Make Me Forever Read Free

didn’t really know what to say, anyway. What could she do or say to reassure him, when she couldn’t reassure herself anymore?
    What the hell is happening?
    Her heart pounded out an excited, anxious tattoo in her ears. He crossed the suite and opened a door—a door that she’d seen him go into on several occasions in the past. When he walked out a moment later, her gaze dipped to what he held in one hand: several bundles of black rope.
    “Don’t look at me like that,” he said quietly, his eyes flashing as he walked toward her. “You know I’m not going to hurt you.” He paused in front of her, his hard mouth slanted. “Do you not want to do this?”
    “I . . . I don’t know.”
    “I’m trying to haul you back into the moment, Harper,” he bit out.
    For a few seconds, her whole world was the vision of his stormy eyes and the throb of her heart in her ears. She wanted him so much . . .
    I love him.
    She found herself nodding, compelled by his eyes.
    As always.
    “Come over to the bed,” he said.
    She followed him to the foot of his bed. He tossed down the bundles of rope and turned to her, immediately beginning to unfasten her blouse.
    “Jacob, don’t be mad at me.”
    His gaze shot up to her face.
    “I’m not mad at you, Harper. Do you think I should be? Do you think I should be pissed at you for keeping secrets from me, just because you’re mad at me for not babbling on about my childhood?”
    She blinked, startled by his slicing vehemence. She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off.
    “I’m not going to make love to you right now because I’m mad.” He unfastened the last button and jerked her blouse open, pushing it down her arms. “I’m doing it exactly because of what I said before: to get your head into the moment.”
    “Because you know I can’t think about anything else
but
the present when you tie me up and make me feel?” she accused.
    He paused in the action of unfastening her skirt.
    “
Make
you? Is that what you think? That I’m
forcing
you?”
    “No,” she admitted, a little ashamed at how condemning she’d sounded because of her anxiety.
    His expression hardened. He methodically stripped her, all except her black pumps.
    “Leave them on,” he said, referring to her shoes. He turned to pick up the coils of rope. “Lie on your back in the center of the bed. I’m going to restrain your arms and legs to it.”
    Her heart felt too big for her chest as she climbed onto the bed, but she was feeling something else besides trepidation. His seemingly dispassionate undressing of her and his instructions to lie on the bed so that he could tie her up had created a low burn of arousal at her sex. Who knew why she liked it so much, to be restrained by him? To give complete control to him? She only knew she
did.
    Both her anxiety and arousal elevated in tandem a moment later when he gave her terse instructions to take a spread-eagle position on the bed. She watched him, having trouble catching her breath, as he soberly and expertly began to restrain her. She realized that the four separate bundles of rope were pre-tied for this specific task. All he had to do was slip a thick coil around wrists and ankles, tighten it, and then fasten the free end of the rope to a corner of the bed.
    When he finally straightened after tying off her last limb, he looked very forbidding. She studied his face as he walked around the bed, and then his body. His flinty expression wasn’t from anger. Her gaze stuck on the fullness of his crotch. No. She thought that
determinedly aroused
might describe his state better.
    The spread-eagle position he’d told her to take left her feeling glaringly vulnerable and aroused . . . turned on and unable to hide it. She panted shallowly, her rising and falling breasts betraying her excitement as did her tight, prickling nipples. Cool air tickled at her spread sex, as well, informing her that she’d grown damp watching him methodically restraining