He eased the corset off her. “I’ve waited forever to see your skin. To make it my canvas. I won’t use paint. I’m not an artist whose strokes hang in a gallery. There is no immortality in my work. It takes this flesh and binds it.”

He’d prepped the rope he would use and called the dungeon monitor, who seemed to have properly set up his scene.

He dropped the length of jute in front of her. “This is my only artistry. My one talent. To bind my chèrie in rope worthy of her, to hold her close so she knows each wrap of my rope is a manifestation of my affection, my need. Can you accept my gift?”

She looked up and tears were already in her eyes. She nodded slowly.

He reached down. “I don’t mean to make you cry.”

“Don’t you dare stop. If I only get a few weeks, I want all of you. I want this part. You let me feel it all. You don’t hold anything back on me. I want it all and I definitely want those words. I used to watch you and you would take your hair down. I waited for that moment because that was the moment you took control.”

“I cut my hair because I had to have surgery,” he explained as he began to wind the rope around her torso. “I’ll grow it back out and it wasn’t a huge deal. I’ve got a metal plate in my head from an injury.”

“What?”

“Hush, this is my time. In my head, this is a lush dance. In my mind, this is art.”

She went still, her obvious trust in him allowing him to find that place again.

“You think I’m hard in this place, this top space, but this is where I find peace.” He worked the rope, the ties perfectly familiar, his fingers moving almost without his brain. The muscle memory took over, knowing where to go as he concentrated on her. On how the rope looked against her skin, how it would leave an indention he could touch and kiss for an hour after. “This is where I let go, allowing my body to serve yours, my mind flowing like that river, gently easing everything out to sea.”

He started in on her breasts, working the rope around each sweet mound. “My rope binds you to me, reminds you that I am the one who touches you, brings you to the ultimate pleasure. My rope binds me to you, reminds me that this connection, the one that flows through each wrap and binding, comes only from this soul I wind myself around. For I am in this rope, in every tie, every inch that caresses you. This rope is the touch of my hand, the loving touch of my mouth and tongue, the offering of my body to yours.”