“Last night I wanted to eat your pussy,” he says directly into my ear. “I still want it. I want you wild, squirming all over my face. What do you think of that?”

I think it sounds like an excellent plan.

As Finn pulls away and tugs me down the hall, I count three bedrooms—three tiny bedrooms—with his at the end, on the street side of the house. It’s pretty empty, other than a full-size IKEA bed against one wall and matching dresser against the other. Finn’s suitcase rests just next to the closet door.

Removed from the sun streaming through the windows, this side of the house is cool, and we trip in and stop, only inches apart. His warmth grows and ebbs with each of his heavy breaths. I’m practically gasping, my heart is thudding so hard.

I almost never feel intimidated—and I’ll be damned if I ever let a guy get the upper hand—but if there is an alpha dog in this room, it isn’t me. Tossing the dish towel back over his shoulder, Finn lets his eyes move from my mouth, to my neck, and lower. My nipples harden beneath my thin dress, and he licks his lips, humming.

“I’m going to tie you up this time,” he tells me, slipping one strap of my dress off my shoulder. With his lips trailing across my neck, he asks, “You into that?”

I blink up to him, a little caught off guard. I . . . might be? I’ve never been tied up. But to be completely honest, I’m not all that surprised Finn wants this. In Vegas, and again in Canada, he was rough and tender in equal, drastic measure. He spanked me, pinned my hands over my head, and withheld orgasms, only to push back inside and kiss me so tenderly I came with a scream. And then he pulled out and made me come again with his mouth.

The first night we were together, we only had sex one time before we passed out cold, but he made it last three hours. Finn likes to call the shots, and right now, I’m going to let him.

“I can be.”

“Last time you showed up unannounced, I was just down to fuck,” he says. “Today, I think I want to savor this. Unless you’ve got somewhere to be?”

I shake my head, closing my eyes. It feels so good to just put it all in his hands. To shrug away every single worry and let him tie me up, eat me out, fuck me until I can’t walk. I don’t know him well enough to trust him with anything else, but I trust this man with my body.

“What’s that?” he asks with a tiny edge to his voice, ducking to meet my eyes.

“No,” I say, eyes fluttering open and my voice coming out thick before I clear my throat. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

He nods, walking over to the closet and pulling a length of red rope from a high shelf.

“You just happened to have rope in the closet?” I ask, my voice high and reedy.

“Didn’t want to leave it in my truck in case someone took it.” He grins at me. “This is really nice rope.”

I’m pretty sure few people in Pacific Beach would have any idea that the rope in the back of a pickup truck is really nice rope, but I can hardly complain. I’m glad he didn’t have to leave the room to go get it.

But when I look down at it, this rope doesn’t seem like something he’d use on a boat. It’s soft, has the sheen of silk.

“You carry silky rope around in the bed of your pickup? Should I Google you, Finn?”

He laughs a little, dropping it at the foot of the bed. “I was pretty sure I’d get you naked while I was here.” He lifts his chin, silently telling me to do just that.

“How confident of you.”

His eyebrow flickers up, as if to say, Well? and he pulls the towel from his shoulder, walking a slow circle around me as I pull my dress up and over my head. When I slide my underwear down my legs and step out of them, I feel a whisper of fabric against the back of my thigh.

And then a sharp pop against the exact same spot.

With a gasp, I turn and gape at him. He’s snapped the towel at me, like a fucking teenager in the kitchen. The sting turns warm, making me more aware of the cool air in his room.

“Come here,” he says, ignoring my surprised expression.

“You’re not going to whip me with a dish towel.”

“You’re right, I’m not.” When I start to take a step closer, he snaps it again, barely grazing my hip. “I’m going to tease you with it.”

“What happened to just getting naked and—”

He pops me again, this time on my upper thigh. “You came to me, not some skinny-dicked kid in Del Mar. And I’m doing this how I want.” His eyes soften. “It’s not like I’m going to leave you needy, sweet thing. I wouldn’t do that.”

