Sending him a kittenish smile, she nodded.

  “You’re killing me. Too sexy to refuse, too infuriating to ignore, too amazing to forget. Damn it. You’re not getting away until I’m ready to let you go.”

  Before Kerry could decipher what those cryptic words meant, she felt his hand clamp about her wrist. He pushed it up to the head of the bed and entwined their fingers, anchoring her down. Rafe took her mouth in a drugging kiss. Already she throbbed everywhere. Now something deep inside her joined in. When they kissed, Kerry swore she could feel not just his passion, but his loneliness, and a frenzied desperation she didn’t understand.

  Rafe released her hand. An instant later, she felt something cool and metallic encircle her wrist. A glance showed that he’d tied her down with the first of the Love Shack’s shackles. Just over the edge of the bed, he reached. And suddenly all the give in the pulley drew taut. The line held her arm immobile above her head.

  While she lay in gaping shock, he repeated the process with her other wrist.

  She could not move her hands an inch.

  “What are you doing?” Kerry demanded.

  “Showing you how thoroughly you’re mine tonight. Mine.” His breathing was harsh, labored. “I’m dying to have you spread out under me, mine to take. All sweet and submissive.”

  His words hit her like a two-ton weight, hammering the death knell to any resistance she may have had.

  “Rafe—”

  “No more words. Trust me.”

  “If I ask you to let me go, you’ll do it, right?”

  He licked the pad of his thumb and swiped it over one sensitive nipple. “I won’t give you a reason to ask. I just need you bound and under me now.”

  Before she could draw another breath, he’d strapped her ankles to the bed and denied her any slack. Naked, save some nipple jewelry and a white thong, she lay spread out before him like a virgin sacrifice. His to take. All night. The thought made her shiver.

  Wearing a shark’s smile, Rafe rose from the bed and stripped in world-record time. Shoes flew in one direction, pants in another. Kerry had no idea where his shirt landed. She was too busy watching those washboard abs as he removed his boxer-briefs, then letting her gaze wander lower.

  His cock rose to his navel, hard, thick, bulging with veins. “Aroused” only began to cover it. He looked like a man in heat, a man who wouldn’t accept no. A man who would last all night.

  From the nightstand, he grabbed a handful of condoms and set them on the mahogany surface. Kerry gaped. There had to be seven or eight there.

  “Feeling ambitious?”

  He shook his head. “Feeling like I’m going to explode if it takes me more than three seconds to get inside you.”

  Rafe ripped the thong away from her body and tossed it over his shoulder, the garment torn, forgotten. But he didn’t immediately tear open a little foil packet and put the condom to good use.

  “Still sore?” His voice cracked, and Kerry suspected the edges of his control had nearly frayed beyond his ability to endure.

  She began to shake her head, too aroused to know discomfort. Taking that as his green light, Rafe trailed a pair of fingers down her body, dragged them over the hard nub of her clitoris, then sank them deep into her wet heat.

  Her nerve endings came alive at his touch. Kerry arched in encouragement, tilting her pelvis up since she could move nothing else.

  “Good?”

  On a ragged breath, she nodded.

  “Take more.”

  “Yes, more.”

  Rafe obliged by sinking a third finger deep into her heat and teased that sweet spot inside that drove her insane. She groaned. Perspiration broke out around her hairline, between her breasts.

  Kerry all but whimpered as the pleasure ramped up in her belly. A knot of need gathered between her legs, growing, congealing. How could he do this to her so easily, put her right on the ragged edge?

  The question—along with all coherent thought—flew out of her head when he bent and suckled her clit into his mouth.

  Pleasure pounded her in an unending assault. His clever tongue teased her to the edge of sanity, along with those long, probing fingers. He drove her to the brink of orgasm—only to pull back, concentrate kisses on her belly, her hip, her thigh.

  When she’d cooled enough to catch her breath, he started over, tongue taking long, liquid swipes at the bead of her clitoris, before drawing it into his mouth.

  He groaned, nearly sending her soaring . . . nearly. She panted, drawing in a deep breath, then even stopping that because it required too much effort. Close . . . so, so close.

