Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (10 page)

“If I’m alone, I’ll probably get so turned on that I’ll have to go to my room, get undressed, and use my hands to satisfy myself.”

The image of her doing just that, of what she’d done earlier in the evening to heighten her pleasure while she rode his cock, flashed through his brain and put every cell of his being on red alert.

“If I’m not alone, I’ll just have to hope no one notices how flushed I’m getting or suspects how damp my panties are.”

His nostrils flared and if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up grinding his molars to dust.

Her tongue outlined the shell of his ear, sending tremors down his spine. Her hands followed the path of his long arms until her fingers dusted the feathery strands of the knitted yarn binding his wrists.

“And every time you see me wearing one of these, you’ll know exactly what I’m thinking about. You’ll think about it, too, and we’ll both be back here, teetering on the edge of bliss. Unless you want me to stop,” she added.

Her breath skated across the back of his neck, raising gooseflesh, while her nipples dragged sharply along his chest.

Yeah, he wanted her to stop. About as much as he wanted to contract a flesh-eating disease on his pork and beans.

“When I get out of this,” he growled, “I’m going to turn you over my knee and blister your behind.”

Pushing vertical, she stared down at him with one brow arched over a moss-green eye. “You know I’m not into the ‘spank me, Daddy’ punishment thing, but if you want to look at my ass . . .”

With that, she lifted off of him and swung around so that she faced the other direction. Glancing back over her shoulder, she shot him a grin and grabbed him by the root.

Air hissed through his teeth at the harsh treatment. Not that he was complaining. She wasn’t really being rough enough to hurt him, but he was already so hard
and so sensitive that even the lightest brush of her fingers threatened to make him go off like a rocket.

“You used to like it this way, too,” she said before repositioning herself and driving herself back down onto his burgeoning erection.

“Christ on a cracker!”

His body bowed, driving his heels and skull into the mattress. She stiffened on him as the motion sent him thrusting deeper inside her, but ended on a sigh.

He was panting now, hanging on by a thread, not sure whether to pray she’d slow down or beg her to finish him off.

“Since when did you add torture to your repertoire?”

Her short black hair danced at her nape when she shook her head. “This isn’t torture,” she replied.

Easy for her to say. She didn’t have a hot, wet woman lodged on her cock, clasping him like a vise.

“
This
,” she murmured softly, “is torture.”

Her slim, smooth back blocked his vision, but a foot-thick wall of concrete couldn’t have kept him from feeling her very special brand of torment as she reached down to cup his nuts.

She palmed them, but no matter how gentle the touch, the sensation went straight to his hypothalamus, sending his nerves screaming. Screaming, thudding, bucking for release.

The side of her thumb stretched to the tight flap of skin connecting his testicles to the base of his dick and began to caress, and he knew he was a goner.

“Move, Jenna,” he bit out, the words laced with as much animal lust as he’d ever heard in his own voice. “Move now and bring yourself off, or I’m going over without you.”

He’d always been one to take care of a woman’s fulfillment—especially this woman’s—before his own, but this time he didn’t have a choice. Try as he might to fight it, he was about to come, and she was on her own.

Instead of letting go, she continued what she was doing, the nails of her other hand digging into his thigh as her hips sped up. She lifted and fell, slid forward and back, the soft globes of her ass bouncing against his abdomen. The heavy beats of her breathing filled the room, and all the while she continued to fondle him.

His balls tightened and shrank in her hand, and pressure built. He thrust as hard and fast as he could from his prone position, wanting to fill her, go deep, give her a portion of the satisfaction she was giving him.

And then it was too late. The boas cut into his flesh as his entire body jerked, strained, convulsed . . . and emptied itself in a shower of pleasure so intense, he thought he might black out.

Through his haze of completion, he heard Jenna’s mewling cries and felt her spasming around him, and knew she’d reached her pinnacle, too.

The next time Gage came awake, it was with a clearer head than before, and his immediate thought was,
Third time’s a charm
.

