But I didn’t splatter him. Instead I pressed against him, hot and hard, and transferred the paint from my body to his. He laughed, then pulled me down to the floor that was, thankfully, covered in drop cloths.

We slid over each other, moving and stroking and playing in the paint—and laughing like little kids—until the mood shifted, taking on more heat. More fire.

“What are we doing?” I asked, because I could no longer hold back the question. “What are we to each other?”

“Everything,” he said, then pulled me in for a kiss.

And as his mouth captured mine—as I moaned from the sweetness of it all—I knew that he was right.

“What do you think?” Cole asked, taking his hands off my eyes so that I could see the finished St. Andrew’s cross. It was mounted on a deep wooden box that was attached to a mirrored wall, which allowed for access around the cross itself, not to mention allowing whoever was standing to see the face of whoever was on the cross in the mirror.

As for the cross itself, the wood was polished to a shine, and the leather padding looked bright and comfortable.

I felt my body clench just looking at it. I’d been wanting this ever since Cole suggested this playroom. Hell, ever since he’d put me on that imaginary cross in my car and stung my back with the leather flails.

“Cole,” I said, and heard the need in my voice.

“I know,” he said. “Me, too. But I believe you have plans tonight.”

I frowned, because he was right. In fact, I’d been just about to leave when Cole had pulled me away from the vanity in my bedroom where I was putting on my earrings to bring me into the playroom and show me the finished product.

“You just wanted to tease me.”

“How well you know me,” he said, moving behind me, and then sliding his arms around me. I was wearing a Lucky Brand miniskirt and V-neck T-shirt, and he slipped his hand into the neck of the shirt and into the cup of my bra.

With his other hand, he eased up my skirt, then slid his hand into my panties and thrust two fingers deep inside of me. “You’re wet,” he said. “Naughty girl.”

“You got me excited,” I countered. “Now I’m going to have blue balls all night.”

“That really is naughty,” he said, then pinched my nipple hard enough to make me yelp—and to make my sex clench tight around his fingers. “A preview,” he said, “of just how hard I’m going to fuck you when you get home.”

“That was an awfully short preview,” I said. “Maybe you should make me come. Take the edge off before I go watch half-naked men gyrate onstage.”

“Not happening,” he said. “Besides, I like the idea of you coming back hot and bothered. All the more reason to spank that pretty ass.”

He pulled his hand out of my panties then, stroking slowly over my clit as he did and making me moan with a combination of pleasure and frustration.

I spent the drive to Angie’s worked up, and then the alcohol and mostly naked men at The Castle—our first bachelorette destination—really didn’t help matters. Not that I was interested in the mostly naked men, but I would lose all street cred as a typical American female if I didn’t at least appreciate the way those dancers were built—even if most of the time they faded away in my mind into a fantasy of Cole.

The party was an informal affair, because Angie had decided to ditch the idea of a big party and just hang out with me and Sloane. One last girls’ night on the town before she became Mrs. Evan Black.

We’d started at The Castle because the drinks were potent, the guys were hot, and the owners knew our men, so we were able to wrangle a few extra special, totally in-your-face dances for Angie. All of which Sloane and I recorded with our phones so that we could show Evan.

Once we were sufficiently plastered, we had Red drive us to Forbidden Fruit. The idea was to buy Angie toys for her honeymoon—and we went a little crazy in that respect—but I had my own shopping to do, too, and before we piled back into the limo, I bought a present for Cole and me. One I very much hoped we would get some use out of soon.

The last stop, of course, was Destiny, where Sloane and I had deviously arranged for the dancers to pull Angie into the dressing room, get her decked out in a costume, and then let her give Evan his own private lap dance.

It was another iPhone moment, but Sloane was going to have to handle that one on her own. I was too intent on the man at the bar who was talking with Flynn but keeping his eyes on me.

“On a scale of one to ten, just how drunk are you?” Cole asked after I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him hard.

“Very,” I said. “Very, very drunk. But I have a present for you.”

“Do you?” he asked. “Nice to know you thought of me while you girls were out carousing.”

I put the box from Forbidden Fruit on the bar in front of him, then leaned in to whisper in his ear, and as I did, I pressed my hand to his thigh, letting my fingers find and stroke his already hard cock. “You’re all I thought about,” I said. “Your hands, your cock, your mouth.” I nodded toward the box. “Open it.”

He did, pulling off the lid to reveal a black leather flogger that perfectly matched the one that he’d made come alive in my imagination.

He tilted his head up to meet my eyes, and I saw a gleam of anticipation in his eye that matched my own.

“Take me home,” I said, brushing my lips over his ear one more time. “Take me home right now.”

“Hell, yes,” he said, and I swear we broke a dozen traffic laws getting back to my house in just over half an hour. A feat which pretty much defied the laws of nature.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he said once we were in the room. “I’m going to take you every way possible tonight,” he said. “But first I want you on the cross. I want your back red. I want your body to sing.”

I nodded, my mouth too dry to form words.

Without waiting for him to tell me, I positioned myself. And as I did, reality meshed with the fantasy. I’d felt this before. The way the bindings at my wrists and ankles felt. The pressure of the padding against my skin.

And then—yes—the sharp sting of the first blow, and then the second, and on and on, with the pain rising, but the pleasure building, too. Growing from beneath the pain, pushing up like lava from a volcano that would soon burst forth and cover everything.

And it did. Adrenaline, endorphins, magic fairy dust. I didn’t know the reason or care. All I knew was that I’d crossed a line, just as I had in the fantasy. And just as Cole had talked me through in the car, now he was leading me through in the flesh.

I was floating. I was lost. I was rapturous. And the fact that this kind of sex, crossing over from light kink to a little bit harder stuff, drew me in so fully, only cemented my certainty that Cole and I fit together perfectly.

A fact that he proved in a much more literal way when he took me off the cross. I moaned against him, feeling alive and intensely aroused. My body might be limp and languid, but my sex was hot and wet and my breasts were tender and sensitive.

He put me facedown on the bed, a position I thought was to spare my shoulders, still sore from the flails, but turned out to be so much more.

He drew his hand slowly over me, stroking me, then bending over to kiss me. He spread my legs, then thrust hard inside me, his hand on my clit making me spiral even higher and faster.