“Do you have any other meandering questions or vague accusations?” he asked. “You look so lovely on your knees, I could answer them all night.”
She realized, with a start, that she’d forgotten that she was kneeling.
Something about that struck her hard. Like a gong. The very fact that something that had been so difficult for her to even contemplate seemed almost quaint now... Surely that should have upset her. Surely that should have been something that took a long time to get her head around.
But the reality was, it was him.
The way he looked at her. Thatvoice. His marvelous hands.
He hadn’t even touched her in any particularly sexual way tonight, and he was still the most exciting man she’d ever met—and by far the best sex she’d ever had.
She hardly knew where to put that.
“Well,” she said, considering all of those factors and her own feelings. And everything he’d said. Or better yet, implied, all midnight blue and that relentless gaze. “I appreciate you telling me all of these things. But I have to say... I kind of thought that kinky sex would have a lot more fucking. If I’m honest.”
His expression didn’t change, though somehow, it got significantly more...wolfish.
He smoothed his hand over her hair, and the way he looked down at her made everything inside her tighten.
“Rory,” he said, so softly. Almost gently, if it weren’t for the steel beneath. “How wet are you?”
She was so wet it should probably have been embarrassing. Hot and aching besides. She was so wetit hurt.“What?”
He looked almost tender, if an expression so intimidating, all steel and intent, could be any such thing.
“This is BDSM, little one,” he said, rumbling and dark, and too delicious to bear. He made her heart slam against her own ribs like a mallet. “I like to start it off with a long, slow, lazy mind fuck. Or what would be the point?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
CONRADCOULDN’TREMEMBERthe last time he’d had this much fun.
He’d had a lot of sex, certainly. And the push and pull of BDSM always made that sex excellent.
But this was on a different level altogether.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been with a brand-new submissive, because he preferred to avoid them. He didn’t want to waste his time training a woman to his standards, when he only intended to enjoy her for a night. Or a short scene. His experiences with Marie Jeanette, the only submissive he’d claimed—and when he’d been much younger—had left him uninterested in collaring anyone since.
The aversion had faded as the years passed, but these days he hardly had time to play, much less maintain a woman in the way she required.
Because, much as he and Marie Jeanette had suited at the start, things had changed. Things always changed—he understood that—but the way they’d changed had ruined them. Conrad had come into himself as he grew. The more responsibility he took on in the outside world, the more intensely he’d wanted sexual power.
But Marie Jeanette had turned out to want less sexual dominance, and more of a conventional life. The more intense he became sexually, the less in to it she was. And the more she cried and wanted more fancy holidays abroad than scenes, the less he wanted to do any of it. It became unworkable.
These days, Marie Jeanette was far happier with a gentler, kinder dominant partner, who was happy to keep her as she preferred. They had married some time ago, and Conrad had attended their wedding. Happily.
But he couldn’t say that he had been particularly inspired to repeat the collaring experience since then. Or even training a submissive to please him, because he rarely played with the same woman twice.
Until now.
And little as he wanted to accept that Rory was different, he was not in the habit of hiding from truths. However unpleasant. Even if it meant that apparently, he was in the market to train this unexpected—and if he was honest, unacceptable—American.
“Am I supposed be doing something?” she asked, her eyes wide. “Or is this part of the mind fuck?”
“It’s all part of the mind fuck,” he replied. And felt a surge of something it took him a moment to identify.
Affection.
He had to pause a moment to process that. This woman was everything he would have sworn to anyone who would listen, in any club he frequented, he detested. And yet here he was, so hard he was beginning to worry it might actually threaten the limits of his control.