Especially when she didn’t look away from him.
“Where yours were,” she whispered, and then flushed again, and brighter.
“I can see that was difficult for you, Rory. You didn’t want to tell me that.”
“No,” she agreed, suddenly sounding winded.
“Do you know why honesty is so important?”
Her eyes widened, almost comically. “Because of all those things in that room of yours. I don’t think anyone would enjoy pretending that they were into it only to find that they really,reallyweren’t.”
“It doesn’t quite work that way,” he said, once again finding that what he wanted to do was laugh. When he was not exactly known for his hilarity in a scene. “Honesty is vulnerability. Only vulnerability allows for intimacy. And for all the closeness you claim you had while tragic, untutored boys heaved about on top of you, it brought you no real pleasure at all. I can promise you that this will be different. If what you truly want is that kind of closeness—that vulnerability and intimacy—then this is where you will find it, within the confines of the games we might decide to play. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” she said. “Or I want to, I guess.”
“Wonderful,” he said. He smiled. “Then get down on your knees.”
Conrad saw the shock go through her, electric and encompassing. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“H...here?”
He nodded toward the floor between them and opted not to point out how benevolent he was because there was a very soft rug there. Her knees would be pampered—a gift she could not possibly appreciate while this was shiny and new.
But her knees weren’t the point. Her head was.
Conrad watched her panic. He saw her eyes move this way, then that, as if trying to figure out how she could get out of this—while still getting what she’d come here for.
He waited, enjoying the show. There was more wringing of her hands. Her bracelets danced and jangled. He saw her toes curl in her sandals.
“Okay,” Rory said, very softly, her voice thready. “But how isn’t this demeaning?”
He didn’tquitelaugh at that. “For whom?”
“For women!” When he only gazed back at her mildly, she shook her head. “For me, then. It’s one thing to wander around making people come at the drop of a hat. But kneeling? Isn’t that...?”
“Isn’t that what?” he prompted her when she fell silent. “If you don’t finish the question, you can’t expect an answer.”
“I have to wonder what you get out of it, that’s all.”
Conrad settled back in his chair. “I’m so glad you asked. I like it. That’s what I get out of it.”
He nodded, again, at the place between them where he wanted her to kneel before him. And he could actually see, to his delight, the goose bumps that marched their way over every inch of her bare skin. Far more bare skin on display tonight, and all of it reacting to him.
She only got more and more delightful.
“I mean, saying that you’re in charge, or controlling, or bossy, or whatever...” Her chest moved dramatically as she fought to breathe. “That’s not the same thing as telling people to get down on their knees. This is basically everything that’s toxic about cishet sex.”
“I’m sorry,” Conrad said, allowing himself to sound bored. “I’m not following this conversation. Are we having an academic debate about the great many social and cultural issues that inform the world outside this building? Because I thought we were talking about what it isIlike. What pleasesme,in my bed and out of it. And there are a great many things that I like, as a matter of fact, but I asked you to do just one of them. And you would rather bludgeon me with buzzwords.”
“You don’t think it’s problematic to ask women to kneel before you?”
“Not for me.” He bit back a smile at her appalled expression. “Or, Rory, for the women who choose to kneel before me not only for my pleasure, but theirs.”
He let her sit with that, because she clearly had to breathe through it. And unless he was mistaken, she wasn’t doing a great job of it.
“Theirpleasure?” she asked, her voice practically strangled.