His gaze travels from my breasts to the bare triangle between my legs. The reaction is immediate—a glint of reverence, a tick in his jaw, a subtle flexing of his fingers as if he’s imagining them buried deep.

For a second, I think he’s going to devour me right here.

Instead, he takes my hand and leads me to the wall of rope. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

He selects a teal shade and lets it cascade through his hands.

This space is his.

And he offers no reassurance, only an unspoken demand for blind trust as he ties my wrists together in front of me.

Somehow, the silence unsettles me more than a command ever could.

My breathing turns shallow, though I don’t know what affects me more—the glide of the rope or his intense expression. Midnight hair flops across a furrowed brow, and every few moments, his warm eyes lift to mine, scanning for distress.

But it’s not fear or hesitation making me tremble.

It’s him.

The devastating beauty in each trace, touch, and tie.

Adrenaline surges as he lifts my bound wrists, elbows angled skyward. The stretch locks my shoulders and arches my spine, thrusting my chest forward, nipples exposed with no way to shield them.

He begins to wind rope around my torso, looping under my breasts and across my ribs in firm, possessive passes.

When he finishes, he guides me to a padded wall, fastens my wrists to a bracket behind my head, and cuffs my ankles, anchoring them wide apart.

It’s art and ownership.

A version of foreplay I’ve never experienced until now.

In this moment, I belong to him, and it sets my blood to boiling.

“All those nights, you clung to control,” he says, peeling off his shirt. “Now you have none.”

He steps in close and drags a single finger up my slit.

It’s the first time he’s touched me there, and my pussy clenches, wrecked from too many nights of denial. I ache for pressure, friction, depth, but he keeps me perched at the edge with a featherlight graze of my clit.

“Please, Oliver,” I whimper, teeth sinking into my bottom lip.

“Please what?”

“Huh?” The sound escapes before I can catch it, my thoughts still tangled in his sensual web.

Cocking a brow, he withdraws only to pinch my nipple hard.

“Ow!”

“Still not what I want to hear.” He twists, slow and cruel, until I grit my teeth against the pain. “You’ve forgotten the one word that matters in this room.”

“I’m sorry!”

“I don’t want apologies.” He claims my other peak and gives it the same punishment. “Say it.”

“Sir!”

My chest heaves beneath his hands, our eyes locking as he holds the pressure. Finally, he releases me.