Wild Rush: A Bad Boy Romance Page 3

  This was it. Nervously, I shifted into the pose I’d decided on, my legs angled out to the side, my chest back, my head tilted with my hair pooling over my shoulder. Yes, that looked good. But maybe it would be better to be standing? Or crap, maybe I was supposed to be kneeling? But it was too late now. No way I could gracefully get to my knees even if the coffee table weren’t in the way.

  The lock clicked and there was a sudden scent of fresh air. The voices were louder now.

  Wait—voices? As in more than one?

  Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Frantically, I looked around for something to cover myself with, but there wasn’t anything. In desperation, I tried to grab one of the throw pillows, but with my wrists bound tightly together, the bulky shape danced out of my grasp and bounced to the floor.

  In a panic, I lunged for the second one. I could hear Justin’s voice along with another male one I didn’t recognize. This time, I snagged the throw pillow by the corner and brought it up against my chest, hugging it there. It was all I could do with my limited mobility. My heart raced as I stared at the entryway to the living room, dreading seeing a strange man there.

  Justin stepped into view and stopped dead. He stared at me in shock for several long seconds and then whirled around and moved back into the entryway. From the muffled “ugh” I heard, it sounded like he’d plowed right into the man who was following him. “On second thought, do you mind looking at it later? My girlfriend’s here, and she’s not feeling very well.”

  I was frozen with fear, waiting to hear the answer, wondering who it was. Not that it mattered—I didn’t want anyone to see me in this state. Justin included, at the moment. I wish I’d never done this. Drawing my knees up, I tucked my ankles under me, trying to shield as much of my body as I could with the twelve-inch square pillow.

  “I’m here man, let me take a look,” said the other man. “They said you called about it already.”

  It must be a maintenance man here about Justin’s refrigerator that had been running very loudly lately. This knowledge did nothing to quell my fears about being seen. But Justin was firm. “I’m sorry, but she’s not feeling like herself today. Can you come back tomorrow?”

  I couldn’t hear the maintenance man’s reply, but he didn’t sound happy. But a moment later I heard the sound of the door shutting and the chain being engaged. Good. Now it was just us. But still, I was apprehensive. What was Justin going to think of all this? Ninety seconds ago, I’d been so excited about surprising him this way. Now it seemed like the worst idea in the world. My heart pounded as I waited.

  He reappeared, watching me, one eyebrow raised. I wished he’d say something. Maybe I should speak first. “Umm… hi.” Why was I nervous? This was my boyfriend. The man I loved.

  At last he spoke. “Hi yourself.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as I squeezed the pillow against my chest with my bound hands. He looked different, somehow. His outfit was normal—dark jeans and a long-sleeve olive tee-shirt that clung to his muscles. But still… the way he was looking at me was different. But I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or bad.

  He dropped his laptop bag on the floor and set his keys down. Moving into the room, he pulled the coffee table out a foot or two, and sat on it, right in front of me. Facing me.

  Reaching out, he tugged the pillow out from under my arms and tossed it on the floor. With strong, precise movements, he rearranged me, pulling me forward until I had to put my bound feet back on the ground for balance. He took my wrists in his hands and examined the white zip tie digging into my skin. “So,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “What’s with all this?”

  I squirmed on the couch, suddenly feeling like a disobedient child. This wasn’t going at all the way I’d thought it would. But maybe now that I’d gotten over my shock from the maintenance guy almost catching me, our evening could be salvaged. “I… I thought we to try some new things together. Kinky things. Things you used to enjoy.”

  “And you thought topping from below was the best way to go about that?”

  “What’s that mean?” I didn’t know the phrase, but from the smirk on his face, I didn’t think it was good.

  “It’s when the sub tries to get the dom to do what she wants him to. Generally it doesn’t end very well for the sub.” Oh. I hadn’t meant it that way. I was just trying to let him do the things he liked. And I wanted to try some of those things, too. Maybe that was topping from below, I didn’t really know. “At least it never did for my subs.”