He fully expected to open his eyes and find Jenna still straddled across his lap, still trying to stir his poor, abused willy to porn-star proportions, still trying—and succeeding—to ride him hard and put him up wet.

And this time, God help her, he
would
get loose and he
would
exact his revenge. He was downright looking forward to it.

But when he opened his eyes, the room was empty. Well, except for his bare-naked ass strapped to the four corners of the bedframe.

The sheets were a tangled mess beneath him and trailing onto the floor. A thin strip of sunlight shone through the partially open blind on the window behind him, bringing out the individual colors of the thin, worn rug covering the floor—and his clothes, strewn about in piles where Jenna had tossed them after stripping him down to his birthday suit.

His abductor, however, was nowhere in sight.

So she planned to use him for her own selfish sexual gratification and then take off, did she?

A knot of annoyance tightened in his stomach. He didn’t much appreciate being the object of her
wham, bam, thank you, man
mentality.

He didn’t much appreciate still being roped up like a calf during branding season, either.

Craning his neck, he took in the ties at his wrists. He’d done more than his fair share of yanking last night, and all he’d managed to do was pull the boas tighter. So he wouldn’t waste any more time with that.

Instead, he studied his bonds, lingering until he found what he thought might be an end piece. From the looks of it, the lengths of tasseled yarn weren’t so much knotted as wound around his wrists and the bedposts, then tied into tight bows.

Twisting his body, arm, and hand—and not all in the same direction—he got two fingers around one of the ends and slowly began to tug.

Slowly.

Slowly.

The end started to move. Mere centimeters at first, but it was coming.

He kept at it, making sure he didn’t rush and lose his grip or end up with tighter bindings than he’d started with. When the first boa loosened and fell from around his wrist, he let his head fall back on the pillow and bit back a shout of success.

Lungs burning from lack of oxygen while he’d held his breath in concentration, he rolled to his other side and yanked the end of that boa until his right wrist sprang free. A second later, his feet were undone and he was off the bed, grabbing for his clothes.

Hopping on one leg and then the other, he jumped into his pants on his way to the door and was tugging his plain black T-shirt over his chest as he hit the hall.

Feet bare and fly still open, he cocked his head to listen for sounds of Jenna. No telling where she was in this big old house, and he didn’t want her springing any more surprises on him. If anything, he intended to spring one or two on her.

When he didn’t hear anything on the second floor, he headed for the stairs, zipping up as he took the steps as quietly as possible one at a time.

As he reached the bottom, he heard someone talking and knew it was Jenna. Her voice was low and intense, coming from around the corner.

Careful not to make a sound, he stopped on the last step and leaned a shoulder against the wall. She was close, probably only a few feet away, even though he couldn’t see her.

He pictured her standing near the dining room table, speaking in hushed tones to . . . someone. Apparently on the phone, because he hadn’t heard a second voice even though there were plenty of pauses long enough for someone else to fill.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she insisted just above a whisper.

He imagined she was keeping her voice low in hopes of not waking him. Little did she know . . .

“Ohmigod, it was amazing. I can’t thank you two enough for all your help.”

Silence. Though he suspected—hell, he knew—she was talking to either Ronnie or Grace.

“No, he won’t,” she went on matter-of-factly. “He’ll be furious. I’m kind of hoping I can cut him loose
while he’s still asleep and then run off to hide until the coast is clear.”

And now he was sure about something else—she was talking to one of her friends about
him
. About tying him up and having her wicked way with him. Over and over again.

“But hopefully the deed is done and it won’t matter how angry he is with me.”

Hmph
. She should be so lucky. He didn’t appreciate being manipulated, no matter what the reason. Not when she could have just
asked
him to come over and help her scratch her itch.

That, he thought, really pissed him off . . .

Wait. What deed?

Wasn’t having sex with him last night “the deed”?

No, that couldn’t be right because she’d said “hopefully the deed was done” and that deed was definitely done. It had been done hard and fast and quite thoroughly. Twice.