  But Rafe released her clit, withdrew those magic fingers again, simmered her down to a slow burn.

  Kerry moaned. “Let me come.”

  “Eventually,” he murmured against her slit.

  Using his thumbs, he parted her folds and delved inside with his tongue. She arched as much as her restraints allowed. But Rafe’s tenacious mouth remained fastened on her, giving pleasure, blowing her mind, almost enough to send her over the brink—but not quite.

  And so the ramp up toward orgasm started again. A faster build, a rapid climb to mindlessness. Certainly, it required less effort on his part—a gentle swipe of his tongue over her clit, a well-placed finger or two.

  “Tonight, you’re mine. No leaving, no sleeping, no saying no.”

  “Yes.”

  Her thighs trembled with effort. Kerry focused all her thoughts on completing what the dark-haired devil had started. She was drenched now, dripping. So swollen, she could feel how full her folds had engorged, how taut her nipples had puckered.

  But as he allowed her to cool down yet again, Kerry gritted her teeth and acknowledged that Rafe knew just how to keep her on the knife’s edge.

  “No!” she protested. “What are you doing to me? Why?”

  “Making sure you know who’s master of your body.”

  Before she could say a word, a determined, possessive glint fired his steely eyes. Desire knotted in her belly as he plunged a finger inside her again. Kerry nearly came off the bed when he resumed the teasing play of her clit with his tongue.

  When he replaced his finger inside her with his thumb and eased his drenched digit farther down, into the unbreached depths of her anus, she moaned.

  Determinedly, he pumped his fingers into her simultaneously. The wild, foreign sensation scorched every nerve ending. Rafe sucked on her pleasure bud, even as his fingers possessed her everywhere, filling her to capacity.

  Oh God, he was driving her mad with a pleasure that threatened to rob her of her soul. Like the strongest storm, need raged in her, growing, expanding into the fathomless depths of desire. His touch sizzled like lightning. Down her arms and legs, up her belly, to her painfully tight nipples.

  Ecstasy, pure and white hot, was upon her. Kerry’s eyes flew open wide, connecting with Rafe’s unrelenting gaze. Wide bronze shoulders, wicked hands, haunting eyes. All tonight, all for her, that stare said. The floodgates of pleasure burst, torrential, explosive. She was dizzy, couldn’t breathe, as satisfaction swirled through her body. Black spots danced at the edge of her vision as she cried out, thighs tense, womb pulsing.

  Brilliant. Endless. Somehow she doubted she’d forget this if she lived to be one hundred.

  Minutes later, now limp and spent, Kerry lay with her eyes closed, wanting to sleep for a week.

  A ripping sound alerted her to the fact that wasn’t going to happen. She watched as Rafe rolled the condom over the surging length of his cock, then reached to the sides of the bed, near her ankles. A metal click on each side later, and he’d returned the slack to the pulleys spreading her legs wide.

  The idea of clamping her thighs together to keep him out never occurred to her. Even if it had, Rafe grasped her knees, bent them, and pushed them wide, making way for the solid width of his muscular torso. He slid into the vee between her legs, the tip of his penis poised against her seeping entrance.

  She expected him to plough inside and ease his ache right then. Instead, he lowered his lips to hers and captured her mouth in a fiery kiss. He layered his warm lips over hers, then sank into her, reaping her response from every corner with his tongue. She tasted herself in his kiss, along with his determination that he not reach orgasm alone.

  He was dreaming if he thought she could manage another ten-point-plus explosion on the Richter scale again so soon.

  Still, Kerry couldn’t deny that with just his kiss, he’d managed to get her hormones doing the hustle again.

  “Take me inside you,” he pleaded, voice raspy. “Now. Tell me you can.”

  At a loss for words, she nodded.

  Something like a growl gave her an instant’s notice before Rafe fastened steely fingers on her hips and plunged inside her full throttle.

  Kerry cried out. Tender, swollen tissues she’d thought immune to Rafe after the ground-shaking orgasm a few minutes ago seemed to leap in delight at the spine-tingling friction of his entrance. He filled her full of him, seemed to touch every corner of her. Lord, who cared that chocolate existed when such a man could give her something infinitely better?

