Tangled Truth (7 page)

“Are you all right?” murmured Eva.

He looked up to see her smirking at him. Just a tiny bit.
Evil as well as beautiful.

“I’ll make it. Lift your foot up.” He tapped on the foot in
question, and she obligingly raised first that one and then the other so he
could slide the rope beneath. He wound her feet together, finishing with a knot
at the ankles, then moved to the rear and began the journey back up her body,
weaving the rope from front to back and securing it at each intersection. At
calf and knees—her startled gasp when he licked the back of one knee afforded
Drew a smirk of his own—and then at the waist. When he passed the rope forward
to craft the final part of the harness around her breasts, he tweaked one of
her nipples and was delighted to realize it was crinkled and taut.

Her breathing was different too. Slower, shakier. Her
fingers trailed over the rope where it crossed her hips, stroking at the fibers
of the hemp over and over.

“Eva?”

“Mmm?”

Drew secured the rope, letting the loose ends fall down her
back, and gently pivoted her to face him. Though she swayed a little on her
bound feet, she didn’t seem distressed at the hindered mobility.

Far from it.

“Oh, honey, you’re doing it again.” Drew could hardly
restrain his glee. “Are you with me?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Her eyes held the same sleepy lust Drew recalled from the
photo shoot, and her fingers kept up their rhythmic stroking over the ropes.

“I should have asked you this before, but what are you going
to tell me if you want me to stop? Do you want a safe word, or is ‘stop’
enough?”

After a blurry moment, Eva blinked and nodded. “Basket
case.”

“Not at all. I think you’re really brave to—”

“No, no,” she said, with a brief return of the little smirk.
“That’s my safe word. Basket case.”

“Oh!”

“But thank you.”

“No, thank
you
. For doing this. God, you’re beautiful
like this.”

He took a long pause, just admiring her body, the smooth
curves that the rope emphasized so well. More petite than the girls he usually
dated, Eva in her clothes looked almost too thin for his taste. Out of them,
and with the snug rope plumping her flesh between its diamond panes, she looked
lush. Almost voluptuous.

She also looked a little worried, though. It was nerves, he
realized. The smirk was her nervous smile, and now she was biting her lip, brow
furrowing, because he had distracted her out of the blissful trance the rope
had drugged her into.

He needed to distract her right back into it. Stepping
closer, he scooped her slight frame into his arms, startling a squeak out of
her. She clasped her arms around his neck and looked toward the bed as he
approached it. Drew wanted to follow her down, maintain the maddening contact,
feel more of the whiskery ropes and the soft, smooth skin beneath his hands.

The almost shy smile on Eva’s lips, the hint of wetness that
lingered on his forearm from where it had grazed across the cleft between her
upper thighs as he lowered her onto the rumpled sheet. Everything about her
overwhelmed his senses, going straight to his cock, which ached with the need
to be inside her.

But there was one more step he needed to take care of.

“Give me your hands.”

She complied, not even looking puzzled. Just accepting and
trusting. Drew realized he was holding his breath. Afraid to breathe, to break
the spell. Afraid the perfection would be marred if he did or said the wrong
thing.

It took him hardly any time to bind Eva’s wrists as he had
the night they’d met, and to secure the tether to the rope that spanned one
side of the mattress.

“Perfect,” he whispered. She was on her side, snugly
crisscrossed with rope from shoulders to heels, lashed down at the hands. The
pattern of the cage binding left the backs of her thighs and her buttocks
exposed, and where they joined Drew could see a glint of wet pink.

“Drew,” Eva whispered back. Her eyes were nearly closed, and
her dreamy smile was intoxicating all on its own. He rounded the bed so he
could stand at the side where her head rested. Soon, so soon, he would feel the
heat of her mouth, her pussy, on his loudly complaining dick.

“You saw me lock the door to the apartment, right? You know
nobody can come in here.”

“Yes.”

“And you want this?”

“Yes. God, so much.” More urgent now. A tiny bit frantic.
She writhed, her thighs sliding against each other, and Drew’s patience
snapped. He slid his jeans and shorts off and brought his straining erection
right up to Eva’s parted lips. He cried out in pleased amazement when she
lapped at him, slipping her agile tongue into his slit before using it to
circle the swollen head.

