, there’d been pain, but now there was only warmth, his wet tongue meeting her wet flesh, the liquid sounds of his taking in her pleasure loud enough to make her blush. Instead though, they only pulled the tension tighter, as she was reminded of the lush sweetness of fresh summer fruit.

Ripe.

Ready.

Bursting.

“Jay.” Her voice was urgent. “Jay.”

His gaze jerked to hers and his tongue jumped to her clitoris. Oh, oh, oh. She was close, so close, her flesh tingling, throbbing beneath his wet mouth. But orgasm seemed just out of reach. Every other time they’d been together, in the crucial final instants Jay had always coaxed her to touch herself. So smart he was, letting her own the moment of sexual release.

Letting her keep a part of herself from him.

But with her hands tied…

Her body writhed against the sheets, and those crazy hickeys made their presence known with a renewal of their exotic sting. A bit of scarf tickled the crease between her thigh and torso as his lower hand reached down and a finger pushed inside.

Her womb clenched, her inner muscles clamping down on the masculine invasion.

Heat flushed over her skin as her female body reveled in the demand. Oh, God.

His hand moved in counterpoint to his mouth. Filling her, stimulating her. Stimulating her, filling her.

Oh, good.

Nikki’s eyes stung. She blinked rapidly. This was too, too much. “I’m going to scream,” she said quickly. He had to let her go or…or something was going to happen. “Untie me before I scream.”

He lifted his head, his mouth glistening, his eyes unconcerned. “Go ahead, it’ll only make me hotter.”

“No.” He needed to let her go now. If it wasn’t a scream, some other, dangerous thing might come out of her mouth. “Please.”

“Trust me,” he whispered, his breath hot against her thigh. “Let go.”

Bending his head once more, Jay licked a hot path over her throbbing flesh. Three fingers worked their way into the wet place where she ached to be filled by him. Her hips shot up.

That scream, those tears, the unsayable emotions she wanted to hold inside her continued to bubble dangerously. Her head thrashed on the pillow, and her cheek encountered cool, citrus smoothness. The lemon.

She remembered it against the heated flesh of her back. In her mind’s eye, she saw another Nikki-Jay tableau, his tanned hands rolling it near her round behind, with the twin hickeys burning there. A deeper, almost painful yet exquisite thrust of his fingers brought her back to the present. Her shoulders pressed hard into the mattress as she arched. And then accepted another swipe of his tongue. Another drive of his hard, long fingers. His mouth moved down the slick flesh between her legs then up again to her clitoris. One light, teasing circle, and then he took it between his lips and sucked.

Her body convulsed against his mouth. She opened her mouth—to scream, to cry, to declare things that should never be said—and in the last second she remembered that lemon against her cheek. Turning her head, she managed to bite down on the fruit, first tasting its clean oil and then its bitter pith. The flavors slid down her throat as her body shook with wave after wave of frantic contractions.

Then the lemon was gone and it was Jay she tasted as he covered her body and kissed her. Ah, but not just the taste of Jay. It was Jay and herself. Still attached. Connected.

Dangerously bonded.

He groaned as he ground his hips against hers and his sex filled her body.

Another attachment.

Connection.

Bond.

He murmured against her lips. “Take me. Have me.”

She tilted her hips to meet him, to open herself to his body and to his passion. And with a last wild thrust, he went over, his release as violent as hers. He whispered against her ear as his heavy, sated body pressed down damply. “Love me.”

Love me.

The two words broke her heart.

It cracked like a raw egg—she found out it was just that fragile. In those post-orgasmic moments, all sorts of pent-up emotions spilled out: blame, shame, guilt, fear, loneliness, but there was no way to fill it up again without taking in Jay’s scent, Jay’s warmth, Jay’s command. “Love me.”

She wouldn’t. She didn’t.

Instead, she resisted with everything she had, even as her body complied with his movements, letting him turn her against him, two tethered spoons in the damp drawer of his bed.

He nuzzled her hair.

She tasted the lingering acidity of the lemon at the back of her throat and took it as the final signal she’d been waiting for. Closing her eyes, she felt Jay press a gentle kiss near her ear.

She’d always known the end would be bittersweet.

The telephone on his bedside table woke Jay. Bleary, he blinked, turned, squinted at the clock beside the ringing receiver. One fucking A.M.

“I’ll get it, cookie,” he mumbled over his shoulder. Then his head rolled left, his whiskers scratching the cool pillowcase. Christ. The other side of the bed was empty.

He snatched up the phone. “Nikki? Baby?”

The sound of a blurred voice did that creepy goose waddle down his spine. “’s me. Sh’nna.”

Sitting up, he shook his head, trying to will alertness. “Shanna? Is Nikki with you?” Putting out a hand, he discovered the sheets on her side were stone cold.

“No. No one. No one with me.”

“Crap,” he muttered.

“No one wants me.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re drunk, Shanna. Go to bed. Sleep it off. You’ll have a hell of a hangover in the morning, but them’s the breaks.” In the last few months she’d called like this at least a dozen times, her voice thick with booze or tears or both. Leaning over the side of the bed, he found the hem of one pants leg and snagged it, reeling in the garment to get to his cell phone.

“Not jus’ drunk.”

He ignored Shanna’s reply. Where the hell was Nikki? Why would she run off in the middle of the night? Fuck, he’d known he should have talked to her before having sex, but…

He looked down at his wrists. Somehow she’d untied the scarf without him waking. And she’d unknotted herself, leaving not even a thread of yarn behind.

Damn it, damn it, and double damn it.

“Took pills, too,” the voice slurred again through the line.

“Say again?” He was staring at his cell phone screen, annoyed—not panicked, no, not that, not yet—that it showed not one missed call, not one voice mail message from the woman he’d just tied up and trusted.

Damn it, he had trusted her! And she’d run out on him!

She’d run out on the man who was contemplating compromising his simple, confirmed bachelorhood.

A chill wafted over his skin. Compromising his bachelorhood?

“Took pills. Mom’s. Oxy…Oxy…thing.”

The chill on his skin froze over. “What?”

“Oxy…vodka an’ oxy.”

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