Des brought the blue rope to Rory. “Wrap it twice around her wrists and then one wrap in the middle, between her wrists. Do it slow, and tighten it. Watch her.”

  Curious at his emphasis on the last, Rory complied, looping the rope around her slim wrists, held up for him. He didn’t have to watch too closely; the reaction was noticeable the second he made the wrap. Her breath shortened, and her body stilled. When he did the wrap in the middle, tightening the hold of the ropes on either wrist, she swayed toward him.

  He glanced at Des, and the spark in the man’s gaze needed no words, since the feeling echoed in Rory’s gut. It was the kind of response a Dom wanted to see, to know he was on the right track.

  “May I?” Des asked.

  Rory nodded. Des dropped to one knee behind Daralyn, moving her skirt out of the way so he didn’t plant his thick-tread black shoe on it. He reached beneath her arms and took the ends of the rope Rory was holding. There was a good amount of it; Rory estimated about twenty-five feet. Des threaded the ends under either of her arms, did something against her back to hold their position and then came back, pulling the two ropes over her upper arms, so her bound wrists were pulled in against her breasts. He did it slow, so Rory could watch what he was doing.

  From the fluid way he did it, Rory expected Des to keep going. Instead, the rope artist immediately stopped. He left the rope tied loosely in front of her bound wrists, the trailing ends in Rory’s grasp before he rose to his feet and backed off two clear strides, putting distance between him and Daralyn.

  “Rory.” Des’s sharp tone and pointed gaze held a clear warning.

  Rory had been watching what Des was doing. When Des said “watch her,” he should have stuck with that for the duration.

  The transfer of the rope to Des and back to Rory again had taken less than a few seconds. Des’s touch upon her had been firm and functional, gentle, nothing inappropriate. When he’d leaned forward to pass the rope back around her upper arms, his chest had brushed Daralyn’s shoulder blades.

  Perhaps that was how Des had noticed she’d gone rigid as a corpse. Her face had lost all color.

  Rory dropped the ends of the rope over his knee and clasped her bound wrists in his hand. “Daralyn.”

  Christ, she had become like ice. No wonder she looked whiter than snow. Even resting on her knees, she was starting to wobble. Afraid her eyes were going to roll up into her head, he pulled the rope loose from around her torso. Des moved back in to help, unwrapping them in a blink, trying to touch her as little possible.

  That left just her bound wrists resting in Rory’s lap and a pool of rope on the ground by her knee. However, when Rory started to take the rope off her wrists, one-handed because he was keeping one arm wrapped around her, she made a noise of protest, curling her fingers up against her chest and hunching into herself, her head tucked over them.

  He paused, undecided, his gaze shooting to Des. The rope artist, resting on his heels a couple feet away, was watching her as closely as Rory was now.

  “The wrists should be okay,” Des said in a calm voice. “The ropes aren’t tight enough to restrict blood flow.” He paused, gave Rory a significant look. “You tied that part.”

  Rory digested that. Nodded. “Can you give us a second, but not go too far?”

  “You got it. I’ll be over here with Julie. I’ll deal with that.”

  Rory hadn’t noticed the approach of one of the Dungeon Masters. Though it got his back up, he discarded the feeling in the next breath, glad there were experienced, sharp eyes detecting something was amiss when the Dom didn’t. Being new to this shit didn’t change his desire to kick his own ass. But him being pissed at himself, embarrassed that others were witnessing his missteps, didn’t do anyone any good, especially Daralyn.

  He’d rely on Des’s experience to handle the conversation with the Dungeon Master while Rory focused on her. She was still so cold. Since it was a warmish autumn night, typical for Florida, neither one of them had extra layers. A coat wasn’t what she needed, though.

  Rory opened the front of his shirt and brought her to a standing position on her knees. When he pulled her up against him, her hip pressed to his legs, she was against the heat of his body. Her bound arms were between them, her forearms pressed to his chest and abdomen, but the heat would transfer through her limbs and into the rest of her.

  She dropped her forehead against his chest and shuddered, but it was a gesture of relief, telling him she was drawing strength from him, steadying herself.

  “Talk to me,” he ordered. “What’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “I—I’m fine. I just…I’m so sorry…”

  He could deal with this a couple ways. Coddle her, not make her talk. Take her home. That didn’t feel right.

  “That’s not what I asked you,” he said, touching her chin. She nestled her hand into his palm, and he resisted the urge to let her hide her face against him. He resisted the even greater desire to fold every part of himself around her, protect her. He couldn’t let his protective instincts take choices from her. He had to channel his decisions toward her right to choose and express herself, even when she was way too willing to give up that right.

  He pulled her face back up so she was meeting his gaze. “Not what I asked,” he repeated. “I want to know what just happened.”

  She pressed her lips together, and her eyes got an odd light to them. “I…I didn’t…I wasn’t ready, but… If… Are you going to share me with Des?”

  “What?” His involuntary shock made her more apologetic.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hesitated. I…My father, he…said my uncle…that a good girl will do what her father says…family… Des is part of your family…”

  Jesus Christ. She was sinking like a ship before his eyes, and for a second his stunned reaction pulled him down in the same vortex. They’d done this way too soon. What the hell had he been thinking? This could be major trauma shit, far beyond his layperson ability to deal with it.

