“I know it was one night,” Rory said, her voice as turbulent as the look on her face. “Two nights, if you want to be technical. And I told myself everything you said to me here, and more. I know exactly how to go back to your house, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to be that girl, clinging to your trouser leg and begging for more.”
She blew out a breath. “I had already told myself that when I came to your house that night that no matter what happened, that would be it. And I stuck to it. But my feelings didn’t change, Conrad. I don’t think they’re going to.”
He needed to say something, but all he could seem to do was stay where he was, trapped in her gaze. Her honesty. All her vulnerability, there before him.
“And I was perfectly happy to sit with my feelings and figure out a way forward,” she said fiercely. I didn’t ask you for anything. But you came here and I want to know why.”
“I’ve told you—”
“That’s your excuse. Why don’t you tell me the real reason? Or does honesty only work one way?”
She could not have said anything that devastated him more.
He was surprised she didn’t feel the earthquake that rocked through him, razing Paris to dust outside, while he could do nothing but stay where he was.
Caught in that gaze of hers—and called out.
“I want to see how it plays out between us,” he said, as if from some great distance, where he was still in control of himself. “I want to explore our dynamic. But I know it’s too soon for you to commit yourself to anyone, particularly in the ways that people in the lifestyle commit themselves. I was hoping that I could be one of the dominants that you play with. I was thinking of you, Rory, though this level of insolence makes me wonder why I bothered.”
“You love this level of insolence,” she shot back, lighting up with temper again. “For two reasons. First, because I’m betting that nobody talks to you like this. They all bow and scrape, scurry around, and I’m not even talking about sex when I say that. And second, because you like to sit over there and imagine what consequences you can visit upon me whenever I’m something less then scrupulously polite. Don’t bother denying it. I know you do.”
“Do you now.” Something in him stirred, dark and greedy. “You’ll have to forgive me. I can’t quite sift through all of that invective and rudeness to find the part where you either said yes, you would like to explore our dynamic, or no, you would rather not.”
She leaned forward so abruptly that the cat there hissed, then jumped off the table.
“Everything you told me BDSM could be, it was,” she said, intensely. “I have never felt so vulnerable, or exposed. It took me a good two weeks to feel like myself again—that was how profoundly changed that night left me. And that’s not all. I haven’t posted a single thing online in a month. I stopped cleaning houses, because that’s not art, and I don’t know why I ever pretended it was. I stopped going on dates. My friends think there’s something wrong with me, but there’s not. I’ve never felt better. I know exactly who I am, and exactly what I want, and neither of those things would’ve been possible without you, Conrad.”
“Rory—”
Her brown eyes looked something like wise, then. Almost sad, he would have said, and that killed him.
“I don’t want to ‘explore dynamics’ with you, Conrad,” Rory said, very distinctly. “I want so much more than that. I want to marry you, and I don’t even believe in marriage.”
He must have made a face, because she laughed. And then she reached over and took his hand, reminding him suddenly of the way she’d kissed him in that pool, changing everything.
This time, Rory smiled when she pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed his palm, the same one he’d used to spank her until she came apart. “I’m in love with you, Conrad. And don’t tell me I’m not, or that I don’t know my own mind or heart. I do.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
RORYHADIMAGINEDthis scene a thousand times over the last, long month, but every time she had, she hadn’t imagined that she would feel like this.
Soalive.
Hopeful and a kind of outsize version of happy—or almost happy—at the sight of him. Something like supercharged—plugged in again—because he was here, and everything seemed to crackle with electricity around the edges near him.
She had looked up from what she considered her primary form of self-care these days to see him coming toward her, and if she’d been entertaining any doubts about what had been happening in her heart for the past month, they disappeared.
Just like that.
Because even outside that Gothic church, out of context, and in the last place she had ever expected to find him in all his broodingmaleness, Conrad was magnificent.
He made her glow with happiness, simply with his presence. He made her squirm in her seat, so instantly was she soft and wet and ready for him. She felt as if she’d been ready for him since she’d last had him.
He made her all kinds of things. Even mad, when he looked at her so calmly and talked about experimenting with others—but not the kind of mad that made her want to storm away, burn bridges, or figure out ways to forget him. This was a kind of mad she’d never felt before. The kind of mad that made Rory want to sit here in this café with cats and coffee, and keep talking to him until they understood each other.
And all of that, she had to believe, was love.
Rory had always thought that love was the sort of thing that would build up over time, like dripping sand through her fingers until it became a castle.