Tie Me

Chapter Five

He wasn't sure why Dawn had him in knots. She hadn't been overly flirtatious. She looked nothing like Sara. Dawn had gorgeous, deep red hair, hazel eyes flecked with green, and adorable freckles on her long, straight nose. Her lips were thinner than Sara's had been. She was tall, long limbed and fine boned. She didn't smell like Sara or sound like her or say things that reminded him of phrases Sara used to say. Dawn was nothing like Sara. Kellen couldn't remember the last time he'd looked at any woman and not been reminded of Sara at all. He couldn’t remember, because it had never happened. He didn't know if he should feel relieved or guilty or sad. What he mostly felt was aroused.

"You're attracted to me?" Dawn asked, her expressive hazel eyes wide. "Because you're doing a good job of hiding it. Why do you draw away when I touch you? You make me feel like I have cooties."

"I don't want to be attracted to you."

"Are you married? Engaged?"

"I wish I were." He might as well just tell her what she was up against. "Are you attracted to me too?" He thought she was, but before he started saying things to scare her away and remind himself of the emptiness inside, he needed to make sure the revelation was worth the pain.

"Yeah, I am definitely attracted to you," she said. "I can't imagine there's a woman on the planet who wouldn't be."

He rolled his eyes. He didn't need her flattery. He just needed her to shoot straight with him.

"The woman I planned to marry died, so technically I'm not attached. But spiritually and emotionally I'm in a relationship that doesn't exist."

She stared at him, her eyes searching his until he had to look away. "Well, that sucks," she said. "Kind of hard for me to compete with someone who can do no wrong."

Not the empathy and sympathy to which he was accustomed. Dawn’s eyes were dry and she wasn't doing that annoying pat his hand and avoid his gaze thing that so many people did when he told them about Sara.

"Okay,” she said, turning back to her keyboard. “I'm going to start the song again and when I get to my stuck spot, I’d like you to play whatever occurs to you."

That was it? She wasn't going to hound him with questions and overwhelm him with so many memories of Sara that he was forced to retreat inside himself again? She wasn’t going to give him a reason to push her away? He didn’t know how to respond.

She started playing her unfinished composition and as before, the collection of notes lifted his spirit, made him yearn for the song to never end. With each successive note he felt happier, more alive, more connected to something than he had in years. When Dawn reached her final note, Kellen prepared to take over, but three additional notes poured from her fingers. She straightened on the bench beside him and played the three notes again. And again. Then she sang them in the most beautiful falsetto he had ever heard and played them yet again.

She released a long breath, the tension draining from her body. "Three is better than none."

"And better than crap."

She beamed and gave him a hasty hug. "I think my muse is intimidated by your crap, Kellen."

He fought the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close. He still wasn't sure how he felt about his attraction to her. It felt different than when he got sexually excited when a woman made unwanted advances toward him. Yeah, his cock got hard when women came on to him, but he felt so guilty about his body's reaction that he couldn’t bring himself to give in to his sexual needs.

Sitting next to Dawn, he felt stirrings of lust, but the place she touched him was deeper than his baser needs. She touched him where his music resided. Sara had never touched that part of him. When they'd been together, he'd almost given up music. Sole Regret’s first album hadn’t been the success they’d hoped. With Sara in college and Kellen holding down odd jobs to pay the bills, they’d been hopelessly broke. Once Sara’s medical bills started to pile up, it seemed the only thing to do was leave the band and find a decent job. He’d wanted to provide for her. Only Owen’s insistence that Kellen stay had kept him from giving up the band entirely. Owen had believed in Sole Regret when Kellen had completely lost hope on their dream. Owen ever the optimist. Owen who always put other’s needs before his own. Owen onboard for anything at any time. Owen...

God, what was he going to do about Owen? Kellen had made a complete mess of their friendship and just when he thought he finally had their relationship back on its proper track, he did something completely stupid. Like tie Owen to a pommel and show a woman how to give him a proper hand job by demonstration. What in the fuck had he been thinking last night?

