“More,” Rory said after sitting with it a while. “I guess I want more.”
“More of what?”
She shifted in her chair again, and Conrad knew that if he asked her to bare herself, her pussy would be swollen already. Wet. Needy.
Just the way he liked it.
“The whole thing,” she answered him, sounding almost solemn. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“What makes it different from any other situation you’ve had?” He lifted a brow. “I seem to recall you boasting at some length about your vast sexual prowess.”
She flushed at that. He approved. “I’ve had sex, sure. But I’ve never... I mean, you know...” Rory clearly fought to settle herself. “I’ve never come before. With someone, I mean.”
“What I’m trying to figure out,” Conrad said, all quiet intent, “is if you came back here because you liked the way I made you come or if you just like that I made you come at all.”
She looked down at her hands. “Both.”
Conrad nodded. “Do you to like to be controlled?”
Rory jerked in her chair, and he could almost see the denial on her lips. She stopped herself. “I wouldn’t have thought so. But when I think about...” Her gaze slid from her hands, over toward that brick wall where he’d taught her that first lesson. “If I think about it, that’s the part that makes me...”
“Good,” he said, and smiled when her eyes shot back to his. “If it didn’t excite you, there would be no point in you coming here. You already know I like control.”
“Have you experimented?” She cleared her throat. “With, you know. Doing it both ways? Just to see?”
“That sounds like you’ve been on the internet.” He made a tsking sound. “No, I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a switch.”
“But I thought it made sense that the way to learn how to do something was to feel it, first.”
“I know how to drive,” Conrad said dryly. “Without the faintest idea how it feels to be an engine. Don’t you?”
Rory’s gaze moved over him, and he would not ordinarily have allowed that, but she was different. This wasn’t a club. She’d never done this before.
And she was just different. Full stop.
“How did you know you were...?”
“A sexual dominant?” Conrad shrugged. “It was always clear. All sex can be good, but the kind that works best for a person has something else, doesn’t it? I’ve heard people say that it’s brighter. That it has more edge to it. Greater highs and lows, certainly. Whatever you call it, it was always clear which I preferred. I gravitated toward that more and more the older I got. And now?” He didn’t quite smile. He let his gaze do that for him. “I don’t really see the point in pretending to be something I’m not.”
“Have you ever? Pretended, I mean? Not necessarily to be on the other side, but to be...” She waved a hand at him. “Notyou.”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
And maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that this conversation was straying into ground he never, ever shared with the submissives he played with. Because none of this was standard. The submissive women he met in the clubs would never dare show up at his front door. Or do any of the other things Rory had already done.
Maybe, too, he was feeling a little more at his ease than he should have, because he’d been completely unable to get her out of his head and she was here anyway. Without him having to break.
That was the only justification he could come up with for why he kept talking. “Not long ago I decided that it was better for everyone concerned if I committed myself to conventionality.”
More to the point, his mother had carried on aboutwhat he owed the family name,and Conrad had already lost Erika, at that point. He’d been certain his version of tough love was what she needed after she’d abandoned her education, but that hadn’t made it any easier. Especially when she’d been so gleeful in her hatred of him. He’d been more susceptible to Chriszette than usual.
And perhaps, deep down, he’d viewed it all as an act of redemption. A way to prove that everything he did was in the family’s best interests, from cutting off Erika to finding himself the sort of fiancée his mother would approve of, social climber that she was at heart. Surely that would show everyone that his heart was in the right place whether they could see it or not.
“Conventionality?” Rory blinked, and this time, when her gaze strayed from his it went toward his chapel. “You?”
He felt his mouth curve in one corner. “Me.”
“But what would that even look like? Whips only twice a week and chains on alternate Thursdays?”