So what else could she have hoped to accomplish with her little domination-and-submission routine?

“I don’t know.”

Her voice dropped, and he imagined her chewing the corner of her lower lip the way she always did when she was nervous.

“Don’t those over-the-counter tests say you have to wait seven to ten days or something?”

Gage’s brows knit. Test? What kind of test took seven to ten days?

Jenna sighed. “Start over, I guess. Start dating again, maybe visit one of those icky sperm banks. But I don’t want to think about any of that. I want to stay positive
and hope the plan worked. If it does, Gage will kill me when he finds out, but I don’t think I care.”

The last of her words swirled around him, going in one ear and out the other because his internal organs had all stopped functioning at
sperm banks
.

Son of a bitch
.

She hadn’t drugged him and tied him down just to have fabulous, forbidden sex with her ex. She’d drugged him and tied him down to get pregnant.

Son of a bitch! Fucking son of a goddamn bitch.

The one thing she
knew
he’d never agree to. The biggest cinder block in the wall that had gone up between them and eventually destroyed their marriage.

Fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, he forced himself to breathe evenly and remain perfectly still. If he moved, it would be to whip around the corner, snatch the phone out of her hand, and shake her until her teeth rattled or worse.

It was the “worse” that kept him rooted to the spot. Because he was afraid if he saw her right now, if he laid a finger on her, he might do serious bodily harm. And no matter how furious he was with her—even now, when she’d betrayed his trust and used his own weak, disloyal flesh against him—he would never truly want to hurt her.

But damn, it was tempting. His jaw ached from holding back a roar of outrage.

Just when he thought his head might explode from the pressure building behind his eyes, Jenna’s voice intruded again.

“Yes, I’m sure. If I need anything, I’ll call.” A beat passed. “I think that’s a great idea. I’m sure they’d love
to see you, and then I won’t be the only one who got lucky this weekend.”

Her tinkling laughter filled the room and spilled up the stairwell. Normally, he loved to hear her happy. She had one of those laughs that poured over him like warm honey and burrowed under his skin.

This morning, though, it grated, reminding him that she and her friends had concocted a plan to knock him out and knock
her
up.

She said good-bye and he heard a small beep as she disconnected. He braced himself, expecting her to round the corner and run smack into him, but instead her footsteps moved in the opposite direction, toward the kitchen.

And she was humming. Humming, dammit, happy as a lark at the little scheme she and her friends had concocted and managed to pull off—brilliantly.

God, he felt like a schmuck.

Oh, sure, I’ll come over and fix your dripping sink
.

Duh.

Gee, thanks for the cold beer, it really hits the spot
.

Der.

You want to fuck like bunnies even though we’ve been divorced for more than a year? Awesome!

Idiot, idiot, idiot!

A fresh wave of anger hit and he pushed away from the wall, intent on finally facing her and letting her have it. He wouldn’t bruise her, he wouldn’t shake her, he wouldn’t toss her through an upstairs window.

But he couldn’t promise not to shout the rafters down around her ears.

Walking softly, he was careful not to alert her to his presence. She was in the kitchen now, still humming as
she moved around, running water for coffee, filling a filter with grounds.

He didn’t let himself notice the snug fit of her cutoff denim shorts or the long, slim legs they left bare. The bright red tips of her toes or the sleeveless white top tied just beneath her breasts to expose her taut midriff.

He didn’t want to see any of that or think about the fact that she looked almost as good in clothes as she did out of them.

Oh, no, not today. He was not going to let his attraction to her get in the way of his fury over her betrayal.

She had her back to him, and it was almost too easy to sneak up on her. When she turned, he was less than a foot away. Her eyes went wide, she shrieked in surprise, and the coffee pot she was holding slipped from her fingers, smashing to the floor in a shower of water and glass.

Gage cursed. He’d meant to intimidate her . . . and yeah, maybe scare her a bit . . . but he didn’t want her to hurt herself.