Dawn abruptly stopped playing. "You're not listening," she said. "Are you bored?"

"No. I just have a lot on my mind," he said. "Don't stop. This song is like a break in the clouds during a storm."

"The eye of your hurricane."

He chuckled. His life was definitely in a whirlwind. "Exactly."

"If you want to talk about her, I'll listen," she said, playing softly again.

"Do you want me to talk about her?"

Dawn shook her head. "Not particularly. I'm sure if you loved her, she was wonderful."

"Sometimes I hate her for what she's done to me." Kellen tensed. Had he really just admitted that aloud? He’d never even admitted that to himself. I didn’t mean it, Sara. I could never hate you.

"I can understand that," Dawn said.

He somehow doubted it.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.

Dawn hesitated, and then she nodded. “But he didn’t love me in return. He thought I was a silly little girl and in retrospect, I was. I was sixteen and he was in his thirties. He’d been my piano teacher for years before my hormones kicked into high gear and I made a complete idiot of myself by throwing myself at him.”

“I’m sure if you hadn’t been jailbait, he would have caught you. What was his name?”

“Pierre,” she said, releasing a dreamy sigh.

“Pierre?” Kellen chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”

“He’s French,” she said stiffly.

“Vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles, mon amour,” he whispered close to her ear.

She swayed against him, and he wrapped an arm around her back to keep her from tumbling from the piano bench.

“You speak French?” she said.

“Just that one sentence,” he said. He didn’t even remember exactly what it meant. Something about the stars being beautiful.

“So if I said, je suis très excitée par vous, you wouldn’t know what I meant?”

“Sounds kinky,” he teased.

“It could be.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. There were mere inches between their lips. Would she taste as decadent as she looked? The green flecks in her eyes caught Kellen’s attention. So exotic. His heart thudded faster and faster as he leaned closer. He hadn’t kissed a woman since Sara. Hadn’t wanted to. He sure the fuck wanted to now.

Dawn pressed a fingertip against his lips. “Hold that thought,” she said and shifted away to pound on her keyboard with renewed vigor.

Kellen stifled a groan. He felt torn between his yearning to devour this woman’s sensual mouth and his desire to be a part of the soaring composition she was creating right beside him. Dawn played with her eyes closed, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys. The loose bodice of her dress fell open as she rocked forward to press the foot pedals, and Kellen caught a glimpse of the soft swell of one breast and an expanse of pale freckles decorating the smooth alabaster skin of her chest. Would he find freckles elsewhere? In places hidden from his view? On her belly? Her thighs? His cock twitched as he thought about kissing every freckle he discovered until she spread her legs for him. Would she allow him to sample her fluids with his tongue? Permit him to breathe the musk of her arousal while he treated her pussy to the same deep, plundering kisses he craved from her mouth? He wanted to hear his name gasped, moaned, screamed as she came over and over again at the insistence of his tongue, his lips, his teeth.

When he noticed the pair of thin boxer shorts she’d loaned him were tented with his obvious arousal, he was glad she had her eyes closed. He shifted so that his belly was against the piano and his erection was hidden from view. He tried not to imagine fucking Dawn on the lid of her grand piano, with her dress bunched up around her waist and her bare breasts spilling from her bodice. Tried but failed. He could almost feel her heels digging into his ass, her heat gripping him. He wiped at sweat that formed at the base of his throat.

This was what he got for denying his needs for so long. And it didn’t help that the song she was composing held the cadence of the sea—the repetition of surge and withdrawal, peak and valley—that was suddenly a lot more sexual to him than it should have been.

The storm raged outside, producing a clap of thunder so loud the windows rattled. Dawn jumped and pressed a hand to the center of her chest. “Oh,” she said, “that startled me. Sometimes I get lost in my music and forget there’s a world beyond my own sound.”

“I get the same way on stage sometimes,” he said.