I exhale a jagged breath and nod. Whatever he wants to do . . . it’s why I’m here. I close my eyes, giving in to the semi-drunk sensation I get when I’m this close to him, and he’s the only thing I can sense in the room.

He wraps his fingers around a small lock of my hair and glides them down to the end, tugging gently. “Look at me.”

I blink up to him, eyes wide and focused on nothing but the bow of his bottom lip, the appearance of his ironic little smile as I wait to hear what instruction comes next.

“Kiss my neck,” he whispers, so I do. I stretch on my toes and press my lips against his pulse point. It’s an excuse, maybe, to see how I affect him and whether his blood trips the same way mine does when we are this close. But his pulse is a steady and slow dum . . . dum . . . dum beneath my touch.

“Lick me.” His fingers slide up my neck and over my necklace, pressing into my scalp and gripping handfuls of my hair.

My tongue sweeps out, just barely touching his skin, and he groans, a low, hungry sound. He tastes like salt and air, as if the ocean wrapped around him when he was small and never let go.

“Go lie down.” His fingers release me but his gaze doesn’t. Right now, I remember that Finn is ten years older than me; I must look wide-eyed and naïve. I wonder if he has any idea the extent of my inexperience with lovers like him. “I’m gonna tie you up and kiss that sweet pussy for a while. I want to hear you say my name when you come on my lips.”

I back up to the bed and then turn, moving toward the middle. Having grown up on the beach, I’m used to being in bikinis around people, but Finn and I have only ever hooked up in the dark. It’s a little weird to be completely naked—with him mostly clothed—and crawling on my hands and knees on a bed in broad daylight.

When I kneel and wait for him to join me, he shakes his head. “Lie back. Close your eyes.” At my suspicious expression, he says in a quiet, deep voice, “You want it or not?”

Before I do what he says, I blink down to the worn button fly of his jeans, faded and soft over time and now distorted with the shape of him, hard beneath. He’s always made sure my body was ready, and I know that’s what we’re doing, but the threat of panic and fear lingering at the edges, and my need to get lost in something other than my own thoughts, makes me impatient.

He sees where my attention has gone and rubs the heel of his hand down the thick line of his cock, gripping it. “You’ll get it in a little bit. Lie back.”

The pillow is full and hard, but the cotton comforter is soft and warm against my bare skin. Between my legs, the mattress dips as Finn climbs up from the foot of the bed, his palms smoothing up my shins.

Finn drags the length of red rope up over my torso, coiling it around his hand. Reaching behind me, he slides the center of its length under my body and then crisscrosses it back and forth down across my torso. Looping it around one hand he coils it up one arm and then back over my chest to the other side. Wrapping it down around my other arm, he’s softly bound my arms so each of my wrists stays at the sides of my hips. In the center, just below my belly button, he ties an intricate—and beautiful—knot. I watch him the entire time; he’s focused and careful not to bind me too tight. I can tell, too, that he loves what he sees. When he’s done, he sighs, running his hands up over my hips and across my stomach, my breasts, my neck.

“I had no idea you were into this,” I whisper.

He shrugs a little, but doesn’t say anything. My breasts are displayed on either side of an X across my breastbone, and the rope is soft but sturdy; I can feel it pressing into the tender skin all along my torso.

“Is it too tight?” he asks, drawing a finger in a small circle around my nipple.

I swallow back a gasp. “No.”

“Do you like it?”

I hear genuine concern in his voice. I can tell from his trembling hand, intense gaze, and the pressing shape of his cock beneath his jeans that Finn likes this. A lot. But it matters to him that I do, too.

And fuck, I do. I don’t mind having my arms pinned at my sides as much as I thought I would. And I feel everything: the silken slide of the rope as I wiggle a little under his inspection, the cool air over my breasts, the thudding echo of my pulse in my neck, chest, between my legs.

I forgot how rough his hands are, calloused from constant work—rough and so huge he covers much of my body as his splayed fingers slide up my legs to my inner thighs, spreading me.

