He could see how strong she was trying to be, but her lower lip was on the verge of trembling. He dragged her into his arms.

“I brought them for you,” Travis said, feeling more than a tad guilty about leaving off the fact that he only went to go pick up the clothes for Lily because he didn’t want her to walk around Italy with him in shapeless, colorless sacks.

Abruptly she stopped struggling in his arms, and he could see her weighing the truth of his words. “I stopped in at Janica’s studio before we left.”

Lily surprised the heck out of Travis by bursting into laughter. “You and Janica in the same room together? I can’t believe you don’t have scars all over your body. I mean,” Lily rambled on in a fit of giggles, “Janica really hates you.”

Travis forced a grin even though he was stung by Lily’s words. “No kidding. She was on the verge of cutting me into pieces with her massive scissors.” Forcing the words past the lump of guilt in his throat, he said, “You looked so incredible in her dress at the fashion show I wanted you to have some more just like it.”

Lily rubbed the tears of laughter from her eyes. “You were willing to brave Janica’s claws for me?”

Travis didn’t trust himself to speak. If he did, he might accidentally come clean with Lily about his real reasons for picking up the clothes, then she’d hate him all over again. He simply reached out for Lily’s hands and nodded, hoping that she wouldn’t probe any deeper.

Lily pulled him closer and wrapped her arms around him. “Travis,” she breathed into his ear, “you can be so amazing. Thank you.”

Surprised, he said, “Do you really think so?”

Lily’s eyes shimmered with appreciation as she gazed at him. “I really do.” With a wicked glint, she said,

“Now it’s my turn to show you how amazing I can be,” and planted a kiss on his pulse point. His heart raced to triple speed and his c**k begged for release from within the confines of his jeans.

As his body responded to her like it never had with any of the bean-pole, fleshless women he’d been with since puberty, Travis had some small insight into the fact that he was, to put it bluntly, an idiot. How could he have ever thought that Lily would embarrass him? In fact it was exactly the opposite—he needed to bat away men with a large, pointy stick.

He closed his eyes, relaxing into Lily’s caresses. One of her hands was roving over the thick bulge of his sex, the other was squeezing his butt. Travis wondered how he could have been so blind to Lily’s innate sexuality. Had he actually been in the same room with her hundreds of times and never noticed the way she made his libido shoot straight up into the stratosphere?

“Let’s get you naked,” she said as she undid the snap on his jeans. All of the remaining blood in his body shot straight to his penis as she made quick work of his clothes. Taking his hand in hers, she grabbed a handful of silk ties from his open luggage on the floor. Bolder than he had ever seen her before, she said,

“Follow me into the bedroom. All this silk has given me an idea that I’m dying to try out. Anyone willing to volunteer?”

Travis pointed to his penis. “I’m pretty sure he is.”

Lily tried to keep a straight face, but her grin won the battle. “Yes, he certainly seems, shall we say, up for the challenge.”

She pushed Travis down onto the bed, and he said, “What the heck. I might as well volunteer too.” He grabbed her wrist and planted a hot kiss on the soft inner skin. “But only if you’re gentle with me. After all, this is my first time.”

Lily muttered, “I seriously doubt that,” but then she was kissing him, and he forgot all about the smart retort he was about to make.

In bed, Travis had always been the aggressor. He instigated every sexual escapade. But every time he had sex with Lily, she surprised him. First, that night when she had masturbated in front of him on his bed, then in the swimming pool when she had been unafraid to make love in broad daylight, and again in the hotel bathtub, when she had unself-consciously pleasured herself just inches away from him. And now she was tying him up. Taking his brilliant idea and running with it.

Lily said, “I love looking in your eyes when you come inside me,” which got Travis so hot and hard that he hardly heard her say, “but right now, I think it’d be much more fun, so much more fun,” she repeated in a husky whisper, “if you were my slave.”

The word “slave” had Travis nearly bucking off the bed with need. Oh God, how did this woman know about every man’s fantasy, to be tied up and captive beneath a woman who wanted him for sex?

She picked a red-and-blue-pin-striped tie from the pile on the bed. “My blind slave,” she said, gently and firmly wrapping the tie around his eyes.

While his hands were still free—and he had a feeling they wouldn’t stay that way for long—Travis cupped Lily’s br**sts through her dress. She moaned as he kneaded the flesh and buried his face in the soft valley between them. He rubbed the stubble of his cheeks against her hard ni**les even as he pulled down the mesh fabric that kept her luscious skin from him.

Lily pushed into him one final time with a moan of pleasure, then deftly captured his hands in hers and pulled them away from her tits. “Uh-uh-uh,” she said, “you’re my slave now, Travis. You’ll do what I want when I want.”

Shaking her br**sts the rest of the way out of her dress, she rubbed the very slightest bit of skin against Travis’s face. He wanted desperately to suck her ni**les, but she wouldn’t let him. In a daze of wanting, he hardly realized when Lily slipped another tie around his right wrist and secured him to the iron bedpost. After fastening the knot, she ran kisses down his arm, from his wrist to the inside of his elbow to his shoulder.

This was the first time Travis had ever been in a subservient position in bed, but if it felt this good, it was certainly not going to be his last. “Lily, you’re killing me,” he said with appreciation, glad to hear her tinkle of laughter in response.

“I sure hope so,” she murmured as she got to work on his left wrist. Travis ached for her to kiss the inside of his left arm and couldn’t suppress the groan of pleasure when she did. But when, seconds later, her soft mouth was on his cock, he did more than groan.

He begged.

“Suck me, Lily,” he urged.

At which point his dick was left cool and bereft as her mouth lifted away. “Am I going to have to put a gag on you, too?” she threatened.