She gnawed on her lips while she considered him closely. “You look a bit tense,” she said. “Is the song not working for you? You can be honest.”

The song was working for him in ways he was sure she hadn’t intended. He couldn’t very well tell her that it turned him on. Of course in his current state of sexual frustration, just about everything turned him on. He’d even gotten turned on while tying Owen last night.

He’d bound Owen so a woman could have her way with him, but seeing him like that… Kellen hadn’t been able to keep his hands off him and had ultimately fled the room with a stiff cock. How fucked up was that?

Habitual masturbation helped ease Kellen’s frustration, but it just wasn’t the same as touching another, as being touched by someone he loved and trusted. He’d touched Owen—and had once allowed Owen to touch him—because in whatever alternate universe his morals were now living, that was not cheating on Sara. Even though he’d convinced himself of that, how in the hell did he explain any of that shit to Owen? Owen who was down for anything as long as it felt good. Owen who loved everyone unconditionally. Kellen had taken advantage of Owen’s nature, and he felt terrible about it. Not terrible enough to have an honest conversation with him. Too awkward. What could he possibly say to make things right?

“Earth to Kellen,” Dawn said. “Are you feeling this song at all?”

“If I was honest about what this song does to me,” Kellen said, “you’d toss me back into the storm. Which actually might be for the best.”

“What does it do to you?” she asked.

He leaned back from the keyboard and glanced down at his lap. She followed his gaze and gasped at the very noticeable bulge in his shorts. “Oh!”

He rubbed at his eyebrow. She must think he only had one thing on his mind, which wasn’t far from the truth. “I’ll go.”

She grabbed his thigh before he could climb from the bench. “This song does similar things to me,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about sex.” She stared at him, all beautiful and beguiling, and his cock jerked. “I can’t stop thinking about sex with you.”

His mouth went dry.

“I’ve never gotten aroused while composing a song,” she said, “so it must be the company.”

Her hand slipped up his thigh, and his belly clenched. If she touched him there, he was going to explode.

“Don’t leave. I need to see where this takes me and I’m afraid if you go, I’ll never finish.”

When she removed her hand and placed it over the keys, he groaned.

“I’m sorry to be selfish,” she said, “but I have to keep going. I’m consumed by the melody now and I don’t want to stop until I’m finished. I hope you understand.”

Kellen understood perfectly. He never stopped until his partner was finished. At least, when he’d actually allowed himself to have partners, it had been that way.

Her fingers flew across the keys, drawing so many positive emotions from Kellen that he could have kissed her in gratitude. The song was a celebration of sensuality, and it had been far too long since he’d celebrated. The enraptured expression on Dawn’s face as she worked through the composition over and over again made him want to drag her to the floor and claim her. Lose himself in her body. He’d already lost himself to her passion.

A flash of lightning illuminated Dawn’s lovely face. An instant later, they were bathed in darkness. The storm seemed to grow louder as the humming appliances and the air conditioning system fell silent.

“I’ll try to find candles,” Dawn said. “I think there are some in the kitchen.”

Kellen reached out to touch her and found the warm skin of her hand resting on her thigh.

“We don’t need light to hear the music,” he said, “or to feel it. Don’t bother.” Plus, he really didn’t mind sitting with her in the dark while the heavens battled outside. He could get as aroused as he liked, and she wouldn’t be able to see it. Too bad the lights hadn’t gone out before he’d revealed his not-so-little secret. Before he’d been so absorbed in the sight of her and the music she created that he’d lost his mind and drawn attention to his painfully hard dick.

Lightning flashed, giving him a quick glimpse of her contemplative expression.

The rain lashed against the windows and wind howled through the rafters. The entire house swayed slightly on its sturdy stilts. Even so, Kellen was so fixated on the woman beside him that the most pronounced sound for him was her breathing.

Dawn turned her hand, still resting on her thigh, until her palm met his and held his hand in a loose grip.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “We don’t need light. Just sound.”

And touch.