  “I told…Dr. Taylor we were doing this… She said…” Daralyn closed her eyes, took a breath. “She said to trust you…to know what I…”

  She couldn’t say it, but he took it from her. “To know what you want.”

  Dr. Taylor had told her to trust him. And she could, damn it. He pulled free of the sucking panic, gave himself a fierce mental shake. Though she was teetering on the edge of a panic attack, her expression shut down in that way that said they’d hit a really bad bump, none of it was unfamiliar ground, even if being at this party was.

  Des had noticed how she wanted the bindings Rory had tied upon her left alone. It wasn’t that which had derailed her. It was the touch of someone else, being bound by someone else. Testing it, praying he wasn’t wrong and about to take her deeper into the abyss, Rory wrapped his hand in the trailing ends of the rope, close to her wrists. He also slid his other hand to her nape, putting firm pressure there, holding her still.

  Her gaze flitted to his rope-wrapped hand, noted how it held her to him. One breath, two, and he saw the nature of the stillness gripping her change. It moved ponderously from that darkness and back toward him.

  “Look at me. Unh-uh. You keep your eyes on mine.”

  Her hazel eyes had lifted to his with effort, and then tried to shift away. Not this time. His fingers flexed on her and her gaze came back to his relentless one.

  “You know what the most important thing in the whole world is to me?” he asked

  “To walk again,” she whispered.

  Wow. Another gut punch, because the seemingly obvious answer hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  “No,” he said. “Any other guesses?”

  Her gaze slid to his chest, and this time he allowed it, though he rubbed the back of her neck with his fingers, a tender stroke. “No,” she said. “But I’d give it to you if I could.”

  Was this the way it was with love? Just when you thought there was no room in your heart to love someone more, a simple declaration doubled the size of the organ, made it press into every corner of his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs.

  “I’m really glad to hear that,” he managed. “One more time. Look into my eyes, Daralyn. I want you to see this one come straight from my soul. So you’ll know how absolutely and totally it’s the truth.”

  It took some doing, but she eventually lifted her chin and met his gaze. He made her do that part on her own, but once she obeyed, he helped by adjusting his touch to cup her face, stroke her chin, the line of her throat. He heard the little sob of her breath. She was balanced on the edge of despair and hope, confusion and fear, but she was giving herself into his hands, trusting him to pull her out of darkness.

  “Your happiness is the most important thing in the whole world to me.” The raw feeling in his heart made his voice rough.

  Her eyes got a little wet. So much pain. He kept touching her face, her mouth. “When I turned those ropes over to Des, you thought I was planning to share you with him, because your father”—the rat bastard cocksucker—“told you the person you belong to gets to make that call. Yes or no?”

  A little jerk of her head. He pressed onward. “And that upset you so badly, thinking I was about to do that, that you nearly passed out.”

  “I’m sorry. I should—”

  “It’s not a good idea to apologize to me for that,” he said mildly. “If I put out a collection jar at the store to pay someone to kill your uncle, we’d not only have enough money by closing time to hire a top of the line hitman, we’d have enough left over to fund the annual town Fourth of July picnic.”

  Her eyes snapped up to him. He stroked her face some more. She didn’t want to talk about this, he knew it, so he wouldn’t push it much further. But he wanted to try one more thing. Even if it went badly, maybe he’d dug up the ground enough a seed would finally take root, despite how many others kept getting washed away by the storms that this subject caused within her.

  “When someone has branded it to your core that you don’t have the right to want things, it’s hard to shake that. I get it. But I want you to say one thing to me. Even if you’re just mimicking my words, even if you don’t feel it yet.”

  “Rory.”

  He took a tighter hold on her. “Say, ‘I don’t want you to share me with another man.’”

  Her gaze darted around, came back to him, jumped away again. “I…”

  “You can do it,” he said. “I know you can. You can do anything.”

  “I…please.” She shuddered. “I don’t want…please don’t…”

  She convulsed, and then she bolted, scrambling away, stumbling to her feet, her hands still tied.

  His heart leaped into his throat. He was chasing after her in an instant, but with the grass he couldn’t move as fast as she could run. Which she was doing, in a panicked, mindless kind of way.

  The tributary, with its fast current and deep waters, was just beyond the light of those tiki torches. If she stumbled over the bulkhead, fell into the water and darkness and hit her head…

  He aged ten years in ten heartbeats, which was when she collapsed to her knees and hunched forward, bracing herself on the ground with one hand as she began to heave.

  That was why she’d been scrambling away. To deposit the contents of her stomach in the grass, instead of on him.

  He tuned into his surroundings enough to notice he wasn’t alone. Des was between her and the water, poised alertly a few feet ahead of the track she’d been taking. Julie and the Dungeon Master were also just now catching up, keeping a distance, but still forming a loose four-point circle around her.

  Rory had no idea how Des had moved that fast, but he felt nothing but gratitude. He could only manage a nod though, since all of his current energy was devoted to settling his heart rate so he didn’t go into cardiac arrest.