  My breath caught. He sounded different. Dangerous. And really sexy. I hoped he was finally going to talk about his former experiences. His desires. “What… what happened if they tried?”

  Justin shifted on the table in front of me, moving closer. Leaning in. Almost idly, he placed his hands on my knees.“For starters,” he said, his voice low with a hint amusement. “They only tried it once.”

  “How come?” I breathed.

  “Because I punished them.” He looked me directly in the eye as he said this.

  Involuntarily, I shuddered, a little moan escaping my lips.

  “You think that sounds hot, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” And he was so hot when he spoke like this, his voice deep and rumbling. The sound waves from his words seem to enter my ears and then travel directly toward my core.

  “It can be. It can be a huge turn-on for both parties. Sometimes,” he said, and his hands slid up my thighs toward the hem of the teddy. “And sometimes it’s only hot for me. Not for her. Because punishment isn’t supposed to be fun. And I made sure it wasn’t.”

  Now there was a slight chill to his voice that made me believe him. And made me squirm at the thought of what an actual punishment inflicted by him might be like. But still… this was Justin. The guy who once drove four hours to return a puppy that had accidentally been left at a rest stop. “It still sounds sexy to me,” I said.

  “That’s because you have no idea what it can be like. What I can be like,” he said, and his tone made me shiver.

  “No, I guess I don’t,” I said softly. He ran his fingers up and down my thighs, rubbing, parting them slightly. His touch felt good. Reassuring. And full of promise. But his words and his tone were not what I was used to. “But if I want to learn about those things—and that side of you—why can’t I?”

  His eyes hardened. “Because you have no idea what you’d be getting yourself into. You have no idea what a bastard I can be.”

  Now I relaxed. He had to be joking. He was the nicest guy I knew. When the women at work all complained about their boyfriends or husbands, all I had to offer was that Justin couldn’t make toast or boil an egg if his life depended on it. I smiled at that thought.

  But that was a mistake. His gaze darkened as he took in my expression. “You think this is a game. And it can be, when two people want it to be. But it also can get intense. Very intense. ”

  His hands slid up to my hips, hiking up the skirt of the teddy as they went. I moaned when his thumbs brushed over my breasts, briefly finding my hard nipples. Then he reached up a long finger and flicked the spaghetti strap off one shoulder and then the other. The fabric of the lingerie caught on my breasts, my hard nipples kept it from pooling at my waist.

  “You have no idea how vulnerable you’ve made yourself. With your wrists and ankles bound, I could do anything to you.” His gaze was on my breasts now and the way the teddy seemed to defy gravity and cling to them.

  “But—but I know you’d never hurt me.” I knew that with all my heart—yet his words made me shiver slightly.

  “Actually, you don’t know that.” He reached forward with both hands and grasped my nipples. A stab of pain shot through my breasts as he pinched my rosy tips in his fingers. And suddenly he tugged, and I had to wiggle my hips forward as he pulled me toward him. His firm grip made me whimper, but then just as quickly as it started, he let go. Blood flooded into my sensitive nipples as I tried to calm my breathing, tried to calm the throbbing betw
een my legs from his rough treatment.

  Justin’s face was unreadable as he lifted my teddy back into place so that it was hanging from my breasts again. “We’ve never discussed any kind of boundaries. Limits. You’ve just tied yourself up for me like a present with a bow. What if it hadn’t been me? What is the maintenance man had just let himself in?”

  My stomach sank as that possibility took over my mind. It would have been beyond humiliating, but would it really have been dangerous?

  Justin was watching me carefully and seemed to see the unease in my eyes. “Or what if someone had broken in? I’ve got a lot of computer equipment in the back room.” “What would you do then? Hop away?”

  “No, I… ” But I didn’t know what to say next. “I have my phone there. I could call for help if I needed to.”

