Page 114 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

Six feet, all at once, and the cold poured into every place he'd been. I stood pinned to the wall by nothing at all, hands still over my head.

He settled back against the couch. "Strip for me." A beat. "Slow. Sway your hips while you do it. I want to see how much you want it."

The humiliation came up my neck on schedule. Strip for Derek Harrington, dance like a stripper in a club. Then it exploded in my mind. Yes! This is what I want!

I was awkward standing there, embarrassed, trembling, a grown woman told to dance. But I did it. I wanted to be like this for him. I started to sway, and he watched me with the ghost of a smile.

"That's it," he said. "Nice. A little more. Beg me with your hips."

I swayed for him. The color was already high in my neck and climbing.

"Lift your dress off. Slow. Let me see every inch."

I drew it up past my panties, already soaked, and I felt him see that, over my belly, over my head, and I threw it somewhere I didn't watch land. I had never wanted to be fucked so badly in my life as I did right now. I would do anything.

He came closer. Then: "Close your eyes."

I closed them, and the dark made it worse, made it everything, his hands finding me by feel, turning me, the bra coming undone. A small sound escaped me. He turned me back and drew it off, and there I was in his front room in nothing but my panties with my eyes shut, swaying.

He whispered a question. "Color?"

It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. "Green," I answered. "So green."

"Open your eyes."

He was close when I did. He leaned in and kissed me and took my breasts in both hands and held them, hard, like they were his to hold, and then stepped back again, and I understood he was going to keep doing that, giving and taking it away, all night if he wanted.

The room came back to me all at once. "Can anybody walk in?" It came out thin. "What if somebody walks in—"

"Don't stop dancing." Not even a glance at the door. "If somebody walks in, they'll see you dancing for me. You won't stop, will you?"

I opened my mouth to say something reasonable, but what came out was, "No. I won't stop."

And the fact that it was true, that I'd keep dancing, that some part of me wanted the door to open, went down through me hot and shaming, and I kept moving anyway.

He kicked off his shoes, pulled his shirt over his head, unhurried about that too.

"Turn around. Hands on the wall." A beat, and the next in the same even voice, like it cost him nothing to say and he knew what it cost me to hear. "Stick that gorgeous ass out for me."

I turned. I put my hands on the wall. I did it.

I was trembling, vibrating with how badly I wanted his hands back. I had never in my life done anything so demeaning.

I felt him come up behind me. He took my hips in both hands and pulled them back, arranging me, and pulled again when it wasn't enough.

"I want you offering yourself to me." His mouth was near my ear. "Are you offering yourself to me, Lacey?"

"Yes," I whispered, trembling.

"Say it."

"Yes. I'm offering myself to you."

"I want the dirty words out of your mouth." He said it like a man in no hurry at all, like we had all night to get there. "Are you offering your ass to me?"

"I—" It stuck, and then it didn't. "Yes. I'm offering my ass to you."

God. That's the sluttiest thing I've ever said. And I'd said it standing up, sober, to Derek Harrington.