Rope 'Em Read online

  Was he already oblivious? Did he have any idea how awful she felt, feeling this wonderful and knowing how soon it all had to end? “Yeah, I know. You have a job to do.”

  Maybe he didn’t feel as wonderful; maybe she was just the flavor of the month, and that was fine. It had to be. She’d already sent out so many résumés, placed so many calls, fired off a slew of hopeful emails about jobs she knew she wasn’t quite qualified for. Slim though the chance might be, it was possible some of those efforts might pay off at any moment, even before she had a chance to research no-degree-required jobs in Dallas that would get her out of Hilltop and Alexandra off her back. But one way or another, she’d be gone soon.

  Which meant she should have gone and found another rigger instead of staying by Ethan’s side all night, helping him keep an eye on the players. Bringing him snacks. Talking, laughing. Telling each other their stories. Most embarrassing moments, dumbest decisions, greatest achievements. Victoria’s becoming the youngest winner, and one of the few student winners ever, of a prestigious textile design award. Ethan’s months at the Royal Veterinary College in London. The time she tried to install a massive self-designed wall hanging in her dorm room and it fell down on her in the middle of the night, taking two huge chunks of plaster out of the wall to boot. The time he actually swallowed a goldfish whole on a bet, then stayed up most of the night drunk crying because he’d swallowed it live and he was guilt-ridden that he’d killed it with a stomach-acid bath.

  At one point, Mindy wandered over to the heater to warm up and joined in their chat. She was naked, wearing only the leather thong and name tag she always had around her neck. Her butt was striped with welts from a caning earlier, but she’d rested for a bit, recovered, and was now taking in the sights while Logan fixed a wobbly spanking horse.

  “Not really what I’d planned for our evening off, but . . .” She shrugged, turning her front to the heat and rubbing her hands together. “I guess I ought to just go put clothes on.”

  Ethan tilted his head as though he were considering the pros and cons. “Well, you know. Clothes are awfully constricting. I mean, it’s up to you, but don’t feel like you have to be in any rush.”

  Mindy snorted. “Oh my God. Perv. Don’t be admiring my nakedness. I’m going to be your sister-in-law next year.”

  Victoria’s heart flipped in her chest. “Really? Congratulations, that’s wonderful.” People’s love stories came true sometimes; things worked out. She wanted that to happen to her someday, but tonight the longing struck her more keenly than it ever had before.

  “Thank you! I always forget people don’t know—I never wear the ring. It was their grandmother’s. It’s absolutely beautiful and I’m such a klutz. I’m terrified I’m going to pop a diamond out into some horse apples or lose it on a trail or something.”

  Ethan chuckled. “I don’t think Memaw’s ever worn it either. I’ve only seen a plain gold band on her finger for as long as I remember.”

  Victoria cast her mind back, trying to recall details Ethan had mentioned about his relatives. “Is that the grandmother who used to live here?”

  “Yeah. Probably didn’t wear the ring for the same reason as Mindy. Didn’t want to lose it in a haystack or drop it down the well. Figuratively, I mean. There was a pump house back then, too. They weren’t cavepeople.”

  So much history in this family. So much love built into each structure on the ranch, soaked into the stones and beams and the very ground of the place. Mindy seemed to belong here now, just as Logan and Ethan did. Victoria had never had a very strong sense of home, but Hilltop had that quality in excess. It seemed to draw people in, make them comfortable, keep them there. Probably Ethan would never leave, or at least not for long. He’d find a woman who wanted to settle down at the ranch; they’d take occasional trips with the tiny house, but their home base would never have to change.

  That was a hypothetical woman in a future that might never come to pass, so it made no sense for Victoria to envy her. It made no sense, at two in the morning after cleanup was finished, for Victoria to push Ethan up against the wall of the Bondage Barn on the way back to his place and kiss him as if she could punish him like an old-school romance hero punishing a wayward debutante for being too irresistibly beautiful and headstrong.

  He seemed to interpret her fervor as pent-up longing and gave back as good as he got.

