Breathe for Me (Be for Me 1)

Fuck freaking out. He was having this moment while it was here. Good thing he knew how to improvise.

He manacled both her wrists in one hand—gripping them tight enough to leave a faint mark while he hauled her to her feet and marched his sexy prisoner to his room. He yanked aside clothes hangers in his wardrobe.

Neckties. He loathed wearing them at work but it seemed they did come in useful on occasion. He had a collection—variants of blue. He grabbed a few of the most navy to match her darkened eyes. He dangled them in front of her, silently asking the question.

She bent her head and coyly looked up at him like she was some saucy penitent. “Xander.” She answered in that way he’d told her that first time.

Consent.

He walked her to his bed and then, jerking his arm quickly, released her so she fell onto the mattress. She rolled with a little shimmy so she was on her back in the middle of his bed.

“You’d better tie me up tight,” she said in a kittenish voice. “I might try to escape.”

Satisfaction streamed through him—a torrent of hot, male pleasure. She’d asked. And he was more than happy to give her everything she wanted.

Chelsea couldn’t stop the tremors shaking her body in regular bursts. She’d never been tied up before. Never thought she’d be into it. But she’d never felt as sexy when he took her arm and stretched it up, tying the material around her wrist and then securing the other end to his headboard. He did the same to her other arm. Then he did one leg—spreading her so she was like a star in the centre of his bed.

She’d creamed up in excitement already. The trust she had in him. She’d dared him and he rose to her challenge.

She loved that.

She circled her hips even as he tied the last of the restraints carefully around her ankle.

“Tug for me,” he instructed.

She strained to pull her legs together. No way could she achieve it. Oh man, he really had her tied tight. Open.

“Hurt?”

She shook her head. It was tight but not painful. And so thrilling.

“If you don’t like it, say the word, anytime.” He looked at her. “That word would be no.”

“Xander.” She said her yes-word instead. Because she wanted this so damn much. She couldn’t wait for him to touch her. She was on the edge of an orgasm already—just from the anticipation. From the dominance he had over her. But it was at her instigation. She knew, ultimately, she had the control in this.

He ran a hand down her body, eyes following how her black suit clung to her. “I’ll get you another of these, he promised. “In fact. I’m getting in a bulk order.”

He turned and walked out of the room. She swallowed, wondering what he’d gone for.

A minute later he reappeared—large shears in his hand. The steel blades glittered. She shivered, doubly excited by the frisson of danger. She knew he’d never really hurt her—she knew he planned to cut her free later.

His eyes were cool, his gaze firm. His brows flickered at the ripple of desire that trammelled through her body. “This turning you on, pussycat?”

She licked her lips.

“You gonna purr for me?”

She tilted her chin at him—about the only movement she could make. “Make me.”

His grin flashed but his jaw hardened. “I do like to make my prisoners scream.”

Her nipples were so hard it was a wonder they hadn’t poked through the material already. He pinched the tip of one with his thumb and forefinger. The tiny pain made her jump. Heat and tension made her sex clench.

Then he let her nipple slip from his fingers so it was only the fabric he still held. He pulled it further from her body and snipping that pinch of black away. He released it and the fabric snapped to cling back to her skin. He tweaked where it lay, so her nipple then poked through the circular hole he’d just cut.

He looked at it for a moment, satisfaction in his gaze. “Nice,” he nodded.

Chelsea melted in the heat. How had she thought she could compete with him in any kind of game?

He bent, holding the shears against her tight breast. Pressing the cold, closed blades against her soft flesh, pushing her nipple higher. He opened his mouth and sucked the very tip into his mouth, his tongue pushing the sensitive bud to the roof of his mouth.

She cried out—couldn’t help it. It was too sensitive.

He released her and grinned. Leaned to the other side to pinch her other breast. To cut away the fabric covering that nipple. Then kissed and squeezed the nub he’d exposed.

Chelsea writhed as much as she could, desperate for him to touch her everywhere—oh who was she kidding? She just wanted him to eat her.

And he knew it. He laughed.

“What treasures have we got underneath here?” He patted her pussy with downward strokes just like she was a little cat who didn’t like her hair being rubbed the wrong way. She shimmied under his touch—wanting him to go lower, to bare her. To make her come. She wanted to come so badly.

Very carefully he snipped the slit wider—taking inches of material away. She could feel the air against her skin. Then she could feel his breath.

The scissors clattered to the floor and her eyes all but rolled back into her head as she went delirious. The guy could do wicked things with his tongue.

“Please, please, please.”

Finally he found the scissors again, running them the length of her legs to cut the fabric—she gasped as cooler air hit her skin. She needed it.

Needed him more.

“Xander.”

He thrust home, arched up on his hands to driving deeper, deeper still. She cried out, calling to him, revelling in his possession. The most unrestrained she’d ever been with him. And he called right back—his eyes, his movements as wild, as passionate. As complete.

There was nothing between them. She arched her neck, smiling though her eyes were closed. The catsuit lay in ribbons around them. Their skin stuck in the sweaty heat they’d built.

She felt replete. So consumed. So content.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?” he murmured.

“Letting go with me.”

He didn’t answer. But he lifted away from her to kneel on the bed beside her and looking down the length of her body.

“You going to untie me?” She had a mind to tell him not to, to tell him to keep her there for the afternoon and do it all again.

“No.” His answer was uncompromising and exactly what she’d wanted. “You went away without telling me where. Left me not knowing when or if you were ever coming back. I’m not letting you go again.”

“Ever?” she teased, her toes curling in anticipation. “I’m tied to your bed for good?” She laughed. “Next time I’m tying you up. You’ve no idea how liberating it is.”

He stared at her for a long moment. To her surprise the amusement in his eyes faded.

“Xander?” She lifted her head as she saw him freeze back into ‘bland’.

“It’s okay.” Xander coughed, and turned his back to her. “I guess I’ll set you free.”

He picked up the shears and sliced through the ties, unbinding one of her ankles, then the other. He avoided her gaze as he moved round the bed to release her wrists as well.

Xander felt like a cement truck had just dumped its load of cold wet concrete into his veins. Now it was solidifying—stopping his heart from pumping. From feeling. He didn’t like this game anymore. Because it wasn’t a game.

He wasn’t going to let her go?

Those words echoed. He heard another voice snarling them.

Xander froze. He didn’t want to threaten her that way. He knew what it was like to be so afraid. Terrified of what might happen when his dad caught up with him and his mom.

Only now he feared he understood his father’s madness. He had it in him. He didn’t want to let her go. He’d do anything to stop her leaving him again.

You can’t leave me. You’ll never get away from me.

The words his father hadn’t just shouted at his mother. He’d whispered them to her through a locked and barricaded door, bloodcurdlingly soft as Xander had curled in a ball beside his mom. They’d been so scared they didn’t even breathe, hoping they hadn’t been detected.

Xander never wanted to see Chelsea afraid of him. But he understood his father now. Xander too was possessive to the point of madness. He couldn’t go down this track. He gritted his teeth. He was a stronger man than his father. He wasn’t doing that to Chelsea.