Neanderthal Marries Human

Quinn glanced over his shoulder then away, back to the room. “Yep.” His response was distracted, a little sarcastic, and maybe a touch frustrated.

I walked past him, crossed to it with swift steps and reached out, catching myself before I touched it. I glanced at our guide. “Can I?”

Emma nodded, looking every inch British politeness. “Yes, of course. Take your time. I’ll return at half past to collect you.”

Faintly, I registered her steps retreating from the room and out the door. My attention was focused on the cruel apparatus in front of me.

A rack.

A real rack.

It didn’t look like a replica.

“The rack was developed for use in England in the thirteenth century by the Duke of Exeter, who was the Constable of the Tower. They used to call it Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. Why they called torture devices daughter never made much sense to me. But the first documented use of the rack was by the Greeks in ancient times.”

“Hmm,” was Quinn’s reply. I couldn’t tell if he was listening, but it didn’t really matter.

I was seized with a sudden inspiration.

“Quick, Quinn, tie me up.” I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to figure out how to mount it.

“What?”

“Tie me up—tie me to the rack. I want to see what it’s like.” I finally decided to sit on the edge first then navigate toward the center.

“You want me to tie you to the rack?”

“Just for a minute.” I tested my weight then awkwardly lifted my legs to assume a prone position. My feet dangled over the end of the table. I was a bit too tall but I’d get the general effect. “Here, tie my hands.” Voluntarily, I stretched my arms over my head.

“Are you serious?” Quinn was suddenly by my side looking perplexed, but he was used to my quirks by now, so he picked up a length of rope attached to the table and studied it as if determining the best way to knot it. I thought it interesting that he’d opted for the rope rather than the very antiquated leather straps with buckles. He glanced between the door, the rack, and me.

The rope appeared to be newer than the rest of the implement, likely hemp—not quite historically accurate—but the original rope had likely turned to dust over the last seven hundred years.

“That’ll do fine.” I offered him my wrists then turned my attention to my feet. “Do my feet too. This is so cool! And take a picture. I want to send it to the knitting group.”

Quinn hesitated, his expression a mixture of surprise and uncertainty. Then, abruptly, he set to work. Apparently, he was an efficient and thorough knot tier, as he swiftly finished my wrists then moved to my feet. He still looked distracted, on edge, but now focused on tying me up. I wriggled my fingers to test his knot. The rope bit unpleasantly into my skin where my arms were bound to each corner of the device.

It seemed that Quinn Sullivan didn’t mess around with knots.

I didn’t care that my legs were spread in an unladylike way—especially true considering that my short skirt had to be hiked higher to accomplish the aforementioned spreading. I was too absorbed in the fact that I was actually bound to a real-life rack!

“Hey—do you think this is the same one that they tied Guy Fawkes to? Although, it’s only rumored that they used the rack on him. He must have been pretty short. See how my legs are too long? I wonder how tall he was. Did you know that humans are getting taller? In fact, since the industrial revolution, we’re growing by an average of just under a half inch every generation.”

I continued relating miscellaneous facts to Quinn as he completed his task. I was so absorbed in the gushing well of information spewing forth that I didn’t really notice that his hand was tracing circles around my inner ankle until I felt a shiver race up my leg.

“…they thought it was…they…they…” I trembled at the contact, blinked, and pulled Quinn into focus—really looked at him—rather than at the facts tumbling inside my brain.

Quinn was standing next to me at my calf, his hip leaning against the wooden table, his face wearing one of his barely there smiles. His eyes, which had been notably distracted virtually all evening up to this moment, suddenly felt piercing and heated.

He looked diabolical.

“Quinn?”

“I like this. We should get one of these.” His fingers moved up the inside of my leg causing me to jerk on reflex, but to no avail. I was bound and restrained…with rope.

He laughed lightly—a perverse chuckle considering my state of helplessness.

I lifted my eyebrows and managed a breathless laugh in response. “Ha…ha ha…ha.” I swallowed as his fingertips slid behind my knee and caressed the sensitive spot. “You can untie me now.”