  “Yes,” he groaned as he sank to the hilt. “Hell, yes. Are you with me? Tell me you want this.”

  The sensation of being filled to bursting, her aching flesh stretched pleasurably to accommodate him, all her nerves held in thrall at his touch . . . what could she say? “I want you.”

  “I feel you gripping my cock, your body sucking me back in every time. You’re blowing my mind,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

  Clutching him tighter with her thighs, Kerry clung. The ride became harder, each thrust wild but precise in its ability to drag her closer to the precipice. Again, the orgasm loomed huge, receding reality as it ratcheted up and quickly stole her mind.

  “You’re mine.” Thrust. “Mine.” Thrust. “All”—thrust—“fucking”—thrust—“mine.”

  Before Kerry could even moan in reply, Rafe lifted her legs and tucked them into the crooks of his elbows, positioning her to take him even deeper inside her body. She swore she could feel him at the mouth of her cervix.

  “Can’t wait,” he said, plunging into her hard, fast. “Come. With me. Now.”

  As if on command, Kerry became hyperaware of Rafe’s cock sliding over the sensitive bundle of nerves inside her, then pushing up inside her, all the way to the tingling end of her channel. One more, two more, three more strokes like that and—

  “Rafe!”

  She erupted like a volcano, molten and uncontrollable, like a force of nature. The knotted desire in her abdomen released to indescribable ecstasy. It surged through her with the strength and finesse of a charging bull. Her body squeezed him, milked his cock, as he shouted in gratification.

  His voice rang in her ear, and she watched the pleasure transform his face from hard angles to a replete, almost peaceful expression. He gasped for one breath, then another, as his movements slowed, then stilled, inside her.

  Still panting, Rafe dropped his forehead onto hers. “Unbelievable. Every time amazes me.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted. Why lie?

  “Why is that?” He spoke as much to himself as to her.

  Frowning, she had to admit that having prior experience might have made answering this question easier. On the other hand, Rafe’s question seemed to indicate this was as uncommon as a seventy-five-percent-off sale at an upscale department store. Maybe some chemistry—or feeling—between them caused the riot of need every time they touched.

  Kerry wanted to believe it would go away, that in time, she would find someone else equally proficient at lighting up every nerve in her body. She feared otherwise. Somehow, her body had known no other man would please her, and her excuses about not having time for sex and being too distraught . . . they didn’t seem as airtight as before.

  Kerry worried that Rafe had imprinted himself somehow into her body’s memory and that no one would ever be able to take his place. Was that because they shared more than mere chemistry?

  Rafe’s cell phone broke into their chorus of shallow gasps moments later, shattering the peace. Reluctantly, Rafe extricated himself from her body, climbing from the tangled bedsheets.

  Half-listening, Kerry soon realized he was talking to a client from California who’d accidentally erased their security patches and feared an electronic attack. Rafe dealt with the client, giving her time to regroup.

  Why did their every time together seem to raise the roof and shoot them to the stratosphere? Kerry had only one theory left, and if she dared to say it—which she didn’t—she doubted Rafe would like it any better than she did. After all, what sane man wanted to hear that a woman he’d known only a few days suspected that she loved him?

  She had to get away from him soon, before she did something really stupid, like beg him to stay with her forever.

  Chapter 11

  Almost midnight.

  Toying with the keys on his laptop, Rafe sat in the tropical luxury of the Love Shack’s silver-shadowed patio overlooking the silent turquoise lap of the ocean. He guzzled a beer. It was not his first.

  Kerry had suggested he leave. She wouldn’t have said it unless she wanted him gone.

  He gave a silent, bitter laugh. Hell, she’d offered to drive him out of her life—after making dinner, of course. Can’t string a man up by his balls on an empty stomach.

  Not that he blamed her, really. He’d failed her. And while he’d been getting busy in her bed—and shower and kitchen and floor—at every possible opportunity, she’d been focused on Mark. Once the FBI had disregarded the clues he’d found and refused to listen, Rafe no longer served any purpose in her grand plan. And she’d dumped him.

