She guessed she did trust them, because she let Zane peel off her top. She was na**d then. They all were. Standing tall as a tree before her, Zane steadied her head between his hands. His hold was more than a reassurance or a caress. The strength of his hands kept her from looking away from him. Her breathing sped up at his control, a reaction she couldn’t stop.
“I’m going to give you instructions,” he said, his bright blue eyes holding hers. “Unless you tell me you don’t want to obey, I’ll expect you to follow them. If you want to struggle, feel free. We won’t let you hurt yourself. Other than that, your words are all you need to stop this train in its tracks.”
“You won’t gag me?”
Zane’s chuckle was sexy. “Not to be cliché, but we have better uses for a mouth as sweet as yours.”
It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that implication. Rebecca’s ni**les beaded like he’d pinched them.
“Okay,” she said, striving to sound steady. “I can go along with that.”
Zane stepped back and considered her as if he were an artist and she his clay. Trey remained where he was next to her. Was Zane his boss for this as well?
“Trap her arms against her sides,” he said to his friend. “Carry her to the niche behind you. I saw that one catch her eye.”
When Trey lifted her as instructed, his stiffened c**k pressed against her back. Rebecca squirmed but held her tongue against making noises that might be construed as stop. His task fulfilled, Trey set her down in the recess Zane specified, facing the shadowy apparatus she couldn’t make out yet.
“Stay,” he said and struck a fireplace match.
Rebecca stayed, her normally independent nature caught in the spell the men were weaving. The flame Trey held revealed two gas sconces on the brick columns to either side of her. He lit them, after which Rebecca sucked in a breath. In the dancing light, she saw what the shadows hid. The recess was about six feet wide and deep. An elaborate rack stood within it, fashioned of dull black metal in a complex arrangement. Bars supported padded rests and rings, some of which were adjustable with gears. Buckled leather restraints provided still more security. A floor length black curtain, also velvet, lined the wall to the rear, concealing who knew what additional instruments.
Rebecca had to appreciate the imagination at work here.
“Kneel on the first set of rests,” Zane instructed behind her.
Trey helped her onto them. Their positioning spread her knees, and air tickled her wetness. Liking this a bit too much, she clenched her jaw.
Maybe Trey knew. “These lock,” he said. He slammed a curved metal piece around her calf and into an aperture. The noise jolted through her, sounding like a jail door closing. Cream welled from her, but at least she wasn’t alone in being affected. As she twisted around to watch him shut the second one, she noticed the tip of Trey’s erection was stretched and shiny with arousal. A pulse beat hard in his upright shaft.
It bounced as he came around to her front again. “Left hand,” he ordered.
Unable to speak, she gave him her hand. He pulled it gently along a padded rest until her wrist was stuck through a ring. Her right arm was treated to the same procedure.
“Tighten the cuffs,” Zane said.
Trey turned a crank and the rings clanked smaller. He didn’t stop until the segmented metal fit her wrists perfectly. She was certain there were easier means of securing her, but the noises the mechanism created were fabulously theatrical. A million shivers of excitement swept her skin. The rack was like some crazy steampunk device—custom made, she was sure. Once the cuffs were snug, Trey strapped her elbows to the padded rest with leather. Nothing pinched, but neither was she able to get away.
The arm bars were extendable. Trey pulled them toward him and locked them down with more clanking. The shift forced her to lean forward. The combination of being slightly off balance and restrained was weirdly arousing.
“Your torso needs supporting,” he said gruffly.
For this he supplied a leather harness. He wrapped it around her middle like a corset. Like the historical version of that garment, it lifted but didn’t cover her br**sts. Unlike it, it attached by a system of straps and rings to hooks on the rack. The harness took the weight of her forward lean, holding her perfectly.
“Test it,” Trey said.
She assumed he meant to pull against it so she did. The leather creaked, but nothing broke or snapped. The rack itself didn’t budge, no matter how she swung her weight. Its structure must have been sunk into the floor. She guessed Trey liked the look of her moving. His right hand fisted at his sternum.
“Anything hurt?” he asked.
“No,” she answered huskily.
His eyes slid down her bound body, over her br**sts, down the corset, locking on the now wet spikes of hair at her sex. He let out an aroused sound, one she’d heard from him before, one he was unable to hold in. His c**k stood up like a horn, his erection thicker and more brutal than any she’d seen in person. At the thought of pleasuring it in some fashion, goose bumps broke out across her thighs.
“Are you cold?” he asked immediately.
She smiled, waiting for his gaze to rise to her face again. He seemed concerned, and not entirely for her wellbeing. She thought she understood his real question. “This may be the oddest foreplay I’ve ever had used on me, but I confess it’s working. You can stop worrying.”
“But if you’re cold—”
“If she’s cold, we’ll warm her,” Zane said. His tone was authoritative as he stepped closer behind her. He’d let Trey indulge his fetish—or maybe genius—for bondage. Now he was taking charge again.
Trey didn’t seem to mind.
“Draw the curtain,” Zane said softly.
Trey turning to obey gave her an unobstructed view of his hindquarters. That was a lovely show, what with his wedge-shaped back and his muscular rear. She took a moment to shake off her admiration and notice what he’d uncovered.
The curtain had concealed a mirror as tall as him, framed in ornately carved dark wood. With round and startled eyes, Rebecca stared at her trussed-up reflection. Her hair was mussed, her mouth stretched into an O. The redness of her ni**les above the harness was p**n ographic, but this wasn’t all that was. In the blue-tinged gaslight, moisture glistened on her inner thighs. Her cl*t was so swollen it peeped out. Blood rushed into her cheeks with arousal and embarrassment.
“Good Lord,” was all she could say.