His quietly uttered words seemed to strike her like bullets. She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. It was like there was a squeezing hand at her throat.
When it became clear she wasn’t going to answer him, he grabbed her wrist.
“Where are we going?” she asked him when he started toward the door and she had to jog to keep up with his long-legged stride.
“To get your head out of the past and into the present, where it belongs,” she heard him reply with steely determination.
thirty-eight
A moment later, he slammed the door of his bedroom suite shut behind them and fastened the lock.
“Jacob—”
She cut herself off when he dropped her hand and moved past her, his face rigid. She 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.”