Miranda was making last minute preparations for Ken's arrival. She had had another late Friday appointment with one of the three interior designers she was interviewing. Ken had assured her that he didn't mind getting a cab from the airport, something about making it easier for him to just attack her onsite instead of having to wait it out on the drive.

She felt a little bad that he was doing more than his fair share of the traveling. She had just been so busy with single handedly running the show of renovating her grandparent's property. She knew he was busy with work too. Again, he had assured her that he wasn't a city boy at heart, so theses trips were a welcome reprieve. He then teased her that packing for him was a ten-minute process and took days for her. He wasn't wrong. She still hadn't fully unpacked from her last trip to Maryland last weekend.

She had been shocked that his 'meeting' with her father had been so short. When he got back up to the boathouse apartment, she had still been freshening up to go join her mother for tea with the Cummings matriarch. She had looked at him with some confusion. "Are the cops on their way? Are we making a run for it? Is he sending you to the foreign legion?" she had asked.

He had crossed the room, placed a chaste kiss on her temple and said, "Miranda, everything's fine, go enjoy your tea. I'll be here when you get back."

'What? How?"

"What can I say, parents love me," he shrugged, holding his arms open at his sides, palms toward her as he backed away towards the balcony, grabbing a Mid-Atlantic Monthly magazine on his way by.

At dinner that night, she knew he was lying. They had steak and lobster tails served by the kitchen staff out under the veranda overlooking the inlet. The wine was flowing, the food was impeccable as always, there was blueberry cobbler with fresh made vanilla bean gelato for desert. Her mother had turned on the charm, asking Ken questions, getting to know him. She was pleased that Ken could turn on the charm as well, and her mother at least seemed pleased with his responses. But her father had barely looked, much less spoken to him. His gaze had been steely. Even with her, his conversation had been limited to what was polite, and well, necessary. He had let her give him a peck on his forehead goodnight, but that was about it. There was also no invitation for Ken to join him for a cognac or brandy, his usual MO when it came to her past boyfriends.

She was actually grateful that it turned into a short weekend. Apparently, her father was going to need a longer adjustment period to warm up to Ken. Hopefully, he would eventually. It didn't escape her notice that part of the problem might have been that her father saw too much of himself in Ken and didn't want to admit it.

She had also decided that she needed to talk to Ken this weekend about being more careful about their condom use. She thankfully had finished her period right before the wedding, otherwise things might have gone differently their first weekend, and then had fortuitously had her last cycle right after his trip to Jackson when they had had their argument. So thus far, timing of things hadn't interfered with their weekend stints in each other's pants. The three times he had been inside her without one on, he had had enough control to avoid cumming, but she was worried they were pushing their luck. She was also aware that pulling out was far from foolproof. Not that she was complaining about his level of enthusiasm.

She was just putting on a little lipstick when she heard the cab pull up to the drive.

Less than ten minutes later, she was flat on her back, wrists locked into padded restraints, spread out so wide on the bed she could barely move an inch, and a gag buckled into her mouth. So much for talking. He had left her legs free, she assumed so that he could alternate her positioning. Or at least, she thought that was what his plan was, until he reached back into his travel bag and pulled out two more larger cuffs and a couple of short chains. Fuck. It was a damn good thing that she trusted him, otherwise she would likely be terrified. He had already fully stripped. His cock was jutting out in front of him and a bead of precum was shining at the tip. He was completely insatiable. Good thing she felt about the same about him.

He returned to her, buckling each ankle into a cuff, and then linking ankle to wrist on the same side with the chain, and she thought she couldn't move before. He scrunched down below her, shoved her legs even further open from the underside of each thigh with his big hands and when straight down on her. Her body spasmed, she felt herself tense up. She had spent enough time over the past several weeks learning his touch and her reaction to it. In that time, she was starting to learn that if she relaxed and fully submitted to his ministrations, her body obtained amazing levels of release. But sometimes she had to literally fight her natural knee jerk reaction for control to get there. This was one of those times. Since she couldn't move and could do nothing verbal but shriek and moan against the gag, there was nothing that she could do but lay there and take it, but her body was fighting her. She cringed and tightened as his mouth descended on her overly sensitive clit. He added a finger and at first her tension only got worse. He didn't even seem to notice, so caught up in his own lust. Finally, just went she was about to somehow tell him that she needed him to slow down, that she wasn't ready yet, her body gratefully shifted with a wave of warmth that bubbled up from her core and she let go, falling under the wave of swimming in pleasure and loosing awareness of literally everything else. This was her addiction, and she couldn't get enough. He was the needle in her vein.

Approximately five minutes later, her entire body fell apart with an overwhelming, powerful orgasm, and she lost any bodily awareness, floating in a cloud of bliss. She barely registered him slipping something onto her left ring finger.

A jostle of the bed brought her back enough to the fact that he had unhooked the connecting chains from her wrist restraints. Her arms were still snugged down firmly straight out to either side of the bed and the cuffs remained on her ankles, the attached chains now loose. She cracked one eye to see him kneeling in front of her, registering enough to see that he was gratefully rolling on a condom. As she was closing her eyes again, a streak of sparkle hit her eye from her bound left hand. Memory floored her, was that her grandmother's ring? She didn't have the time to further process, as Ken roughly pulled her legs around his upper thighs and plunged himself into her. She screamed against the, was it a ball in her mouth? She really had no idea. Not that it mattered. She let him do nearly anything he wanted to her. A few thrusts of fire later and she was doing the best she could to match him stroke for stroke. But wait a sec, the ring. Why was her grandmother's ring on her hand? Was she delusional? Had he finally managed to fuck her insane?

