My stomach flip-flopped, but the longer I gazed down, the more the storm’s efforts receded. It was like I was inside the nightmare, yet apart from it, somehow. “I feelsomething.”
He took hold of my waist and stood. I stared up. My fingers glided from his shoulders to his neck, then up into that glossy hair.
He shivered. For long moments, we just stood like that, an island of stillness amid the maelstrom.
“You should probably chain me now,” I said, husky.
He nodded and let his hands drift to my dress, unfastening the hooks that ran down the front. “We won’t continue our earlier conversation. Not yet.”
I shook my head. No, now wasn’t the time. Whatever the truth, whatever he had to tell me, I set it aside. I only cared that he was here with me.Forme.
That right now, in this moment, I was seeing him with utter clarity. And that, in all the time I’d known him, he’d never once hurt me. He’d only proven himself, over and over, in a thousand different ways. He’dcaredfor me.
Whatever Vick had over him, then, whatever Ky had to confess, it wouldn’t change that. “No, I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Something...happy?”
He finished with my dress and tugged it off. That done, he reached around for my corset laces. The surety of his fingers told a story, of how he’d done this many other times, on other evenings, in other bedrooms, with other girls.
But I set that thought aside, too, storing it on a high shelf, to be taken down and examined later. Or not. The past didn’t matter. Not right now.
“Something happy, hmm?” he said. “If you like, you could start by admitting how breathtaking you find me. I can’t think of anything happier than that.”
He yanked my corset loose and let it fall to the floor.
I stood there in my chemise, caught by his gaze. I’d never realized such pale eyes could command such depth, but that sky-deep expanse seemed to stretch forever. “Youarebreathtaking. So much that it hurts to look at you, sometimes.”
Shock leapt in his eyes, then smoothed into delight. His hands skated down my sides. He lifted me onto the bed and moved over me, his touch leaving flames in its wake.
I lay there, limbs splayed, a flashfire shiver starting somewhere deep. I’d never imagined being chained to a bed could feel so...sensual, but Ky infused the process with both tenderness and promise. His thumbs lingered along my pulse points as the cuffs clicked shut. First my wrist, then my ankle. My other ankle, another wrist.
When he finished, I tested my restraints and, for once, didn’t chafe at the vulnerability they conferred. Goddess, the things he could do when I was helpless like this.
He cranked my chains and climbed atop me, his weight like a spear pinning me to the now. Somewhere distant, the hurricane raged. Bits and pieces filtered into my consciousness— something monstrous hunched in the corner, its knobby spine rippling while a different something crunched wetly between its jaws.
But I drew a curtain down between myself and it. There was me, here. Ky.
That was all.
“I don’t believe you’ve ever complimented me before,” he said. “I think I like it.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “It’ll probably never happen again. Idostill hate you, after all.”
He chuckled, a smoky sound that slid fire along my nerves. “Of course you do.”
Incredible. Here we were, mid-nightmare, and I couldn’t keep from melting at the sound of his laugh.
He leaned close, locking us into some private orbit. “Now, how would you like me to distract you? We could try what we did last time, or...something new.”
My breathing sped. Pressure built behind my eyes, an ache I recognized as the storm edging into my mind, but I’d already lasted longer than I should have. A heady sense of triumph joined the zing of his nearness, propelling me to some new height.
Fuck, this was a rush.
“Touch me,” I breathed.
His eyes heated. “Well. If you insist.” He caged my jaw with a hand, turning my head to expose the delicate skin of my earlobe.
