I almost never feel intimidated—and I’ll be damned if I ever let a guy get the upper hand—but if there is an alpha dog in this room, it isn’t me. Tossing the dish towel back over his shoulder, Finn lets his eyes move from my mouth, to my neck, and lower. My nipples harden beneath my thin dress, and he licks his lips, humming.

“I’m going to tie you up this time,” he tells me, slipping one strap of my dress off my shoulder. With his lips trailing across my neck, he asks, “You into that?”

I blink up to him, a little caught off guard. I... might be? I’ve never been tied up. But to be completely honest, I’m not all that surprised Finn wants this. In Vegas, and again in Canada, he was rough and tender in equal, drastic measure. He spanked me, pinned my hands over my head, and withheld orgasms, only to push back inside and kiss me so tenderly I came with a scream. And then he pulled out and made me come again with his mouth.

The first night we were together, we only had sex one time before we passed out cold, but he made it last three hours. Finn likes to call the shots, and right now, I’m going to let him.

“I can be.”

“Last time you showed up unannounced, I was just down to fuck,” he says. “Today, I think I want to savor this. Unless you’ve got somewhere to be?”

I shake my head, closing my eyes. It feels so good to just put it all in his hands. To shrug away every single worry and let him tie me up, eat me out, fuck me until I can’t walk. I don’t know him well enough to trust him with anything else, but I trust this man with my body.

“What’s that?” he asks with a tiny edge to his voice, ducking to meet my eyes.

“No,” I say, eyes fluttering open and my voice coming out thick before I clear my throat. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

He nods, walking over to the closet and pulling a length of red rope from a high shelf.

“You just happened to have rope in the closet?” I ask, my voice high and reedy.

“Didn’t want to leave it in my truck in case someone took it.” He grins at me. “This is really nice rope.”

I’m pretty sure few people in Pacific Beach would have any idea that the rope in the back of a pickup truck is really nice rope, but I can hardly complain. I’m glad he didn’t have to leave the room to go get it.

But when I look down at it, this rope doesn’t seem like something he’d use on a boat. It’s soft, has the sheen of silk.