“Dangerous?”

I nodded as heat flooded my cheeks. “And that just makes it hotter,” I finished, my voice little more than a whisper, as if revealing that most intimate truth would push me over the edge. That it was the final secret that would cost me everything and leave me totally open to him. Totally vulnerable.

But I wanted that—so help me, I wanted to be vulnerable to him. I wanted everything with him. I wanted to go as far as we could go together, and then I wanted to take it even further.

I knew that about myself with unerring certainty. But more than that, I wanted this man, fully and completely. I wanted to see what was inside him. To understand his needs and his desires.

I wanted him to open himself to me. And I could only hope and pray that by opening myself to him—by trusting him completely—that he would trust me in turn.

As my thoughts circled around, Cole adjusted the rope, tying a knot that brought the two separate strings together. Then he positioned that knot right over my clit before continuing to secure the end of the rope to the section that encircled my waist.

The end result was similar to wearing crotchless panties—if those panties were made out of rope and designed to stimulate with the slightest motion.

“You move, you even breathe, and this will drive you just a little crazy.”

“It already does,” I confessed. I felt the pressure of the knot rubbing against my sensitive flesh, and sending waves of pleasure rolling through me. But it was a frustrating sensation, because while it felt damn good, it also wasn’t building, and I knew that the torment of this particular setup was to get a woman hot—but to never quite get her to come.

“It’s a little evil, isn’t it?” I asked wryly.

He chuckled. “Just a bit. What can I say?” he asked, sliding his hand down to cup my sex and making my body arch in response and demand. “I like you primed and ready—but you only get to come when I say.”

“If I ever said you were a nice man, I take it back.”

“I’m not a nice man, baby. I really thought you knew.”

I almost grinned, but was quickly distracted by the way Cole had hooked his fingers under the rope just above my belly button and was guiding me back to the bed. In one fluid motion, he picked me up, then held me close in his arms. He murmured my name and then, before I had the chance to lose myself in the sweet sensuality of being held by this man, he put me gently on the bed.

Gently, however, wasn’t gently enough, because as he laid me down, the cord that stretched so intimately beneath me shifted over my clit at the same time that the weight of my body pressed against the plug in my ass. I gasped, then clung to him. “Do you know what you’re doing to me?” I asked, my voice heavy with arousal. “Do you have any idea how primed you’ve made me?”

“I intend to take you much further,” he said, then reached for the two pillows at the head of the bed. He pulled them down, then situated them under my hips, raising me up while my torso angled slightly down to the mattress.

He spread my legs, and the motion caused that damnable knot to tease me mercilessly, sending heat coursing through me, making me wild and frustrated and itchy and so damned needy I wanted to scream. “Please.” I forced my voice to stay level. “Christ, Cole, please.”

He eased between my legs, his cock erect, and his face reflecting so much desire and adoration, that I thought I could come simply from the way he looked at me.

“Next time I want to bind your arms behind you, flip you over, and take you from behind. But tonight I want to see your face when you come, and when . . .” He trailed off, and I saw mischief in his eyes.

“Cole?”

“Tell me you want to go further,” he said, his voice shifting to a new level of intensity that excited me all the more. “Tell me you liked my palm on your ass, my hand twisting your nipples. Tell me you liked it rough.”

I felt my sex clench simply in response to his words and his tone. “You know that I did.”

“Tell me,” he repeated.

“I liked it. I liked it all.”

“Baby, I want to give you every form of pleasure I know, but some of them aren’t reached except by passing through the curtain of pain. I’m going to take you there. Take you high, I promise you. Do you trust me?”

“More than anything.”

He reached beside us on the bed for the chain and held it up for me. The chain itself was gold, with two gold alligator clips at either end. Except they weren’t really alligator clips because there were no teeth. Just a smooth, waxy plastic.

“The boundary between pleasure and pain shifts. What can be painful one moment,” he said as he opened the first clip and secured it to my erect nipple, “can turn to pleasure the next.”

As he spoke, fire seemed to shoot through my nipple, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. It hurt—damn right it hurt. But there was something else underneath, and by the time he had fastened the clamp to my other nipple, the first was humming. A warm, wonderful sensation that made my whole body seem larger than life and desperately, wonderfully aware.

“Pain,” Cole said simply, giving the clamp a little flick with his finger and making me groan as that warm sensuality ramped up, bringing heat and fire that maybe hurt but maybe didn’t.

“And then there’s pleasure,” Cole said, as my body sank in response to the fading sensation, moving through that curtain Cole had described to the wondrous blanket of pleasure that waited beyond.

I sucked in air, awed by these reactions. By how sensitive my skin was. By how erotic the simplest touch had become, and by how even the caress of the air against my flesh held the intensity of a lover.

“I want to give you both,” Cole said, his expression almost rapturous as he gazed at me, my legs spread, my back arched, my sex bound, my nipples clamped. I was an object for his pleasure—and for my own. And that thought alone sent waves of delight coursing through me, making my already sensitive clit swell and harden, so that each movement, each breath was torture as that damnable knot rubbed against me and the plug worked in tandem to remind me of just how completely I was his.

“More and more,” Cole said. “Not tonight, but over time. I want to take you as far as you can go, Kat. Tell me you want that, too. Tell me you want everything I can give you.”

“Yes,” I moaned. “Oh, god, yes.”

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he said, and I almost wept with relief.

He lowered himself over me, and I almost passed out from the wave of intense pleasure when he positioned himself and then readjusted the rope so that it would stroke his cock on either side as he thrust into me.

He did just that, and I wasn’t expecting how the movement of the rope with his cock would intensify the motion of the knot against my clit. Or how the impact of him thrusting so damn hard into me would shift the plug in my ass, setting off a riot of sensations in me. Or how the building pressure of the nipple clamp combined with every other sensation would shoot sparks through my body, making me electrically charged, so that even the slightest brush against my skin would totally light me up.

I was there—right there and ready to explode faster than I’d ever done in my life, and I gasped, calling for Cole. Needing and wanting and demanding. And through that gray haze of sexual drunkenness I became aware that he had taken hold of the chain. And as I arced up toward release, he yanked on the chain from the center with enough force to pull the clamps off my nipples in one violent, fluid motion.