  Had he let it be and moved on? No. He’d played Conan the Caveman, beat his chest, then carried her off by her hair for a good ravishment. Figuratively, of course. Oh, she’d been a good sport tonight, seemingly more than willing. But Kerry was a woman who kept her word, even when the bargain involved her body.

  Tossing back another long swallow of beer, he sighed. Who knew what to think? Just yesterday he’d suspected her of getting too emotionally involved with him. Now he wondered if she’d cried because she felt like she’d been whoring herself for her brother. Because she had thrown away her virginity, giving it to the first stranger who might be able to help her. And he, with an ego as swollen as his ever-ready cock, had simply assumed she cared for him.

  What a fucking idiot.

  The other head was no better, he thought. For the first time in days, his boxer-briefs weren’t tented. His flaccid state wouldn’t last long around Kerry, he knew. Tying her down and inducing her to orgasm with all the protruding parts of his body hadn’t been enough. An hour later he’d taken her swiftly against the wall. The savage satisfaction at hearing her cry out his name still stunned him.

  He was a man with red blood cells who clamored for lush women with Kerry’s sort of enthusiasm. He reveled in the kind of sexual trust she placed in him. Still, Kerry giving her body every time he crooked his finger, in any way he wanted, wasn’t enough. He had her . . . but he knew very well that he didn’t. Despite their bargain, she wasn’t his.

  Rafe didn’t want to know why that pissed him off.

  Something was very wrong. Women were meant to be lusted after, wanted. Women weren’t supposed to be needed. And he feared very much that’s where he was at the moment.

  How ironic that three days ago he’d wanted nothing more than to escape the woman he’d thought just south of psycho. Now he was pretty sure he needed the psych ward far more than Kerry ever would.

  Saying goodbye to her come morning . . . damn it, a part of him didn’t want to. The thought lodged somewhere under his skin, irritating him like a case of the hives. The irrational part of Rafe urged him to race inside and claim her body again, in the hopes she wouldn’t forget him. He had the most insane urge to imprint himself on her, ruin her for any other man.

  The more sane part of him told him he was being a moron.

  Behind him, French doors opened with a quiet click. Rafe didn’t have to turn to know Kerry stood there. He felt it. Peace washed over him. And as evidenced by the fact his cock was again doing its best imitation of a flagpole, lust. Two feelings that, until Kerry, he would have sworn were mutually exclusive.

  “I thought I’d find you out here,” she murmured.

  Doing his best to look busy, Rafe logged into Standard National’s files. “Yeah.”

  He couldn’t look at her. If he did, he’d jump her, rip off whatever she might be wearing, and find some position, comfortable or not, to get inside her, become a part of her. Drown out the clock in his head, ticking away the seconds they had left together. Or he might demand an explanation for being dumped. So he opted for pulling up account files in the bank’s database.

  God, he hated this shit. Relationships sucked, and he didn’t want one. He had no idea how to have one anyway. This little . . . tiff with Kerry was a perfect example. She’d dismissed him, or he was pretty sure she had. His experience at interpreting emotions was less than zero. He’d be more successful at building a spaceship without instructions.

  At his right, Kerry sighed, then slid into the chair next to him. “I think we should talk.”

  Unable to stop himself, Rafe glanced her way. Lavender V-neck top. No bra. Black lace panties tied by minuscule bows on each hip. The whole look had him salivating. Lust made him half-feral, and she wanted to talk? Yeah, right after Tinkerbell sprinkled him with pixie dust and he flew away to Neverland. He gritted his teeth, willing his blood to stop rushing south.

  Opting for the safe view, rather than the one that made him think of the soft cries she made as she neared orgasm, he turned back to the computer screen and hit the keys that would open the bank’s transactions for the day.

  “Rafe?”

  He turned back and saw her face. Kerry didn’t look like her usual, sunny self. A hint of something somber wrinkled her brow. Rafe figured he had something to do with it and swore under his breath.