Leaning forward, he let his weight carry him farther between
her lips and reveled in the sensation as his fingers sought Eva’s breast and
began teasing at her nipple. He used his other hand to cup her head, applying
only the lightest pressure, resisting the urge to fuck her mouth. He was
pitched too high already.

The slick, hot wriggle of her tongue against his erection
was enough to make him sweat, but it was the vibration of her mouth over his
flesh when she moaned that forced Drew to pull out and reach for the bedside
table, desperate for a condom. He nearly dropped it, his hands were so shaky,
but he finally coaxed the thing on and rounded the bed to crawl up behind Eva
and spoon his body around hers.

“
Please
…” she whispered, arching her back to press
her ass against his cock. He gasped and pushed back against the sweet pressure,
fingers tugging for leverage on the rope that crossed her hip.

But it wasn’t enough. Drew reached between them, cursing
softly at having to suffer even that much separation, and followed the seam
between Eva’s thighs straight up to the slick heat he longed to bury himself
in. Her pussy was drenched, and when he slid two fingers inside her she cried
out and tried to fuck them. Her motions were too constrained by the ropes,
which allowed her only a slight flexing at the hips.

Her ragged cry ripped through the last shred of Drew’s
restraint, and he replaced his fingers with his aching cock, driving balls-deep
in one rough thrust.

Eva’s cries mingled with his own as he worked himself in and
out of her, gripping at rope and skin to steady them both against the severity
of their responses. Drew felt accosted by pleasure, blindsided, and above all
that was the urge to hold this woman even tighter than the ropes that bound
her. He wanted to cover her up, tuck her into himself. Spin a web around her
that would protect her from the world. And fuck her until neither of them could
move.

“Drew,” she whispered. She was shaking, and he realized
through his heated blur that she was crying even as she gasped with pleasure.
But she didn’t say the words that would stop him, and only those words would
have. Drew surged into her again and again, marking the rising pitch of her
moans, the whiteness of her knuckles where she gripped the ropes restraining
her hands. It dawned on him that he was in over his head, that he was in love.

Then Eva came, shuddering in a profound, almost silent
ecstasy. It was too much to withstand, the rhythmic tightening of her cunt
around him. He went over after her, shouting, startled and unwilling to let it
be over. Undone, utterly undone, by what had gripped them both.

Trembling. Sticky. Sweat already chilling over still-heated
skin. Drew lifted his head weakly to see Eva’s eyes were closed. Evidence of
tears was still there in the blurs of mascara darkening her lids. He hadn’t
even known she was wearing any makeup.

“Sweetheart?” For the first time in several minutes, he was
coherent enough to worry that he might have pushed too far, too fast. “Are you
okay?”

She took a second before nodding. Just that, no words.
Perhaps she didn’t have any to fit the occasion, Drew thought. He reached over
to his nightstand for a tissue to dab away the ruined makeup but stopped when
Eva murmured, “Don’t let go. Not yet.”

So he lay back down and held her, even tighter than the
ropes.

Chapter Seven

Why did that have to happen on a Sunday night?

Drew slurped a bit of foam off his second cup of latte, and
the creamy sweetness only reminded him of Eva’s skin.

The mahogany of his desktop, cool but rapidly warming under
his hand, also reminded him of Eva’s skin. And the sunrise that tinted the sky
such a rosy, golden hue was exactly the shade of the gorgeous flush that
suffused her face when she was aroused.

Drew looked away from his office window and tried to focus
on the meeting agenda on the computer screen in front of him. When he started
having lyrically lewd thoughts about the color of the red stapler next to the
monitor, however, he pushed his keyboard away and swung his chair around to
face his door.

It was hard sometimes, being the boss. This was his meeting,
he couldn’t skip it or show up late. He couldn’t show up unprepared, either.
For all his easygoing manner, Drew actually worked hard to make sure his
employees were happy. He knew that showing up for a Monday morning meeting to a
boss who had slept late and didn’t have a plan would make nobody happy. Least
of all him.

