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Her pulse jumped at the sudden shift in his expression, a glimpse of something hungry. "But you can say stop at any time," he continued. "And if you feel uncomfortable or afraid, you tell me. Okay?"
Yep, she had all the control. Control of a bag of wild cats, all of whom were wanting to tear loose, make her act in inexplicable ways.
Des let go of one hand and picked up his shirt. He kept a firm clasp on her other hand, leading her through the slit in the curtain to the stage beyond it.
He'd prepared for her arrival. A table held neatly coiled figure eights of black rope and a glittering pile of silver carabiner clips. Next to them were a half dozen pale ivory candles and a lighter. A backpack was on the floor, leaning against the table leg.
Several ropes were hanging from the support beams above the stage, with hooks attached to the ends of the lines. Maybe she should have brought Madison. What did she really know about Desmond? What was he going to do with those hooks?
He stopped, perhaps feeling her hesitation. "Anything you want to talk about, we can," he said. "If you change your mind about having someone here, we can do it another night when you can give Madison some advance warning. We can go get a pizza or something."
She swallowed. "No. I think I made the right decision. What I need... I need your help feeling right about it."
At his quizzical expression, she colored. "It's going to sound stupid, but when we were looking at the orchids, you had this way of tapping into what I am... I mean, what I felt. It made it okay. I think I would have let you do anything to me right then."
His jaw muscles flexed, suggesting her bald admission had elicited a primal response, barely held back. She felt it in the strength of his grip on her hand, but he only said, "Okay."
Pressing his shirt in her hands, he tilted his head down so they both looked at the cloth bunched in her grip. "At the end of our session tonight, I'm going to put my shirt on you."
The worn cloth was soft, and she resisted the female urge to lift it to her nose to smell. Hard and strong he was. Broad chested, not so much. She glanced down at her D-cup breasts. "I don't think this is going to fit."
"We'll button what we can. I think the effect will be interesting."
He took the shirt from her, walked it over to the table and left it draped over the pack. Moving to the side stage, he drew back the curtains. As they retracted, he revealed the darkened theater, the empty chairs.
He returned to her, a masculine figure moving through alternating shadows and shafts of light. Any words she'd planned to say dried up. He didn't tell her to be quiet; his expression and body language did.
Turning her to face the front of the stage, he put his hands on her shoulders. "Close your eyes. Feel the theater breathing like you talked about. Imagine there are a few hundred people out there, all silent and waiting, watching. Each of them imagining themselves in either your shoes or mine, or both, bringing their own personal stories to life in a million different ways. We inspire their imaginations, but we're also oblivious to them, because that's the point."
His lips brushed her ear, making her shiver. "There's being a story and telling one, and this is being a story. If the crowd stirs, even just a little, I'll silence them with a look, a raised hand. I won't permit anything to distract you or intrude on your experience. That's part of my job, part of what you can trust me to do."
It had been years since she'd performed on a stage, so it was peculiar to feel a bit of stage fright as he created an imaginary audience watching them.
"Everyone is quiet. Now it's just us."
His captivating voice, too deep for his frame, too compelling for an individual who looked like a roadie and who might be too young for her, held her in place. Through the touch of his hand, the stroke of his voice, he evolved into the Dominant she'd felt on their first meeting and in that unforgettable moment at the orchid garden.
She told herself it was just performance. He possessed that incredible charisma that incited crushes from so many actresses for their leading man, even when he was a total dick outside the role he played onstage. She didn't have that risk of being crushed by reality. They'd set the boundaries. She could be swept up in her own character, enjoy it without losing perspective.
But he'd said he couldn't let her hold herself apart. This wasn't a performance with a review write-up tomorrow. This was intended to be an experience.
He swept his hands down her arms and back up to her shoulders, his fingers caressing her throat. She swayed and he closed the gap between them.
"When I do a scene, my submissive is the center. She's everything."
He removed the barrette from her hair so it spilled over his hands. He combed through the thick locks, tugging harder with each pass, scraping it all together as if he was going to create a ponytail. Only instead he loosened his grip, spread her hair back on her shoulders, then did it all over again, digging into her nape, her scalp, mixing force with the tug. Her eyes had closed again and she was swaying with his motions, a spiral of reaction inside and out.
"I'm going to undress you, Julie," he whispered. "I want you to feel my hands on you, get you used to me touching you, taking control. All right?"
As she'd said, there was little modesty in theater. She didn't see her body as a glowing treasure that had to be hidden until some presto moment where she'd reveal it to an awestruck lover. It was just a body. They were all sizes and shapes, and fit society's definition of beauty at different levels, but in the end, a body was a body. Everyone had one.
On the other hand, her body had never been unwrapped as if it was a treasure. A far different experience from matter-of-factly stripping off outer garb while cast and crew members passed by like orbiting planets.
"When I tell you I'm undressing you, I'm demanding a paradigm shift in your head. Answer me, love."
She moistened her lips. "Yes. Okay."
His fingers curved around her waist, slid around and plucked open the tunic's sash. "Lift your arms."
