Jess Michaels by Taboo Page B

smiled, enjoying the game between them, perhaps for the first time. As a young woman, she had been too inexperienced to toy with him, to utilize her feminine powers to their fullest. But now, with several lovers and a fuller understanding of sex as her guide, Cassandra liked knowing that as much as their current affair was a punishment and a blackmail, she could still control Nathan on some level.
    She could still make him desire her like there was no other woman in the world.
    With another pull, she let the chemise fold over her waist and revealed her breasts. Nathan growled low in his chest and triumph puffed her up.
    “All of it,” he ordered, but he wasn’t moving to force her hand. He clenched the soft restraints in a death grip, but never overpowered her.
    She shimmied and let the chemise glide down slowly, until it pooled around her feet with her discarded gown. He sucked in a breath, and suddenly Cassandra was glad she had left her fancy, handstitched red stockings and high heeled slippers on, rather than slip them off for comfort as she worked.
    “You are more beautiful than…” he began, then cut himself off, as if he wouldn’t allow himself to compliment her even in the smallest way. He lifted the restraints. “Come over here.”
    She moved toward him with a slow, purposeful swish of her hips. “You can fasten those to my bed,” she said, as she reached him.
    His eyes widened as he looked at the bedposts. She had installed small hooks on each one during her time with one lover who liked to use and have restraints used on him. She’d never removed them.
    “Lie down,” he said, and his voice was laced with frustration as well as lust.
    She didn’t argue, but took a place in the middle of her big bed, perfectly positioned for the velvety restraints that dangled from his big hands. Her heart fluttered like hummingbird wings in her chest as she stared up at him, waiting for him to tie her down. She would be at his mercy then and, at the moment, he didn’t seem particularly merciful.
    But never did she think he would hurt her. That was the strangest part. He could easily physically harm her, especially once she was bound and unable to defend herself, but even in the height of his anger, she knew his weapons would be pleasure, not pain.
    He cupped her hand with his much larger one, the rough slide of his skin eliciting a soft groan that she couldn’t withhold. She thought she saw the fleeting shadow of a smile cross his lips before he slipped the soft binding around her wrist.He looped the other end over the hook on her bedpost and then tightened the fabric until she couldn’t move her arm more than a few inches one way or the other.
    He did the same with both her ankles and then her opposite wrist, taking his time to bind her, gentle in the way he tightened the restraints. Once she was fully at his mercy, he backed away, watching her through a hooded, unreadable gaze.
    A wash of panic rushed through Cassandra as an unbidden thought pierced her haze.
    “You aren’t going to leave me like this, are you?” she whispered. Though her servants were discreet, it still wasn’t a humiliation she desired.
    He jerked back in surprise, then tilted his head as if he were now considering the merits of such an action. Finally, he shook his head. “As tempting as that might be, I want you more than I wish to leave you exposed and disgraced.” He sighed, as if maligning his own weakness.
    Cassandra relaxed a fraction at his reassurance, but it was a fleeting reprieve from tension. The moment Nathan’s hands trailed to his waist and he began to unfasten his trousers, she stiffened.
    When they had sex in her parlor the previous afternoon, she hadn’t been able to see him. He had kept his body from her, she supposed as some kind of message. But now his fingers worked deftly at divesting himself of his jacket, his crisply tailored vest and shirt, and his fitted trousers. She stared inwonder at the slow revealing of