“Any other limits?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Hurt me,” he said. “You know where everything is in the room. Whatever he does to you, you can do it to me.”

“If Søren finds out I topped you...” Eleanor said. “Without him here? Without his permission?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt us.” He raised one finger to his lips.

She would have been less scared had she agreed to kill someone for Kingsley. But still, she raised her finger to her lips, as well.

Now, here they were, alone in Kingsley’s bedroom. And she was going to hurt him. And she’d never done anything like this before in her life. Where did she start?

She took a step back and looked Kingsley up and down. He needed something. Not a collar but something, something to make everything different between them.

“How do you feel about blindfolds?” she asked.

“I don’t mind them, but I’d rather see you.”

“You see me all the time,” she reminded him.

He gave her a long look, heated and heavy with meaning. “But not like this.”

She took a quick breath. “No.” She couldn’t argue with him there. “Not like this.”

Stepping back in front of him she started to unbutton his vest. She’d undressed him before at his command, but never of her own volition. He stood there, still and submissive, letting her pull the vest down and off his arms. She thought about folding it, thought about hanging it up. This was part of one of Kingsley’s sexiest Regency-style suits, after all. And likely one of his most expensive. Instead, she paused, looked at it and then dropped it on the floor.

“You’re more like him than you can possibly know,” Kingsley said.

To which Eleanor replied, “Don’t speak until spoken to.”

Kingsley bowed his head in apology. She felt something new surging through her veins, something sweet and spiked and utterly intoxicating.

Power.

Kingsley remained still as she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers. He had such a beautiful body—all lean muscle and old scars—that she couldn’t stop herself from kissing his naked shoulder as she pushed his shirt down his arms. First a kiss on the naked shoulder, then on the naked bicep, then the naked forearm and the naked wrist.

The naked wrist.

She left him standing there while she went down on her hands and knees by the bed. She pulled out a suitcase and opened it up. Inside was bondage equipment—ropes, adjustable spreader bars, cuffs and collars.

And gauntlets.

She took out two black leather gauntlets and laid them on the bed. She’d seen male submissives at The 8th Circle wearing various sorts of leather. Bicep cuffs, chest harnesses, but her favorite were the gauntlets. They looked so medieval, like something a knight would wear under his armor. And after a battle he’d strip down to nothing but the dirt and sweat and the leather braces on his wrists.

Eleanor lifted Kingsley’s arm and held it against her chest. She wrapped the brace around his forearm and laced it. Her hands shook as she did it and she knew Kingsley could see it. But he didn’t tease her for once.

“You like leather?” he asked. His voice was soft and the gentleness of his tone made her even more nervous.

“Yeah, I do. On men especially.”

“Why did you never tell me?”

She glanced up at him.

“You never asked.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes at her. “I should have asked. What other secrets are you keeping in here?”

He touched her temple and let his fingers trail down until they rested on her chest under her shirt and over her heart.

“Lots of secrets,” she whispered.

“Tell me all your secrets. Tell me everything you want.”

“You,” she said. “Like this.”

“Like what?”

“Submissive to me.”

“You’ve fantasized about this?” he asked. “About me submitting to you?”

Finally she had the wrist brace on his left arm. Lacing the brace onto his right arm went much more smoothly. She could do this. She could.

It scared her to answer the question. The question wasn’t a question but a box, and if they opened the lid to this box, God only knew what would come out.

“Please tell me, Elle,” he said so quietly she could barely hear him even in the potent pregnant silence of the room.

“Yes.”

And with that yes, she yanked the laces on the gauntlet and tied a neat quick bow.

When she had the braces on his arms, she looked him up and down.

“Almost perfect,” she said, appraising her handiwork. She unbuttoned his trousers, pushed them down and told him to step out of them.

“Perfect,” she said with a smile. “Absolutely perfect.”

Eleanor had only ever been on the receiving end of a beating. She had no idea how to throw a flogger, wield a single-tail. And she certainly wasn’t going to try to figure it out tonight. But there were other ways to hurt someone, ways she did know.

“Lie on your back,” she ordered, and Kingsley did as he was told.

Wild. For years she’d been doing everything Kingsley and Søren told her to do.

Go here. Do this. Spread for him. Suck me here.

Stand there and take it and take it and take it...

Time to give as good as she got.

Kingsley was lying naked on the bed, naked but for the elaborate leather arm braces laced from his wrist halfway up his forearms.