“Were you abused? Is that why you like to tie up women? Did someone tie you up or something?”
His face went blank. He exhaled sharply after a moment. “I guess I deserved that,” he muttered under his breath. “No. I was just telling you some of my sexual preferences. They aren’t related to anything from my past. I was never sexually abused. But who knows where this stuff really comes from? I just didn’t want my preferences to …”
“Damage me? It’s okay,” she said. She started to suspect she might have an idea from where this all was originating. “I’m not going to shrivel up on you or curl into a hysterical ball, despite how you saw me in the stables this morning. That guy in the woods just freaked me out. I’m not usually like that,” she assured with a hard glare.
He rolled his eyes. Guilt slinked through her. She had no doubt she tried him at times with her defensiveness. She just couldn’t seem to control her reaction sometimes. Her defensive armor was practically hardwired in her brain.
“I don’t think you’re hysterical. I’m just trying to be clear about some basics, that’s all.”
“I don’t know if I’ll like what you’re talking about or not. I’ve never …” She faded off, her face scrunching up as she tried to imagine it: being tied up or restrained while Dylan made love to her. She wasn’t sure the idea sat well with her. Or part of it didn’t. The part about Dylan touching and pleasuring her, that part was great. She wouldn’t have any control, though.
But you loved it, the way he dominated you in the stables.
“I only want to make you feel good, Alice. If it doesn’t feel good or right, just say so.” Heat rushed through her. Having Dylan roughly murmur those words with that hot gleam in his eyes? Well … that sat with her just fantastically.
She nodded in agreement.
“One other thing,” he said quietly. “I’ll use a condom with you, if that’s what you want. I’m healthy, though. I haven’t been seeing anyone for the past two—no, not since April eighteenth, in fact. Over three months,” he added, his brows knitting together as he reconsidered. “And I just had my yearly physical.”
He knew the exact date? That didn’t bode well, Alice thought. Whoever he’d been in a relationship with must have meant something to him, to have abstained all this time from sex. Surely celibacy wasn’t a natural state for a man like Dylan. She swallowed thickly, trying to bring her ping-ponging thoughts under control.
“I haven’t been in a relationship since I was in undergrad … if you want to call it that,” she mumbled, her cheeks coloring at how lame that sounded. Numbers had been Alice’s lover for the past two years in graduate school. Lovely, safe, predictable numbers. Dylan was the opposite of predictable, but at least he was trying to be honest from the first. “I just had a complete physical when I had the drug screening done for this job at Camp Durand. I’m healthy. And I’m on the pill.”
He nodded. “There. That’s out of the way. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She returned his small smile. He was right to have brought it up. She wasn’t so thrilled about what he’d said about him restraining her sometimes, but she wasn’t afraid, either. And she was curious.
Maybe she was too far gone, her attraction to him an unbreakable, compelling restraint in and of itself.
He caressed the skin at her nape with blunt fingertips and cupped her neck. Reacting on instinct, she lifted her face, and his mouth was on hers, his lips moving hungrily, forcefully … and again, she felt that thrilling edge to his lust.
His arms went around her, and her feet left the ground.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked her gruffly a moment later as he mounted the stairs, Alice in his arms.
“It’s just …” she glanced around at the elegant, sweeping grand staircase and back at his face. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s happening all right.”
“I feel a little like Scarlett O’Hara. I always wondered what Rhett did to her when he got her behind locked doors,” she said distractedly.
He looked somber as he kept his gaze trained at the top of the stairs. Determined. “Now you’ll be the one behind the locked door. No more wondering,” he said, and Alice’s heart paused before it surged, resuming its race.
She strained to look around a moment later when he shoved open a wood paneled door with his foot and threaded her body through the opening. It was a large, handsomely decorated bedroom. The bed was right in front of her, while to the left was a sumptuous living area situated around a carved mahogany fireplace. Alice noticed two crystal chandeliers as Dylan spun and kicked the door shut behind them. The chandeliers were stunning, one at the foot of the four-poster bed hovering over a long gold damask bench, one over the luxurious sitting area before the fireplace. The sumptuous crystal stood in direct contrast to the beige, dark blue, and gold décor, the masculine bold prints on the fabrics, and the hearty suede accents in the rest of the suite. Over the bed was a handsome painting of a black horse.
“Lock it, Alice.”
His low, rough voice brought her out of her rapt admiration of his private domain. She leaned down, twisting the brass knob on the door.
Locking them in. Sealing her fate.
He held her stare as he carried her over to the bed. He laid her against a mound of silk and suede pillows.
“This room is amazing,” she croaked as one of his hands slid down her bare leg. He unceremoniously whipped off her canvas slip-on tennis shoes and tossed them onto the floor. Her eyes widened when he just as casually slid his fingers beneath the waistband of her canvas shorts and unfastened the top button.
“Thanks. It’s newly decorated. I just moved in a few weeks ago,” he said as he lowered the zipper of her shorts. He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“But … I thought you’d lived at the castle for a while,” she managed in an unnaturally high voice as he tugged her shorts down over her hips. He drew them off her bare feet, and the garment went the same way as her shoes.