His barely there smile spread until it became a thoroughly devilish grin. “Well, now, not so fast….” He narrowed his eyes as though he were in deep thought.

I was not smiling. “Quinn.”

“Shhh….” He shook his head slowly, shuffled his feet until his hip was adjacent to my knee. Before I could reprimand him for shushing me, his hand behind my leg moved to the inside of my thigh and under my skirt with a feathery touch. I sucked in a sharp breath. Electric sparks followed the path of his fingers and my heart skipped two beats.

“You know, I had tonight all planned out: take you on the private tour, marvel at the Crown Jewels, candlelit dinner next to the Thames….”

“Quinn, you sound like a monologuing supervillain.”

He ignored my attempt at humor. “But you’ve presented me with….” Quinn’s eyes traveled down the length of my body to where his hand was still moving on my leg. “You’ve presented me with a very unique opportunity.” He said this last part almost to himself and sounded every inch the monologuing supervillain. His grin was brazenly sinister.

I knew this man and I knew that look. I fought against a shudder and a moan. The fogginess, the delicious murkiness of arousal had blanketed my usually sporadic thoughts with a suddenness of force. I felt at once calm and frenzied.

This is what he did to me.

“Quinn….” this time I whispered his name because I couldn’t manage anything else.

“What am I going to do to you?” He murmured softly—so softly that I almost didn’t hear his words—his touch growing bolder, inching higher. I gasped when he traced the line of my thigh-high stockings with his fingers. He laughed again, a dark, mischievous, ominous chuckle. His eyes moved back to mine and I saw true enjoyment, happiness there. He’d shed every ounce of his previous distraction, his air of practiced aloofness, and devoured me with his gaze.

We stared at each other for a long moment; my lips parted and my face flushed with pleasure and tense expectation. The villainous glint in his eyes gradually ebbed, leaving him with a dreamy expression as though he were lost in the sight of me.

I’d caught him staring at me this way a few times. Sometimes it was after we’d made love, and I’d write it off as the high of post-coital endorphin euphoria. But sometimes he’d wear it while I carried on unchecked about the difference between hemotoxins and neurotoxins, or why goats are superior to sheep, like he’d done earlier at Spitalfields Market.

It was during these times that his gaze felt most unsettling because I hadn’t done anything to earn such a worshipful expression.

The sight slightly sobered me and, despite how much I wanted him to continue teasing me with his hands, I knew we only had a few more minutes. It would be much better to re-create the scenario tonight in our hotel room instead of inside the Tower of London on an antique instrument of terror.

“Janie.” He said my name suddenly, and I noted his face had lost a bit of the dreamy quality; it’d been replaced with a measure of solemnity. “I have to ask you something.”

“Okay.” I breathed, tried to ignore the fact that his hand was still up my skirt, resting on the inside of my thigh. “But can you untie me first?”

Again, he gave me the slow headshake. “Not until you answer my question.”

“O-kay.” I gripped my hands into fists. My fingers were tingling with the first signs of poor circulation. “But you know…” I cleared my throat, hoping the action would also clear away some of my arousal fog. “I’ll tell you the truth, whatever you ask. You don’t have to put me on the rack.”

His mouth hooked to the side for the briefest of seconds before all trace of a smile disappeared. “It’s not that kind of question.”

I frowned, because his voice sounded almost sad. I searched his eyes for clues. I found none.

“Quinn.” I said his name a third time now, feeling a measure of concern. “Ask me anything.”

“I love you,” he said, surprising me. His eyes lost their focus as though he were talking to himself. “I remember the precise moment I realized I wasn’t going to be able to walk away from you, that you were it for me.”

I thought back over our relationship as I studied his face, trying to pinpoint the moment I realized I was in love with him. Before I could begin to collate my findings, he interrupted my thoughts.

“It was that Sunday I first showed you the apartment, before all the business with your sister and Seamus. We had that picnic, and I fell asleep. Later, when I woke up, my head was in your lap. I realized you hadn’t moved at all, maybe for an hour. You just let me sleep….”