Playing with Mr. Grant (The Men #10)

“You think you’ll hurt me?” I push, flicking my eyes back up to his heated ones.

“No, but I might ruin you,” he grits, his voice rough like sandpaper.

I drop my gaze to his hands. He’s coiled his skipping rope around one hand, his fingers turning red with how tight he’s pulling on it.

Maybe this is what he needs. A way to break through his barriers so he’ll finally be honest with me. He’s always communicated better with me when we’re being physical. He opens up more when he feels in control. When he’s giving me pleasure.

“Do it,” I whisper, the same way I did in the alleyway the first time he ever touched me. The first time I made him snap.

“No.” He grinds his teeth so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t have to spit out dust. Then he curses and strides away.

“You don’t get to walk away from this!”

I rush after him, following him into his bedroom. Everything logical tells me to leave, to do as he’s asking and let him cool down. But pushing him feels like the most natural thing in the world to me. It’s the language we both understand.

I want to tear the truth from him. But as he stops in front of the bed and turns, I see the wild, trapped gleam taking over his eyes, and everything stops.

The sight rips my heart out.

“You’re scared? Scared telling the truth is a gamble that you can’t control.”

Beads of sweat gathered in his chest hair glint in the light as his entire body goes solid. His eyes burn into mine, heating every drop of blood in my body until they feel like they could combust. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

He tightens the skipping rope around his palm. My eyes drop to it, and he curses as he sees me looking at it.

“You need to feel in control right now, I get it. You keep telling me you know me better than I know myself. Well, I know you, too,” I breathe. “So take control.”

“No,” he hisses.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Don’t be a brat, Ava.”

“Don’t be an asshole and I won’t have to be!”

“Fuck!”

He roars as he closes the gap between us in a flash, another guttural curse leaving his chest as he lifts me and throws me down onto the bed on my back. He crawls up over me, his eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them as he grabs both of my wrists. My breasts tremble with my shaky breaths as he brings them together above my head.

“You want this?” he spits.

“I want the truth!”

Thick nylon drags against my skin as he binds my wrists together with the skipping rope. Every muscle in his body is tense, rippling with each move he makes.

“You want to be tied up for me, is that it?” He checks the knot, giving it a tug that makes me gasp as my body jerks beneath him. “You want to give up all your control to me? Why?”

“Because you need it.”

His eyes blaze into mine. “You’re telling me the what. Now tell me the why.” He repeats my words back to me in a deep rasp.

“The same reason you lied to me. The same reason you can’t say out loud.”

His jaw tightens and he yanks the neckline of my top down roughly, rushing to cover my nipple with his hotmouth like he can’t do it fast enough. He groans like an animal that’s been starved as he sucks hard.