Anticipation is liquid fire between my thighs. I am aroused, wet, and aching with an emptiness only he can fill. It is beyond erotic to allow him this control, and for someone who often feels I do not know myself, I am suddenly aware of why his control pleases me. When I am with him like this, I don’t have to calculate what comes next. He will do that. He is doing that. I trust him to the degree of allowing myself to be tied up with my hands over my head, when I do not trust anyone.

Finally, Liam begins to undress, and I am spellbound by this powerful, sexy man, downright hungry to see him completely naked, stripped down in all his masculine glory, a pleasure I didn’t have the night before. There was just us ripping whatever clothes off we could to come together. This time is slower, more luxurious.

He toes off his shoes and slides his jacket down his shoulders. Almost impatiently, it seems, he unbuttons his shirt. Or maybe it is simply me who is impatient. Adrenaline pours through me as dark, springy hair peeks from the fine material and finally, his shirt is gone. My mouth goes dry at the sight of taut skin over flexing muscle and when his hand goes to his pants, I suck in a breath and I do not breathe again until he is without clothes, standing before me, his thick erection pulsing thickly in front of him.

I take in the sight of him, tall and finely carved, and he is truly a work of art, the definition of masculine beauty but I hone in on my obsession, one that I am sure many women have shared. The tattoo. My gaze tracks the path of the equation that trails down, down, down, and I swallow hard at where it ends and he is, ah, well, hard. Liam has singlehandedly made math sexy for a girl who has despised every number she’s ever met.

Liam turns away and my heart thunders in my chest as he opens a dresser drawer and I anticipate what he might produce, but I am remarkably unafraid for a woman tied to a door. I am quite sure I should be, though. What if it’s a whip or chains, or…what do people do when they tie up a lover? He pulls out a box and a pinch begins in my chest as I digest the packaged condom he’s removed from inside. I am suddenly excruciatingly insecure, aware that there have been many before me, few before him.

He tears open the package, and I drop my head between my shoulders, hiding the emotions expanding where the pinch had been. I am not sure why this is affecting me this way but it is. I am over my head. Way, way over my head. I’m probably not even his first bathroom-door affair. Maybe this very tie has been around another woman’s wrists. I do not know what to do or say or how to be. I do not even know my own name half the time. I am not—

Liam squats in front of me, and the sight of his strong thighs and thick erection cuts off my rambling thoughts, and I struggle to gain my composure and recreate some version of Amy that is worthy of this man even if I, myself, am not.

His finger slides under my chin, and he levels my gaze with his. “I bought the condoms today for us, if that’s what you’re wondering. For us, Amy. I don’t stockpile and have women in my hotel room ever night. I don’t have women to my room, or let them inside my life, at all. Never. Just you.”

He reads me like an open book I thought I’d shut years before. “Me,” I whisper, reminded of his declaration that we are raw and honest or we are nothing.

“You,” he agrees. “And us.”

Us. I have never truly been a part of an “us”, but the idea strokes a raw nerve ending, then caresses it with possibilities. I wet my suddenly dry lips and Liam leans in and brushes his mouth over mine before he murmurs, “And we need to get you to a doctor and on the pill.”

“That takes weeks,” I whisper, and the words vibrate with the same wistful quality I’d had earlier on the sidewalk, a wistfulness that I cannot seem to control any more than my feelings or reactions to Liam.

He cups my face and kisses me again, a soft brush of his mouth against mine, and I can feel myself sigh inside. This is what gets to me with Liam, the way he is so tender, and yet so dominating. It works for me. He works for me. So does the way he’s trailing kisses over my jaw, teasing my neck, then my ear. “Until then,” he voices, all velvet and seduction, “I’ll be fantasizing about the moment the only thing wrapped around me is you.”

My sex clenches with his words, slickness gathering on my bare thighs, and I decide right then that no woman knows what she has been missing until she has a man like Liam say such wicked things to her while he is na**d in all his male perfection.

He leans back to study me, his blue stare probing, intimate. “Have you ever been bound before?”

I laugh and the sound is nervousness personified.

He doesn’t laugh. His hands frame my face. “And you let me tie you up.” It is a statement, not a question, and there is a husky rasp to his voice that tells me he is affected by this realization.

“Yes,” I confirm, knowing somehow this is what he desires of me.

His hand reaches behind me, cupping my backside, and he pulls me to him. His shaft settles between my thighs, and I soften instantly against him. “And I’m just barbaric enough to like the idea of being the first of many things.”

He’s said something to this effect before. It’s just as arousing now as it was then. “You do seem to have a bit of a liking for the word ‘teacher’.”

He caresses up my back and closes his hand on the back of my head, pulling me to him, his cheek finding mine, his voice low, raspy, as he murmurs, “I haven’t even begun to start teaching you, Amy. We have not even begun to go where I plan to take you.” He drags his lips over my jaw and his mouth lingers a breath from mine. “You trusted me with your body by letting me bind you. I’m going to make sure you don’t regret it. That’s step one, baby.”