  “Wanna tie you up,” he freed his mouth long enough to mutter at one point. She nodded and went right back to kissing him. It was a wonder they made it all the way up the hill to his tiny house—although it was a necessity since all his rope was up there.

  When they finally crashed through the door, stumbling in their haste to get the lights on, tear their clothes off, and get entwined again, Victoria saw that Ethan’s rope plans were more specific than she’d realized. He’d been busy that day, it seemed, installing certain small but useful details to the frame of the open area under the loft.

  Eventually that space would serve as a living room, with a couch and an entertainment center; Ethan had designed the loft high enough to give him walking clearance underneath . . . by about an inch and a half. He’d confessed to a certain amount of glee upon realizing that Logan, who was six foot one, would either have to duck or hit his head every damn time he came over to watch a game.

  For the moment, however, only Ethan and Victoria’s height mattered, and nobody would be banging their head on the frame that night—which was good because the frame was now armored with a series of cleats and ring bolts that looked sturdy enough to secure a raging stallion, much less one medium-sized and extremely compliant rope bottom. The tools he’d obviously been using were pushed to one side, and the fluffy gray blanket was spread out beneath the arch to protect their feet from the unfinished floor.

  With only her top, bra, and shoes off, Victoria couldn’t resist dashing to the frame and testing the strength of the cleats, grabbing one of the highest ones and hooking two fingers through the closest of the top rings, then lifting her feet from the floor. “Oh my God! This is amazing, Ethan!”

  In his house. Not only had he managed a bondage frame in his own house, he’d managed it in a house that was barely over two hundred square feet . . . and to any vanilla visitor, it would probably just look like decorative touches to make the place look more like a barn or a boat or wherever one found metal cleats suitable for attaching ropes.

  “I know, right?” He pulled off his jeans, then joined her, naked, to help her shuck hers the rest of the way off. The yoga shorts came with them. “I mean, the kitchen is supposed to be the heart of the home, but fuck that noise. This thing is the real deal. As long as I don’t want to tie up anybody taller than me. And you, you’re . . .” He put his hand on top of her head, then slid it off, level, to the tip of his own nose. “You’re perfect.”

  That flutter in her chest again, that faint tightening of her throat. Not that, anything but calling me perfect. “I’ll fit okay, at least. So what’s first?”

  “Oh, right. Uh . . . karada!”

  She giggled and started to sing before she could stop herself. “Oh, you say ka-RAY-da, and I say ka-RAH-da.”

  Ethan picked it right up on the way to his gear bag, but said po-TAY-ta and po-TAH-ta for the next line to keep the rhyme consistent.

  Victoria called him on it. “Okay, but nobody actually says po-tah-ta.”

  “Shh, I’m choosing a color.”

  She swung from the cleat and ring again, ignoring the pain in her fingers. “I hear dark red ombre is all the rage this year.”

  “Don’t make me call this whole thing off.” He came up with royal blue instead, a hefty hank of it, and approached her with a gleam in his eye.

  “As if.”

  “Hey. C’mere. I got something for you.”

  She glanced down at his cock, which was semihard. “Mmm.”

  He swished up the bundle of rope, then smacked it into his other hand, obscuring her leering view. “On second thought . . . turn a
round. Yeah, just put your hands back up there and grab on again.”

  Skin tingling, pussy warming in anticipation, she did as he said. She wasn’t surprised when the end of the rope whipped across her ass, but the sting pulled a gasp from her lips anyway. Ethan paused, and she was about to glance back to see what he was doing when another whipping blow came, thuddier than the first; he’d looped the rope.

  By ten or twelve strokes in, she was hanging on to the support in earnest, whimpering at each pause. Then he switched to the single piece again, bringing more sting with more power behind it, and tears sprang to her eyes . . . but she felt herself getting wet, her clit throbbing with her rising heartbeat. She wouldn’t have welts like Mindy’s—she wouldn’t want welts like Mindy’s; canes scared the fuck out of her and she didn’t usually get off on extreme pain—but she knew Ethan was leaving marks that would last the night. On her butt, her back, the backs of her thighs. A ladder of stripes to commemorate the occasion.

