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"I told you that you would be helping me with Troy tonight. I don't change the terms of what I require, even if the environment, what you feel, compels you to send me messages that push for more. Do you understand? You're safe here. I said that from the beginning, and it will be true until the end. You be whatever you desire. I will keep you safe, even from yourself."
She digested that. "Do you have a tattoo of a heart on your ass?"
Troy gave a strangled half chuckle. Logan lifted a brow, put his warm palm against the side of her neck, drawing her a step closer. Troy was a healthy-sized male, but standing next to Logan was like standing in the shade of a brick building.
"Actually, it's a pink unicorn, but I don't talk about it. Now, hush."
A mild reproof, but one that made her fall silent. He dropped his touch, but only to unwrap the coil, shake out the line. "Troy, turn around and watch what I'm doing. Madison, you keep your eyes on me."
Troy obeyed, pivoting so that the chains above him twisted. Logan had given him enough slack to permit that without taking him off his feet. She saw that in the corner of her eye, since not keeping her eyes on Logan would have been impossible, regardless. He formed a loop out of the rope, something that looked like a noose, only with a different kind of knot, the resulting two lengths of line falling below it to his feet.
"Japanese rope tying is one of the things I'll be doing to Troy tonight. Would you like to experience an upper body harness? I can do it over your clothes."
Yes. She'd nodded before she even gave it thought. He stepped closer, putting the noose over her head. If he'd hesitated a mere second, she would have chickened out, but what she'd seen in Troy's eyes when the shackles closed over his wrists she experienced now, a curious stillness that made her breathing more shallow.
He put evenly spaced knots into the two lengths of rope, and continued with that past her waist. Then he adjusted her so she faced Troy, less than two feet between them. Logan retrieved another coil of rope from the bench and moved behind her. When he clasped her hand, her fingers squeezed his. He guided her arm so it was bent behind her, then he did the same to the other, gently changing her grasp so she held her forearms.
"This is called a boxed arm position." He wrapped her forearms in the rope. Troy was keeping his eyes down, but she detected tiny flickers as he fought his own desire to look. It was a heady combination, being bound by one man and compressed between the heat of desire from both. Logan shifted to work the ends of the rope into the lines between the knots in front. It opened up the parallel lines of knotted rope, creating a diamond pattern down her front. He used another line to create a similar pattern over her breasts, two diamonds framing them, and then cinched the lines snug by working the ends into the wrapping of her boxed arms. His fingers brushed her breasts, her collarbone, her upper body, in dozens of small functional ways.
When Logan moved behind her, tightened the ropes, it lifted her breasts and her posture, displaying her more provocatively. Desire speared straight to her core.
Should she tell him to stop? That this was more than she'd anticipated? She couldn't find words to speak, too lost in this. When he'd said "harness," she'd expected something like a halter top made of rope. Instead, he'd bound her arms, ensnared her in a net. A net she had no desire to escape.
Troy's breath got shorter; so did hers. She'd never been tied up like this in her life, and the way Logan did it, so efficient, no hesitation but no hurry either, made it all feel like it should. Everywhere he touched her to test the hold of the ropes, the way the knots lay against her skin, kept her nerves sizzling. Yet she was also paralyzed. She thought of how Troy had looked, somewhat hypnotized as he was restrained, and knew the same feeling. Everything sensitive, hyperalert, but caught in a sensual haze.
Just as she'd been mesmerized in the clubs where Alice had taken her. She felt like she'd stepped into a world that had merely been waiting to welcome her back, knowing she was finally ready to embrace what it had to offer. How was that possible?
Earlier she'd torn her gaze away from Logan. She'd been evading that direct look because the answer to the question was in his brown eyes. Eyes that had embers in their depths, capable of immolating her and her fragile, false reality with their flame. She swayed.
"Master--" Troy spoke.
"Got it." Logan's hands were on her shoulders, holding her steady. "Breathe, Madison. Don't forget to breathe."
She took a shaky breath, then another. He stroked her hair, waiting for her to settle. It took some time, but a blink after she realized she was okay again, so did he, and it was reinforced by Troy's quick nod, showing how closely aligned the two men were, even with Troy in his own restrained state. For a brief moment, the young man held her gaze, a lifeline between them, both of them tied up at Logan's
behest.
Then his lashes fanned his cheeks again. Was she imagining that he'd lowered his gaze at a more leisurely pace this time? Her breasts constricted by the harness made them highly provocative, especially in the thin T-shirt. When Troy did the lip-wetting thing, she was pretty sure her nipples hardened further. A reaction that only increased when Logan adjusted the ropes once more. She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a quiet moan.
"Keep an eye on her, Troy," he ordered. "Her breathing and balance, not just her breasts."
"Yes, Master." The strained note of amusement in Troy's voice was matched by the wryness of Logan's.
Picking up another rope off the bench, Logan moved behind Troy. "What are you supposed to be doing, Madison?"
"Breathing," she said, a little breathlessly.
"Good. Talk to me, prove you're doing it. A customer comes in. She wants to get the fires going again with her husband. What would you recommend? What's in your inventory that will do the trick?"
She'd been that route personally, and had had a recent reminder of it, in her first disastrous interaction with her customers. With failures number one and four in the relationship track, she'd tried lingerie to generate excitement again. Jonas had smirked and Henry had given her a resigned, indulgent look, like she was a child he had to entertain before going to do more preferable, adult things.
Her nails dug into her forearms. Even when she'd donned the lingerie alone, she hadn't felt comfortable in it, as if she already knew it was a pathetic attempt to save a relationship going south. She couldn't blame Henry. She'd probably come off like a kid putting on her mom's work clothes and pearls. The clothes had been no different than they'd be on a mannequin. She hadn't worn them; they'd worn her.
"I'm not the best one to suggest that," she said. The bonds were restrictive in the wrong way now. She should tell him to take them off.
"Look at Troy, Madison. He's worked up over you, wants like hell to disobey and take a good long look, not just steal those quick glimpses I'm going to take out of his hide. He wants to stare at your breasts, how gorgeous and swollen they are, tied up in the rope, your nipples stiff and wanting to be sucked. Imagine you're going to pick something out to wear for him in your bedroom later tonight, when he's not tied up, when he has the chance to seduce you. He wants to put his mouth on you, his cock inside you. What would you wear to make him even crazier? You're driving what's already there, not coaxing it out. Any man you have to talk into getting hard for you is the wrong guy. Plus he's fucking blind and too stupid to live."
She choked on a laugh, but she had a crazy quiver happening, too, the husky timbre of his voice emphasizing the male power he could unleash. It wasn't Troy she was seeing in her bedroom. When she lifted her gaze to Logan, she wondered if he saw the hunger, what she couldn't voice. Then she didn't have to wonder.