Kellen’s thumb stroked her skin. Why did holding her hand feel so intimate? Why did it feel so right?

“Kellen?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“What was her name?”

His heart twisted, and he tugged his hand free of hers. He focused on the rivulets of rainwater flowing down the windowpanes against a background of distant flickers. “Sara,” he said around the lump in his throat. “Her name was Sara.”

“Sorry,” Dawn said. “I shouldn’t have brought her up. It’s just…” She took a deep breath. “If I had a man who loved me even half as much as you obviously still love her, I’d consider myself blessed.”

“I don’t feel blessed.” Damned. That’s how he felt. Damned.

Dawn leaned against his arm, and her free hand slid along his lower back. Kellen held his breath, not wanting to be comforted by her simple gesture, but he was. It felt wonderful to relax against her and allow himself that small bit of feminine contact.

“So why are you single, Dawn O’Reilly?” he asked. “A beautiful, sexy, talented, intelligent, successful woman such as yourself should be taken.”

Her arm tightened around his back, which pulled her closer to his side. She was so warm. Smelled so sweet. He was glad of the darkness so he could experience her on an entirely new level. He’d been overwhelmed with the sight of her before; now his other senses had the opportunity to be dazzled. He leaned closer and detected a hint of honeysuckle on her skin.

“Just busy I guess,” she said. “I haven’t been able to find the right man. Or maybe I was waiting for him to find me.”

Kellen closed his eyes and swallowed. He wasn’t ready to be the right man for her. How did he convey that without hurting her feelings? There was absolutely nothing standing in his way but himself, but he sure as hell wasn’t prepared to clear the road ahead just because this woman had his hormones in an uproar.

“Dawn, I…”

She drew away, and he immediately missed the feel of her hand in his.

“You don’t have to say it. I understand.”

A random note sounded on the piano as her fingers found the keys.

He squeezed her knee.

“I didn’t realize how alone I’ve felt,” she whispered, “with nothing but my music to fill the days and nights. I thought it was enough.”

He knew what that was like. With the exception of Owen, he hadn’t allowed himself to care about anything but music since Sara had passed and if he hadn’t known Owen before meeting her, Kellen wasn’t sure he’d have ever let anyone close again.

“What about your friends?” he asked. “Your family? Don’t you see them?”

“From time to time,” she said. Her hand moved to cover his on her knee, as if she feared he’d move it away. “They have their own lives. I’ve never been a priority to anyone.” She laughed, a dry empty sound. “When I was little, my mother spent a lot of time trying to wring a bit of talent out of me—ballet, gymnastics, art, if they had a class for it, I was in it. When she discovered I had a natural affinity for the piano, she handed me off to the best teachers my daddy’s money could buy and made sure they pushed me. It was almost as if she was relieved that she didn’t have to bother with me anymore. Daddy…” She inhaled a deep breath and pushed on. “Daddy always made appearances at my recitals to show he was proud of my accomplishments, but there just wasn’t any warmth in him. I never felt close to either of them, not the way I imagined other daughters felt about their parents. I thought that the only way I could make them love me was if I was perfect.”

He heard the pain in her voice and wished he could see her face. He probably should have encouraged her to find those candles. “What about your siblings?” he asked.

“Only child,” she said.

“Me too. Well, until I met Owen, and his family treated me like one of theirs.” He laughed, because even thinking about the Mitchells brought him joy.

“Tell me about Owen,” she said, her hand tightening on his. “I was homeschooled by the best tutors money could buy, so I never got to be around anyone my own age until I became an adult. Piano isn’t a team sport. More than anything, I would have liked to have had a childhood friend.”

“Your family must be very wealthy,” he said quietly.

“I never wanted for anything as a child,” she said. “Except affection.”

Kellen hadn’t had a surplus of either wealth or affection. His grandfather had been an important part of his youth, but he’d been old and age had done terrible things to his memory. He hadn’t lived long after they’d put him in a nursing home for his safety. Grandfather simply hadn’t thrived away from the brushy wilderness he loved to wander. It was as if taking him away from his land made him give up on life. It wasn’t long after his grandfather had passed that Kellen had met Owen. It was as if destiny had known how much Kellen would need him in the coming years.

