She’d co-opted the picture in Raina’s parlor. She looked like a man’s fantasy, and it made her tremble, because she knew she looked like one particular man’s fantasy. A man who had a propensity for saloon girls and the John Wayne cowboy code of the Wild West, a code he claimed was directly connected to the code of knights and chivalry. Since he’d been alive back then, he should know.

When she lifted her gaze, he was standing a few paces away. He was still wet, only now he wore a duster, chaps, boots and spurs. He carried a bridle and a coil of rope on his shoulder, as if he’d just come in from tending stock. As he studied her, he let them slide off that broad perch, tossed them onto the back of a chair with a clank of metal and a muted thud. She clung to the way the rough twine passed through his fingers, and she shivered as she imagined that against her skin. He saw it, the blue eyes becoming more intent.

“You’re a fantasy, for sure,” he rumbled. The sound of that sexy voice, low and filled with lust, made her rib cage strain for more air in her boned confinement. “All tied up so you can’t run from me.” Picking up the rope, he twisted it in his hand, and she noticed it had a couple knots in the end. “Maybe I should put you over my knee and beat you, for all the bad nights you’ve given me. Or keep a bit in your mouth until I’ve had my say and that sharp tongue doesn’t interfere. But I think I’ve got a better use for your mouth.”

He moved to her then, bringing the smell of leather and denim close. “Lift your face up to me. Close your eyes.”

She did, and gasped as cold rainwater splashed across her cheeks, over her breasts. Opening her eyes, she saw he’d taken off his hat, angling it so the water still captured in the brim trickled slowly over her. He watched the water run down her breasts, some of it funneling into the cleavage. “I like you all trussed up, in just that corset.”

The bikini bottoms tied around her wrists hadn’t been the first time their lovemaking had taken this kind of turn. She’d been innocent when he’d first lain with her, but their couplings had integrated this element almost from the beginning. She’d spent her life so guarded, so many things locked up inside. Through restraint and command, Derek was able to free her. Though not all alpha men had it, she’d recognized that dominance went naturally with his personality, and something in her craved and responded to it. Every time he won her surrender, that boulder of responsibility, guilt and insecurity was removed, letting her breathe.

It was part of what had pulled her to Mikhael, she couldn’t deny it, though she knew there was a pretty big chasm between this and that. Mikhael’s dominance helped her appease her body’s hunger. Derek’s helped her stretch her wings, let her fly. With Mikhael, she found a way to numb her aching heart. With Derek, she surrendered it utterly. It was chicken and egg. Maybe Mikhael had given her the bravery to flesh this particular fantasy out in her head. Or maybe her needs with Mikhael had become even more explicit, the more she fantasized about and missed Derek. As closely linked as Derek and she had once been, she wondered if maybe this fantasy had crossed his mind a couple times.

Oh, Goddess, this was a huge mistake.

She saw something warring in his expression as well, likely a projection of what was going on inside of her. She told herself she wanted to be used hard, fucked senseless. She wanted an act devoid of tenderness. And yet she hungered for him to bend down, put his mouth on hers, give her one of those soul-stealing kisses where she’d open herself up and hand him her heart anew, everything she was or wished to be.

“Please,” she whispered. She didn’t know how to choose, but it was okay; it was her fantasy. It would know. Raina had said so.

“So afraid of letting go, but all sweet honey when I take control. Fuck, you’re killing me.”

Shrugging off the duster, he tossed the rope aside so it hit the table with another heart-stopping thud. The lantern trembled, and so did she, afraid it might go out. But this was her fantasy. Only she could blow it out, though of course if he put it out, it would be an extension of her mind, ending the fantasy. It was so dangerous to get lost in this.

Shut up and just enjoy it.

His hands moved to his belt, loosening it from the buckle. “Your shirt,” she breathed. “Please.” She repeated it, wanting to see him. She wanted to rub her cheek against his hard stomach, take him in her mouth. Looking up at him like that, her mouth stretched over him, had always stirred him to an even thicker girth. She’d loved it.

His biceps rippled with casual power as he pulled the cotton shirt over his head, tossed it to the side. When he opened the jeans, her thigh muscles tensed, lifting her up so she was dead eye level as he reached in and drew out what she wanted to see. He’d already been noticeably thick against his jeans, but seeing it up close and personal made things between her thighs contract, hard.

“You work hard, girl, and I’ll bend you over that saddle over there. Put every inch of me in that wet heat of yours.”

