Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) (16 page)

Amanda has just pulled up next to Caleb’s truck in one of those golf carts the staff uses to get around the property.

“Dinner service starts at six,” Tina calls back over one shoulder.

“Please,” Amanda purrs. “We’re not going to see those two for hours. Days, even.”

“Oh, you hush!” Tina hisses.

She and Caleb stand together on the porch like new homeowners, watching the golf cart speed off uphill.

“What was Nora going on about?”

She hands him the book. “She thinks you might be an alien.”

“A good alien or a bad alien?”

“I’ll have to thoroughly examine your body to be sure.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Caleb says with a grin.

He takes her by the waist and leads her into the cottage. On the console table inside the front door is a map of the property, across the top of which someone, presumably Nora, has drawn a giant smiley face next to the word,
Welcome
! Most of the cabin is decorated in creams and light browns, with sliding glass doors that lead to an expansive deck offering views of the sunset’s last, dying rays. In the bathroom, the Jacuzzi tub is flush up against a plate glass window that looks out over treetops.

“Can we do my alien examination in this tub?” he asks.

“Sounds like a plan.”

He takes her in his arms. Their lips are inches apart. “That’s turning into a refrain with you this evening.”

“What can I say? You’re just bursting with good plans.”

He kisses her, gently at first, then harder. Then he’s holding her so tightly he’s lifting her up onto the balls of her feet, and she realizes this is going to be one of those things he does that drives her wild. One of the many things he does that drives her wild.

“Easy, big boy,” she says when they both come up for air. “We plan on taking a bath in that thing we better start filling it up now.”

“Why? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Clearly, cowboy, you have little to no experience with Jacuzzi tubs.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

Twenty minutes later, or as she’d prefer to think of it, three and a half make-out sessions later, they’re sitting on the edge of a half-f tub, watching the water line rise gradually even though the faucet’s gushing.

“Damn,” he says. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Toldja.”

“Alright, well, it gives me time to prepare something.”

“What?”

“You’ll see. I want you naked and in that tub by the time I come back.”

“Is that an order?”

He grins, rises off the edge of the tub. He grips the back of her neck gently, then firmly. When she doesn’t wince or ask him to stop, he tilts her head so she’s staring up into those blue eyes she’s spent so many years not looking into.

“Would you like it to be an order, little lady?” he asks in a deep, gruff voice.

 Shivers dance down her thighs. The heat in her belly is poised to spread throughout her body. Images from the fantasy she still hasn’t shared with him swirl across her vision before she blinks them back.

“That feels like a yes,” he says.

He tightens his grip a little more. She gasps.

“I think I’m getting closer to that fantasy you don’t want to tell me about. Am I right?”

He tightens his grip a little more.

“Am I, little lady?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

He releases her suddenly, takes a few steps backward, and says, “Good. Then get those clothes off and get in the tub. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

On his way out of the bathroom, he dims the light.

Technically she’s alone, but the act of undressing feels deliciously naughty given she knows who she’s doing it for.

She leaves the faucet running as she sinks down into the warm water. A few minutes later, Caleb walks into the bathroom wearing a cowboy hat and nothing else. Their first lovemaking was so frenzied and rushed, she didn’t have the time to study his body. Now she can clearly see every ridge of muscle, the light tattoo of old scars from his years of hard labor, and the heft of his cock and balls, which swing as he walks. Surrounded by the opulent bathroom’s marble and polished stone, he looks like he walked right out of the dark woods and into her most secret chamber.

Only once he’s settling into the tub across from her does she realize that his nudity was also meant as a distraction. In his right hand, he holds several sheets of hotel stationary and a slender coffee table book he lifted from the living room. And a pen.

In a neat pile, he sets all three items into the space between the window and the edge of the tub. Then, with a beaming smile, he slides them toward her with one arm. Before she has time to respond, he finds her wet, eager folds under the surface with one big toe and begins prodding at them gently but insistently.