  The pain had started her on the climb into subspace by the time he stopped, and the first lingering touch of the rope on her skin took her higher still. Neither of them said a word as he started to loop and tug, arranging the rope into an intricate harness from her neck to her thighs. Victoria stayed wherever he put her, floating along with his unspoken directions, leaning against his warm body whenever she got the chance. Tasting whatever bit of skin passed near enough for her mouth to reach.

  Eyes closed, relaxing into the rope as it encircled her, she put all her trust in Ethan. She would have said it was more emotional than sexual—except that when he finished the karada and slid one hand from her breast all the way down to her rope-framed pussy, then pushed two fingers past the rope and into her wet cunt, she nearly came on his hand. Her legs trembled, she exhaled, she pulled back from the wave of pleasure—and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her with wonder and longing and unmistakable sadness.

  She shut her eyes again because she couldn’t see all that and keep it together. “What next?”

  “I wish I knew . . . oh. Don’t move.” He stepped away, and she heard a muffled curse, then the rustling of the gear bag.

  When he returned, a whump by her feet suggested he’d dropped more rope. But before he used any more of it, he kissed her lightly, then tapped one of her temples.

  “Hey. Can I put this on you?”

  She braved a glance. He was holding out a blindfold—a nice one, silk or something like it, with a plush lining. Yes. “Please.” Because neither of them needed to gaze into the other’s eyes at the moment. It was too much; she was relieved he apparently felt the same way.

  Bathed in warm, fuzzy darkness, she no longer had to decide whether to peek. She had to let herself go, let Ethan move her into position under the scaffold. He worked his way from one side to the other, top to bottom, weaving ropes through the karada and securing her to the frame. Victoria tried to picture what it must look like, the blue ropes around her body, the black ones he’d chosen for the web that held her ever more firmly in place. She was caught dead center, the focal point, unable to move even if she’d wanted to.

  Victoria told herself that she would want to when it became important enough. But at the moment she couldn’t think of anyplace she’d ever felt more inclined to stay.

  * * *

  Ethan had been almost unable to plan for that night—not because he couldn’t think up anything to do with Victoria, a bondage frame, and a fuckton of nice rope, but because he couldn’t narrow it down. He wanted to do everything to this woman, everything he knew. He wanted to learn new things just so he could do them to her. He wanted to hear her reaction, find out which things she liked the best, so he could better woo her by becoming awesome at those things.

  Yes to the sounds she made when he whipped her with the tail of the rope he was about to bind her with . . . and probably yes to flogging. He needed to bring his up from the main house some night.

  Some night soon, before she left.

  No to that. He couldn’t think about that right now.

  Yes to the way her body looked, framed by rope. But mostly to the way she moved to his slightest touch, as if she could read his mind and simply knew what he wanted her to do next. He wanted to sink into her and stay there. That was all. And he couldn’t have that.

  When she opened her eyes, he couldn’t bear the truth he read in them. He blindfolded her to spare himself, and told himself he’d seen only what he wanted to see. But that didn’t make it any less perfect when he continued the ropework, lacing her into the frame he’d created below the loft. He was hard, aching now, and he worked quickly because he had to see her like this, but he also had to free her enough from the binding to fuck her soon.

  When it was done—all the ropes woven into a web around Victoria, holding her into place in the middle of his still-unfinished home—he took a step back to appreciate his handiwork. Instead, he saw her lips part slightly, her head turn as if she was following his movement even though she couldn’t see him, and then the words to a dozen old standards jumbled through his mind all at once. Because it had to be her, and she was too beautiful, and they couldn’t take that away from him, the way she looked tonight.

  He brought his hand to his mouth, tasting her, filling every sense he could with her. Even at a distance she overwhelmed him. The fact of her. The way she was so much more present than just about anyone he’d ever met, but would be gone in such a short time. It seemed impossible that he wouldn’t continue to see her. There had to be a way.

