But instead, one night had ripped her wide-open, showed her who she was and what she wanted, and that was it. She was done.
And as Conrad stared at her now, looking as close to dumbfounded as she supposed a man so stern and austere ever could, she only felt more certain.
It wasn’t going to go away. It wasn’t going to change. She had known that beyond the shadow of a doubt when she’d been certain she might never lay eyes on him again. She knew it now, while he was here.
All she had to do was touch him, and it was like that collar he’d put around her neck. It affected her breathing. It was impossible to ignore. Something held them both in a tight, unbreakable grip.
“I collared and claimed a woman once,” he told her, and for once, his dark eyes looked like a storm. “That means—”
“I know what it means, Conrad.”
Rory didn’t tell him that she’d spent an inordinate amount of time this last month studying the BDSM lifestyle. Not just looking at sexy pictures, though she’d done that, too. She’d read books, a thousand articles, and had even gone to a few lectures.
But that was something she could tell him later.
Because she had to believe, now he’d tracked her down in what he didn’t need to tell her was a very unlike-him move, there would be a later. Hopefully a lot of laters.
“I would have told you that we simply changed,” Conrad told her, sounding something like bleak. “People do. But it’s been pointed out to me that I misjudged her from the start. And I can’t be sure that I won’t make a similar mistake again.”
Rory understood that was supposed to set her back, but she only shrugged. “Everybody has problematic exes. That’s why they’re exes. My college boyfriend could only get it up if I wore white cotton panties, lay on my back in corpse position without moving, and let him drip candle wax on my nipples. Totally not a serial killer, I’m sure.” She grinned at him. “We all make mistakes.”
Not for the first time, his eyes did that thing where she thought he was about to tip over into a temper, but instead, he laughed.
“I have no place to put any of that.” He ran a hand over his face. “What I’m telling you is that I—”
“Will never trust again, blah blah blah,” she interrupted him.
Rory felt his hand tense, but she didn’t want to let it go. And she reveled in it when their eyes clashed, because she could feel the dominant in him roar. She had the immediate, overwhelming urge to slip off her chair and find her knees on the floor, and only remembered that they were in public at the very last second.
She managed to breathe, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about the ache in her pussy.
“If I were you, Rory,” he said, stern and dark and authoritative, which made her heart beat faster, “I would be very careful with how dismissive you plan to be during this conversation.”
And the desire to please him warred with her longing to save them both the only way she could. By risking his displeasure now in the hope it would lead them where she knew—she knew—they needed to go.
“Conrad,” she said, very seriously, “haven’t I proved that you can trust me? I’m not saying that it isn’t hard, because I know that it is. I thought that getting onto my knees in front of you would kill me, but it didn’t. It made me stronger. It made me understand myself better. And everything else that happened that night just made everything more and more clear. I want you to do the same.”
One of his brows rose, making him seem dark blond and more dangerous than usual. Her breath caught. “I will never kneel.”
She found herself smiling. “I would never ask you to kneel. Perish the thought.”
Again, that ring around them seemed to tighten. And when he pulled his hand from hers, she felt a shot of desolation, straight through her. But all he did was lift it to her neck and hold it there, where he could rub his thumb over her lips, her cheek. Or simply hold the weight of his hand there, like the grip she felt all around them.
Like eternity.
“You are absolutely nothing that I would ever want,” he said, and something about the way he looked at her as he said it made it sound like an endearment, not an insult. And his hand was on her skin, so she found herself melting instead of bristling. “You are too brash. Too mouthy. You say whatever’s on your mind, and what’s on your mind is always...extraordinary. You make me laugh, Rory, when no one has managed that in years.”
“I sound terrible,” she whispered.
His eyes crinkled in the corners. “You are.”
And again, that should have hurt her feelings, but he was smiling. He was looking at her the way he had when he was inside her, fierce and bright, and she felt spellbound. If that was terrible, she would commit herself to being as terrible as possible forevermore.
“You came out of nowhere,” Conrad said, his voice low and dark but all that bright light in his gaze. “My cock is prepared for anything. But my heart...”
“I know you have one,” she said quietly. Intently. “I felt it beat.”
He looked as if that hurt him. As if she’d swung hard and landed a blow.