“What could possibly be in that head of yours that you think I’d be too afraid to try?” he asks.

“Caleb…”

“Alright, well, if it’ll make you feel safer, I’ll add some ground rules. For me, I mean.”

“Go ahead,” she says.

“No other people. Although I’ll be happy to play more than one role, if you like. Oh, and I won’t draw any blood. Not ’cause I’m judgmental but because I don’t trust myself to handle that kind of situation in a way that’ll keep you safe. I’m just not experienced in that manner is all, and I’m not confident I’d be able to keep you safe.”

“Caleb Eckhart, what kind of girl do you think I am?” she asks, batting her eyelashes.

“What I think, Amber Watson, is that with me, you’re allowed to be any kind of girl you want.”

The expression on her face is the one he wanted to see because he smiles warm, sinks further down into the tub, his big toe finding and then gently grazing her nub.

She picks up the pen, but the sight of the empty page terrifies her.

“Maybe if it wasn’t the stationary for my
mother’s
hotel.”

“Come on now,” he says gently, and just then his big toe finds her clit and begins rubbing lazy, gentle circles around it. “Just turn the paper over if it bothers you.”

His voice is something between a growl and a purr. Between its lustful timber and the job he’s doing on her under the water, she can barely see straight enough to keep the pen steady.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks.

“My writing assignment or your big toe?”

“Either? Both?”

“Just promise me something.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t want you doing it if it’s not something you want to do,” she says.

He nods solemnly, but she can tell he’s sure there’s not a chance in hell he won’t want to do it, no matter what it is.

“You promise me?” she asks.

“I promise,” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “Now quit it with your foot so I can concentrate.”

He jerks his foot back so suddenly it sloshes the water in the tub, which causes both of them to crack up for several minutes. Once they manage to calm down, once she takes a deep breath and finds herself staring again at the blank, empty page, she finds the courage to say, “Why is this so important to you, Caleb?”

“Because after what you went through with songbird, I don’t want you to be afraid to ask me for anything.”

And just like that, she’s writing. She’s writing without regard for how he’ll react when he reads it. The fantasy isn’t really all that outlandish or kinky. Girlfriends of hers have shared far stranger ones with her over cocktails. But this one involves dark woods, woods as dark as the ones Caleb got lost in on that long ago night. True, it also involves being found. Hard. Still, it seems like a cruel trick of fate, the fact that her most private, unrealized sexual fantasy could trigger one of Caleb’s most painful memories. But maybe she’s overthinking it.

By the time she’s done, she’s filled two pages with her hurried block printing.

Her heart hammering, she slides the coffee table book and the pages back across the edge of the tub toward Caleb, who dabs his hands dry on a nearby towel and picks up the pages gently and carefully, as if they were made of old, thin parchment.

She watches his face as he reads, watches the tense set of his jaw, the focus apparent in his dazzling blue eyes. Watches him suck in a deep breath through his nostrils when he gets to a certain line—she has no idea which one, but she’s got a few guesses. Is it stirring painful memories for him or something else?

Look down and see, genius,
she realizes.

The head of his majestic, swollen cock just pierces the water’s surface.

“Oh, Amber,” he growls, still reading. “Amber Louise Watson.”

It’s been forever since anyone’s used her middle name. This must be serious.

“What?” she asks.

He sets the pages aside.

“Get ready, baby,” he says. “We are
so
doing this!”

13

Are we really going to do this?

Amber’s lost count of how many times she’s asked herself this question in the past thirty minutes. It would have made more sense to ask Caleb back when they were still plotting out the details. But she’s on her own now, making her way through the woods just below the cottage, bound for the spot Caleb marked on the map Nora left in their room.

When she’d asked him how he’d ensure their privacy, he’d told her not to worry, that he’d take care of that part. That he’d take care of everything. All she had to do was trust him.

They’d agreed on two safe words. Slow down was
leaf
; full stop was
Chevron
. But still, the thought of him asking Nora or—oh, dear Lord, no—her mother to keep one of the hiking trials clear just so the two of them could do some outdoor role-play leaves her flush with shame.

