TangledBound (4 page)

“It’s amazing,” she said after a minute. “The energy in this
city. Excitement and life and money and sex. And Elvis. Sooo much Elvis.”

He pushed his hands into his pocket to keep them out of her
hair. “It’s artificial and fleeting. Many people will go home broke.”

“Yeah, but they’re having a good time now.” She opened her
eyes and her smile faded. “Most of them, anyway.”

“Are you tired?” he asked abruptly.

“No, not really. I want to see things.”

“Come with me.” Giving in to the need to touch her, Sam took
her hand and steered her in the opposite direction from their hotel. “Every
first time in Vegas deserves a fountain show.”

Melanie laughed, a lighthearted sound that cracked something
inside him. Even though he knew he’d regret it later, Sam decided not to worry
about the break in his armor. It wouldn’t go any further, not now that he knew
who she was. The anonymous woman on the plane had gotten under his skin, but
her identity protected him from any more damage.

He and Melanie fell into an easy silence as he guided her
down the Strip and through the ever-present traffic, both pedestrian and motor
vehicle. When they reached the Bellagio’s man-made lake, Sam carved a path
through the crowd in order to secure an unobstructed view for her.

“The songs change,” he said, standing behind her and bending
his head so he could speak in her ear. “Elvis’s
Viva Las Vegas
is
usually on the playlist. I’m not sure what else is running right now. I haven’t
been here in a couple of years.”

People packed in around them, chatting and snapping photos
while they waited for the next show to begin. When a few minutes passed without
action on the lake, Melanie turned around and leaned against the stone at her
back. “Can I ask a question?”

Something in her expression warned Sam to say no. Instead,
he nodded.

She fingered a chin-length lock of hair and looked away from
him. “Do you do the whole contract thing? Lists of expectations and forbidden
behaviors and all that?”

Shit. His cock stiffened instantly at the thought of sitting
down with her to define her permissions and her limits. He should have listened
to his instincts. If he had, he wouldn’t be wondering how she signed her name.
He was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard her, but he wasn’t a coward and as a
Dominant, he had a responsibility to educate. Even when he didn’t want to,
especially when the information-seeker was a lovely, naïve submissive-curious
getting all her information from storybooks.

He blew out resigned a breath. “It depends.”

“On what?” Melanie had rediscovered her ability to make eye
contact. She watched him expectantly.

“Every pair of people has a different situation.” Knowing
that wouldn’t satisfy her, he continued. “For me, it depends on the
circumstances and the person. If dinner leads to bed, then no. If dinner leads
to a power exchange relationship, then yes.”

“Do airline peanuts count as dinner?”

Sam grunted.

Still studying him, she tilted her head. “What if dinner
leads to bed more than once?”

“It isn’t going to.”

“But what if it does? When does something that’s casual
become something requiring a written contract? Is the contract a way of saying
‘let’s be boyfriend and girlfriend’ or is it more commitment-oriented, like an
engagement ring?”

“It depends,” he repeated, and checked his watch, suddenly
desperate for the fountain show to begin.

“How many contracts have you signed?” she asked.

“Nine.”

“Nine!” Her eyes widened. “Is that a lot? It seems like a
lot.”

“I’m not new to this.” But he was finished talking about it
with her.

Melanie grimaced. “So I would be number ten. Or I guess if
you’ve had nine contracts, you’ve had other non-contracts, so I wouldn’t even
be number ten, would I?”

She couldn’t keep her emotions off her face. As she talked,
her confidence visibly faded away to uncertainty. “Thirteen seems kind of
insignificant.”

Taking charge of the situation, he said, “Enough, Melanie.
You asked your question and I answered. All you’re doing now is hurting
yourself. It’s time to stop.”

Water spouts broke the surface of the water and the energy
of the crowd changed. Thank God. Sam nodded at the lake. “Turn around and
watch. The show’s starting.”

Still frowning, she shifted to face the water. Sam let out a
relieved sigh, which became a silent curse when she leaned back against him. If
she noticed the erection straining his pants, she gave no indication. While she
turned her head to watch the progression of the fountains as water erupted, he
tried to bring his body under control. Instead of Elvis’ energetic tune, the PA
system crooned an Elton John ballad. Melanie swayed to the music, and even
though he couldn’t hear her voice, he knew she was singing along because her
back vibrated against his chest.

The truth was, he hadn’t kept a count of his one-time
encounters. Even though Melanie wasn’t even close to the thirteenth woman he’d
fucked, she was too far from insignificant for his peace of mind. Every minute
he spent with her sharpened his desire to
own
her. In that capacity, she
wouldn’t be the tenth, she’d be the first.

His past contract-bound relationships were very specific in
nature, granting him slave-training authority for a limited time. While he’d
personally trained nine submissives who had wanted to learn how to be more than
bottoms, he’d never entered into a total power exchange relationship that
involved his emotions as well as his body.

