I pull my shirt over my head and toss it, revealing my black lace bra. He watches my face, and it’s even more erotic than him looking at my almost-bare breasts.

He lifts my foot to his leg, barely glancing away from my face to tug of my shoe and sock, then repeats the process with the other foot. His hand on my denim-clad calf is incredibly arousing.

He lets go, taking several steps backward. “I’ll let you do the rest.”

He wants to watch me. It’s all about time and anticipation with him, and it does what he intends. I’m wet. I’m ready. I want to know what he has to show me.

I unzip my jeans and shimmy them down my legs, kicking them away. My eyes meet his, and heat replaces the lutters in my belly. I reach for my black thong, shoving it down my legs.

Still he holds my stare, and I unhook my bra and drop it. My br**sts are heavy; my body is alive in ways only Chris can create.

Slowly, his gaze lowers to my br**sts and my ni**les tighten and throb. He doesn’t touch me. I don’t expect him to. This teasing is part of who he is, and he is what I want. Then his eyes lift, illed with male satisfaction and the knowledge of how easily he afects me; how easily he turns me into a wanton, eager player in his sensual games. And I’m ine with him knowing that. These games are sexy and they’re no longer emotional tightropes.

Chris closes the distance between us and surprises me by touching me, his hands sliding to the side of my face. I think he likes to do what I won’t expect, to keep me guessing and on edge.

He leans me against the desk, his body molding mine, and I love the way he is hard where I am soft. The way he absorbs everything that I am and somehow makes me more in the process.

“Do you trust me, Sara?”

“Yes,” I say, and my voice cracks with the ache I feel for this man. “Like I’ve never trusted any other person in my life.

Completely.”

“Then trust me when I say what you witnessed that night at Mark’s club was me going too far. What you and I do is not the same. When I tied you up, when I spanked you, that was mild BDSM. What you saw was extreme— too extreme. You and I decide what is right for us.”

“Yes, I know. I like that.”

He leans down and brushes his lips over mine. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. And why does your saying that right now make me nervous?”

He rests his forehead against mine, trails his ingers down my arm. “Because you know I’m going to take you somewhere you’ve never been. That’s part of the high, Sara. The adrenaline rushing through your body. The unknown soon to be discovered.”

He straightens and then reaches over to open the center drawer of his desk. I watch as he removes a long velvet box and my stomach lip-lops at the sight. I’ve seen one of these boxes before. I know there’s a toy inside.

I hold my breath as he holds it between us, and lips it open.

I stare down at a black logger with eight ministraps dangling from the handle, and my heart jackhammers. All I can think of is my irst night at the club, when I heard the painful cries of a woman being publicly logged. “No . . . I . . . ” I shake my head. “No.”

“We deine who we are and what we do,” Chris reminds me.

“I know, but—”

He slides a hand back to my face and kisses me. “Trust me.”

“I do, but—”

He presses the logger into my palm. “It’s silk,” he says. “Feel it. It’s soft. It won’t hurt you. I won’t ever hurt you. There are diferent kinds of material used to make these. Leather and rubber sting more. This won’t. It’s a good beginner’s choice.”

My ingers close around the eight strands dangling from the handle, and they’re indeed soft to the touch. “It won’t hurt?”

“I know what I’m doing. I know how to make it feel good.”

And he does. I know he does. I close my eyes. “I . . .”

His mouth brushes over my mouth, and his tongue whispers past my lips. “Trust me, Sara,” he murmurs again, teasing me with the possibility of another kiss. “Let me redeine what this is to you, and to us. Don’t let what you saw in the club, or whatever Isabel said to you, do that for us.”

I suddenly lean back to look at him. “You didn’t even ask what she said to me.”

“I don’t care what she said. I care how you reacted. I care that whatever poison she tried to feed you didn’t work. That says everything about where we are and what we can be.”

My eyes burn with unshed tears. Do I dare believe that I’ve inally washed away his doubts? His fears? “It does?” I ask, needing conirmation.

“Yes. It does. Trust is everything, remember? That’s what you gave me tonight. And I’m asking for it again. Will you give it to me?”

I cup his face. “I told you. You have it.”

His eyes soften. “And I’ll always deserve it—you have my promise. But Sara, that doesn’t mean you can’t say no now. You can always say no.”

“I know. I do.” Chris makes me discover parts of me I never knew existed, parts that often work against how the past has conditioned me. But I feel safe enough with him to go to those places. I know I can be me, and he won’t judge me or hurt me.

Certainty ills me and I say, “I want to do this.”

Twenty-One

This isn’t something I’d ever have believed I’d agree to. But this is Chris, and we are everything I never knew I wanted, and everything I was once missing.

One of his long, talented ingers trails over my jaw, raising a shiver of erotic anticipation. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Chris. I want to try this.”

His eyes ill with acceptance. “All right, then,” he agrees, his voice low, seductive. “Flogging is similar to spanking. It will be delicious friction, nothing more. Not with this logger, and not with me holding it.”

He is what’s delicious. He’s what makes a spanking erotic.

He, that makes me eager for what comes next.

“Hold out your hand. I want you to get used to how they feel on your skin.”

I nod. I can’t seem to ind my voice, but I don’t think he needs words. He’s watching me, studying my every reaction.

He slowly drags the tails of the logger over my arm, and then does it again. Anticipation builds in me, and I can feel my nerve endings coming alive.

He covers my arm with his hand for a moment, drawing my gaze to his. Heat simmers in the depths of his stare. He, too, is illed with anticipation, and it stirs conidence in me to know I can do that to him. That doing this with me excites him, not just me. His ingers drag seductively up and down my arm as he says, “Now I’m going to show you what an actual logging motion is like.”

