Laying her down on the bed, he leaned over her. "Because I want you to remember me here, even if I'm sometimes on the other side of the wall."
He left her there to go to the door. For a distressing moment, she thought he'd changed his mind and was going to leave, but he stopped. When he put his hand on the panel, Sam understood what he was debating. Closed or not closed? In the end, he pushed it open, looking back at her. She smiled, agreeing with him, and lifted her arms.
He pulled off his shirt as he came across the floor. He was wearing painter's pants today, a secondhand pair he considered his run-out-early-and-get-donuts wear. Because of his size, his muscled thighs and heavy bone structure, most jeans didn't fit him comfortably and well unless he bought the more expensive brands. With his job he didn't see any point in buying pricey clothes, except for a few items in his closet when he needed to dress up more. She had no objections. His camo pants and the painter's trousers fit his ass nice and snug and made the groin area, particularly when aroused, all the more noticeable.
He unhooked the top button. She remembered how the zipper had pulled loose yesterday because of the size of the erection beneath. A strategically located damp spot on the trouser fabric made her realize, with a suddenly dry mouth, he wasn't wearing any underwear.
When she lifted her gaze to his face, his expression made everything inside her yearn and go still at once. Dropping to one knee beside the bed, he grasped her bare foot and bent his head, kissing her insole with lingering tenderness. Then he kissed her ankle. His gaze swept down her body like a meandering breeze. Everywhere his gaze touched tingled with its passage.
"Stay there," he said. He left, and she heard him in his room, opening a drawer. As he came back, she saw he carried the canvas belt he'd worn with the camo pants yesterday. Leaning over her, he held out a hand, palm up. She laid hers in it, mystified by the almost courtly gesture. He waited, and she realized he wanted both her hands. When she complied, he wrapped the belt around her wrists, threading the end through the rings. He pressed her arms up above her head, looping the end on her headboard, cinching it so her arms were lifted even farther, her elbows by her temples. She forgot how to breathe, especially when he sat a hip on the edge of the bed and continued to stare at her.
"You're trembling," he said. "Are you afraid?"
"In a way." She moistened her lips. "The good way."
"It's kind of Geoff's thing."
"Is it your thing?" She didn't want him doing things in imitation of Geoff, thinking that was what he had to do to please her. But his thoughtful expression and response reduced her concerns.
"Don't know. Think I have some of it inside me, because I sure like how you're shaking. Maybe it's how you respond to it that works for me. When you took off your clothes because I told you to do it, it twisted something hard inside me. Bringing me water and ice to clean me up because you wanted to do it, wanted to care for me like that, opened up something inside me, too. In a good way."
As he handed her words back to her, his fingertips slid down her abdomen, played with the tiny pewter bear in her navel piercing. "I almost didn't give you this," he continued. The sexy timbre of his voice, the manner in which his eyes kept coursing over her bound and stretched body, were playing havoc on her senses. She was restless, hot, needy, even though she'd just climaxed. She also wanted to cling to every word he spoke.
"I thought it might be too sexual and intimate," he said. "But you were so pleased with it. You took off the one you were wearing right away and put this one on. When you were playing with it, stroking your skin, holding the hem of your shirt up, your jeans low on your hips, you gave me a hard-on that took half a day to get down. I about blacked out, I jerked off so hard in my room that night."
Her breath was erratic, noticeable in the quiet of the room. "I wish my hearing were as good as yours. I would have snuck into your room and watched you." She couldn't speak over a whisper.
"I'll bet." He smiled wryly. It was the kind of expression that made her see his vulnerability and strength both, because with Chris one was inseparable from the other. Then the strength took over, his gaze shifting to hers, mouth firming. "I don't want you to talk for the next bit. Just feel, okay? I want you to feel what I'm feeling."
She nodded, her fingers curling in the belt. Moving back down to her feet, he placed his mouth there. A surfeit of emotion filled her as his hand forged a path ahead of his mouth, exploring her skin as if he was discovering a woman for the first time. The ceiling fan turned, moving currents of warm air over her, his heated mouth adding to the sensation. He worked his way up over her knee, to her thigh. His hands slipped under it and her calf, and he adjusted her leg outward.
When he lifted his head, met her gaze, she understood what he wanted. She shifted the other leg so they were spread equally, and the shivering came back. Geoff could say Spread your legs and make her cream instantly. Whereas when a look from Chris demanded the same thing, her reaction was just as intense.
A strangled moan came from her as he bent and pressed his lips against her cunt. Not teasing or licking. He tasted her as an explorer would, learning her body, the secrets it held. Secrets she didn't even know, because her reaction now was new to her as well. He lifted his head again, lips pressed together and moving, obviously savoring her taste.
"You look so aroused and hungry, so hot. I want to make you come over and over, even as I want to keep you just this way, because it makes me so fucking crazy to see you like this. All tied up, waiting for me. Maybe Geoff isn't the only one who likes that."
That seemed to bemuse him. She thought she might start whining if he didn't go back to kissing her again. Fortunately, he obliged her before she embarrassed herself. He spread kisses over her hipbones, over ticklish spots that made her squirm and him chuckle. He traced the curves of her breasts with his tongue, played over the nipples until she was lifting off the bed toward him. Then he moved to her neck.
"Turn your cheek to the pillow and keep it there."
She did, and he spent endless moments kissing her throat, setting his teeth to the delicate combination of tendons, veins and muscles there. Nuzzling beneath her ear, he kissed the tender spot between her collarbones. Cupping her face, he turned the opposite cheek toward the pillow and did the same to the other side of her neck.
As he broke her mind into fragments with that, he slid his other hand up her arm and clasped both her wrists, digging his fingers into the belt and reinforcing the bond holding her. Her legs were still spread as he'd left them, and her tied state tilted her breasts up. Everything about her position suggested a desire to be taken, but Chris wasn't a man who let himself be rushed. She'd never been so frustrated and aroused at once.
"Please . . . Chris."
As he lifted his head, inches between their faces, her gaze latched on his mouth, wet from kissing her, from tasting her pussy. "Please, what, Sam?"
"I need you."
"How?" At her discomfiture, he closed his fingers around her jaw. Though he didn't hurt her, he made sure she fel
t the strength in his grip. She couldn't move her face at all.
"I don't consider them dirty words, Sam. There's nothing pure and real as the earth. Damp, rich soil tumbling between my fingers always reminds me of a woman's cunt. I want to bury myself in yours, Sam, but I want to hear you say that's what you want as well. I want to hear it come from your mouth. What do you want me to do to you?"
"I want . . . you inside me. Fuck me. Make me yours. Please. I think I'll die if you don't do that, right now." Yes, it was ridiculously dramatic, but every throbbing cell wanted her to be dramatic, over-the-top. No room for misinterpretation.