At the peak of the show, she half-turned to say something to
him. Her hip brushed his groin and she paused mid-sentence. Surprise widened
her eyes and realization darkened them. She visibly shook herself, licked her
lips and started over with whatever she meant to say. Sam didn’t wait for the
words. Driven by an inexplicable need to claim her, he tunneled his fingers
through her hair and twisted, pulling her head back to a point that strained
the tendons in her neck. He saw acceptance in her gaze, followed by surrender.
He swooped to take, plunging his tongue into her mouth and turning her to fully
face him. He felt more than heard her whimper as he backed her against the
stone wall until her stomach cushioned his groin.

Melanie flattened her hands against his ribs and stood on
tiptoe, rising to meet him. Completely unnecessary—he wouldn’t have allowed her
to escape even if she’d tried. The crack she’d started broke open and ran long,
destroying the barrier he’d built over years of watching so-called serious D/s
relationships begin and end due to changing needs. Young women like Melanie
flitted from one stage of life to another, and she wasn’t anywhere near the
same page he was on. He’d been looking and waiting for as long as he could
remember, searching for the woman he could claim for a lifetime.

Sam knew he’d have a hell of a time repairing the wall after
indulging himself, but something beyond his control decided the pain was worth
it. While he sucked at her wine-sweet lips, he committed her flavor to memory
and counted the reasons why this had to be the last taste. Her newness headed
the list. Ironic that it also headed the list of things that attracted him.

When he finally lifted his head, she opened her eyes and
smiled at him. All her earlier distress had vanished, replaced by a dangerously
self-assured confidence. “You should tell me more about that dungeon of yours.”

“No.” He released her and backed away. “What I should do is
put you in a cab and send you back to the hotel. And that’s what I’m going to
do right now.”

Chapter Three

Melanie spent the next morning doing the spa thing with her
mother, stepmother and Jovanna. Her face tingled from the herbs in the European
scrub and her scalp ached from a vigorous massage. After the night she’d spent
tossing and turning, wanting Sam and trying to figure out why he didn’t want to
desire her, the morning’s grooming activities only exhausted her further.

Snuggled into a fluffy white robe, she wiggled her toes in a
basin of hot, perfumed water. The whirlpool pedicure tub frothed bubbles around
her ankles while a small, silent woman massaged moisturizer into her right
hand. Neither the steam nor the acupressure did anything for her headache, and
she couldn’t block out the sound of maternal advice being pushed upon Jovanna.

By some blessed stroke of luck, the motherly figures
finished their mani-pedis first and left to get started on the hot stone
massages they’d both decided upon.

Jovanna groaned out loud once they were gone. “I am so glad
they live away from David. Far, far away.”

Melanie closed her eyes. “Not as glad as I am. I don’t even
want to think about the ‘when are you going to get married’ harassment I’d
suffer if they were closer than email and phone calls. Bad enough that my dad
thinks I need a financial planner and a husband, or a financial planner as a
husband.”

“What do you think you need?”

“I dunno. An android to manage my bank account and my schedule
so I don’t have to.” She grimaced, reminded of the scheduling mess she had to
puzzle through when she returned to New York. She’d missed her chance to
register for a required class, and somehow had to convince somebody to add her
to the overfull roster. Maybe if she showed up with a photo of the litter of
dehydrated kittens that had sidetracked her on her way to the registrar’s
office, she’d win a little sympathy for her situation.

A few minutes later, Jovanna spoke again. “Sorry about
dinner last night. David and I got distracted. Leaving you alone with Sam
wasn’t the plan.”

Melanie’s pulse sped up and she tensed. Trying to keep her
tone neutral, she said, “It was fine. Everybody was finished eating anyway.”

“Yeah.” Jovanna paused before asking, “What did you two do
after leaving the restaurant?”

“We walked over to the Bellagio to see the fountain show.”
The nail technician sprayed Melanie’s hands with a drying agent and promised to
come back shortly to check the polish. Once they were alone, Melanie
half-turned in her chair to look at Jovanna. “Do you know him pretty well?”

“Who, Sam?”

Melanie nodded.

Jovanna drummed her crimson-lacquered fingertips on the arms
of her chair, obviously trying to decide what to say in reply.

Before the other woman could deflect or give a vague answer,
Melanie spoke again. “I know he’s, uh, kinky. So if you’re trying to figure out
a way around that, you don’t have to worry about preserving my pristine
innocence. I just want to know other stuff about him.”

“Like what?” Jovanna asked warily.

Melanie took a deep breath. “Like whether he has a contract
with anybody right now.”

Jovanna cringed. “Oh my God. What do you know about
contracts? Have you slept with him?”

“Um. There hasn’t been any sleeping, no.”

