I’m not worried. He’s wearing loose-fitting shorts, but they don’t hide his erection. My husband wants me as much as I want him. “We’ve barely gotten underway,” I say. “Ten hours is a long time to stand. And there’s no other seat in this room.”

He glances around as if to verify my observation. Then he moves back another step so that he is leaning against the door. “I’m sure I can make do. I’m capable of putting up with all types of self-denial. At least so long as the prize at the end is worth it.”

“Oh.” I shift a bit uncertainly on the bed. I know damn well he speaks the truth. I know even better that I am the prize—his wife, hot and wild and a little bit crazed with desire, all the more so because she has been teased and tempted, and yet denied.

I drag my teeth over my lower lip as I watch him. He’s not smiling, and yet there is no denying the spark of amusement lighting his face. “You wouldn’t,” I say, projecting a note of certainty in my voice that I don’t actually feel.

“Wouldn’t I?” He takes a sip of Scotch, studying me. “Funny, I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Dammit, Damien,” I say, not certain if I’m pissed or amused. The only thing I am certain of is the feel of my body. The way my skin seems to fit just a little too tight and my breasts are a bit too heavy. My nipples are so damn sensitive that even the faint movement from my heartbeat makes them tingle in a silent demand for more. And my sex—oh, Christ, I’m so damn wet, so swollen, so painfully, desperately, needfully turned on, that even the lightest brush of my fingertips sends shock waves through me and makes my cunt throb in demand. I want him inside me—no, I need him inside me. But if he’s going to torment me …

“No,” he says, as I boldly stroke myself, imagining that my touch is Damien’s, and then arching up as a series of sparks like tiny fireflies begin to dance inside me, a precursor to the lightning storm that is coming.

He crosses to the bed and takes my hand, his thumb brushing lightly over my sex in the process, like some form of casual torment. “No,” he says again as he lifts my hand above my head, then uses the same seat-belt strap that I’d used for the left one to bind this hand as well.

I am completely immobile now. My hands are strapped above my head, bound together at my wrists. My legs are bound on either side of the bed, leaving me wide open and ready. I am naked and helpless and entirely at Damien’s mercy.

I am wild with anticipation, and so aroused that the tightness in my nipples is almost painful, and my sex is so primed for his touch that I fear I will come from nothing more than the weight of his eyes upon me.

“Well,” he says, as if to himself. “What does a man do when faced with unlimited possibilities?”

I don’t answer. I’m too entranced by the expression on his face, like a man who has just opened an incredible gift. It is a look—among so many others—that I have come to know well. It’s a look that says he loves me. More than that, it’s a look that says he desires me.

He pours himself another shot of Scotch, and then takes a sip, as if pondering this knotty dilemma. I continue to watch him, my breathing shallow, my anticipation building. After a moment, he steps beside me again, his glass raised. I expect him to take a sip, but instead he very slowly tilts the glass above me, allowing a thin stream of liquid to fall. It splashes on my breasts, then trickles down my belly, some pooling in my navel, and some easing over my waist to dampen the sheet beneath me.

It is not cold, but I still gasp from the shock of contact, my eyes going to Damien’s. I see heat and purpose, and I watch, mesmerized, as he sets the glass aside, and then slowly removes his shirt, his shorts, his briefs.

I have little enough time to enjoy the view, though, as he tells me to shut my eyes. I consider protesting, but since I know it will only earn me a blindfold, it hardly seems worth it.

And then there is his touch.

The stroke of his hands lightly over my skin, running along my sides as if to steady me. His fingertip strokes a pattern on my stomach, circles and swirls drawn with the Scotch, cooling my heated skin as the liquid caresses me.

He is touching neither my breasts nor my sex, and yet the sensation is so wildly sensual that he might as well be. I feel his touch throughout my body. Heating the flesh between my inner thighs. Making my nipples so painfully tight.

I writhe against my bonds, wanting more. Wanting everything. Wanting Damien.

And yet I can find no relief from the growing pressure of desire. This building firestorm inside me that he is so slowly and so deliberately stoking. I can only ride this wave, losing myself to the painfully sweet torment of his touch.

“Damien, please,” I murmur, but he only brushes his lips across mine.

“Frustrated, Mrs. Stark?”

“You know I am.”

He says nothing, but I swear I can hear his smile. This is what he wants, to take me to the edge, to keep me hovering there, and then—when he finally sends me spinning into the abyss—to be there to catch me as I tumble back to earth.

He lifts his hand from my body, and I whimper a bit.

“I could stand here all night, simply looking at you.” His voice is as soft as the caress he has withdrawn, and it sends shivers over me. “Seeing the way the color changes on your skin when you are aroused. The way your nipples peak and the way your stomach muscles tighten in anticipation of my touch. Every inch of you is ripe with need for me.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

Slowly he traces his fingertip from the indention at the base of my throat all the way down to my navel. I arch up, his touch sending shock waves through me, and when he stops—so close to where I crave both his touch and the explosion I know it will bring—I moan in frustration.

“I control an empire,” he says, “and I will not deny the thrill of holding that kind of power. But it is nothing compared to the way I feel when you respond to me. When my words make you smile, when my touch makes you wet. And when you are like this, bound and open, so full of trust and desire, giving yourself so completely to me—god, Nikki,” he says, his voice quivering just slightly. “I swear it’s you who has the power, because only you can break me.”

I open my mouth to speak, but there are no words. And when his mouth closes over mine, I fall hungrily into the kiss, then moan in protest when he withdraws to kiss his way down my body, his mouth following the trail of the Scotch.