My brain demands that I close my legs and escape from the painfully cold sensation assaulting the most delicate part of me. “Motherfucker!” I try to kick out at him, but Zeth grabs hold of my ankle, his eyebrows dipping together.

“Sloane.” That reprimand again. “You want me to use the rope?”

I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down on it. Screw this. I should just get up and kick his ass out. It’s all well and good when he’s doing questionable things that might scare seven shades of shit out of me, so long as they excite me at the same time. But this is just uncomfortable. And sticky!

Zeth’s a smart guy—he watches all this play out on my face. “Risk it,” he advises me, tightening his hold on my ankle. I hear what he’s really saying, though—trust me—and that changes everything. He hasn’t asked me for that before. I’ve given him my trust a few times, unwisely I’m sure, but he’s never asked anything of me. It feels like a development of some sort. I’m not sure how; it just does.

“Okay…fine.”

He gives me a single nod, stern and grim, which is kind of ridiculous since he’s holding a florescent blue freezer pop in his hand. He gently traces it down the center of me, watching my shivering reaction with a kind of smug appreciation. Then he dips forward and licks at me, still piercing me with his eyes. The change from cold to burning hot has my muscles jumping uncontrollably.

“Shit!”

Again, he repeats the same thing. Cold then hot. Cold then hot. The pleasure smashes into me over and over, never letting up. Eventually the cold becomes just as pleasurable as the hot, and my hips are rocking again.

“Your tongue’s blue,” I groan.

Zeth arches an eyebrow at me. “So’s your pussy.” He traces the frozen treat downwards, and hovers a moment over my opening.

I know what he’s going to do and I am not on board. I am so not on board. But I’m also too late. He pushes it inside me, growling a warning as I try to squirm away…

It’s the coldest fucking thing ever. And then it’s not. The blistering sensation of the biting chill quickly turns to heat—the strangest sensation. A burning, stinging warmth that feels—I hate to admit it—feels good. I gasp as Zeth draws it slowly out again, and then does something that fuses out the wiring in my brain. He slides it into his mouth, a low rumble of approval echoing from his chest as he wraps his full lips around the thing and sucks. I’ve never been so jealous of a freezer pop in all my life.

“Mmmmm. Bubblegum and Sloane. Best combination,” he purrs.

Oh. My. Fucking… I can’t think straight.

Zeth rises up my body like a hungry predator, eyes filled with fire. I shy back from him until I’m lying flat on the table and he’s on all fours hovering over me. The freezer pop makes its way from his mouth to mine—he gingerly rubs it over my lips until I open my mouth and then he slides it inside. The flavor is sweet and sugary, an explosion of chemical goodness. Then he reclaims it again, sucking it, tasting it himself, like he can taste my mouth on it, too. He places it down on the table next to my head and considers me for a moment, his breathing ragged and hard.

“Time for the rope, angry girl.”

I haven’t forgotten about the rope. Its presence has been that of an angry snake coiled on the corner of the table—a danger that I’ve tried not to provoke. To say it worries me is an understatement, but I made my decision earlier: I’m done being afraid. He picks it up and I brace, readying myself for the panic of being completely vulnerable. This isn’t going to be like before when he restrained me, tying me to the bed. This will be hands behind back, ankles knotted together. Who knows? Maybe he’ll hogtie me. Sweat prickles in a nervous rash across my skin, and Zeth hesitates. He stops altogether.

Why is he stopping?

He doesn’t say a word. He jumps down and yanks his shirt over his head in that careless way men do, and then he’s looming at the end of table like some rough-hewn monolith, only he is made out of tightly packed muscle instead of stone. He unbuckles his belt, gets rid of his shoes, rips off his jeans in the space of ten seconds flat, and then there he is…standing naked in front of me. His cock is rigid and hard, the tip level with his naval. I’ve seen quite a few penises through my training and later through my work, but I’ve never been possessed with the urge to toy with one before. In fact I’d always thought they looked quite gross. But Zeth? No, not Zeth. He is magnificence personified. I realize I’m staring at him. The intensity with which he stares right back is unnerving and confronting, and yet I can’t look away. I don’t want to.

“Stand up.”

I barely trust my legs to do it, and yet they somehow manage. A thousand scenarios run through my head—is he going to bend me over the table and fuck me? Is he going to grab that knife from the kitchen again? Is he going to blindfold me and do unspeakable things that I can’t even begin to imagine? But he doesn’t do any of that.

He snatches me into his arms and hoists me up so that I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist. And then he slams me up against the wall, pain jangling through my nerve endings like jarring, discordant piano chords.

“Ah!”

He doesn’t waste any time; he’s inside me. He thrusts inside me so hard that my eyes water.

“Ah!” I cry out louder this time, and Zeth grunts, too, straining with the effort of pile driving into me. Hands grasping hold of my hips one second, pulling firmly on my hair, tipping my head back the next, he exposes my neck and grazes his teeth across the sensitive skin of my collar bone. The mix of pleasure and pain is dizzying. I’m pulled into his fever, allowing the fire sparking inside me to run riot. I gouge my fingernails into his back, enjoying the way his muscles tense against the pain.