Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(13)

“Sara,” Chris prods softly, that tenderness back in his voice.

My gaze lifts from where it’s fallen to the rug, and the concern in his face echoes what I’ve just thought. Chris would never hurt me.

“I’m good,” I say, answering his silent question. “We’re good.” I step forward, letting the soft ibers twine in my toes and lead me to the center of the rug.

Chris’s expression turns hot and dominant again, and my nipples tighten with his scorching gaze. Slowly, I lower myself, kneeling before him, his submissive in a way I have never been before this moment.

I’m certain whatever comes next will be some sort of dominant Master-type thing, like in Rebecca’s journals.

But Chris steps forward and kneels in front of me, his palm settling on my cheek, ingers caressing, and I blink at the afec-tion in his eyes.

I cover one of his hands with mine. “I thought you had no gentleness in you today.”

His lips curve slightly. “I guess you’re corrupting me.”

I smile at the reference to what I’d once said to him. “I like corrupting you.”

“As I do you.” Slowly, his ingers slide from my face, his palm caressing my bare shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Chris pushes to his feet and crosses to the curtain, where he removes a satin-like sash. My pulse leaps with the memory of the painting he’d done of me: naked, in the center of the loor, and tied up. My mouth goes dry. I know what he’s going to do with that sash.

The instant he turns back to me, I see the hunger in his eyes. Gentle Chris is gone. A darker, more predatory Chris is present, stalking the woman in his sights. And my breath hitches, just thinking about being that woman.

He squats in front of me and his gaze rakes over my breasts.

The imaginary touch is like velvet rasping over my skin. My nipples tighten with the invisible friction and I ache for the wild rush of his touch.

“Lace your ingers together in front of you.”

He expects my hesitation; I see it in his face. I give him none, doing as commanded. His expression is unreadable; he simply wraps the long sash around my wrists and hands several times, then ties it of, leaving a long piece of the silk dangling to the ground.

He twines the dangling sash around his hand. “You’re at my mercy, you know?”

“Is that supposed to frighten me?”

“No. It’s not. And if it did, I’d untie you now.”

“Isn’t it you who told me the painting of me bound like this wasn’t about bondage? It was about trust.”

His eyes widen slightly, and then narrow. “I also said it was the kind of trust I don’t have the right to ask for.”

“You don’t have to ask,” I whisper. “You already have it.”

“I know that, Sara. Now the question becomes, what will I do with it, and will you hate me when I’m done?”

“No.” Despite the binding, my ingers ind his hands. “I won’t. I can’t hate you.”

“We both need to know if that’s true.”

“It is,” I insist.

I want him to argue against or conirm my declaration but he gives me neither of those things. He simply leans in and kisses my forehead, a tender act that deies the way my hands are tied and what is surely to soon happen between us. And then he moves beside me and his ingers splay across my back.

“Lean forward and put your hands in front of you on the rug.”

I see the hard glint of challenge in his stare, and read the silent message he intends for me to see. If I can’t handle this, I’ll never be able to handle the dark secrets locked in his mind and in his past that he intends to reveal. And deep inside, Chris believes I’ll hate him before this is over, whatever “this” is.

And so it begins. Test number one, of what’s sure to be many.

My chin lifts in rejection of him assuming my failure. Then I walk my ingers down the rug and stretch as far as I can.

Chris’s hand goes with me, a gentle weight that doesn’t press.

It’s simply there, full of potential pleasure. For several seconds neither of us moves, and the sexual tension in the room crackles around us.

The rug tickles my nipples and the cool air caresses my bare backside. I am exposed. Swallowing hard, I wonder how Rebecca did anything remotely like this in front of an audience.

Did she trust Mark the way I trust Chris? Or just love him the way I love Chris?

Chris caresses my back, and the erotic pleasure pulls me away from the grim place my thoughts have drifted. Sweet friction brushes down my spine with his touch, then over my waist, until his inger inds my tailbone and continues downward. In anticipation of where he will go next, my breathing is suddenly shallow, almost a pant. And when Chris begins the highly intimate, slow glide down the crevice between my cheeks, my sex clenches almost painfully.

“Did you like it when I spanked you, Sara?” he asks, his palm caressing my cheeks the way he had the night he’d actually spanked me.

My skin tingles beneath his touch and I can hear my breathing, short little pants I can’t seem to control. “I . . . I don’t know.”

His hand stills, his ingers widen and tense. “Did you like it when I spanked you?” His voice is low, taut, illed with command.

Somehow my hair draped over my face and my arms tunneled around me are not protection enough from this soul-searching moment. I squeeze my eyes shut, aware that I’ve exposed more than my body to Chris. I’ve exposed a part of me that I burn to understand, yet can’t seem to fully embrace. But I want to. No, I need to. I need to do this.