He suddenly licks his wrist, slapping the strands over my arm in kind of a circular motion, the slight sting just enough of a contrast to his soft touch to shock me. I jerk slightly but the next slap comes, and the next, and I become lost in the sensations that start to tingle on my skin. Incredibly, the small bites of silk become a warm sort of awareness that darts up my arm and over my chest to my nipples. They ache, and that ache radiates to my sex.

“You like it?” Chris asks, his voice deeper, warmer.

I glance up at him, meeting his stare, and whisper, “Yes.”

Approval lights his eyes at my fast reply. “The longer I do this, the more your body should react.”

I wet my lips. “Yes. Only . . .” I’m moved by the power radiating from his eyes, aroused by the raw sexuality so a part of who he is. “But I’m pretty sure I’m reacting to you, not the logger.”

His eyes darken, amber lecks of arousal simmering in their depths. “You’re reacting to me using the logger. And to the invisible ‘more’ you want and can’t name.”

Yes. I do want more. Please. Whatever it is, I want it.

As if hearing my silent plea, he sticks the logger’s handle in the top of his jeans. His hands go to my arms and he caresses a seductive path downward, pressing me backward at the same time. “Hands on the desk.” He guides them there with his, covering mine on the glass behind me, his big body molding mine from the waist down. The position is intimate, arousing, the springy hair of his chest tickling the tips of my nipples, now thrust up between us.

Chris lowers his mouth to my ear, crushing my throbbing ni**les against the hard wall of his chest. “I’m not going to tie you up.” His breath is a warm wash over my ear and neck, promising I will soon be warm all over. His hand curves under my hair, possessive but gentle, and he leans back and looks down at me. “But we need to talk about rules.”

My heart skips a beat and I instinctively try to move my hands. “Rules?”

“Relax,” he purrs near my ear. “And don’t move your hands.”

I shut my eyes, forcing the muscles in my body to ease. “I am. I won’t.”

His hands leave mine and settle on my shoulders, and our eyes meet. “Only one simple rule. If you want to stop, just say no and I’ll stop. Don’t swipe at the tails or jerk away, or I could hurt you without meaning to. I need to have full control of the logger.”

Trepidation ills me. “Am I going to want to swipe at it?”

“No.” He bends at the knees to bring us eye level and leans in and kisses me. “Just the opposite. You’re going to like it. But knowledge is power. Knowing what to expect, and what to do, gives you control. Remember how I told you how many times I was going to spank you?”

“Yes. I liked knowing.”

“Good. I won’t ever surprise you, and the word no is always the ultimate power. You say it, I listen. Okay, baby?”

The endearment does more to calm my nerves than all the explanations in the world. “Okay.”

He swipes away the hair that has fallen over my face, leaning in and kisses me, his tongue delving past my lips, one slow stroke followed by another. His hands settle on my waist and begin a sensual slide upward to caress my br**sts and tease my nipples.

I moan and lift my hands from the desk to cover his.

He quickly captures them and presses them behind me onto the glass. “If I don’t tie you up, I have to trust you to keep your hands there.” He hardens his voice to a command. “Don’t move them. Understand?”

“I won’t move them.”

He holds my stare, assessing my words, and then—seeming satisied I mean them—his ingers leave my hands to trail up my arms over my shoulders. He surprises me yet again by squat-ting at my feet, his hands settling on my ankles. “I’m going to start logging you here and then move higher.” His hands caress over my calves, over my knees, to my thighs. “Then here.” He presses them apart and slides the Fingers of one hand into the V between my legs, exploring my sex.

“There? Won’t that—”

He dips a inger inside me. “Feel good? Yes.” The slow stroke of him pulling out of me is sweet torture. He cups my sex and kisses my hip.

“Chris.” It’s a plea, wanting his mouth where his hand is, and he knows it. But he doesn’t give it to me. I know he won’t.

Instead, he drags his lips over to my belly button, licking me, teasing me.

When he pushes to his feet, the male force of him overwhelms me. It’s arousing. He’s arousing. His hands glide from my waist to my breasts, and he teases my nipples, plucking at them. “And here, Sara. I’m going to log your breasts.” He plucks harder now, rougher, and I’m wet and aching, not thinking about the logger. I’m thinking about him inside me.

“And inally,” he murmurs, reaching around me to cup my backside hard against him. “Here. This is where I’ll log you right before I f**k you.”

“Can we get right to that part?”

He smiles. “What fun would that be?”

“I think it would be lots of fun.”

He kisses me. “The wait always makes it better.”

“You always say that. It gets irritating.”

He laughs and licks one of my nipples. “I’ll work on that.”

“No, you won’t.”

“No,” he agrees. “I won’t.” His hands leave my body and he steps back from me. In a lash of movement he’s shoved down his pants and boxers and kicks them aside. A second later he is gloriously na**d, his body a work of art, his c**k jutting forward, thick and pulsing.

My gaze shifts to his dragon tattoo and settles on the logger in his hand. My heart seems to lodge in my throat, because I can’t breathe. How had I forgotten this is really happening? He’s going to log me.

Chris steps close and leans in, pressing his hands on the desk next to mine without touching me, the dangling tails of the logger teasing my arm. His c**k between us taunts me, so very close to where I need it to be. Where I need him to be.

“Breathe, baby,” he murmurs near my ear. “I’ll take good care of you.”

“I know,” I whisper. “Just take good care of me quickly, before my heart explodes from my chest.”

A low rumble of sexy laughter rumbles from the chest that I yearn to touch right now. “We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

I surprise myself by smiling. I’m about to be logged, and I’m actually smiling. Chris and I really are nothing like how Rebecca described herself and Mark.

“Then let’s get to it.” He pushes of the desk. “I’m going to start now. Ready, Sara?”

“No. Yes.” I take a deep breath. “Yes.” He arches a brow and I say, “I’m ready.”