At that moment, Jovanna’s phone chimed with an incoming
text. While she read and responded, Melanie slumped in the chair. She wished
she hadn’t opened the subject of Sam up for discussion.

“I don’t know him well enough to have any details about his
personal life,” Jovanna said several minutes later. “I don’t think anybody
does. I’ve heard vague rumors that he’s kind of hardcore, but people make up
stories to fill in the blanks they can’t fill with facts. He owns Bondage but
he doesn’t actively engage with anybody while he’s in the building, that I’ve
ever noticed. Whatever he does when he’s not in the building, he keeps it to
himself. Hence the rumors.”

“I am so not going to ask what you do at Bondage,” Melanie
said. She was familiar with the fetish club—everybody was—but she’d never been
inside. Not only was Bondage a membership-only establishment except for one
night a month, but it was also a little bit scary. Even Brooke, who’d had three
Masters, steered clear. Melanie probably wouldn’t ever visit now, not knowing
if she might encounter David among the crowd. Ew. She shuddered. Extra ew.

“Thank God for the little things,” Jovanna muttered. Louder,
she said, “He’s very experienced. He’s respected. He’s straight. He’s…whether
the rumors have any basis or not, he might be too serious for you, Mel. I don’t
think he’s the right man for experimenting or having a little fun.”

“He seems like he could use some more fun in his life.”

“Don’t play with him,” Jovanna warned, giving the exact
opposite advice she’d received from Brooke early that morning. Brooke suggested
some serious playing-with and insisted men like Sam thrived on being provoked.

“But he’s fun to play with. I don’t think he knows what to
do with me.” Her lips curved and she closed her eyes. She’d rather follow
Brooke’s approach, since she suspected provoking Sam was the only way she’d get
him to look her way.

Jovanna sighed and continued texting.

* * * * *

Sam sat at a poker table with David, David’s father Howard
and another man named Joaquin, who David introduced as his stepfather. Four
hands into the game, the two Burkes began to discuss Melanie. Since the day was
so early and the casino crowd slim, the dealer didn’t comment on the amount of
conversation.

Sam requested a beer from a passing server and glowered at
his cards while he waited for the cocktail waitress to return.

“I’ve decided to cut her off,” Howard Burke said. “She has
to learn she can’t keep throwing away money on stray cats. She calls me every
month asking me to send her deposit through early. How can she have nothing
left for her actual needs?”

David flipped a plastic chip into the pot to up his bid.
“Leave her alone, Dad. The cats make her happy.”

Joaquin chewed on the end of his cigar and placed his own
bid, nothing to add to the conversation. Nothing in English, anyway. He
muttered to himself in a language that didn’t filter through Sam’s rudimentary
background in French.

Howard grunted. “You’re going to be taking a new wife home
with you. Your sister’s happiness shouldn’t be your concern, not if you want
your marriage to last. What does Jovanna think about having eight or nine
flea-ridden felines in the garage?”

“Jovanna likes animals.” David glanced at his phone and,
frowning, started tapping out a text with one hand.

“She won’t like them once she’s wearing a wedding ring.”
Howard folded and leaned back in his chair. “Trust me, son. You want to worry
about your wife’s happiness, not your sister’s. When Melanie has a man of her
own, she can have her fleabags again. Even better, the man will take her in hand
and put a permanent stop to it. For God’s sake, she could get rabies from one
of the little mongrels.”

Sam stared at his cards until the cocktail waitress finally
returned. When he looked up, he found David watching him with an inscrutable
expression.

Sam steeled himself to maintain eye contact and asked, “Your
sister likes cats?”

“She’s been having a love affair with them since she was
seven,” Howard answered. “The skinnier and closer to death, the better. Now she
wants to go into veterinary medicine and it’s gotten out of hand. This is the
third time she’s changed majors. At this rate, she’ll never finish college.”

“I suppose she figures starving kittens won’t divorce each
other and send her to live with her brother.” David glanced away from Sam to
glower at his father.

Howard ignored David’s accusation. “She needs a man to keep
her in line and give her direction. She can love him and a few babies instead
of an endless parade of animals.”

David refocused on Sam. “I don’t disagree.”

Joaquin pulled a royal straight, ending the hand and saving
Sam from having to respond to the knowledge and permission in his friend’s
stare.

* * * * *

That evening, Sam leaned against the hotel’s poolside bar
with a bottle of beer in his hand and a hard-on in his pants. Public erections
weren’t part of his life anymore. Years of forty-hour weeks first working in,
then managing, the fetish club he now held fifty percent share in, had
desensitized him. Visual displays were standard procedure. Yet there he stood,
undeniably stiff.

