smelled him. I wanted to taste him with a delirium I had no control over.
With the swiftness of a snake, Arkady pressed the knife against my lips, and the coolness of the metal drew a moan from me.
One move and he could do something irrevocable and awful.
Yet I was helpless, held enslaved in his heat and the promise of what he might deliver.
Don’t let it be death this time.
I swallowed when he pulled the blade back to his mouth. His tongue darted out, and he licked where my lips had pursed.
I only exhaled when he pulled out the bottom of the sweater, holding the thick fabric far from my body.
I rolled my neck when he sliced the knit right up through the middle, shredding it off of me in skilled, practiced motions.
Freed from the sweater, my nipples swelled, and Arkady grunted something in Russian I didn’t understand.
“What are you going to do to me?” My voice sounded smoldering and smoky even to my own ears.
He didn’t answer.
Rounding on me, he drew the tip of the knife from one hipbone to the base of my spine then up the center of my back.
I leaned into the sharp, delicate touch that whispered with almost deadly intent along my skin.
His hoarse voice came right beside my ear as he curved a hand around my hip. “You are gorgeous.”
Snip.
He’d cut the string on my hip, and one side of my panties loosened.
His calloused fingers drifted to the underside of my breast. “You are incredible.”
Slice.
He cut the other band free, and my panties fluttered to the floor just like my heart flew up against the wall of my chest.
“No more knives for you though.” He roamed to my front then he grasped my face. “And no more cutting.”
With cold steel against my cheek, he lowered his mouth to mine. Melting against his lips, I was thirsty for his cool smooth taste I tempered on my tongue.
He touched only my face, and I yearned for more—more contact, more of his hands, more of his knowing touch. His tongue twisted against mine, and I felt the hot burst of his expelled breath against my cheek when he pulled away.
I chased after his lips, but he pressed his fingertips lightly against the front of my neck right where he had tethered me to him.
I was his to control.
He walked away from me, fans of golden muscles arrowing down to two dents above his buttocks and lean waist. When he put the blade away then crouched down, I gasped as his flexed ass rounded out and his boulder-like shoulders bunched then relaxed.
I didn’t know what he’d done. What he was doing. What he had in mind.
I no longer cared as long as there was more of him that I could have, taste, touch.
Coming back to me, he watched from beneath hooded eyes. His thick erection made a prominent display inside his pants, and he stopped several feet away.
Almost desultorily, he adjusted that positively enormous cock, a smirk lifting the side of his mouth.
And I panted.
I couldn’t move.
There was no place to go.
I didn’t want to go.
“Can you stand all right?” He took another stalking step toward me.
“Yes.” Breathiness invested my voice, making my tone reedy and thoroughly feminine.
“Khorosho.”
It felt like approval, the word he’d uttered once before.
Then he brought out a thick coil of black silken rope that he lengthened between his two strong hands.
I am his to control.
To save.
To enslave?
I no longer knew. Magnificent heat soared in my belly, my nipples ached for some sort of contact, and slick trails of slippery arousal already slid down the insides of my thighs.
I glanced away just long enough to gather breath in my chest.
Ropes?
What was he planning?
Did I even care anymore?
His steps ranged closer.
That was when I spotted a cross directly opposite the bed. The diagonal crossbar construction was easily over six feet tall, painted deep black and burnished to a high sheen. Something to crucify a person on.
Or tie a woman up to . . . to have her at his mercy.
My eyes fled back to Arkady.
He rolled that rope up one thickly muscled forearm that was scattered with black hair and more Russian ink.
Fear fluttered through me, but curiosity coiled inside uppermost.
He didn’t move and neither did I.
Heat compelled me closer, but I instinctually knew I was supposed to stay still. I almost forgot the burning pain of my thigh as my nipples pebbled beneath Arkady’s obviously possessive perusal.
At last, I found my voice. “Do you bring women