His fingers found their way to the top of her stockings. Gently, he rolled them down, one by one, removing them, along with her shoes. “Don’t get me wrong. These are unbearably sexy, but I need your bare skin.”

Her world went pitch black. He had pressed the silk blindfold over her eyes. “This is about you. About all the things you can feel if you let go. With this on, all you can do is feel,” he said, low and husky, near her ear. Oh God, she was feeling everything. She was feeling the tight coil of desire deep inside her, and the fervent hope that he’d take her to the far edge of pleasure. That’s what she was feeling.

She drew a quick breath at the soft fluttery touch from a feather running along the inside of her calves. The feather brushed across her knee. Goosebumps rose on her flesh. Her skin felt electric as the feather travelled across her body, visiting her belly, teasing her breasts, trailing along her sides. When the sensations stopped briefly she wanted to ask what happened, until she felt the feather once more.

He was tracing the shell of her ear, and she gasped.

Warmth spread inside her body. She had no idea that being touched on her ear would be such a turn on. She had no notion either that she’d arch her back, seeking closeness, willing him to touch more, when he ran the feather down her arm, inside her elbow and across her wrist. “Your whole body is a playground,” he instructed. “For now, until you learn to thoroughly give up control, it will be my playground. Isn’t that right, Casey?”

She nodded and moaned her agreement in a voice she didn’t even recognize as her own.

“Then hike up your skirt for me,” he told her.

Instantly, she responded to his request. She reached for the hem, pulling it up. Her skirt was now bunched at her waist. He stopped, and hissed in his breath. His audible reaction to her body drove her arousal. They were a feedback loop of desire. She’d move; he’d admire. He’d say a dirty word; she’d heat up. They fed each other with this fevered kind of lust. She pictured him drinking her in, memorizing the way she looked half-undressed on her couch.

Then, she was alone again as she heard him rustling through the box. She knew what was in the box: three things. She was wearing one of them. The other one he had already used. That left only the one she feared. She tensed, waiting for soft to change to hard. For tenderness to turn to a sting.

She emitted a small cry at the first smack. He had flicked the crop once against the flesh of her outer thigh. He shifted to the other, flicking her there. She let out a tiny yelp. Reflexively, she closed her legs. She wasn’t sure if she liked the crop. She parted her lips to speak, but then his fingertip pressed softly against her mouth. “Shhh,” he said. “I can tell you don’t like it.”