She tipped her hips toward his palm, rubbing herself against it. Wetness seeped through her panties, dampening his hand.
“I don’t know. I just like it.”
“Even if you don’t get what you want?”
“I want whatever you give me. Whatever you choose not to give me. All of it turns me on. If it hurts too much in the moment, it just turns me on later when I’m remembering it.”
“Pervert.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She smiled impishly.
She was too fun. Too good. There was a catch somewhere, and he was impatient to find out what it was.
“What’s your deal, Miss Korsgaard? You show up here for work and weeks later you have Sutton eating out of your hand,” he heard his voice stumble over Sutton’s name and the reality that she was gone forever washed over him again. “You’re too fucking perfect. You follow me around and let me treat you like shit. You blow me and let me fuck you. Let me hit you. I locked a collar around your neck, claim you as my property, and you don’t even question me or object.” He blew out a breath. “Why?”
“Because I’m a submissive masochist and you have my fucking number, Mister Leduc.” She groaned. “Can we finish discussing this after you give me an orgasm or two? I answer questions much better after sex.”
“Nice try.” He lifted her off his lap and sat her on the table. It would be easier to talk without the distraction of her squirming on his cock. “Why are you still here, Miss Korsgaard? What do you get out of this?”
“I like it here. I like you. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?” She propped the toe of one of her little ballet flats on his stool, between his legs, letting her dress slide up her thigh until he could almost see those distracting panties of hers. “You’ve decided you own me. I could try to fight a
nd run away, but it would be pretty pointless seeing as how I was already here of my own free will. I also know part of the reason you collared me like this was to freak me out and scare me away. You’ll just have to deal with me hanging around liking you.” She leaned in, looking into his eyes, her own beseeching. When she looked at him that way it made him sorry he wasn’t a decent guy. “Someday, if you’re mean enough, I might leave, but I don’t think that’s what you really want.”
He wrapped a hand around her calf. Compared to him she was so finely built that she felt disturbingly breakable. And yet she seemed to trust him more than he trusted himself.
“Why wouldn’t you leave? Eventually you’re going to want a normal life again. Unless you’re in the witness protection program or something, why would you stay here?”
“My grandfather died about a year ago,” she said, shrugging like it hadn’t been unexpected. “My parents have basically disowned me, and my perfect sister doesn’t speak to me. I don’t know what you keep thinking I have to go back to. You’re it. You and your family and your friends. I was alone before I came here.”
“What about your own friends?”
“I lost most of them when I moved to Michigan. I spent so much time trying to finish school and make rent that I didn’t have time to keep up with them. People grow apart. Maybe it makes me a bad friend, but we have nothing in common anymore. I talk to them online once in a while, but Jenna is married and has two kids, and all she wants to talk about is her husband’s bitchy mistress, and Marisol is getting her master’s in public health and I can’t follow half of what she’s saying. I don’t have much to contribute.”
“But your family?”
She shrugged. “My final transgression was apparently unforgivable.”
“Were you a stripper or something? Call girl?”
Her laugh was incredulous. “I hate to have to break this to you, Mister Leduc, but I’m not exactly a hot commodity. I’m short. Silly. Quirky.”
“You’re perfect.”
She blushed and rolled her eyes. “You’re delusional.”
“Antisocial and delusional are two different things. I’m not the only one who thinks you’re perfect – Rodrigo would steal you from me in a heartbeat.”
“Anyway,” she continued, looking uncomfortable, “I didn’t get disowned for anything as exciting as being a sex trade worker. I think my mom would have preferred that.”
“Why did they disown you, if not for that? You said they thought you liked sex too much?” He felt himself relaxing. This was a much easier discussion than he’d thought it would be. He’d avoided asking her much about herself because he didn’t want to think about other people who’d have a claim on her time – people she’d eventually go back to when she got bored of being at the house with him. As much as it made him an ass, he liked hearing she had no one too.
“When I came up here for school we did a segment on gerontology. It was a weird topic for me, because I never knew my grandparents, really. My dad’s parents still live in Denmark, and my mom’s mom died when she was twenty-two.” She tapped her toe where it rested between his legs. “My mom’s father has been in and out of jail since she was a little girl. He was a thief. She barely knew him. My parents pretended he didn’t exist then got mad when I decided to look for him to interview him for a school assignment. I got to know him and started helping him out. He couldn’t work anymore by the last time he’d been released from jail, and he was too sick to work anyway. He was stick thin when I found him.”
In her agitation, she was tapping her foot on the stool he was sitting on, making it vibrate. He moved his grip to her ankle, then marveled at how his thumb and forefinger overlapped when he had his hand wrapped around it. She drew a sharp breath and her shudder shot through his palm.
“So what happened?” he asked quietly.
Her gaze settled on his, and she worried at her lower lip with her even white teeth. “I moved him in with me, and when my parents found out they were livid. We had a huge fight. I know Ben wasn’t there for my mom when she was growing up. He was rough around the edges but he regretted a lot of the decisions he’d made in life by the time I’d met him. He’d tried to patch things up with my mom, but she didn’t believe he’d changed, and was holding a grudge.” She shrugged. “I guess that bridge was burned too far to repair. His emphysema was so bad he couldn’t do much, and he had no one else.”