Page 113 of The Kings of Kearny

“So, where are we going?”

“Lost Maples,” he said. “A friend of Dad’s has a cabin out there in the middle of the woods.”

I watched his profile as he drove. “Right. Where no one will hear me scream.”

He glanced my way and sent me a look that smoldered. “Or moan, or pant, or beg.”

I lifted a brow at him in challenge. “The only one doing any begging will be you. Remember what you promised me.”

He jerked his head sideways toward the truck bed. “I remember.”

I turned in my seat and froze. Coiled up in the rear of the truck was a length of off-white rope.

“It’s made from flax,” Jakob said. “The woman at the sex shop said it wouldn’t chafe as much as the others.”

The woman at the sex shop? Oh my God, thevisualof him picking out his own rope, some poor, unsuspecting woman staring up at him while he tested its tensile strength.

I doubled over in my seat, laughing. Maybe it would be easier to relax this weekend than I thought.

Epilogue

JAKOB

Krista Evans was goingto be the death of me. In those heels, she was six feet of sin draped in darkness. The silk robe she wore barely covered the tops of her thighs. She’d cinched it tight around her waist, somehow both accentuating and obscuring the curves that had driven me crazy since the day she strolled into town. If she knew how long I’d wanted her, how badly I’d wanted her, she’d never let me live it down.

The sun was sliding toward the horizon, and the small cabin we were staying in was bathed in shadows. She stalked toward me out of them, hips swaying, and I raked my gaze over her from head to toe. Her dark hair fell in waves to her waist. She didn’t usually wear makeup, but she had some on now. I could tell because her eyes were rimmed in black, and her mouth looked fuller than usual, lips glossed over like she’d just sucked me off. She hadn’t yet, and I was sure that had something to do with the evil little grin on her face.

I nearly growled. We hadn’t doneanythingyet, besides throwing our bags into the bedroom, and if she didn’t put her hands on me soon, I was going to start testing these restraints.

I’d been half joking about letting her tie me up, even after buying the rope. I thought it might just be another one of our games, but then she’d dropped her voice into a husky purr after we’d ditched our bags, asking me nicely, and now here I was, buck-ass naked in the middle of the living room, arms straining overhead. She’d tied me to a goddamn beam. And I ended up helping her because she wasn’t tall enough to do it herself.

So yeah, I was gone for this woman. And I should just stop pretending that I wasn’t. I’d spent the past two weeks trying and failing to give her the space she asked for. I managed to keep from calling or driving over to her new place, but every night I still found myself at the bar. I kept telling myself to stop, to back off, but then I saw the way she looked at me through the crowd, and I thought maybe, just maybe, she was twisted enough that she enjoyed our little games too.

“You going to do anything?” I asked her. “Or just leave me here until my arms go numb?”

She stopped a few feet away, head tilted to the side as she looked me over. “Can’t I just enjoy the sight of you for a minute without you getting cranky?”

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