“Living in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have any close friends as a child either,” Kellen said. “I met Owen on the first day of seventh grade. We’d gone to different elementary schools, but they bused us to the same junior high. I was hoping for a fresh start. New school. Only half the kids there would know where I came from. Even then, no one would sit next to the poor kid who’d done a really bad job of trying to cut his own hair the night before, and no one would let the pudgy kid in orange and white horizontal stripes sit next to them. So Owen had no choice but to sit next to me. He’d given my bad haircut one long look, but he never said anything. He never made fun of me like the other kids did. Owen sat next to me on the bus every day for a week and we didn’t say a word to each other. We had the same lack of popularity at lunch and sat at the same table, both trying to be invisible, because when you’re thirteen, invisible is better than being noticed for being different.”

Dawn squeezed his hand. “Thirteen is an awful age. So I guess you two finally started talking to each other. Or do you still just sit in silence, trying to be invisible?”

Kellen chuckled. “We started talking after his mother stood up for me in the principal’s office.”

“Principal’s office? Were you a troublemaker?”

“I only made trouble when I couldn’t ignore it any more. And there’s just something in Owen so pure and good that I wanted to preserve it. I hated that those assholes would walk up behind him in the cafeteria and squeal like pigs as they shoved him against the table. I hated how they treated him far more than I hated how they made fun of my clothes, my shoes, my haircut, and the trailer I lived in with my mother and her welfare check. Owen had never done a mean thing to anyone in his life. Where I came from didn’t matter to him, and he wasn’t upset that he was forced to sit next to me on the bus and at lunch. He seemed grateful.

“So a week after we started hanging out in silence, Owen’s sitting there across the cafeteria table from me, minding his own business as usual, and this fucking asshole, Jasper Barnes, picks up Owen’s chocolate pudding cup and smashes it into his chest. ‘You still going to eat that shit?’ he said. ‘I bet you will, Piggie. Lick it off. Eat your own shit, Piggie.’ And then he starts making those pig-squeal sounds.”

“That’s so mean.”

“I was pissed, not going to deny it, but I probably would have just sat there and tried not to watch, grateful it wasn’t me being targeted. Then Owen lifted his head and he looked at me. I saw the shame in his eyes. Shame. What the fuck did he have to be ashamed of? That fucking bully was the one who should have been ashamed. When Owen started to clean the pudding off his shirt with a napkin, I fucking lost it. I was a scrawny kid and didn’t have a chance against a big jock like Jasper Barnes, so I went after him with my fork. I didn’t even get the chance to stab him with it before the teachers pulled me off him. I got suspended for using a weapon at school and later got my ass kicked by that bully and half the defensive line of the football team, but it was worth it because Owen started talking to me after that. Actually, he hasn’t shut up since.”

Kellen smiled as he thought about Owen’s ceaseless prattle. He was definitely a talker. And something about sitting in the dark with Dawn O’Reilly made Kellen a talker too.

“I’m glad you became friends. I can tell he means a lot to you.”

“I’d die for him. I don’t say that lightly. Owen’s always saying how I saved him by protecting him from the bullying, but he saved me a thousand times over. No telling where I’d be today if it wasn’t for him and his family. He didn’t see the dirt-poor bastard that everyone else in town saw. He never judged me based on my mother’s poor choices. Owen just saw me. It didn’t bother him that his mom gave me his older brother’s hand-me-downs. Owen said great things like, ‘You have no idea how glad I am that I don’t have to try to squeeze into Chad’s old clothes anymore’ and ‘I can’t believe my mom gave you socks and underwear for your birthday. The woman is so embarrassing.’ The woman is a saint, is what she is. I hit my growth spurt in eighth grade and if it hadn’t been for Janine, I’d have been wearing high-waters and ripping the seams out of my Spiderman T-shirt.”

