“Matthew, save your sex games for whatever bimbo you’re screwing right now and just get this over with.

I can be a lot more fun with my hands free. I’ve…got plenty of lovers who will vouch that I’m worth the time in the sack.”

She heard him sigh, and then his hand was against her back, pressing her down to the table, making her lie there on her stomach. His thighs brushed the back of hers, and she choked on feminine fear. My God, he’s going to… No, not like this.

One of the nylon straps was under her upper arm, telling her the contraption was just to her left. There was a sliding sound, a click of metal, and for a moment she thought he was adjusting the device. Then she realized he had picked up something to her right. Something he had laid on the table earlier, before he pulled her over his lap. She swore.

“Goddamn it, Matt—”

“Two things,” he said in a hard voice. “The cursing, and referring to lovers you’ve never had, and never will have.”

Snap!

The belt was like a lick of flame, striking her across both buttocks. She cried out, startled, her mind not able to keep up.

“Matt, don’t. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’d gouge my eyes out if you could right now.”

Snap.

Her body quivered with the pain, but she clenched her teeth, even as she felt the first tear spill out.

“Why are you doing this?” She lost her resolve, her voice breaking.

“Why can’t you just…not do this? Why does it have to be like this?”

“Sshhh…it’s okay.”

His body covered hers, completely blanketing her, his legs against hers, his pelvis against her hips, the pressure of his cock firmly against her aching ass, his waist against the small of her back, his chest against her shoulder blades, his neck and jaw against her temple. For some reason, instead of wanting to bite him in retribution, she wanted to press her face into the curve of that warm male neck, feel the rough scratch of his afternoon shadow, his breath moving the soft hair along her face. She needed oxygen, or her entire body was going to decompress from the pressure. Tennyson Rule Four: Show no fear , was about to fly out the window.

“How did you imagine it would be with us? You and me?” His voice was a husky whisper.

Like you described. Forever, making love to me forever, with fresh flowers in the room…The thought was almost as shocking as her next thought. She’d also imagined it somewhat like this. The heat, the wildfire and sexual violence mixed with exhilaration. Not this tearing emotional pain. But one couldn’t come without the price of the other.

She was a negotiator, a closer. She knew the cost of the biggest deals.

And tonight was a very big deal, though she kept trying to minimize it.

Matt was ruthless at the negotiation table when he wanted to be, and he wasn’t holding anything back.

All the wildness of the past few moments faded back as a stillness settled over them, the sacred,

unassailable intimacy of two bodies that wanted to be together, no matter what her mind denied. The press of his weight against her perversely soothed the vibrating pain of her bottom. His hand reached up, stroked back her hair, freed a piece caught in an uncomfortable position in the mask.

“Trust me, Savannah. Tell me you want me, what I’ve always known.

Then we don’t have to do this.

Just surrender.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. Please, Matt. Just…don’t.”

“No.” He nuzzled her ear, and she couldn’t help moving her cheek against the touch. “This is a deal I’m going to win, that we’re both going to win. You’ve got a lot of starved passion in your body, and I’m going to devote tonight to appeasing its hunger. And when your lust is sated, there will be only one truth, one you won’t have any excuse to deny.

There’s only one man that can give you what’s pounding for release in that heart of yours.” His hand slid down, his fingers probing beneath the crotch of her panties, making her shudder. “Your pussy knows the touch of its Master. It wants my cock buried up to the hilt in it. Before the night’s over, you’ll beg me to fuck you.”

“So you can say bad words, but I can’t,” she said petulantly.

“I said it in a way that makes your nipples hard and your mouth go soft.”

His dry chuckle reverberated in her ear. “The way you said it made me doubt you had love in your heart.”

She bit down on a retort. The cool smoothness of the table pressed against her bare upper body as he rose, keeping a palm on her back to hold her in place. He began to remove her jewelry. Her earrings, her bracelet, the ring she wore on her left index finger. He was stripping her of everything, and the quaking in her stomach acknowledged the power of it, the meaning, even as her mind refused to embrace it.

“Cleopatra at least had an asp,” she said.

“I don’t intend to drag you in chains through the streets of Rome.”

“No…” She jerked as his hands settled on her neck, on the locket. She cursed herself for the emotional reaction, but his hands gentled. He still removed it, but his knuckles stroked her neck soothingly.