The only thing that would make him truly happy at the
moment, of course, involved Eva Godfrey and several hundred feet of
well-conditioned rope. He still felt a lingering glow from the events of the
previous night. He wanted to believe it was all about finally getting to tie
the girl up and boff her, because that was simple. Drew liked simple. But even
beyond that heady thrill was the lingering admiration for Eva’s bravery. Her
willingness to try, her wholehearted commitment once she had agreed and the
payoff that meant a great deal more than just sexual satisfaction.

Although the sexual satisfaction had also been mind-blowing.

“Is that your second cup already? Late night?”

Annabelle, his chief operations officer, was standing in the
open doorway of his office, looking rumpled and sleepy and extremely casual in
snug jeans and a tattoo art t-shirt. She held her own cup from Starbucks in one
hand, a tablet computer in the other. She didn’t look like a Harvard MBA with a
wall full of computer-related credentials, or like a woman who could lead a
team of high-powered consultants into a Fortune 500 company and revamp their entire
workflow, but Drew knew she was all that and more. She intimidated the hell out
of him at times, in fact, when she put her game face on.

Yawning hugely, Annabelle slumped into one of his guest
chairs and put her Converse-clad feet up on the edge of his desk. Drew lifted
an eyebrow but allowed the feet to remain as he accepted the tablet she pushed
his way.

“A bit of a late night, yeah. What’s this? Budget?”

“Yep. I was playing with some numbers to see if we can
afford one of these things for everybody in the office without messing with
Christmas bonuses. End-of-year bonuses, I mean.”

“Whatever. Do you think it would be worth it?”

He listened with a fraction of attention to Annabelle’s
enthusiastic justification for getting everyone a tablet, one of her new
favorite toys, while the greater part of his mind played with his own new
favorite toy. He had a particular traditional
karada
in mind for the
next time he and Eva were together. In red rope. Where had he stored the long,
red nylon rope? Was it at Dan and Sheila’s place, or still in the small gear
bag from the last time he did a demonstration at the club?

“And then everybody should also get a pony with a big pink
ribbon around its neck. Do you want to hear why?”

“What?”

“Just checking. Were you listening to anything else, or was
I talking into a void?”

With a self-deprecating smile, Drew chuckled and shook his
head. “Sorry, A.B. I’m a little unfocused this morning.”

Annabelle cocked her head, her messy brown ponytail flipping
off her shoulder with the movement. She went from looking like a precocious
teenager to looking like a cutthroat corporate negotiator in about two seconds
flat, a change that would have unsettled Drew if he hadn’t seen it before.

“You actually
are
unfocused,” she remarked, her eyes
narrowing. “This isn’t just your jovial Peter Pan act. And you were up late.
You’ve been spending an awful lot of time… Oh my God! Drew, is this about a
girl? A woman, I mean?”

When Annabelle got the eagle eye, Drew knew there was no
point in attempting to lie to her. And she was one of those happily married
people who wanted to see all their friends settled down, so he knew she
wouldn’t rest until he was attached. He shrugged and smiled his best charming
schoolboy smile, hoping to convey the casual exhaustion of the sated libertine
who still had to get up and run a company the next day. But he knew he wouldn’t
fool A.B. even that much. She was already on to him.

“Drew Brantley. Wow, I never thought I’d see the day. You’re
a mess.”

“Yeah, I kind of am.” He liked it. He liked admitting he was
a hot mess of gooey emotions about Eva. He thought he might even admit it to
Eva at some point in the near future, he was that far gone. It felt too good
for him to resist. He knew it was too soon to be so foolishly optimistic about
his future, but it was that sort of a mood.

Annabelle grinned back at him, looking like a teen again. He
recognized himself in her, that ability to switch gears and to disarm people
with a casual front. “Well, good for you. It’s about time.”

“Thanks. We’ll see how it goes.”

“For right now, let’s figure out how this meeting is going
to go.”

They finished the agenda together, and Drew was nominally
more focused for the rest of the day. He didn’t mind the mild amount of teasing
he got after Annabelle outed his romantic daydreaming to the team. It was
afterward that he recognized a shift in tone. He was different, and people were
different toward him. Suddenly he was this guy with a girlfriend. It shouldn’t
have mattered that much, but it did somehow. He felt strangely grown up, like
his life was heading in a good direction. And he knew that the real change was
in how he perceived himself.