Never had she looked up and felt like a man wanted to consume her, to eek every last drop of desire out of her body and swallow.

Until now.

Did she trust him?

She did, though there wasn’t necessarily any logic to it.

He was borderline rude, definitely bossy, and determined to get his own way.

But he was also honest, straightforward, fair. And most important, he never pushed her.

So yes, she did trust him. And even if it meant she was going to lose a little face by caving five days early, a mere forty-eight hours into their marriage, she knew beyond a doubt that his goal was to make it worth it for her.

“Okay,” she whispered, well aware that she was giving in to a course of action that would change the way they interacted over the next six months. But she wanted this. She wanted him. Inside her.

Then he smiled and it was so beautiful, she sucked in her breath, her heart beating almost as loudly as the vibrator that was still buzzing a few feet away from her right ear.

The least she could do was try not to laugh.

So when he bent over to kiss her again, his arm pressing into the pillows, she tried, she honestly tried not to think about the fact that her arms were contained beneath white linens, like a mummy. Or that if she wiggled her hands, they would pop out the bottom of the pillow like T-Rex arms. She twitched, a snort coming out as she tried to contain her nervous laughter.

Rhett paused. “Really?”

“I can’t help it!” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, I’m good. Sorry. I’m fine now.”

But she really wasn’t, because when he stroked his thumb across her bottom lip, she squirmed from need. Not sexual need, but the hysterical urge to reach out and snap at him with her teeth. Suppressed laughter made her nostrils flare and she knew she was about to totally lose it.

She was in no shape for sex clearly.

Rhett sat back, giving her a dark look. When he retreated off the bed, she was disappointed and annoyed with herself. Why couldn’t she be normal and artfully pose and come on to him? Why did she have to act like a ginormous goofball and ruin her chances of actually having an orgasm?

Sighing, she rolled over and turned off her vibrator. No sense in wasting the batteries, and she didn’t think she could go back to it with the right attitude once he was gone. But Rhett didn’t leave her room like she thought he was going to. Instead, he yanked open her dresser drawer and started rooting around. Hello. Her panties and bras were in there.

“What are you doing?”

He turned back to her, a pair of her tights in his hand.

Wait a minute.

He wasn’t going to . . .

Oh, but he was. Rhett crawled on the bed and lifted her head so he could put the tights behind her and around her jaw. For a second, she felt a flash of anxiety, but before he gagged her, he kissed her softly. “Trust me.”

Unable to speak, her mouth thick with saliva, she nodded. She’d never been gagged before, but it had certainly robbed her of the obnoxious need to snort with laughter.

Rhett wasted no time in tying off the tights so that she couldn’t open her mouth. It was a strange sensation, not nearly as vulnerable as she would have thought. It was actually sort of . . . freeing. She didn’t have to say anything. She could focus on the pressure of the spandex pushing against her lips and breathing through her nose. It calmed her down, and when Rhett slid his hand up her thigh and under her T-shirt, his lips caressing her neck with soft, seductive kisses, she had no desire to laugh. Instead, she sighed, relaxing back against her mattress.

Rhett brushed over her thighs, her belly, the underside of her breast, his other hand pulling stray hairs gently free that had been caught under the tights. His callused thumb moved across her cheek, tracing her mouth under the tights, his eyes on her facial features, like he was studying each inch of her.

There was something almost worshipful about the way he touched her, like she was fragile. Or beautiful.

She suddenly remembered that legally he was her husband.

It was a very, very strange thought.

The pillow had fallen off her chest and he hovered over her, his bare chest tantalizingly close. He was muscular, like any man on a pit crew should be, free of tattoos and covered in a light dusting of caramel chest hair. Shawn wanted to touch him, both to explore that hard plane, and to keep a slight barrier between them. To hold on to control.

But he clearly sensed that because when her hands came up, he shook his head, cupping them to push them back down. “No. Lie still.”

The question was, did she do as he told her, or did she do what she wanted? Given that she would still be chortling like a donkey if he hadn’t taken charge of the situation, she realized that while it went totally against her every instinct as a competitor and an independent businesswoman, there might be some value in doing as he said. At least this once, to see if it brought her a different experience, if it allowed her to experience pleasure from a new perspective.

So she left her hands at her sides where he had placed them and waited further instruction. The very idea of that actually brought a rush of warm desire to her inner thighs, the heat pooling deep in her womb. His hard masculinity trapped her beneath him, and though she couldn’t feel it, she knew his erection was mere inches from her. Part of her expected him to shove her shirt up and push into her hard, claiming her before she changed her mind.

But that wasn’t what he did. Instead he ran his hand up her thighs, slowly and steadily, slipped under her shirt to brush over her breast, then descended again. He caressed her inner thigh, but never moved over the front of her panties, and after three passes up and down the length of her body, Shawn no longer felt the urge to laugh. His feathery touch was pulling goose bumps from her skin, and she quieted down, her body relaxing as he coaxed a simple awareness of her body from her. She wanted him to touch her more intimately, to push her panties back and bury his finger deep inside her wet body. That was what she expected, an aggressive dominant approach of going straight for the gold. He would use his finger, then his cock to get her off, and it would be over and done in a hot burst of ten minutes of passion.