“It will be right over here. I won’t let anything happen to it. I promise.”

And everyone, friend and foe alike, knew that he kept his promises. She relaxed slightly, on that point at least.

He loosened the bra from around her wrists, but before she could take advantage of that, he was replacing it, strangely enough, with a pair of gloves. He worked them over her cold fingers and she discovered from the touch of the air they had open finger holes. Lacings on the back of the right and the palm of the left allowed him to lace her two hands together so they were flat, sandwiched together at the small of her back, the knuckles of her left hand against the dip there. Then he put a set of cuffs on her wrists, as if her inability to move her fingers apart was not enough.

He shifted her quivering body onto the upholstered narrow bench piece of the device he’d lowered from the ceiling. It ran from the base of her throat to just above her pubic bone. It wasn’t as wide as she’d thought it was, perhaps about five inches.

Supporting her sternum, it separated her breasts, pushing them out so they were on either side of it. She tensed as Matt’s hands moved over her breasts, but his intention was to extend four bars, two on each side, that were apparently joined to the bench at its base to swivel out as needed. She felt a moment of trepidation when he positioned the bars at the top and bottom curve of her breast on either side, and then he began doing things with the straps in that area.

Things that compressed those bars together, holding her breasts snugly, so her nipples pressed harder against the table surface, immediately increasing their sensitivity to any friction.

“That feels good, I know, but I won’t make them any tighter. You need to have good circulation, because I’m going to have you in this for a while.”

Two extensions came out near her hips to give them a wider area of support on the bar, and then one more set at her shoulders for the same purpose.

As he made all the adjustments, she found her breath was getting more shallow, not from constriction, but from a dizziness swamping her, her arousal compounding exponentially with every action he took to make her more confined, less able to control anything. With constant gentle touches and quiet reassurances, he balanced the panic that caused, and the power of the arousal took care of the rest. It seemed perversely okay for her body to be reacting the way it wished, now that he was transferring all power and control to himself.

He increased that helpless sensation tenfold when he went behind her and produced another set of bars from beneath the back end of the bench.

She felt them extend and press against the line of her thighs.

Swallowing against a rising tide of panic and arousal, she couldn’t suppress a shiver as his fingers hooked into the delicate swatch of panties and removed them, sliding them down her legs and off her feet before he gently adjusted her knees outward. These bars had a cuff at the end of each one, into which he guided her knees. He locked the top part of the cuff at her thigh just over the knees and then slid a bar into a lock hold between the two cuffs. Her legs were now spread and held open.

“I’m going to lift your feet off the floor now,” he warned her. “Ah, sweetheart. Your pussy’s absolutely gushing. You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

She couldn’t reply without her voice shaking, and she couldn’t risk that.

Her fingers clutched one another, tangled in the lacings. Another set of cuffs went on her ankles, and then he gently bent her legs to a ninety degree angle and connected the ankle cuffs with another straight bar to the cuffs just above her knees, like the hypotenuse of the two sides of the triangle formed by her calf and thigh.

Why was she so violently aroused by being restrained? Why on earth would she, a master of controlling her life, be so completely seduced by the lack of it? She could not ask, imagining that smug look he’d have in his eyes if she admitted the confusion. Of course something this unsettling had to be a weakness.

She was sure she could play sex games with the best of them. This was no more frightening or dangerous than any hostile corporate takeover.

He’d think her stupid and naïve if she said she’d never had any restraints during sex, not even some innocuous silk scarves. But why couldn’t she stop her shaking?

She started out of her thoughts as another motor engaged and suddenly the straps were tightening across her body, the bench pressing firmly against her, taking her weight as the contraption began to retract, lifting her.

“Matt—”

“Don’t worry. I’m just moving you all the way onto the table.”

As good as his word, he stopped the motor after just a moment. Another lever engaged and she was moved forward, over the table she assumed.

An assumption confirmed when there was another adjustment downward, and he had her settled completely on the rich mahogany.

In the position which the harness system held her, she was on her bent knees, her upper body sloped downward so her cheek rested on the table, her backside exposed in the air, a disturbing and ignominious position she began to protest, but then he was touching her face, telling her he had moved to the opposite side of the table, directly in front of her.