  He just raised an eyebrow at me and then look down at the coffee table where I’d indicated. He picked up my phone and swiped the screen open, tapping a few times. Then, keeping it in his hand, he looked back up at me. When he spoke, his voice resonated with quiet intensity. “When you play without setting rules first, you might find that your partner does something you’re not comfortable with.” And then he raised the phone, aiming it in my direction. And snapped a picture.

  Shocked, I looked down at myself, wondering what all was in that picture. The red teddy still clung to my nipples—just barely. But the tops of my breasts and the cleavage in between were fully on display. And did the picture include my bound hands in my lap? And then the question that should have occurred to me first finally did. “What—what are you going to do with that picture?”

  “Whatever I want,” he said. “That’s what happens when you don’t negotiate limits and reach a consensus before you start playing. “

  “But you wouldn’t show that…” He wouldn’t, right? But suddenly I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  And he did nothing to reassure me, just cocking an eyebrow as he stared at me. “I told you. I can be a complete bastard when I’m in that mode.” For some reason, his words made my thighs clench. I’d done this because I wanted to explore a different side of him, and I was definitely seeing one—even though this still wasn’t turning out the way I’d expected.

  Justin reached a long finger out and tilted my chin up so that I was starting into his eyes. “That thought turns you on.” I nodded. “But it also should scare you, too. When I get that way, I could push you too far. And right now, I’d like to. I’d like to punish you for putting yourself in danger like this. What if there had been a fire?”

  Now I felt on slightly firmer ground. “It’s okay. I put a pair of scissors under those magazines,” I said, pointing my chin in the right direction. “I can get out if I need to.”

  “Can you now?” Justin’s voice was more statement—a very skeptical statement—than fact. He lifted a magazine and glanced from the orange kitchen shears to my bound wrists. “Those zip ties look pretty tight.”

  “I can get out of them,” I repeated, hoping my voice sounded more confident than I felt.

  Justin was doing something with my phone again, swiping through it. “Let’s test that theory,” he said, not looking at me. “Pick a number between one and… seventy-two.”

  Seventy-two? That seems like a random number to use as an upper limit. “Forty-nine,” I said.

  “Okay, then.” He swiped at my phone again and then the corner of his mouth twisted upward in a half smile. And maybe I was just reading too much into the situation, but his smile looked a bit evil.

  He reached over and handed me the scissors, offering them with the handle side facing me. Prying my palms apart, I took them. “So,” he continued. “Since it’s so easy to get free, you have one minute to do so. Otherwise,” he said, tossing up my phone and catching it, “this picture of you looking so hot and fuckable gets sent to the forty-ninth person on your contact list.”

  For a moment I gaped at him, replaying his words in my head. Had he really just—he wasn’t serious, was he? He couldn’t be. A small smile rose to my lips. He was just messing with me as payback for trying to top him from below or whatever it was called. “You wouldn’t do that,” I said, my voice fainter than I meant it to be.

  “You’ll find out in sixty seconds,” he said, ostentatiously looking at his watch.

  “But—”

  “Starting right… now.”

  That last syllable galvanized me, and I moved the scissors between my palms, trying to get the blades pointing down toward the taut white plastic of the zip tie. Panic set in and made my fingers clumsy. Who was number forty-nine on my contact list? That was about two-thirds of the way down the alphabet. Which was right where my evil coworker, Sara Reed, would be. God, if he sent that picture to her… or to anyone at work, I’d never be able to show my face there again.

  “Forty seconds left.”

  I’d finally gotten the edge of the blade of the scissors aimed between my wrists where there was a tiny bit of give in the zip tie. But with my hands so close together, I had so little room to maneuver. When I tried to ease the handles of the scissors apart, they slipped from my fingers and dropped to the floor.

