Jacked (46 page)

“Adam.” I heard my own voice crack as I tugged on the handcuffs.

He stroked his erection and then tore a foil condom packet open. “Shh. I’m not done with you yet. Just curbing your tendency to run from me.” He winkled. He climbed over me and caged me in with his formidable presence.

I swallowed hard. “I’m not running.”

His nose brushed over mine. “That’s because I’ve taken your choices away.” He placed the softest of kisses on my lips and then looked me dead in the eyes as he parted my thighs, making himself right at home. He didn’t stop until he was fully seated inside me, rending all the breath from my lungs.

I thought about my penchant for walking away instead of fighting for what I wanted, for the man that I wanted. I gazed up into his glorious face while he showed me all those things that words could not convey. His intensity as he rolled his hips into me, making me feel protected and adored. It made me realize that Adam was a man worth fighting for.

ADAM UNCUFFED ME
and gently massaged my wrist, placing tender kisses on the slight redness that appeared from me twisting and tugging while he made love to me. This encounter between us was quite different from the weekend. Perhaps it was the added kink of the handcuffs that made it so much more erotic and exciting.

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed it. For once I didn’t have a guy fumbling, mumbling that lame “do you like that, baby?” crap while trying to figure out how to pleasure me. That was such a turn off. Adam never asked; he didn’t require me to tell him what I wanted or needed.

He just knew.

I don’t know how he just knew, but he did.

Adam gave. He took. He didn’t need instructions or me calling out orders and orchestrating the team effort to eliminate the chaos and potential errors.

And that’s the moment I realized I was more relaxed than I had been in years. The man lying on the pillow next to me, working on calming his own erratic heartbeat, was simply amazing.

He gave me a sweet kiss, then rolled off the bed and headed into my bathroom. I took great pleasure in watching his muscular ass indent as he discarded the used condom.

How’d I get so lucky?

“Doc,” he leaned out of the doorway, “Shower? Or are you ready to crash?”

There wasn’t one muscle in my body willing to move. Even blinking felt like a momentous effort. But my brain, on the other hand, was working overtime, though I still managed to utter, “Sleep.”

Adam’s lazy smile was devastating when he added it to his casual
naked in my bedroom
swagger. One knee hit the edge of my mattress.

“You look gorgeous all sated like that,” he said, grinning down at me, apparently enjoying his mastery of ruining me.

“I had several
amazing
orgasms.”

His smile widened. “Good to know.”

He climbed back into bed, taking care to tuck us both under the warming layers of blankets. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore my thoughts, but something had been bugging me. “Adam?”

“Hmm?”

“I need to ask you something.”

His eyes opened, giving me his full attention.

“Your ex… Nikki…”

His mouth curled down. “Yeah?”

“Yesterday morning she said something about your kinky rope games?” I felt ridiculous for asking.

Adam diverted his attention to the stitches in his palm.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. You know that, but I can’t help but wonder what she was talking about.”

I could see him clearly contemplating how he was going to respond, mulling his answer over carefully.

“She said rope, Adam, more than once. I need to know. Are you into S&M or whatever it’s called?”

He snorted. “No. I don’t get off inflicting pain on women. I haven’t hurt you so far, have I?”

My wrist was only slightly tender, but other than a bit of kinkiness, he hadn’t inflicted any pain whatsoever. “No. Well, except for the torture you’ve put my nipples through.”

Adam’s devilish smile widened. “You’ve enjoyed everything I’ve done to your nipples.” He brushed my hair back. “I know you have. I listen to the sounds you make, to the way your fingers grip into my hair, the way your breathing increases and you arch into my touch. Believe me, I’d know if I was hurting you.”

He took a measured breath. “Be honest. Did you like the cuffs? It seemed to me like you did but I want to hear it from you.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It was strangely liberating.”

“Liberating?” His head tilted. “Explain.”

That was easier said than done. “I head up trauma teams every day, Adam. I have to be in control of everything, all the time, making decisions, instructing several people, telling them what to do. I don’t want to have to dictate what happens during sex. No woman really wants that, well, none of the women that I know do.”

“So you liked the cuffs,” he deadpanned.

I gave him a nudge. “I’ve answered that already. Now answer mine.”

“Which was?”

Was he stalling on purpose?

Adam took a deep breath and held it a few beats. “Neither of us is ready for that conversation, Doc. Ask me some other time.” He patted his hand on my hip, placating me. “Let’s get some sleep. I’m tired. You wore me out.”

I sat up on my pillows, watching him nestle in deeper and close his eyes. I wasn’t happy that he got to be the one to decide that this conversation was over.

Adam sighed again. “Come on, Erin. Don’t do this right now. We’ll talk about it some other time.”

I reached for my cell phone, taking my own stand on the subject. “It seems like a pretty significant topic to me. I let you handcuff me, and, well, that was hard for me to do, so if there’s more—”

He gazed up at me. “Really?”

