Firebird by Annabel Joseph Read Free Book Online Page A

hurt you, not today, and I won’t ask you to take off your panties. What’s between your legs is not yet mine. Everything else I have a right to. Can you live with those terms for today? One hour?”
    “ Not yet mine .” The yet alarmed him. He already considered her his. Somehow he knew this was only the beginning; otherwise he would have pushed to have it all. Maybe he would still push to have it all when he got her alone. No, no, don’t go too fast. Don’t scare her off.
    “What do you say?” he asked. “In or out?”
    Please, please, please, Prosper. You can do this.
    “In,” she finally said.

Chapter Five

    Prosper’s fingers seemed to belong to another person as she unbuttoned her coat. She took a deep breath and shrugged out of it. Jackson hung it on a coatrack near the door while she looked around. His town house was sparsely furnished. A rental, obviously. One couch, one end table. One TV. One table between the living room and kitchen with a computer on it. One bar stool at the kitchen counter, and one coffee cup in front of it. Everything was neutral except for a large bowl of fruit on the counter and a colorful afghan over the arm of the couch. His apartment was very clean. She thought of her and Glenna’s messy apartment. Thank goodness she hadn’t taken him there. Not that she could have. What were they doing? What if someone found out about this? They would all assume she’d slept her way into Jackson’s ballet.
    Oh my God . He was looking at her.
    “Come upstairs. To the bedroom.” She let him lead her across the living room and up the stairs. His bedroom was as sparsely furnished as the rest of his house. A large iron bed dominated the room. There was a white shag rug on the floor and a bureau with a mirror across from the bed. She stood and watched with butterflies in her stomach as he folded down the white comforter.
    “Down to your panties, Prosper.”
    She blinked, and then her fingers began to fumble with the zipper of her dress. Nudity wasn’t a huge hang-up for her. Being a dancer, her body was always on display for appraisal and judgment. What made this different was that she was undressing for him.
    He watched her from a few steps away. His burgeoning erection was obvious through the fabric of his pants. She couldn’t look there, nor could she bear to look at his eyes, so she kept her gaze on the floor. She believed him when he said he wouldn’t take what wasn’t his. But the fact that his erection was there, blatantly obvious, made her own center throb and grow wet. She took off her dress and her bra, then looked down at her garter belt and stockings. Besides them, she wore only a teensy thong. She looked up at him, flushing hot.
    “Yes, okay. Pretty lingerie. Leave it on.”
    With a sigh of relief, she went to the bed. By the time she’d arranged herself across the stark white sheets, he had equally stark white ropes dangling from his hand. He took first one wrist and then the other and tied them to the posts of the headboard with a casual ease that indicated he was far from new at this. They were soft ties, of nylon maybe, but they were strong. They had no give at all when she tested them with quick, furtive pulls. He watched her with a hint of a smile.
    “You’re caught now, aren’t you? Try to get free. Pull hard.”
    She did and felt fearful excitement when she couldn’t move her wrists more than an inch or two in each direction. He reached down and snapped one of her garters. She yelped at the sting and reached to soothe it, but her hand was stuck fast.
    “Naughty girl. You wouldn’t have worn those if you didn’t have every intention of getting naked today with our friend George.”
    He looked down at her in mock censure. She shook her head.
    “No, I wouldn’t have. I only wore them… They make me feel… I hoped—”
    He snapped the other garter. She yelped again and fidgeted on the soft sheets.
    “Little liar.”
    “Really! If he… If you had been a