Every nerve on my body is afire. My muscles tighten, urging me to jump, move, run—but I can't. I won't. I ignore the knots twisting in my belly, the desire growing between my legs, and I wait, frozen, for the end.
Calder's footsteps move forward, toward the far wall. He pauses only briefly when he reaches the corner adjacent to mine. He's no more than twelve feet away from me now.
How much time is left? It can't be more than a minute.
His steps turn, and now he's moving along the wall. I can hear his fingers graze against the stone. His steps are slow, deliberate. He's only ten feet away from me now.
I should run. Or better yet, crawl. Maybe I can stay beneath his arms. If he doesn't touch me, then he doesn’t win. Even if my shoe squeaks against the stone, I might be able to evade his hands in the darkness.
It’s risky, and I’m too close to winning. There can't be more than thirty seconds left.
But Calder can't be more than five or six steps away.
I lift myself off the ground, only just enough to slide myself a couple feet to the left.
Calder doesn't break his step. He doesn't appear to notice my presence at all.
I shift another couple of feet. Why haven't our phone alarms gone off yet? How much time is left?
Calder has reached the corner where I was hiding just a moment ago. If he could see through the darkness, he could grab me easily.
Are there ten seconds left? Twenty? I'm so close. Just a little longer…
My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket. Relief sweeps over me, but dread follows just a quickly. It's not my alarm going off—it's my normal ring tone. Someone's calling me.
Calder reacts before I have time to recover from the shock. He dives toward me, and his hands grab me in the dark.
“Caught you,” he says, his fingers digging into my skin.
Then, only then, do our respective alarms go off in unison.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It’s not right.
I was so close—so close. To lose like this, with only second left—to lose because my phone went off… no. No. I won't go down like this.
"You can't—" I start, but Calder surprises me by yanking me to my feet.
He doesn't say anything. He just pushes me up against the wall. I try to argue again, but his fingers close across my lips.
I reach up and grab his shirt. I intend to push him away, to explain to him why his victory shouldn’t count, but instead I find myself pulling him closer. After an hour fantasizing about this moment of capture, I realize I don't have the will to refuse him.
His warm breath sweeps across my nose, my cheek, my ear. In the darkness like this, robbed of my sight, I feel like all of my other senses have exploded. The side of his face brushes against mine, and his stubble scratches my jaw in a hundred tiny places, but it's the sort of pain that only increases the heat building in my core. He pulls my earlobe between his teeth and sucks. Pleasure surges through my body, and I start to whimper against his fingers, but he tightens his grip on my mouth and pushes me harder against the wall.
His free hand slips beneath my shirt and glides across my stomach, up toward my breast. His touch sends waves of heat across my skin, my core throbs in anticipation. His fingers slide beneath the bottom edge of my bra and push the cup up over the curve of my breast. I moan, but once more he tightens his hand across my lips, this time so much it hurts.
He pulls his hand away from my breast and tugs at my tank top. I’m so flustered that it takes me a moment to wrestle it over my head, and before I can throw it aside, Calder grabs it from my hand.
“What are—”
He cuts me off by shoving the shirt in my mouth. I nearly choke on the fabric, shocked by the force of the movement, but I don’t fight him.
He wants me to be silent, I realize. Here we are, with no speech and no sight—we're like two strangers coming together in the darkness.
That realization excites me more than I want to admit.
I clamp my teeth down on the makeshift gag and reach around him, slipping my hands beneath the back of his shirt. I trail my nails across his skin as I move upward, hoping to remind him of our earlier encounter, and I’m rewarded when a tremor passes beneath my touch.
And then suddenly he grabs me by the elbows and yanks my hands away from him. He captures both my wrists in one hand, and before I can twist away from him I hear the telltale metallic clink of his belt buckle. I playfully struggle, but his grip on me is firm. When he manages to free his belt, he brings it up and wraps it around my wrists, so tightly that the leather edges are digging into my skin. Then he jerks my bound hands upward, pinning them to the wall above my head.
I writhe against him, and he responds by grinding against me, hard. The button of his fly digs into my stomach, and his arousal presses against my lower belly. He moves only enough to allow his free hand to slip between us and undo the button on my own pants. He undoes my zipper in one swift motion, and then he jerks my jeans down over my hips and pushes them toward the floor.
His leg forces my knees apart, and I step out of my pants as I obey his silent command. I strain against his hands, wanting to grab him and feel his hot skin beneath my fingers, but he won't let me move.
Only when I stop wriggling does he release the hand on my waist. He grinds against me once more before leaning back just enough to reach for his own pants. There's a slight crackle as he pulls something from his pocket—a condom, I'm guessing—and then the rustle of fabric as he wrestles his way out of his pants. When he presses against me again, I can feel the smooth hard length of him against my own heated skin.
I want to kiss him, but my lips are frozen around the gag. He doesn’t seem particularly inconvenienced by this. His own mouth moves past mine, brushing against my cheek on his way to my ear. He buries his nose in my hair and pulls my earlobe once more between his lips. I twist beneath his grasp.
His grip on my wrists tightens as he shifts again, and even though it's painful, I find myself fighting back a cry of pleasure.
I don't know how much longer I can bear this. I buck my hips, urging him to meet me, and quickly, but he responds by pushing me forcibly back against the wall. The message is clear: he's in charge here. That was the prize, wasn't it? I'm truly at his mercy.
Maybe I should be ashamed at the reaction that realization sends through me, but I'm not.
When I've stilled again, Calder reaches between my legs. His fingers slide back and forth across the wetness there before he shoves my legs further apart.
This time his cock slides between my thighs. My clit throbs as the smooth skin of his shaft brushes against me. Another couple of touches would send me right over the edge, but Calder doesn't seem interested in gentle erotic caresses. His length nudges between my folds, seeking my core. And then he pauses, his head just inside my opening, and I throb again in need as I feel myself start to stretch around him.