I nodded, not wanting to go into my history with cops handcuffing me and why. I needed that to stay in my buried past. “I think we’ve made it to a certain level of honesty after that.” I checked my missed messages since he seemed resigned to dropping the subject. There was one text from Adam.

One tap on the screen was all it took for him to take my breath away. Five simple words in a gray text bubble.

Adam let out an exasperated breath. “Have you ever heard of Shibari?”

I lowered my cell. “Who?”

He laughed softly. “It’s a
what
, Doc, not a
who
.”

I considered searching Google. “Um, no.”

I lost his gaze for a moment. He leaned up on his elbow and then studied my face. “It’s Japanese rope bondage.”

My nerves tingled at the myriad of implications those words evoked.

“Before you get all worried, it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

I set my phone down on the nightstand. “Then explain it to me. You going to make me call you
Master
or something and humiliate me?”

Adam frowned and sat up next to me. “Not into any of that, Erin. Shibari is an art; it’s not ass paddles and whips. I’m not into giving or receiving pain,
at all
, so just get that out of your head right now.”

He tucked a few pillows behind his back and pulled his knee up, resting it on top of my thigh. “There’s a difference between sex and exploring the boundaries of control and surrender with a partner, Doc. Anyone can have meaningless sex. It’s nothing more than a physical release without a connection.”

I nodded, intrigued by the simple movements of his lips.

“Sometimes sex is mutual; sometimes it’s selfish and one-sided. Shibari, on the other hand, is more than that. It’s sharing so much more than just the act of sex. It’s a give and take.”

He studied my face.

“When you’re bound, like you
just were
with my cuffs, you put your trust in my hands, knowing I will do everything in my power to make it so much more than just a release. Be honest, did you or did you not just enjoy what we did?”

I had to be truthful, though doing so was almost admitting to liking it dirty. “Honestly, I enjoyed it very much, although it was a bit scary at first.”

He gave me a confident grin and then snagged my hip, encouraging me to snuggle down next to him. He laced our hands together. “I can awaken parts of your sexuality you didn’t even realize you had,” he said. “I don’t need you to tell me what you like or don’t like. I can tell just how your body reacts under my touch to know what gives you the greatest pleasure. Read you like a book, open you at my whim, just waiting, anticipating my perusal. Will I? Won’t I? That’s not for you to decide. I take those choices away from you, just like I did earlier. Your part is just to feel and enjoy and know with every fiber of your being that I will take you to places you’ve never been. Touch you in ways you’ve never experienced.” His eyes leveled on mine. “So to answer your question, Doc, yes, I want to do so much more than just have sex with you. But that will come, I hope, in time. The rest we’ll experiment with later, when we’re both ready.”

I needed to digest all of that while feeling his words settle in my most sensitive places. “So you want someone you can tie up?”

He drifted his lips down the back of my hand. “No, I want you, Erin. But yes, from time to time I would like you to let me take complete control of how you receive your orgasms. Sound doable?”

“Just a little kink?”

“Don’t take it to a dark place, babe. It’s just a little surrender every now and then.”

My body naturally softened. “Then why did Tampon Girl make it sound so horrible?”

Adam chuckled, his gaze warm with his amusement. He pulled the blankets up over us. I laid my face on his arm and cuddled deeper into his chest, my body sated with fantastic sex and heavy with exhaustion and mental overload. Yet, content.

“Because,” he said, “
Tampon Girl
has a way of twisting everything and finding a way to be miserable about it. But you…” He folded our hands together and pressed them to his chest. “You are just the opposite.”

He kissed me sweetly and slowly, letting me know the depth of his feelings without saying a word.

“One last question,” I managed to say.

Adam pulled his face back.

I let my fingers sift through his soft hair. “Is this Shib… rope stuff the extent of it? The truth.”

He smiled softly, pressing into my touch like a pampered lion. “It’s Shibari, and yes, that and seeing you in my cuffs is about the extent of it. You look worried.”

Part of me was.

“Think rope swing, okay? And maybe being tied to my bed for a few hours while I make you come over and over again.”

I liked the sound of that very much. “Why rope?”

Adam shoved at the pillow under his head. “I like it. I like the feeling of control it gives me, Erin. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

I could sense I was making him agitated and I was too tired to properly analyze it all. My fingertip traced the ornate rope tattoo that wrapped his upper arms. It made sense as to why he decorated his body with the symbol that gave him a sense of stability. His spirit was just as vulnerable as mine.

Life, death, crime, control… it was all so very exhausting. I snuggled into him and closed my eyes, but Adam was restless.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I stirred. “What?”

“My bed is much more comfortable than yours,” he whispered. “Just sayin’.”

I smiled, agreeing with him. My old mattress felt like a rock compared to his.

Adam let out a deep yawn.

“Just sayin’, Cop?”

He smiled, kissed my forehead, and tucked me back under his chin. “Just sayin’, Doc.”