“I will,” I say, utterly shameless.

His expression is devious. “I want you hot, I want you desperate.”

I swallow. “I already am.”

“We’ll see,” he says. Then he reaches for the robe and pulls off the sash. Without his eyes ever leaving mine, he puts it over my eyes.

“Damien?”

“Shhh.”

He ties it behind my head. I think of the word—sunset—but I keep it to myself. I want this. I want to feel, and how much more will I be able to if I can’t see?

The bed shifts, and I realize he’s no longer beside me. I bite my lower lip, but I refuse to call out. He’s playing a delicious game with me, and I fully intend to hold my own. He’s taken me full circle, I realize, from fear and shame, to excitement and arousal. I don’t think anyone but Damien could do that, and whatever he has planned for me now, I trust him.

I jump as something cold and wet hits my breast.

“Ice,” I whisper.

“Mmm.” But he doesn’t speak, because he’s licking the water off, his mouth hot against my nipple. He traces the cube down my belly, and my muscles jump and twitch from the cold and from excitement. His mouth follows, his tongue, his lips. He leaves a hot trail down my body. I tug against the sash that binds my wrists, wanting to touch him, wanting to rip off the blindfold. And yet I don’t want to, either. There’s something exciting about being so totally at his mercy. Of seeing just where this will lead.

My legs are spread wide, and I can feel the cool night air against my soaking wet sex. I shift my hips, partly to try to quell the growing need and partly as an invitation. Either that or a demand. I want him in me, and I want it now.

“Getting anxious, Ms. Fairchild?”

“You’re a cruel man, Mr. Stark.”

His laugh suggests that I don’t yet know just how cruel, and then I feel the bed shift again. One finger stays on my belly, but I don’t feel the rest of him. And then—oh, God, yes—I feel his warm breath against my sex followed by the brush of his cheek against my inner thigh.

I almost come right then, and my hips buck up involuntarily.

“Please,” I whisper. “I’ll beg. Damien, I’ll beg.”

“I know you will, baby.” His mouth is right there, and then I feel the sharp flick of his tongue and I cry out from the almost painful pleasure that shoots through me. “But you’re not ready yet, not quite yet.”

“I think you’re wrong about that,” I grump and draw another laugh.

It’s stifled, though, by his mouth on my inner thigh. I squeeze my eyes closed tight behind the sash as he brushes his lips over my scars, kissing his way down my leg, worshipping me with his mouth. I feel his tongue dart out and tease the back of my knee, and I learn in that moment just how sensitive that part of a body can be.

I’m still twitching from the electrical sensations that buzz over my body when he reaches my feet.

“You have lovely toes, Ms. Fairchild,” he says. “I don’t have a foot fetish, but if I did …” He trails off, and his mouth closes over my big toe. He sucks on it, gently at first, and then harder until I’m squirming again, feeling the corresponding tug all the way in my cunt. I’m throbbing, but I know better than to beg. Damien’s not done with me yet.

He moves his attention to my other foot and licks each of my toes gently. Then he kisses his way back up my leg. By the time he reaches the soft skin between my thigh and my vulva, I am completely lost in a haze of pleasure.

At least, I think I am. When he closes his mouth over me and grazes my clit lightly with his teeth, I am wildly, hotly, intensely proven wrong. There are still heights, and Damien is taking me there.

He has an expert tongue, and it swirls over my clit, soft and gentle, but with a building intensity. My eyes are squeezed shut behind the blindfold, my breath coming in short gasps. I twist against the bindings that hold me. I am lost, I am nothing but pleasure. A vibrant white scream of pleasure concentrated between my thighs.

And then—oh, yes, oh, my—the world seems to explode, and I’m bucking against him, and still he’s sucking and pulling and tonguing me and I’m climbing higher and higher until finally, finally, the world settles back around me and my chest is rising and falling with the power of the explosion.

“Now,” Damien whispers, and I realize he’s above me. His mouth closes over mine, slick with the scent of me. The thick head of his penis is pressed against me, and he thrusts inside. “Oh, baby,” he says. His hand slips down between our bodies, and I feel his thumb on my sensitive clit. My body trembles again, and I gasp as my muscles clench, drawing him in even more. “There you go, that’s right. Are you sore?”

I manage to croak out a no.

“Good,” he says, and I feel him withdraw just a little, then slam back into me. He said he was going to fuck me hard, and he is, and I’m lifting my hips to meet him, because I want him deeper now, deeper and harder. I want all of him, and, dammit, I want to see him.

“Damien,” I say. “Damien, the blindfold.”

I’m afraid he’s going to ignore me, but then his fingers brush my temple and he pulls it off. He’s above me, his face hard but his eyes showing nothing but pleasure. His mouth curves into a gentle smile, and then he kisses the corner of my mouth. The frenzied fuck slows to a sweet, sensual rhythm that is all the more devastating because he’s drawing it out, making it last. It can last forever as far as I’m concerned.

And then I see the tension building in his body, his muscles tightening, his body stiffening against mine. He closes his eyes and I watch as he arches back, and then I feel the sweet pressure as he explodes inside me.

“Christ, Nikki,” he says as he collapses against me.

I want to press my body against him, but I’m still trapped. “Damien,” I whisper. “Untie me.”

He rolls over and smiles at me, warm and languid. At some point he put on a condom, and he takes it off and drops it in a small trash bin by the bed. Then he moves quickly to undo the drapes. I didn’t get to enjoy watching him strip, but I’m very happy with the view now. He may not have played tennis professionally for years, but the man still has an athlete’s body, long and lean and so damn sexy.

“Come here,” he says roughly once I’m untied. He pulls me close to spoon against him, my back against his chest, my ass against his magnificent cock. His fingers stroke the outside of my thigh, and his lips graze my shoulder. “I liked taking you tied up,” he says. “We may have to try more of that.”

“More?”

“Have you ever heard of Kinbaku?”

“No.”

His hand slides over my thigh to rest on my sex. His fingers stroke my hair lightly. “It’s ropes,” he says. “But they’re for restraint as much as for pleasure.” His fingers ease between my thighs, and I gasp, amazed that I already want him again so desperately. He rubs his finger over my clit and whispers, “It’s all about the placement of the ropes.”

“Oh.” My voice is breathy.

“Would you like that?”

“I—I don’t know.” I swallow. “I liked this,” I admit.

His fingers slide easily inside me and I moan. “Yes,” he says. “I could tell.”