  Crap! I dove for the scissors, snatching them and trying to get them in position again, little whimpers issuing from my throat. The sense of panic was nearly overwhelming, but underneath all that, my body was responding in other ways, too. Such as the continued throbbing between my thighs. The way my nipples were so hard that they ached. And my clit ached, too. It definitely approved of Justin being so devious even if my mind didn’t know what to make of it.

  At last, I got the scissors back into position, this time with one blade on either side of the zip tie between my wrists. But I just didn’t have enough leverage to squeeze the scissors together. I tried twice and then my fingers slipped and I gasped as the sharp end of a metal blade dug into the delicate skin of my wrist.

  “Ouch!” I shrieked, dropping the scissors again.

  “Fuck,” Justin growled and he grabbed my hands just as I was about to reach for the scissors again. “Did you cut yourself?” He reached down for the scissors himself and two seconds later my wrists were free. He ran his hands over them, looking for injuries.

  “I—I don’t think it drew blood,” I said shakily.

  Justin now had my right wrist in his hands and he was leaning over it, examining every inch, trying to find a cut. “But it could have,” he said. “Easily. What the fuck was I thinking?” He scrutinized my other wrist just as thoroughly, and then leaned down and cut my ankles free. “I’m so sorry, Lily.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, but I was trembling, pretty much from head to toe. Plus my fingers and hands were tingling a little. I really had put the zip ties on too tight.

  “I should never have told you to do that. I just wanted to make you see how dangerous it can be to play this way if you’re not careful. And I guess I did because I almost let you get hurt. Just to prove a fucking point.”

  “But I’m the one who choose the scissors as a backup.”

  “It doesn’t matter. When you’re being submissive, that means it’s my job to make sure you stay safe—whether I agreed to take on the dominant role or not.”

  I pushed the straps of my teddy back up onto my shoulders and slumped against the back of the couch. I wished Justin would come sit with me, take me into his arms and make me feel better, but he remained on the coffee table, his expression contemplative.

  Maybe we could just pretend this never happened? I certainly wished it hadn’t. Parts had been really hot, but now the distance I’d been sensing recently between us seemed even wider. I wished things could go back to the way they were before we met Madison in the mall. But we couldn’t go back, and I didn’t know how to move forward. And there was one thing I still really needed to know.

  “Justin?”

  “Yeah?” Even his voice sounded distant.

  “Would you have… I mean, you wouldn’t really have sent that…” I trailed off as he looked at me.
Then a moment later he realized what I meant and picked up my phone again. He tapped at it and then held the screen up for me to see. The picture didn’t even show me. It showed the back of the sofa next to me with just a small sliver of my arm at the edge of the frame. “Oh,” I said, the syllable turning into a sigh of relief. “I didn't think you would—but—I wasn’t sure.”

  “It’s called a mindfuck. Those used to my specialty,” he said bitterly. “Making a sub believe something bad was going to happen if she couldn’t do something well enough. Or fast enough. Making her frantic and panicky. That’s the kind of thing I used to enjoy” He paused and then looked me straight into the eye.

  “I told you I could be a bastard.”

  Chapter Five

  THE NEXT EVENING, we talked again on the phone while I was making banana bread.

  “You’re baking? Again?”

  “There’s a retirement party tomorrow,” I lied.

  “Hon, are you still upset about yesterday?”

  “No,” I said truthfully. I wasn’t upset about that—a bit humiliated, but not upset. But I was pretty sure he was. He’d sent flowers to my work this morning. “I’m just curious about the things you used to be into. About why you want to—used to want to—be in control. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

  He was silent for a moment. I could picture him lying in the big bed we shared on weekends. I imagined him bare-chested and wearing sweat pants. It was a far more delicious prospect than the banana bread. Justin had been on the swim team in high school and college, and his upper body was really muscular. He still swam at least three mornings a week before work.

  I wished I were there right now. Being wrapped in his arms, held in his powerful embrace, nestling against his chest was my favorite place to be in the whole world, but we’d long ago figured out that if we spend the night together on weeknights, we were usually zombies the next day at work.