I resist, and he makes a quiet tsk sound, easily overpowering me as he shakes his head. He’s not looking at my face, he’s looking at me, there, between my legs.

I like to consider myself a pretty progressive woman—lots of talk about being comfortable with anything and trying everything once—but mostly, so far, it’s only been theory. At twenty-two, I’ve never had a lover who was experienced enough to be slow and force me to still under his acute attention. I’ve never been with anyone who was confident enough to be still and calm while he just looks at me. I’ve certainly never been tied up. And I’ve never had someone savor me the way Finn is right now, not even the Finn I thought I knew from before.

He settles, propped on his elbows between my legs, and kisses my thigh, looking up the length of my body at the red rope against my skin. “You look amazing.”

I whisper out a raspy “Thanks,” watching rapt as he bends, lips parted. And, God, I believe him.

He groans a split second before he makes contact, and when he does it’s like a bomb goes off inside me. Something seems to break loose with the wet slide of his tongue. I fall back, arms stiffening in their hold, back bowing off the mattress so I can arch closer. I know now that I haven’t just been waiting for this since last night; I’ve been waiting for it every second since I last felt his tongue between my legs. His mouth is warm and strong. Kissing there like he would my mouth, small kisses and gentle licks release my first cry, and he grunts, pushing his tongue up into me and just . . . losing it.

Finn was always borderline rough and clearly wanted control the two other times we were together, but this . . . this is different. It isn’t just the rope around my arms or the way he has me pinned beneath him. It’s the way it feels like we’ve crossed into a different space—before it was just a one-time thing, a two-time thing, just sex. But this time, it’s like he’s peeling away the layers to show me a secret side of him.

For a flash, I’m aware of how loud he is, sucking and smacking, and how loud I am, crying out and saying his name and other garbled words—but I can’t hold on to the inclination to be self-conscious. I can’t because with the vibration of his groan spreading through me, and the way he uses the knot at my belly to rhythmically pull me against his mouth, I’m coming so soon, so hard it claws up my thighs and explodes like heat and wet and pure fucking bliss, sliding silvery all along every inch of my legs. My skin feels flushed and electric, and I can hear my own hoarse cries echo sharply in the mostly empty room. Finn keeps going, diligently working his mouth over me, but I’m gasping as I come down, my legs trembling and weak. I want to push them together, but his hands spread across my thighs, holding me open, pressing them flat to the bed.

He grunts out a No and reaches beneath me with one hand to deliver a sharp smack on the outside of my thigh.

I’m too far gone to be shocked. When he spreads his hand over where he’s just struck me, and rubs his rough palm in slow, soothing circles as he hums, I immediately want the sharp crack again because of the way it melted into delicious heat under his sweeter touch.

Finn is watching me, his lips pressed gently against my clit, concentrating his gaze on my face. He pulls away just enough to whisper, “Tell me how that felt.”

Does he mean the spanking or the mind-numbing orgasm? Or the way I can barely move after he made every muscle in my body clench? Regardless, the answer is the same. Blinking, I open my mouth, slowly stringing the words, So . . . fucking . . . good, together in my head. Before I can get them out, he smiles against me, returning to the maddening kisses, the licks and tugging on the knotted rope. I let the words and every thought in my head fall away and push into him, circling my hips closer to his mouth.

My face feels hot, my cheeks flushed. The rope tickles along my skin, pulling up and down in a rhythm that matches the teasing flicks of his tongue. My nipples are hard, aching, and I want his fingers to find them, his mouth to find them. I want him everywhere at once. I feel heavy and desperate, my entire world oriented by where he’s touching me and where he’s not.

I must be saying something because the sound of his voice breaks through the fog. “That’s right,” he says, murmuring softly. “Fuck, look at you.”

But I’m looking at him. His soft hair is between my legs and his eyes, those fucking eyes are staring right back at me, waiting. He curls a finger inside and bends his head to continue sucking, and that’s all it takes. My back arches off the mattress and I cry out, falling to pieces again inside his web of silken rope.