By his speed she could tell he wasn't going to last much longer. Unfortunately for her, swirling questions were going to limit her own release. Damn brain. She was starting to release why she needed him so much. He was the only thing that got her to periodically turn it off.

He finished, pumping hard into her. She contracted around him, she knew technically orgasming with him, just not to the level that she wanted. He unbuckled her first wrist and she reached to pull the ball out of her mouth. "Ken?"

"Yeah?" he answered, reaching for her other wrist. She knew him well enough at this point to know that he was intentionally deflecting.

"Why is my grandmother's ring on my finger?"

"Thought that was a given," he answered, having finished releasing her and standing to dispose of the condom.

Oh, so this was how he was going to play it. "Ken, you can't propose to someone when they are incapable of giving you an answer, or was that your plan? Make it so I couldn't say no?"

"Is that your answer?"

"No! I mean yes, Goddd, I swear you are the most insanely frustrating man ever created!"

He smiled. The asshole actually smiled, and climbed back onto the bed, leering over her without touching her. "Ken, you can't propose to someone in the middle of sex, especially bondage sex."

"Why not?" he asked. "Who writes the rules on these things? Seems pretty on point to me. Aren't you just agreeing to be mine forever and always anyway?"

She ignored his smirk. "How did you get this anyway? Did you somehow steal it?"

Ken laughed out loud. "No, your father gave it to me."

"My father, the man you obviously hates your guts, gave you my grandmother's ring?"

"Yup," he answered cheekily.

"And this is your idea of a proposal?"

"Yeah."

"Appropriate," she responded, as for better or worse, it was.

"And?"

"What do you think?' she retorted, giving him a knowing look.

"That's a yes?" he confirmed, trying to contain his excitement.

"Yeah," she answered.

He kissed her, throwing everything he hadn't said into the kiss.

"Yes!" she laughed, smiling, the hint of tears in her eyes.

She spent the next fifteen or so minutes lying in his arms, as he lovingly stroked her, cuddled her, and told her how beautiful she was, how happy she made him, and how he was going to spend the rest of his life making sure she felt the same. She had completely forgotten about the leather cuffs still present on her wrists and ankles, until he gave her one particularly passionate kiss, his tongue going for a joy ride deep in her mouth and she felt his dick harden quickly against her upper thigh, and he was back. Before she even fully registered what was happening, he had removed the longer chains, tossing them aside and had connected each wrist to each ankle on the same side with a clasp. "Ken!" she complained, regaining her senses.

"Oh, I'm sorry, princess, did you think we were done already?" he asked.

She could shimmy a little in her new state, but if she tried to move much more, she was more than likely to fall off the bed. She couldn't deny that she loved his dominance, but he could also be a bit of a prick.

Ken wasted no time. He reached for another condom, quickly rolling it on, and adding some lube. He stood, sliding her right to the edge of the bed. Now she was really nervous that she would fall. Ken sensed it as she jerked, but his arms never left her. "I got you, don't worry, baby, relax." He angled her just so, and pushed his way back inside her. This time her brain was pleasantly nowhere around. The soles of her feet rested on his forearms and as he held her hips and thrust sinfully into her, she could feel the tightness of his tendons with his movements. She massaged the veins and cords of his arms with her bare feet and her pleasure spiked. Pumping hard back against him she fell over the edge, dragging him down into the abyss with her.

The next night, he took her out for dinner just outside downtown Jackson Hole in a little chef owned bistro restaurant. The food was gourmet and excellent. Miranda spent the meal alternating between gazing at the ring on her finger, and that man that had put it there. She had always loved her grandmother's ring. It wasn't Meredith's original diamond, but had been purchased later in the marriage, when the fortune was well established. It was a huge oval cut, nearly flawless. Miranda didn't actually know how many carats it was, but it was big. The whole thing was surrounded with tiny, slightly darker diamonds that ringed the oval, and it was set with white gold. It sparkled beautifully. Some people might have thought it a bit gaudy, but Miranda had always loved it, and felt that it fit her hand perfectly. Ken had his hands across the table, holding hers. His eyes basically never left hers. When she lifted her eyes to his, all he saw was openness. Souls were laid bare, and it wasn't scary, not for either of them. Something about them just worked.

The only thing that stopped them from touching was the arrival of their meal, and even then, Miranda stretched a long leg under the table, having kicked off a shoe, and trailed her foot up his pantleg, just as she had at the yacht club. The intimacy they had shared since then had been a wild ride in a very short period of time. It was only early into the second week of September.

They had hired a limo and driver to celebrate, and Ken had ordered a very good bottle of champagne at the start of the meal. They had skipped desert at the restaurant, but Miranda's sweet tooth had insisted they get some for take-out. Ken paid the bill and grabbed the not quite empty bottle from the chiller on their way out the door, dribbling some ice and water as he went. They leaned into each other in the parking lot, tipsily entering the car door opened by the chauffer, and finished the bottle in the car on the way back to the estate.

Ken made love to her that night. Not that what he had been doing wasn't his way of love before. But he caged her in with his arms, kissing her some combination of gently and passionately, as he humped them both to completion in traditional missionary. For them, it was very vanilla, but Miranda appreciated his sweetness and the gesture.