That wasn’t what he was doing, clearly.

He was taking his time.

And it was driving her nuts.

She couldn’t even complain because her mouth was covered.

“Your skin is very soft,” he told her, eyes trained on her.

It didn’t require an answer, though under usual circumstances, Shawn would have said something in response. She would have most likely made a crack about having a boyish figure or how winter brought on alligator-skin syndrome, both of which would have however unintentionally and however minutely altered the mood, never allowing either of them to fully surrender to pleasure.

It was an interesting realization. As she was forced to lie still, which was not her most coveted or easy position, there was no running commentary of words from her mouth to distract her. There was nothing but her skin and an awareness of her rising desire that she had never experienced before. She could feel the prickle of each goose bump rising on her flesh, hear the soft rush of her breathing out of her nostrils, smell his masculine scent as he lay over her, his knee wedged between her thighs. Rhett played a little with her nipple, just teasing his thumb and forefinger over its hardness, his lips brushing across the delicate flesh under her ear.

When he pinched her nipple, unexpectedly, Shawn was stunned at the sharp kick of desire that she felt acutely in her stillness, her body quiet, able to process in its entirety the sensation of pleasure through the sting. She had never kept her hands at her sides, had never understood that if she did, she would feel the distinct ache in her womb, feel the slow trickle of hot desire easing out of her to soak the front of her panties. Her breathing grew more anxious, and she reveled in the new experience at the same time she started to panic. Involuntarily, her hand came up to push against his chest, to pull off her tights.

Rhett pushed it back down. “Shh. Not yet. Just give me a few more minutes. But if you really want me to stop, I will. I won’t hold your hands down.”

Did she want him to stop? Given that his thumb was now stroking against the skin at the apex of her thighs, so tantalizingly close to her clitoris, she decided she could keep it together for at least a few minutes. If he didn’t tie off her hands, she could also escape. She did trust him.

As long as he didn’t demand she crawl across the floor, she was okay with what they were doing. In fact, she was more than okay with it, and that’s where the fear sprang from. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been quite this aroused from so little actual contact.

“Are you okay with this? I need your permission. Nod your head.”

So she nodded her head.

“Good girl.”

Rhett kissed her on the lips, the nylon tights between them. It was an odd sensation, one that made her yearn to feel his taste, his tongue inside her. She moaned a little, the sound muffled, her nostrils flaring. Then his thumb slipped under the satin of her panties and slid up and down in her slickness and she arched her head back, closing her hands into tight fists so she didn’t move them, reach for him. It felt so odd, to be a non-participant, but more involved and attuned than she had ever been. She wasn’t sure how that was possible, but as Rhett massaged up and down her swollen lips with his thumbs, his tongue teasing into her ear, she marveled at that reality. She was agonizingly turned on, and she could already feel an orgasm building, and from what? A few finger strokes? She usually required the launch-to-orbit setting on her vibrator or a man who knew how to use his tongue for extended periods of time.

She didn’t come from a single finger, nowhere near her clitoris.

Without realizing she was doing it, she started to squirm, wiggling her hips.

“No moving,” he told her, pinching her swollen labia, his stroking ceasing. “Or you won’t get my tongue.”

Oh, God. Shawn’s chest heaved, her breathing anxious and frantic sounding to her own ears as she desperately tried to quiet her body, the thought of his tongue motivating her to follow his directives. If his finger could do this, what could his tongue, his lips, his teeth do down there? The thought prompted a rush of liquid desire, soaking over his thumb, trapped by the barrier of her panties. She knew if she looked down, she would see the satin stained with her arousal, and he knew it, too. He was looking at it. He had bent over to study her, pausing to wait for her compliance.

It almost killed her, but she relaxed, letting her legs drop apart, keeping her head back on the bed.

Her reward was him removing his hand entirely. Aghast, she tried to cry out in protest, but the words were lost behind the tights.

But he shook his head in disapproval. “Trust me. Or I’ll leave you here like this, wet and aching.”

Shawn wasn’t sure she could do this. She didn’t know how.

But neither did she want to be left alone feeling like she was on the cusp of something, like she was about to be treated to intense satisfaction, only to have it denied to her because she couldn’t relinquish control.

It was an ironic paradox and she fought with her emotions, while Rhett startled her by pulling up her T-shirt and gently lifting each of her inert arms through the holes, then lifting it up and over her head, leaving her gloriously free and bare to his gaze.

“See?” he told her. “That’s what I was going to do. I wasn’t trying to torture you.”

Oops. Hey, how was she supposed to know? Shawn felt the cool air of her bedroom on her naked skin, her nipples pert, her breasts rising and falling rapidly with the urgency of her breathing. There was nothing between her and Rhett’s gaze, his touch, but the wet scrap of her thong that he had bought and she had worn to torment him. Funny how the tables had been turned.

He peeled the tights back long enough to surprise her with a hot kiss and a plunge of his tongue, before he was gone again, his mouth descending on her breast. She gasped, her eyes fluttering shut, her heels digging in to the bed, her hips squirming again before she realized she wasn’t allowed to do that. Knowing he would stop if she did, she immediately stilled her actions, sliding her hands under her ass so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and claw at his briefs to free his penis.