I’m pretty sure few people in Pacific Beach would have any idea that the rope in the back of a pickup truck is really nice rope, but I can hardly complain. I’m glad he didn’t have to leave the room to go get it.

But when I look down at it, this rope doesn’t seem like something he’d use on a boat. It’s soft, has the sheen of silk.

“You carry silky rope around in the bed of your pickup? Should I Google you, Finn?”

He laughs a little, dropping it at the foot of the bed. “I was pretty sure I’d get you naked while I was here.” He lifts his chin, silently telling me to do just that.

“How confident of you.”

His eyebrow flickers up, as if to say, Well? and he pulls the towel from his shoulder, walking a slow circle around me as I pull my dress up and over my head. When I slide my underwear down my legs and step out of them, I feel a whisper of fabric against the back of my thigh.

And then a sharp pop against the exact same spot.

With a gasp, I turn and gape at him. He’s snapped the towel at me, like a fucking teenager in the kitchen. The sting turns warm, making me more aware of the cool air in his room.

“Come here,” he says, ignoring my surprised expression.

“You’re not going to whip me with a dish towel.”

“You’re right, I’m not.” When I start to take a step closer, he snaps it again, barely grazing my hip. “I’m going to tease you with it.”

“What happened to just getting naked and—”

He pops me again, this time on my upper thigh. “You came to me, not some skinny-dicked kid in Del Mar. And I’m doing this how I want.” His eyes soften. “It’s not like I’m going to leave you needy, sweet thing. I wouldn’t do that.”

I exhale a jagged breath and nod. Whatever he wants to do . . . it’s why I’m here. I close my eyes, giving in to the semi-drunk sensation I get when I’m this close to him, and he’s the only thing I can sense in the room.

He wraps his fingers around a small lock of my hair and glides them down to the end, tugging gently. “Look at me.”

I blink up to him, eyes wide and focused on nothing but the bow of his bottom lip, the appearance of his ironic little smile as I wait to hear what instruction comes next.

“Kiss my neck,” he whispers, so I do. I stretch on my toes and press my lips against his pulse point. It’s an excuse, maybe, to see how I affect him and whether his blood trips the same way mine does when we are this close. But his pulse is a steady and slow dum . . . dum . . . dum beneath my touch.

“Lick me.” His fingers slide up my neck and over my necklace, pressing into my scalp and gripping handfuls of my hair.

My tongue sweeps out, just barely touching his skin, and he groans, a low, hungry sound. He tastes like salt and air, as if the ocean wrapped around him when he was small and never let go.

“Go lie down.” His fingers release me but his gaze doesn’t. Right now, I remember that Finn is ten years older than me; I must look wide-eyed and naïve. I wonder if he has any idea the extent of my inexperience with lovers like him. “I’m gonna tie you up and kiss that sweet pussy for a while. I want to hear you say my name when you come on my lips.”

I back up to the bed and then turn, moving toward the middle. Having grown up on the beach, I’m used to being in bikinis around people, but Finn and I have only ever hooked up in the dark. It’s a little weird to be completely naked—with him mostly clothed—and crawling on my hands and knees on a bed in broad daylight.

When I kneel and wait for him to join me, he shakes his head. “Lie back. Close your eyes.” At my suspicious expression, he says in a quiet, deep voice, “You want it or not?”

Before I do what he says, I blink down to the worn button fly of his jeans, faded and soft over time and now distorted with the shape of him, hard beneath. He’s always made sure my body was ready, and I know that’s what we’re doing, but the threat of panic and fear lingering at the edges, and my need to get lost in something other than my own thoughts, makes me impatient.

He sees where my attention has gone and rubs the heel of his hand down the thick line of his cock, gripping it. “You’ll get it in a little bit. Lie back.”

The pillow is full and hard, but the cotton comforter is soft and warm against my bare skin. Between my legs, the mattress dips as Finn climbs up from the foot of the bed, his palms smoothing up my shins.

Finn drags the length of red rope up over my torso, coiling it around his hand. Reaching behind me, he slides the center of its length under my body and then crisscrosses it back and forth down across my torso. Looping it around one hand he coils it up one arm and then back over my chest to the other side. Wrapping it down around my other arm, he’s softly bound my arms so each of my wrists stays at the sides of my hips. In the center, just below my belly button, he ties an intricate—and beautiful—knot. I watch him the entire time; he’s focused and careful not to bind me too tight. I can tell, too, that he loves what he sees. When he’s done, he sighs, running his hands up over my hips and across my stomach, my breasts, my neck.

“I had no idea you were into this,” I whisper.

He shrugs a little, but doesn’t say anything. My breasts are displayed on either side of an X across my breastbone, and the rope is soft but sturdy; I can feel it pressing into the tender skin all along my torso.

“Is it too tight?” he asks, drawing a finger in a small circle around my nipple.

I swallow back a gasp. “No.”

“Do you like it?”

I hear genuine concern in his voice. I can tell from his trembling hand, intense gaze, and the pressing shape of his cock beneath his jeans that Finn likes this. A lot. But it matters to him that I do, too.

And fuck, I do. I don’t mind having my arms pinned at my sides as much as I thought I would. And I feel everything: the silken slide of the rope as I wiggle a little under his inspection, the cool air over my breasts, the thudding echo of my pulse in my neck, chest, between my legs.

I forgot how rough his hands are, calloused from constant work—rough and so huge he covers much of my body as his splayed fingers slide up my legs to my inner thighs, spreading me.

I resist, and he makes a quiet tsk sound, easily overpowering me as he shakes his head. He’s not looking at my face, he’s looking at me, there, between my legs.

I like to consider myself a pretty progressive woman—lots of talk about being comfortable with anything and trying everything once—but mostly, so far, it’s only been theory. At twenty-two, I’ve never had a lover who was experienced enough to be slow and force me to still under his acute attention. I’ve never been with anyone who was confident enough to be still and calm while he just looks at me. I’ve certainly never been tied up. And I’ve never had someone savor me the way Finn is right now, not even the Finn I thought I knew from before.