Two Alone

He looked at her for an agonizingly long time. Aislinn couldn’t bear to watch his eyes moving over her, so she closed hers.

“You’re very beautiful.” She braced herself for his touch. It never came. Instead, he spun away from her, apparently vexed, either over her stubborn resistance or the vulnerability he had inadvertently expressed.

Whatever it was had made him exceedingly angry. He pulled several drawers in her dresser from their moorings before he found what he was short-temperedly searching for. He came toward her with two pairs of panty hose.

“Lie down.” Reaching around Aislinn, who stood rooted to the spot in terror, he flung back the covers on her bed.

She lay down, her body stiff with fright, her eyes wide as he knelt over her. But he wasn’t even looking at her. His face was set in tense, remote lines as he reached for her arm and pulled it back toward the rails of her brass headboard.

“You’re tying me up?” she asked tremulously.

“Yes,” he answered curtly, pulling the nylon tight around her wrist and securing it to the rail.

“My God.” A hundred hideous nightmares flitted through her brain. Every deviate practice she’d ever heard about, she was reminded of now.

His mouth tilted into another of those sardonic smiles, as though he had read her mind and seen her fears.

“Relax, Miss Andrews. I told you I wanted food and rest and that’s what I intend to get.”

Still frozen with shock and fear, Aislinn lay docile as he bound her other wrist to his, using the second pair of panty hose. When they were tied to each other, the backs of their hands pressing together, she stared up at him with incredulity. He merely snapped off the lamp and lay down beside her, his back to her.

“You bastard.” She tugged hard on the fetter that tied her to him. “Untie me.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I said to untie me,” she shouted, trying to sit up. He rolled over and yanked her back down. Though she couldn’t see him in the darkness, the body lying so close to hers communicated a terrible menace that was more repressive than sheer force.

“I had no choice but to tie you up.”

“Why did you have me undress?”

“To make it more difficult for you to escape. I seriously doubt you’d go chasing out into the night as you are. And—”

“And what?” she asked angrily.

After a slight pause his reply came through the darkness like a stealthy, sensuous, black cat—anticipated, but unseen until it’s there. “And because I wanted to look at you.”