I jerk my head out of the way and laugh. “I know, surprise.”
Her eyes are wide. “Yeah.”
The car slows and Lachlan clears his throat.
Ellie snatches the bobby pin from my hand and reaches for her purse, busying herself with tucking it away.
The car slides through the gates at 24 Sussex, stopping at the front door. I get out first and go around to Ellie’s side. She takes my arm and holds her wrap tight around herself as we hurry through the cold.
An RCMP guard lets us into the house, then I wave him off.
We have a conversation to finish.
She zooms ahead into the sitting room. She puts her purse down, and I stop behind her, setting my hands on her shoulders, signalling I want to help her with her wrap.
Most of the time, I’m a beer and pizza kind of guy. Ellie naked except for one of my t-shirts, perched on my lap without any fuss or fancy trappings.
But on New Year’s Eve, there’s something magical about bringing my woman home and helping her out of her wrap, revealing her silk dress that plays up the golden red of her hair and the creaminess of her skin.
She’s a goddess, a princess, an ethereal fairy…in blue jeans or blue silk, she’s perfect. And I like spoiling her.
We stand there in the silence as I slide the rest of the bobby pins from her hair, letting her waves fall in a silky slide.
“I’m excited for them,” I tell her as I kiss her shoulder. As I trace the delicate muscles and bones there with my tongue, then add my teeth. Just a press. A little taste of my Sprite.
“It makes me think about making babies with you.”
I didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she let it go in a slight, breathy exhale. “Oh.”
“Am I rushing you?”
“No,” she whispers. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
My heart squeezes. “Since when?”
"A little while. But…"
I can only imagine what she's going to say. But it's too soon. But we need to wait for the wedding. She's not wrong on the latter point. I don't care about the former, but I'll respect her wishes. "Whenever you're ready."
"It's smart to wait until the wedding."
"I know." I sigh as I nuzzle into her neck. The sacrifices we make to avoid gossip and scandal.
"But I need to tell you something else."
"Mmm." I'm listening, but not really. I'm mostly thinking about the dirty talk I'm going to fill her ears with tonight. Me knocking her up. How good she's going to look--
“Violet told me she was pregnant.”
Now I'm listening. I stop kissing her neck. "When?"
"Ahhh…" She shrugs out of my grasp and moves across the room, turning and giving me a curious look.
I curve one eyebrow up in a well, I’m waiting kind of look.
"A week. Or so."
“You’ve known my best friend was going to be a father for more than a week and you didn’t tell me?”
"Maybe."
I make a disappointed sound. I'm not really disappointed. I'm sure she had a good reason. But I like the way her chest rises and falls as I give her an even sterner look.
And I like the way she protests.
“I really don’t know what the big deal is,” she says breathlessly, backing away from me.
I tug at the knot of my tie, leaving it hanging loose around my neck as I prowl after her. “I don’t like secrets between us, Ellie.”
Her eyes flash and she nibbles on her lower lip. I don’t miss that her hands are slowly gathering her skirt, pinching the fabric up, up, up so it’s bunched in her fists.
“Ellie…”
Her chest rises and falls as she gives me an innocent look. “Yes?”
“Sprite.”
“Sir?”
I shrug out of my tuxedo jacket and hang it over the corner of a chair, my gaze locked on her the entire time. “Don’t you think there should be some consequences for keeping the news about Max from me?”
Slowly, deliberately, she shakes her head from side to side.
My pulse thuds heavy and hot in my veins. “And why is that?”
“It wasn’t my secret to share,” she whispers, a smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
“I still want to spank you.”
The smile breaks across her face. “Then you better catch me.”
She spins around and darts into the hallway. I get to the bottom of the staircase when she’s halfway up it, and I follow two steps at a time. My fingers glance off her hip at the top of the stairs, but she kicks off her heels and I have to jump to miss them as they tumble past my feet.
“Playing dirty,” I growl, slowing to a walk as she flees to our bedroom.
Nowhere to escape in there.
3
Ellie
I leap onto the bed a second before Gavin stalks in. He sees me, but he doesn’t acknowledge me.
Instead, he pulls his keys from his pocket and unlocks the vintage style padlock on the antique chest at the end of our bed.
Such an innocent looking piece of furniture. So carefully staged to look like that lock is purely decorative.
My heart speeds up as Gavin lifts the lid. He means to really play tonight and I can’t wait to see what he has in store.
He removes coils of black silk rope—the same rope he tied me up with that afternoon with Lachlan—and tosses it on the bed. The velcro cuffs come next. My pussy clenches with the memory of that day.
I know there will never be a repeat of that particular performance, and I wouldn’t want one, but I’m all for reliving it in a private, dirty way, just the two of us.
Gavin closes the chest and spins around to face me.
“Instead of spanking you, Sprite, I think your punishment should be something…different. I hope you aren’t too attached to that dress,” he says as he holds up a pair of safety scissors.
It is a nice dress, but I got it on sale and someone spilled wine on it earlier. And nothing tops the thrill of being cut out of it. Besides, I can always use the material to make some nice throw cushions or something. I give him an innocent look. “No, not overly attached, but maybe you could cut along a seam so it is somewhat salvageable?”
Gavin chuckles as he climbs onto the bed with me. “That can be arranged.”
I hold perfectly still as he slides the shears up from the bottom of my dress, tearing through the silk like a hot knife through butter.
The fabric falls away, leaving me in stockings and lingerie.
There’s a glint in his eye as he snips the sides of my panties, then tosses them to the floor.
“I think we’ll leave the garter belt and stockings for now,” he says as he manhandles me, rolling me to one side, then the other so he can toss the dress in the same direction as my destroyed panties. Then he picks up a cuff fastens it around my wrist. He walks around the bed, attaching cuffs to my ankles, and finally the other wrist.
He leans down and claims my lips in a long, slow, lingering kiss, then returns to the foot of the bed and picks up a coil of rope.
“Spread your legs as wide as you can.”
It’s fascinating to watch him work. There was so much more going on the last time he tied me up to this bed, and I didn’t pay much attention to the details.