"You're beautiful, Anna. So damn beautiful."

Those perfect lips curved up into a tremulous smile. She blindly reached up for his face, running her fingertips across his jaw, over his lips. "Thank you," she whispered.

Leaning down over her, he licked her lips, a long stroke from one side to the other. She opened up to him on a whimper and for the hundredth time that night, he lost sight of his plan.

Because just kissing this woman was better than f**king any other.

As her curves went soft and pliant beneath his, as he settled his erection against her wet heat and she bucked up into him, it took everything Cole had for him to remind himself that they'd been to this point before, where she was open and wanting, and she'd frozen up. If he kept at it like this, not using any finesse at all, odds were high that it would happen again.

Not because she was a tease.

Not because she didn't want him as badly as he wanted her.

But because she was good girl.

And pleasure this extreme frightened her.

"Have I mentioned yet how much I love kissing you?"

"I love kissing you, too," she said in that soft voice that was as warm and sweet as the woman beneath him.

"I want to kiss you everywhere, Anna."

Her soft smile froze on her face at the exact moment that he took hold of her wrists and lifted her arms over her head.

"Cole?"

"Just relax, sweetheart."

He'd never been one for pet names, had never bothered to force them out to get in a girl's pants, but with Anna he wasn't forcing it. She was sweet. So sweet he ached with the need to kiss her. To taste her. Working quickly, he drew another silk tie from where he'd been storing it around his neck and bound her left wrist to the right bedpost.

"How can I relax when you're tying me up?"

Her earnest question had him smiling down at her. The kind of woman he usually slept with would be playing it up right now, moaning and putting on a show for his benefit.

But not Anna. Instead, she was telling him exactly what she was feeling every step of the way with beautiful honesty.

"Like this," he said a moment before he ran his tongue lightly across the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. "And this." His mouth ran kisses from her palm around to her shoulder.

By the time he made it back to her face, he had to drop in for another taste of her sweet mouth. Her ni**les were a hard press of heat against his forearms.

"Better?"

Her breath was coming in harsh pants. "No."

"Maybe this will help." With her limbs still rubbery from his kisses, he quickly moved her other arm into place and secured it to the bedpost. Moving back to stare down at her beautiful, half-bound body, he asked again, "Better now?"

"No, Cole. Please. I don't know how to do this."

"You don't need to know, sweetheart. Not when your body already does."

Gently spreading her thighs with a hand on each leg, he inhaled her scent, more sweet than musky. His mouth watered with the urge to bury his face in her soft, wet folds, and taste her.

"Can you feel how wet you are for me?"

Her pink panties were soaked against her pu**y lips. He pressed two fingers against her wet heat and she gasped, clamping her legs together around his hand.

Leaving his hand pressed in tight against her silk-covered lips, he asked, "Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?"

"But you're the one touching me."

Jesus, she had no idea how much her innocence inflamed him. Hell, he was as surprised by it as she was.

He hadn't been sure about tying up her legs. Now he was.

Anna's reserve went so deep that if he gave her any chance at all to protest, to try and fight what her body so desperately wanted, she'd use it.

Leaning over, he lowered his face to her groin and slid his hand out of the way, only to replace it with his mouth. Knowing he'd have to use the element of surprise to his advantage if he was going to have any chance of prying her thighs apart again without hurting her, a split second after he planted a hard kiss against her soft, aroused flesh, he was drawing her legs apart and securing her ankles, one after the other, to the foot board.

* * *

Anna reacted instinctively to her imprisonment by pulling and yanking at her silk bindings. But although they weren't tight, they were firm. "Cole," she begged, "please untie me."

"Let me look at you first," he murmured. "I've never seen anything so pretty. You should see how sexy you look all spread for me, so wet and aroused, so ready for me to love you."

Without touching her--even though she was frightened by how vulnerable she was now

--his words of approval sent her to new peaks of arousal. Especially when he'd used the word love. Because even though the rational part of her knew there was no way they could be feeling more than lust--and like--for each other after meeting only hours before, her heart clearly wanted to believe in the fairytale of love at first sight.

Feeling the heat of his stare, even though she couldn't see him looking down on her through her blindfold, she could feel her breath coming too fast, knew she was actually shaking within her bindings.

The next thing she knew, his warm breath was brushing against her earlobe. "You're being so brave, sweetheart."

But she wasn't. She was begging him to release her at every turn, telling him she couldn't do what he was asking her to do.

Just like she'd been doing her whole life.

He sucked the fleshy lobe of her ear between his teeth and she arched up off the bed as far as the bindings would let her. Her ni**les brushed against one of his thickly muscled arms.

"Touch me, Cole." She was still begging, but in an instant what she wanted had changed.

No, that was a lie. She'd wanted him to touch her from the first. All that had changed was she had finally stopped getting in her own way.

His mouth moved from her ear to trail a hot path down her neck. "Here?"

"Yes," she said as her head fell back to give him better access to her sensitive skin. But the way her br**sts were aching for his touch had her changing her answer. "No."

She heard him chuckle, felt his soft laughter against her skin a moment before his tongue dipped into the hollow in front of her shoulder.

She gasped at the delicious pleasure racing through her and pulled at the bindings at her wrists. Only, this time she was pulling because of the pleasure, rather than trying to get away from it.