“Did Owen realize that his mom was helping you?”

“He never said anything, but he had to have known. Everyone knew that I’d never met my father and that my mom took a welfare check because it’s hard for a drunk to hold down a job. She’d given up hope for a better life long before I was born. Our lack of money was what defined me. But not to the Mitchell family. I was Owen’s friend, so I was their surrogate son. His mother is a true treasure. Best woman I’ve ever known.”

“So there’s another woman in your life that I’ll never measure up to,” Dawn said.

Kellen chuckled. “No other woman can measure up to you either, Dawn. You are the only woman who sexually excites me with a mere song.”

She leaned in and whispered close to his ear, “I’ll take what I can get.”

It wasn’t only her song that sexually excited him. The tickle of her breath against his skin drew a soft moan of longing from the back of his throat.

“Kellen?”

He loved the way his name sounded when she spoke it. “Dawn?”

“How long has it been since you last had sex?”

He sat stunned that she would ask him something so forward.

“Uh, why?” he said after a moment.

“I don’t usually have sex with men I’ve just meet, but I want to with you.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. How could he turn down her offer? It wasn’t that women never propositioned him. They did it all the time—rubbed up against him, shoved their hands down his pants, whispered suggestions into his ear—but he hadn’t been interested. Sara’s memory had given him the strength to say no. Hell, when he was alone with a woman, he found forwardness downright repulsive, but he was alone with Dawn and her words didn’t have the usual effect on him. He wanted her. God, he fucking wanted her.

Promise you’ll never make love to another woman, Kellen. Sara’s words echoed through his head. They were like a slap to the face.

“It’s been five years,” he said.

“You haven’t done anything in five years?”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t done anything. I just haven’t been inside a woman in that long.”

“Oh,” she said.

He could hear the disappointment in her voice. This time he was glad it was dark so he didn’t have to see it on her face.

“What kinds of things have you done?” she asked unexpectedly.

“Alone or with Owen?”

She gasped. “With Owen? Are you gay?”

“I’m not gay, Dawn. A bit confused maybe.” He rubbed at his eyebrow with two fingertips while he gathered his thoughts. “Can I talk to you about something? Something I haven’t even talked to Owen about? Something I need to tell him but am so worried about how he’ll react that every time I try to bring it up, I can’t form the words.”

What was it about the darkness that allowed him to open up? Or maybe it wasn’t the darkness at all. Maybe it was the kindred spirit within the woman beside him that made him feel he could tell Dawn anything.

“I’ll listen,” she said. “I probably won’t say the right thing though.”

He doubted there was a right thing to say. “Soon after Sara died, Owen started going to sex clubs and guilting me into going with him.”

“What’s a sex club? Is it like a whorehouse?”

He smiled and couldn’t resist running a hand along the base of her spine. Oh the naughty things he could introduce her to, Miss Sweet and Vanilla.

“No, you pay for a certain service at a whorehouse and that’s what you get. Sex clubs are where people of certain sexual tastes congregate and hook up.” He turned his face to whisper in her ear, and the tickle of her hair against his nose set off nerve endings that sent waves of pleasure to his groin and triggered alarm bells in his head—alarm bells he chose to ignore. “What are your sexual tastes, Dawn? I can tell you where there’s a club for it.”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable hooking up with some stranger in a club,” she said. The muscles of her back were taut beneath his palm.

No matter how much he enjoyed it, he needed to stop touching her. This thing between them wasn’t going to happen. “I wouldn’t want you to hook up with a stranger,” he said, which was the truth, but he had no business saying that to her. And he really did need to talk about what was going on with Owen. Maybe someone outside their relationship could make sense of it. “So one night while I was waiting for Owen to finish up spanking and screwing some chick he’d just met, I caught the eye of a man named Toshi.”

Dawn shifted beside him, squirming slightly.

“I didn’t have sex with Toshi,” he said.

