“Yes.”
Her throat ached when she swallowed. “I knew it,” she said softly. “Or part of me did. I recognized your scent and the texture of the fabric when you held me last week in the garage and you were wearing the coveralls.”
He said nothing. She looked up at him uncertainly. Expectantly. His long bangs had fallen forward in the lake breeze, so that his gleaming eyes were shadowed.
“What do you imagine that I’m going to tell you now?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess you’re a person who likes BDSM, and that’s your lifestyle choice? And that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s your sexual preference? That it’s consensual and no one gets hurt?”
“Very politically correct,” he said, his small smile gentle despite his mild sarcasm.
“Well what would you say?”
His hands moved on her waist, stroking her in a seemingly distracted fashion while he thought. “I’m sorry,” he said, perhaps noticing her impatience. “Believe it or not, I don’t sit around thinking up excuses for why I want something, or why I want it a certain way. But I will tell you this. You were right to be disgusted that night.”
“What?” she asked, taken aback. She hadn’t expected him to agree with her.
“I did behave coldly. Selfishly. You believe that your disgust came from sexual practices you weren’t familiar with, which is part of it. But I think the reason you were disgusted is that you caught me behaving badly,” he stated starkly. He met her incredulous stare. “You caught me in the act, Emma, of depravity. It’s one thing to prefer to dominate a woman and to care about her security and her pleasure, to want to claim it. There was nothing wrong technically in the things I did that night. It was consensual, and I would never harm a woman. But because I didn’t really care, one way or the other about Astrid’s pleasure—or even remotely about her—it was wrong,” he admitted.
“She certainly didn’t seem to find her pleasure lacking,” Emma said dryly, resisting an urge to touch his tension-filled face.
“I would have been better off masturbating instead of being with her.”
“She was using you as well,” Emma said after she’d recovered from his bald statement.
“We all use each other to some degree,” he said quietly. His long fingers stretched, gently kneading her back muscles. Her undeniable attraction to him, her need, swelled in her breast. She wanted very much to pull him closer to her, to press against him.
Instead, she forced herself to focus on what he was saying. “So you’re saying that I probably would have been upset even if I’d witnessed you having sex with Astrid by more conventional means?” she asked carefully.
“I’m guessing that’s what disgusted you the most, yes, although not being familiar with the particulars, you were shocked by them as well. You knew I didn’t care, that I felt no sense of connection or even true desire for her. You sensed I was bored and cynical—”
“I thought you were behaving beneath yourself,” she said abruptly, interrupting him. “And it pissed me off.”
They faced off in the silence that followed. His face was a mask, but the heat in his eyes told her she might have angered him.
“It’s not a pleasant thing for me to consider, either,” he said. “Do you even realize that? I wouldn’t have thought twice about that night if you hadn’t intruded, aside from some passing self-disgust. Your eyes were an uninvited, extremely uncomfortable mirror,” he bit out, “and yet here I look into them.”
His voice rang and rattled in her head.
No, she hadn’t considered how difficult it might be for him to think of her watching him in the midst of his bitterness. He’d been vulnerable while having sex that night, but not to Astrid.
To Emma.
She blinked and felt the burn in her eyes. She realized something else.
“I thought you were beautiful,” she said. “Despite it all.”
His features stiffened. His hands tightened at her waist.
“I have never wanted a woman the way I do you,” he said. “Tell me what you need to make this right.”
Her heart began to pound in her ears.
“There are so many things I don’t understand,” she admitted.
“Then ask.”
“Okay,” she said tremulously. “Who is Adrian?”