  “Ethan?” she whispered, sounding uncertain.

  He’d been standing and staring too long, getting lost in his own head. “Be there in a second.” It took a few seconds, actually, to open up a packet and roll on a condom, then start to unbind Victoria. Ethan started at her feet this time and worked his way up.

  He could see how wet she still was, smell her arousal, hear it in her tiny gasps and moans as the rope and his hands passed over her skin. Once her legs and waist were unbound from the webbing, Ethan spread his legs wide enough to accommodate the height difference, hooked one of her knees over his arm, and used his other hand to push the rope at her crotch aside enough to make room for his cock to enter her.

  The angle was awkward. His legs were shaky. But both of them sighed when he was fully sheathed, as though it was perfect.

  “I won’t last,” Victoria said almost instantly. More to be polite, he thought, than in any way apologetically.

  “I don’t want you to.” He pulled halfway out, then thrust in again. Not too hard, but enough to make Victoria groan and tighten her legs around his waist.

  “Again,” she begged.

  He obliged her, repeating the motion as precisely as he could. Then again, and again, and again, and she stopped breathing, her entire body turning to warm marble in his arms, pulling tight against the ropes as she came.

  Too much. She was too amazing, and his leg was cramping, and he needed something he couldn’t get in this position. When Victoria came down from her orgasm, sighing and trembling, he let himself slip out of her—disappointing to them both, from the sound of it—and rapidly unwound the rest of the rope web, hoping her legs would hold her up.

  When she was finally untied, he used the karada to haul her into his arms and lift her feet clear of the ground, then walked her over to the pile of blankets with the sleeping bag on top of it. When she collapsed gratefully onto the heap, she pulled him down with her. Then she surprised him by slipping off the blindfold but rolling to her stomach and lifting her hips enough to slip a pillow under them.

  He didn’t need an engraved invitation. He knelt between her thighs, gripped the ropes covering her hips, and buried himself inside her again, covering her like a stallion. This time he held nothing back—he took her fast and hard, grunting at each stroke while she groaned her pleasure into the blankets. It was raw and basic, and they might as well have been two animals rutting in the night.

  Except for the way he found her hands with his wh
en she came again, and then he came a moment later, and they laced their fingers together tightly and he never wanted to let go.

  Chapter 14

  It had been a weird Giddyup for Ethan.

  It was the best of Giddyups, it was the worst of Giddyups . . .

  He watched Victoria on yet another phone call Monday morning and thought about the weekend they’d just spent. Mostly joined at the hip, at least figuratively—sometimes literally—except when their work required otherwise.

  They’d slept like logs after the previous night’s play party and subsequent shenanigans, and he hadn’t set an alarm; Roxie’s door-scratching and insistent face-licking had roused him at eight-thirty. He’d gone outside with her—really gotta get that bathroom walled in and the toilet set up—and returned to find Victoria awake and attempting to take rope-and-lash-mark selfies.

  “I don’t post them anywhere,” she reassured him. “They’re just for me, or to show friends sometimes for bragging rights.”

  “Oh, I understand. Would it be easier to let me take the pictures?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He couldn’t remember a more entertaining Sunday morning. Or a more entertaining, easy, enjoyable . . . any time. Not just the best Giddyup but the best weekend-long date, because that was essentially what it had turned into. And within another few weeks she would be gone. Which made it the worst of times.

  Maybe even sooner, the way her phone was lighting up now. Apparently, the round of résumés she’d sent out the previous week—even before Alex’s ultimatum—had been aimed at exactly the right targets. It was an hour later in New York, and the first call had come in at eight that morning Texas time. Some clothing store company she’d apparently interned with wanted to set up a Skype interview that afternoon. Then one of her former teachers, who was apparently now some design company’s director of textile-something-merchandising-stuff, called because he wanted to talk to the vice president of something else about interviewing Victoria for a position other than the one she’d applied for, but that she might be perfect for, if she was interested.