“It’s none of my business if you did.”

“Do you want me to not talk about this? I can tell it’s making you uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, uncomfortable,” she whispered. “We’ll go with that.”

“Toshi is a master in the Japanese art of Shibari.”

“Does that involve swords and disembowelment?”

“No, ropes and release. Toshi spoke of tying knots as if it were a high art form—the way an inspired painter or a poet or a musician talks of his work. I was intrigued. I guess I’m a sucker for an artist. I let him show me a few techniques on one arm. He taught me to tie a couple of knots and then when Owen came to collect me, Toshi told me to keep the rope and if I wanted to learn more, where I could find him.”

“So I guess you found him.”

“I did a lot of research about Shibari on the Internet, even read a few books, but ultimately I did seek him out, because nothing compares to being taught one-on-one by a master.”

“That’s true.”

“He has a studio in San Francisco,” Kellen said. “He binds people with ropes and then he photographs them. For the first year after Sara died, nothing excited me—emotionally or physically. But as I walked through his gallery, admiring his work—flesh against intricate designs in colored rope—I’m not going to lie, I was aroused. The guilt almost made me leave.”

“Why did you feel guilty? It sounds erotic to me. Aren’t we supposed to get excited by things we find erotic?”

He didn’t want to go into that, so he pressed forward in his story. “Yeah, well, I asked Toshi to teach me to be an artist like him, to show me how to tie the ropes into designs that accentuated every line of the human form. He said in order to understand the art form, I first had to be a subject. He told me to strip off my clothes and allow him to bind me.”

Dawn squirmed again. When her hand lightly touched his bare knee, he gasped. He should have skipped this part of the story, he realized too late. That first experience with bondage had been one of the most intense emotional and sexual experiences of his life.

“Did you go through with it?” she asked.

“Yeah. I was scared to death. With each knot Toshi tied, I became more tense, more afraid, more aroused. When he was finished, I was aware of every inch of my body. I was completely helpless. I thought he might force me to have sex—thought I’d be okay with it even though I’d promised Sara. But once he had me bound, he whispered, ‘Now, you are free, my student,’ and then he sat beside me with one hand between my shoulder blades while I fought the rope. Not physically. I couldn’t move if I’d wanted to. But mentally I raged against my restraints for a really long time.”

“What did he mean you are free?”

“I didn’t understand until I stopped fighting against the bonds. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually I gave the ropes control, and then I understood what he meant. By giving up control, I became free.”

“That doesn’t make sense at all,” she said.

“It won’t unless you experience it for yourself.”

“Do you do the rope thing now? What did you call it?”

“Shibari. I haven’t been practicing much recently. For about three years, it was an outlet for me. I enjoyed tying women, but I only did it when Owen was with me. I’m not sure I trusted myself to be alone with a woman. They tend to beg for sex after I tie them, and I wasn’t willing to take it that far. Owen had no problem with that aspect. He’d have sex with them if they wanted it and eventually he started helping with the bondage too.”

“So you and Owen tied women up and then he had sex with them?”

“Not always. We left that decision to the woman.”

“But you didn’t do anything sexual with them?”

He took a deep breath. “I would usually…” He coughed. Wow, was he really going to tell her this? “…perform oral sex on them.”

Her breath caught, and she squirmed again.

“But I never penetrated them, never allowed them to touch my cock in any way. No blow jobs. Nothing.”

“You had to have been miserable.”

“I would have been, but Owen helped me out.” His stomach clenched. What must this woman think of him?

“How?” she asked.

“Hand jobs.”

“Oh, but no sex?”

“Isn’t it all sex?” he said. “That’s why I’m so confused. Sara was gone before I was introduced to Shibari, so somehow I convinced myself that it was okay. She didn’t like oral sex—”

“I like it,” Dawn blurted.

A long silence hung awkwardly between them, and he prayed for a bolt of lightning to light her features so he could see her expression.