A few yards away, Melanie lounged naked by the kidney-shaped
pool. Practically naked. The tiny green triangle of cloth that made up her
bikini bottom bunched toward the crease of her shapely ass, giving him a big
eyeful of her tanned cheeks, and her top’s ties dangled toward the ground. She
rested her head on folded arms, her face turned away from the hotel. Sam took a
long pull from his beer while studying the pale hollow under her arm and the
bare, full curve of her breast.

That’s where he’d start. He’d start right there, running his
tongue over the swell of flesh compressed between her chest and the lounger. He
wouldn’t be able to reach her nipple, but that would come later. He could taste
the suntan oil and salt just fine by dragging his open mouth across her
shoulder and down her back.

A skimpy bow secured her bikini bottom at her hips. One
quick tug and the bow would give, leaving her ass bare to his view. Her slim,
curvy legs were already spread—nothing lewd, but enough that he’d be able to
admire her slit and maybe get a taste of her cream while he was down there.

Once he woke her up with his tongue, he’d turn her over onto
her back and get down to the real business of slaking the need that had kept
him awake most of the night after leaving her, untouched, at the door of her
hotel room. The long, thin cord hanging from her ear buds would fit nicely
around her slender wrists. He could stretch her arms taut above her head,
secure her to the lounger’s frame and feast on her pussy until she begged him
for relief.

Cock aching, Sam straightened and left the bar behind.
Melanie didn’t stir as he walked around her lounger and sat on the chair beside
her. He rested his forearms on his spread thighs, relishing the discomfort as
his fly constricted the painful thickness of his erection.

Her lips, shiny with gloss, were slightly parted in her
sleep. She didn’t wear any sunglasses. This close, he could hear the music
coming from her ear buds—not enough to make out the songs, but enough to know
she
wouldn’t hear anything coming at her. Sam frowned and swallowed another
mouthful of his still-cold beer. The sun blazed high in the sky and beat down
relentlessly. Stupid. No, that was wrong. At dinner last night, while David and
Jovanna provided a buffer, she’d proven herself well-versed in everything from
world events to art, able to hold her own in conversation. He couldn’t call her
stupid. The nubile young blonde occupying his fantasy was
reckless
.

He should leave her alone. If he was smart, he’d walk
away—but he wasn’t smart.
He
was the stupid one, thinking he could enjoy
something noncommittal with a stranger, thinking he’d feel differently about
responsibility if he didn’t know the woman. Years of watching casual encounters
at his club should have kept him from the mistake he’d made during their
flight. Casual Dominants could play for the sake of playing and walk away
without more than surface obligation to the submissives they topped. He wasn’t
a Dom who could shed his obligations, and stupid man who he was, he’d decided
to take responsibility for her. Worse, that kiss outside the Bellagio had made
him
want
it. Irritated with his situation and her lack of
self-preservation, Sam leaned over and pulled out her ear bud. “Wake up.”

Melanie opened her pretty blue-gray eyes immediately and
started to sit up. Sam stopped her with the base of his beer bottle, holding
the cold glass between her bare shoulders.

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Unless you’re interested in giving
me an eyeful.”

“It’s nothing you haven’t already seen.” She licked her lips
and curled her hands around the edges of the lounger but she didn’t raise her
shoulders any higher. “You could just look away.”

“I could. I’m not going to.” Sam took his bottle back and
sat it on a nearby table. “Ever heard of skin cancer?”

Melanie held his gaze a long minute. Sam could’ve sworn he
saw the instant she decided to ignore instinct in favor of attitude. He braced
himself for what was to come.

Pushing up off the lounger, untied bikini top and all, she
swung her feet around to land between his. She flashed a sly, knowing smile.
“Did you see any discolored spots while you were checking me out?”

Sam gritted his teeth, smothering his desire to rid her of
the attitude and fortifying his determination not to look down. “I wasn’t
checking you out.”

“Hmm.” Her smile grew. She leaned forward and reached past
him to snag his beer. As she tipped the bottle to her mouth and tilted her head
back, a drop of condensation rolled off the bottom.

He lost the battle with his eyeballs. The droplet of water
landed between her breasts and slid south. Her bikini top had landed
fortuitously, mostly covering her breasts. Mostly, not completely. He could see
the curve of a pink nipple, the same color as her lips.

“Tie me up?” she asked. She sat the bottle on the ground
between them and twisted, presenting her bare back.

Sam blew out the breath he was holding. He shouldn’t touch
her. Despite the unspoken approval he’d picked up on that afternoon, David was
a good friend and a man he respected. Bad enough that his
imagination
wanted to fuck David’s little sister, without crossing the line into actual
physical contact.
More
physical contact. But Melanie stared at him
expectantly over her shoulder and Sam desperately wanted to test the silk of
her skin one more time. Against his better judgment he picked up the ties, drew
them across her narrow back and permitted himself to linger while securing the
flimsy strings in a square knot.