Yes, that was what she wanted. Rough male demand. Even so, her heart betrayed her as she leaned forward. A lump formed in her throat, making her want to weep. For all that this seemed down and dirty, it was still Derek. And that moved it right from crude, simple satisfaction into the more complicated maze of intimacy. She parted her lips, tasted him, welcoming him the way she wanted to welcome him inside other parts of her body. Inside all of her.

He dug his fingers into her hair, controlling her movements as he pushed in deep. But once there, he stopped, a hard shudder going through him. She found herself doing the same at that contact. Closing her eyes, a moan caught in the back of her throat. Two stingy tears had squeezed out from beneath her lashes.

His taste, his heat and life. So close to him, touching him. Contact. He would take her after this, and no matter how rough he threatened or promised to make it, he knew everything about her, how her body responded, what her soul needed. Not just the dark, ugly part of her soul that Mikhael knew. Derek knew all of it, the dark and light.

But she wasn’t that same girl. As Raina said, Derek was one of the good guys. If he knew just how dark she’d gone, he’d no more have sex with her than he would with a harpy straight from the fetid depths of Hell.

Stop it. This is your fantasy. All yours. Don’t ruin it. She hollowed her cheeks, flicked her tongue over the base of his cock, and the spell was broken. His hand convulsed on her. The jeans were gone from under the chaps, but he was still wearing those sexy, flank-baring leathers. It made her thank Raina’s skill anew for allowing her mind to dispense with the improbable clothes-coordination issues. She wished her hands were free so she could trace that buckled line just above the pubic bone, though. When he thrust harder, she made a noise of urgency and distress at once. She wanted him to demand more of her, make her strain to pleasure him. She needed oblivion to leave the rest behind, and Derek had always had his own unique way of making that happen, ways she didn’t anticipate, like now.

He pulled her off him. In that blink, the jeans were back and fastened, but he left the belt hanging loose. Before she could figure out why her mind would want him more clothed in any fantasy scenario, he was reaching behind her. The angle pressed his body against her and she burrowed her nose in his abdomen, putting her mouth on him there. He made a noise, freed her wrists from her ankles, though he left both still tied. Picking her up under her arms, he put her over his shoulder, his hand spreading out on her buttocks. She moaned again as he fingered the petals of her sex between her bound legs, and she writhed, nearly choking on the desire that swept through her.

“You’re going to sit here now.” He placed her on the table, her feet on the bench, bottom firmly on the surface. “Don’t squirm. You might get splinters in places you don’t like. Though I might like plucking those out for you.” A flash of that devastating grin.

Putting his knee on the bench to the right of her feet, he cupped her breasts in that tight corset, his gaze assessing, pleased by what he saw. She swallowed, quivering, as he freed the first several hooks so he could slide a finger inside, tease over her left nipple. At the first contact, she cried out, arched into the touch. “Still have those responsive tits. Remember how I could just look at them, and you’d get two hard little points? I could see them even under your bra, begging for attention.”

Bending down, he put his mouth on top of her left breast, giving her a heated, openmouthed kiss on that curve, pushed up like a ripe offered fruit. His head, his hair, brushed her jaw, her cheek, and she closed her eyes, taking in his scent, her fingers clenching in the bindings. Had she been that smart or that masochistic in her fantasy, denying herself touch, because she knew that might take things too far into the emotional realm? The ropes around her ankles and wrists were a reminder of what she couldn’t have.

“Derek….” She breathed his name, because she had to say it. Earlier today, she’d had to say it in scorn, but here she could say it the way she wanted. With need, desire, yearning.

“I’m here, baby. I’ve got you. Give it all to me.”

I didn’t mean it, when I sent you away and said I didn’t love you anymore….

She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud, but since she hadn’t let herself even think it for three years, she’d give herself that at least. She cried out again as his tongue found her nipple, teasing it on the inside of the corset’s loosened hold so the friction of the stiff fabric was enough to make her squirm, just as he’d warned her against. But he slid his hands down under her backside, cupping each cheek in one broad palm. It brought his fingers in contact with the wet folds between her legs and she writhed harder. She would have picked up every splinter on the table without his protection. He had the nipple in his mouth now, his sandpaper jaw against the tender skin of her breast.

“Oh God….” She was going to come just from this. Go right over. She could climax three, four, sometimes five times with Mikhael, astounding him with her responsiveness and sometimes frightening her, because she knew part of it had an unnatural source. With Derek she might come twice that amount, because it was him. She’d come so intensely she’d be in danger of blacking out, particularly in the oxygen-depriving corset. But it made her feel so erotic, so restrained….