“I mean if the guy knows what he’s doing,” she said. “Maybe she didn’t like it because you’re not good at it.”

Kellen chuckled. “Trust me, I’m good at it. She was a bit timid in bed.” Kellen rubbed the back of his neck. “That kind of deep intimacy embarrassed her, so she didn’t want me making out with her pussy for hours on end.”

“Dear lord,” Dawn whispered.

“So I convinced myself that oral sex didn’t go against my oath to her.”

“Thank God.”

Kellen chuckled at Dawn’s little asides. “And though I told her I’d never let a woman touch my cock, I never said anything about a man touching it. So I used Owen to get me off because I felt comfortable enough with him to let him touch me. The thought of any other man anywhere near my cock makes me ill, but Owen is different for some reason, and that’s the part I don’t understand. Why am I okay with him touching me?”

“Do you love him?”

“He’s my best friend.”

“So, yeah, you love him.”

It wasn’t as simple as that. “But not romantically.”

“Are you sexually attracted to him or not?” Neither judgmental nor accusatory, her tone was simply inquisitive.

Kellen tried to sort through the jumbled feelings he had for Owen. He was so glad that Dawn was letting him air his filthy laundry without judgment. He’d needed to talk to someone about this for years. He couldn’t discuss it with Owen when he really didn’t understand what was going on in his head, and he obviously didn’t want the rest of the band to know what went on between him and Owen behind closed doors, so he couldn’t talk to Jacob or Gabe or Adam either. Dawn couldn’t possibly understand how much she was doing for him by just listening and forcing him to face reality.

“I don’t look at him and think, damn, I want to fuck him unconscious. It’s more like, please, will someone touch me there? I can’t stand this anymore. So Owen’s handy. Literally.” Kellen’s stomach sank as realization hit him. “Shit, I’m just using him, aren’t I?” His elbows hit the piano keys as he dropped his face into his hands. “How could I do that to him? He must be as confused about this as I am.”

“Do you look at me and think, damn, I want to fuck her unconscious?” Dawn said.

Kellen’s back stiffened, drawing him away from the keyboard as he thought about the way she looked in that loose, shapeless white dress. How she smelled of honeysuckle and the sea. The sound of her voice and the music she so easily drew from the piano before him. He knew he was in trouble when he imagined how she’d taste—as delicious as her sweet, vanilla French toast—and how her supple flesh would feel beneath his hands. Warm. Soft. Smooth. He could almost feel her writhing beneath him as he claimed her with slow, deep thrusts. His cock throbbed and his balls ached with an unbearable fullness. What he wouldn’t give to be able to bury himself inside her. But he couldn’t.

He took a shaky breath and held it deep in his lungs, willing his lust to dissipate.

Torture. This was fucking torture.

“Yes,” he groaned. “That’s exactly what I think when I look at you.” He clenched both fists and rested them on either knee to keep himself from reaching for her. “But I can’t.”

The storm seemed to grow louder as their conversation lulled. He’d never been more tempted to go back on his promises to Sara. He had to leave this house. His convictions were strong, but his flesh grew weaker each moment he was in Dawn’s company.

“Could you tie me?” she asked quietly.

He tensed and scrambled from the bench, stubbing his toe on the piano leg. Pain shot up his foot and shin, and he welcomed the diversion. She was already a work of art. How beautiful would she look with knots and ropes drawing attention to her graceful lines and soft curves?

Kellen licked his lips and swallowed hard despite the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“I’m going to go,” Kellen said.

Lightning flashed in quick succession. Thunder made the house shudder. The wind howled, slashing the torrential rain against the windows in sheets.

“You can’t go out in that,” Dawn said. So matter of fact. So Dawn.

A gentle ping sounded on the piano as she found the keys in the darkness and began to play his song. Funny how he thought of it as his song. He wished Dawn could be his too.

He pressed the hard ridge of his cock against his thigh with one hand and closed his eyes, completely giving himself to the melody, even if he wasn’t quite ready to give himself over to the woman.