The wrong kind of shame.

Of course, he’d probably try some sort of cover story. But it wouldn’t matter, because neither Nora nor her mother would believe it for a second.

Her flashlight beam bounces across the old, capped wellhead he marked on the map. Rustic benches sit on either side. A dense canopy of interlocking oak branches filters the night sky above. If she keeps walking, she’ll hit woods too dense to move through without a machete. Now she realizes why Caleb picked this particular location. It’s the dead end of a hiking trail, a long distance from the inn’s main building, but closer to their cottage if things go wrong.

She’s here. She’s got everything she needs—the blanket, the box of condoms, the flashlight, and the T-shirt they’ve already tested out on her wrists. She can turn the shirt into a makeshift pair of cotton handcuffs, easy to escape if she gets cold feet, just tight enough to give the illusion she’s actually restrained.

She spreads the blanket out in front of her, parallel to one side of the bench and its curved metal armrest.

This is the part of the script about which she’s the most nervous.

Once she turns the flashlight beam off, she’s got ten minutes.

Once she turns the flashlight beam off, she’s committed.

Unless, of course, she decides to use one of her safe words once they’ve started. But the ten things she has to do before the scenario starts—that’s what they’ve agreed to call it, apparently. The scenario!—those have to be perfect! Otherwise, the whole thing will turn into either a colossal joke or a huge embarrassment. Or both.

God save me,
she prays silently.
Save me from feeling like an idiot. The other stuff? I might be beyond hope in that regard.

She kills the flashlight.

She slides out of her panties and kicks them to one side.

She drops to her knees on the blanket, and then, just as she practiced back in the cabin, she laces the T-shirt around the bench’s armrest until she’s tied it loosely around her hands. She tugs gently with both wrists until the cotton’s tight enough to give the illusion she’s handcuffed.

Then she waits.

She waits as the cool night air kisses the cheeks of her ass and everything in between.

She waits as the fear—of wildlife, of discovery, of mortification—turns into a feeling of exhilaration. A feeling of taking all of the rules and limitations and lectures she’s endured all her life, all the finger-wagging nonsense abut what good girls are and what good girls have to do, and blowing them into the air like they were nothing but a handful of sand.

Footsteps approach, cracking twigs. Fast at first, then slower. Then Caleb lets out a long, slow whistle.

“Well, well, well, well,
wellllll
,” Caleb says. Only for now, he’s not Caleb. He’s just some random cowboy who emerged from the dark woods to find her half naked and tied to a bench. And he’s playing up the accent too, just like she asked. “What have we
here
? Lord!”

“Sir, could you untie me please?” she asks.

Her voice sounds like someone else’s. She’s speaking words she’s imagined countless times while pleasuring herself with a showerhead or her fingers, all while her husband slept in the other room. Or lied to her about staying late at work so he could bang his mistress.

“Untie you?” he asks, feigning shock. “Are you tied up, ma’am? Is that what you are?” He reaches down and tugs at the makeshift handcuffs. Pretends as if they’re locked in place. “Well, you most certainly are, aren’t you? Now how in the heck did a pretty little thing like you get tied up out here in these dark woods?”

“It was my husband…”

“Your
husband
did this?”

“Yes and then he left me here. We were playing a game and he freaked out and he left me.”

“A game, huh? What kind of game? The kind of game where you gotta turn this pretty ass to the woods?” A light touch. Feather light. Torture light. Just a graze of his finger from the very top of the crack of her ass up into the small of her back.

Oh, God, he’s good at this. He’s. So. Damn. Good. At—

“And, uh, whose idea was this little game?” he asks.

“Mine,” she answers, sounding as sheepish as she can. Which isn’t all that hard. Because she’s in this, gripped by it. Feeling the boundaries between the scene and reality blur into a kind of blinding heat.

“I see. So it wasn’t your husband’s idea?”