but us.
“Unhook my arms,” I whispered against her lips, not wanting to stop kissing her, even for a second. “I want to touch you.”
Her lips curled against mine, then she pressed a hand against my chest and eased back, grinning down at me with a mischievous look I couldn’t define.
“Uh-uh.”
“What do you mean, uh-uh?”
“There’s one other thing we need to address before I let you go.”
She climbed off me and moved around the bed in the dark. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but a shuffling sound echoed through the room, and when she climbed back on the bed, she held a rectangular box in her hands.
“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously as she straddled my boxers and her steamy heat pressed against my already throbbing erection.
She set the box on the bed near my hip, but I couldn’t tell what was in it in the dark, and her expression gave nothing away. “Do you remember our first night together in Rome?”
“Yeah,” I said warily, wondering where she was going with this.
“Do you remember what you told me before you touched me?”
Fuck. She was thinking back to that conversation. When I’d told her I was a beast. I didn’t want to talk about that now. “I—”
My words faltered when she tugged my T-shirt up and over her head, then tossed it on the ground, leaving her wearing nothing but her succulent skin, not even the silk panties I knew she’d been wearing earlier.
Just the sight of her bare breasts, the gentle curves at her hips, the small thatch of hair between her legs where she pressed against me made the wires in my brain completely cross so I couldn’t even remember what she’d asked me.
“You said”—she braced both hands on my chest and looked down at me in the dim light—“‘I don’t make love, Natalie. I don’t fuck. I dominate.’ Do you remember that?”
I blinked up at her, fuzzy-headed and hot. Really fucking hot. But also vaguely aware my own words were about to get me in trouble. “Yeah. But that was before we were involved.”
“Very true.”
She leaned down and kissed me, and I breathed a sigh of relief when our lips met, because I’d just dodged a bullet.
“I knew that first night in Rome you were lying to me.” She scooted back, lifted her weight off me, and grasped my boxer-briefs to drag them down my legs. Tossing them on the ground, she held my gaze as she crawled back over me, careful not to touch my already stiff cock even though I was aching for her to do so.
She settled her weight back over my belly once more as she looked down at me again. “Yes, you dominated me, but you also made love to me on that couch when you claimed you never would. You fucked me in the shower like you couldn’t get enough of me. And every time we’ve been together since then, I’m always excited and eager to know which Luc I’m going to get—the sweet man who can make me melt with a soft touch, the voracious lover who can’t wait to fuck me into next week, or the assertive Dom who can very nearly make me come just by ordering me to my knees.”
I sucked in a sharp breath because I knew now just where she was going with this.
And all that arousal I’d been feeling threatened to overwhelm me. To control me. To push me to a place I didn’t want to go. “Natalie—”
“The thing is, Luc...” She leaned down and pressed her lips against the center of my chest. “I love making love with you. This last week has been amazing. Like discovering a side of you I only saw glimpses of before. But it’s not really you. Not all of you.”
I shifted uncomfortably beneath her, tried to pull my hands down, but the stupid cuffs held them in place. “Natalie...”
“I told you before if you pulled away, I’d just drag you back to me again. Consider this part of me dragging you back.”
She reached down for whatever she’d set by my hip, and brought it back in front of her. I squinted to see what she had in her hands, but it was still too dark to tell. She held her hand out over my chest, then something slick and cool dripped over my skin.
Oil.
I bit back a groan as she massaged the oil into my skin, using her fingers to knead muscles I didn’t even know were