  He didn’t let that stop him from closing the distance between him and Daralyn, though. He rested a hand on her back, gave her a soothing touch. Since she was shaking, hopefully she’d miss the tremor in his own hand.

  She needed his strength, so he pulled it together. He couldn’t worry about what his audience was thinking, or if he was about to be thrown out of this place. His only focus was the woman he’d protect with every resource he had. He’d have to rely on Des and Julie to keep handling whatever was going on around them.

  She seemed to be finished throwing up, so he kept stroking her, murmuring, doing the quiet things to tell her he was here and it was okay. His heart cracked over the struggle he felt going on within her. Jesus, he couldn’t imagine how exhausting it must be for her. Would she ever be able to break free of the hold the past had on her, to say what she wanted for her own self, her own life?

  Fuck, Dr. Taylor had warned him, told him that expressing what she wanted wasn’t as simple as saying it out loud. But he’d felt so close to it.

  So he’d pushed. Okay. He’d fucked up. But she was here, she was okay, it was okay. And he’d keep doing what he was already doing. Read her desires from her body language, get as close to what she wanted as anyone could. He wouldn’t let their damage to her keep her from it.

  She’d sat back on her heels, but she was rocking back and forth, curled over her bound hands, her back rounded. “Please don’t say we have to go home,” she whispered. “I wanted to do…the ropes. I just couldn’t…when he touched me…”

  It was so unexpected, at first he thought he’d misheard her. While he recognized it had been unconscious, driven by the erratic tangle of her emotions, the physical stress of her nervous stomach, it took an act of will not to react with a fist pump.

  I wanted to do the ropes.

  He held that in and kept stroking her, feeling the bumps of her vertebrae. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for not paying better attention, but she’d keep trying to take the blame. He needed to change the focus for both of them.

  “Come on up here. Let me see you.”

  She adjusted onto her knees, then put a foot under her. He took it from there, using her momentum and his strength to slide her up and onto his lap, adjusting her so she was leaning on her hip against him, cradled in his one arm. He reclaimed the trailing lengths of rope, a considerable amount of it, drawing it into a pile in her lap.

  Julie approached, left a bottle of water next to his wheel, but withdrew without a word, just a reassuring look. Daralyn had her face pressed into his throat, so only he saw her.

  Julie and Daralyn were friends, but this, what was happening right now, it was a Dom/sub thing. And Tyler had said no one disrupted a moment between a Dom and sub unless invited.

  Everything rested with Rory now, as long as the DM didn’t disagree, and apparently he didn’t. He was still nearby, but he was sticking to the peripherals.

  Rory opened the water and offered it to Daralyn. She took it, swishing the water around her mouth. With a furtive look toward him, she spat it out in the grass and then took a few more swallows, clearing out the taste of her being sick. Then she handed it back to him with a nod. He recapped it and set it down next to them.

  He sent a pointed look at the front of her dress, pinched up folds of her skirt as if looking for something. Her brow creased. “What are you doing?” she asked thickly.

  “I’ve hung out with football players who partied and drank too much. Not a one of them could vomit without getting it all over themselves. You could give them lessons.”

  Her weak attempt at a smile came with a little glistening in her eyes, a quivering of her chin. “Hey.” He tightened his arm around her. “Easy. I’ve got you.”

  She let out a little sigh, her body melting more into his, her head back on his shoulder. He rested his hand on the pile of rope in her lap while clasping the ends close to the wrist bindings. A little tug caused a flicker in her gaze, one he noted as he pulled back enough to look at her face. “So,” he said casually. “You did it.”

  “What…did I do?” Her voice was still rusty.

  “You said you wanted to do the rope stuff.”

  She blinked. When a million conflicting emotions crossed her face, he interlaced his fingers with her tense ones, stroked her wrists around the hold of the rope.

  “You feel up to doing a little more?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  He waited a beat. She’d agree to it, whether she did or didn’t want to do more, but when he detected relief and an easing of her features, he had his true answer.

  His gut might be as clueless as the rest of him, but he wasn’t Dr. Taylor. Words weren’t going to get them where they needed to go. Neither was going home and giving up on this. She’d asked him not to do that, which in his book was expressing something she wanted.

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He gestured to Des. As Julie’s Dom came toward him, Rory turned his attention to the Dungeon Master, standing a little farther away. He had steady blue-gray eyes that looked a little dangerous, short cropped hair and a tribal tattoo around one of the biceps exposed by his short-sleeved shirt. He had the compact build and previously broken nose of a fighter.

  His eyes also held the concern that Des’s had, suggesting he was here to be in Rory’s corner as much as Daralyn’s, especially if Rory was doing everything he could to keep his sub safe.

  Rory nodded to him, acknowledging it, and returned his attention to Des. “Two things. First, I don’t want to put her down quite yet. Will you help me get my chair over there?”

  He tilted his head toward another section of grass, the right distance away from where she’d thrown up.

  “Sure,” Des said. “Just tell me what to do.”

  Rory tilted his chair back into Des’s capable hands, and helped push so the two of them were able to put the chair where it needed to be without taking Daralyn out of his lap.

  “That’s one thing,” Des said as Rory settled. “What’s the second?”