Page 55 of Bared

He did not give her a quip for that. His demeanor changed to the very opposite of quipping. Suddenly he was all prowling heat, molten focus, mesmerizing confidence. Yes, even with a cookie cutter in his hand.

“Sometimes, steel hearts are the easiest to wreck.” He held up the gleaming steel until they peered at each other through the open shape. “The hard stuff is only around the edges.”

Jayd pinned him with a deeper scrutiny. It was not difficult to see what he had just given her. This unique revelation. The insight to him. She could no more ignore the gift than forget about it.

“But the part inside…is not that easy to fill. Is it?”

She meant it earnestly. Honestly. She knew Brickham understood that, even if he was not so easy to read now.

“Well, that depends.” She was hit with more of his enigmatic energy, snagging her breath in unique ways as he leaned in again. His own throat clogged out loud from the second his crotch hit her kneecaps. “On what you choose to fill them with.”

In a hot rush, Jayd already knew what he was talking about. A leap from the symbolic to the certainty. To the knowledge of exactly how he intended to use that cookie cutter.

The second she concluded it, Brickham confirmed it.

“Wrists,” he directed, sounding like he was merely requesting she fetch a spatula for him. But they were not getting ready to make pancakes here. She knew it as soon as she extended her arms to him and he slid the big steel heart around her wrists.

“Oh.” Her reaction came from her psyche as well as the naughty regions of her belly. Something had happened to her. Something visceral and sharp but spiritual and complete.

Yes. Complete.

Buried parts of herself, longing for this moment. Seeking this surrender. For the time when she would finally rest in this sublime trust. In him and herself.

“Now back up,” Brick instructed, guiding her arms back over her head. With her wrists settled into the heart’s humps, he used the upside-down point as a hook around one of the cabinet handles. “Feels okay?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir.”

He grazed the side of her face before rubbing the pad of his thumb across her mouth. “That sounds better and better each time you say it, woman.” He kept caressing her lips, tackling their corners with tiny but rough circles until he replaced his fingers with a long, dirty kiss. Once he had her quivering like a butterfly on a stick, he murmured, “Now I want you to say it while you spread your legs for me.”

“Oh.” She practically gasped it out. “Oh, yesss…Sir.”

Most of it was a hissing mess, but it was a miracle she formed the words at all. Not after the demand he had made of her. Not as she realized how much she craved to comply with his command—and did. So swiftly. So eagerly.

Those feelings intensified as she watched what her acquiescence did to Brickham. How his chest rose and surged. How his gaze darkened and dropped. How he caused her stare to dip too, drawn to the part of him that had changed the most. The crux of his body was no longer defined by a broad bulge. She could see the outline of his whole shaft, pushing at his jeans like a living thing.

He riveted her. Fascinated her. But she was also frightened, not so much in that giddy, aroused way. By the heavens. Maybe he had been created from the elements themselves. As he freed the top snap of his pants, his arms flexed like magnificent storm fronts. His manhood continued to throb, equally powerful but dauntingly unknown.

What was it going to look like…when he freed it from its bonds? Would it be too huge for her? How on earth were they going to fit?

The questions hounded her so hard, Jayd barely noticed when Brickham shifted a little closer. Or that he had swept up one of the spatulas too.

But she noticed now.

As the man smacked the flat plastic to the insides of her thighs.

“Ow!” she snapped, wriggling.

The man himself was irritatingly calm. “Wider,” he intoned.

“You could have asked nicel— Ah!” She shrieked as he did it again.

“Spread. Your. Legs. Wider.” He emphasized each word with another sweep of the spatula, though reduced his treatment to teasing taps. Even so, as she merely thought about his stricter smacks, Jayd flinched again.

But flinching led to something else.

Clenching.

And by activating those muscles in her thighs, she clenched other things. Like the tender tissues between them. Like the intimate core there, already so slick with her arousal. Like the nub of need that vibrated harder as soon as Maximillian Brickham fixed his lusty stare on it.