“I don’t make spontaneous decisions,” he told her, severely. “I am a rational, measured, meticulous man, in word and deed.”
Rory leaned her cheek into his hand.
“I love you, Conrad,” she said, calmly. Because when he was touching her like this, when she was lost in his gaze, no matter what else was happening in her body or her head—she felt still. Calm. Whole. “I don’t care if that’s not rational and measured and meticulous. It’s a fact. No one’s expecting you to drop down on your knees or, God forbid, become a switch—” and neither one of them smiled, but the look they shared warmed, all the same “—but I think that just this once, you should trust me. See what happens.”
An eternity seemed to tick by. A muscle in his jaw tensed.
“If we jump into this,” he said, and her heart flipped over inside her, “I don’t think it’s going to be halfway. Are you ready for that? No brakes. Just you and me and all the intensity we can handle. And while we’re on the topic of intensity, there will be no one else. When I claim something, I keep it to myself.”
It took everything she had to keep her expression neutral, when inside she was melting. Jumping up and down. Filled with a hope so encompassing that it almost hurt.
“I’ve never claimed anything,” Rory said, solemnly, though everything in her was a single, solid scream of yes. “But you better believe that I’ll be more than happy to claim you.”
“I’ve never jumped off a cliff in my life,” Conrad said, a note of something like wonder in his dark voice. And a light she hardly dared believe in there in his navy blue gaze. “Why do you make me feel like that might be a great idea?”
“Because you trust me.” Rory was unable to keep the emotion out of her voice, her eyes,her. “And I trust you. And everything else will sort itself out.”
He shook his head, but his grip only tightened. “I don’t think you know what you’re signing up for. When I told you about maintenance spanking, I wasn’t kidding.”
She shivered at that, that delicious, spiked kind of terror going through her once more when she’d thought she would never feel it again. It kicked up everything inside her, turning it into that thick, pulsing desire that only he created in her, and it headed straight for her clit.
“I’m sure I’ll hate them,” she said, and smiled.
His eyes darkened with promise. “Only if I do them right.”
“Just as long as you do it.” She burrowed more deeply into his hand. “I promise you, you can trust me to take what you give. All that you give, Conrad. All that you are.”
His stern face changed, then, lighting up as he reached to hold her face in both his hands. Caressing her and trapping her at the same time, and it made her heart seem to spin in place. “I’m going to love you something terrible, aren’t I?”
She let her grin get wicked and insolent, just for him, the man who hated brats but couldn’t stay away from her. “Conrad, you already do. Or you would have thrown me out of your house the second you found me your secret room and never let me back in.”
Something flashed in his eyes, as good as vows from another man, and then he was kissing her. A deep, wild claiming, right there in a cat café.
He kissed her like he owned her. And better yet, he kissed her like he was hers, body and soul, the way she’d hardly dared let herself imagine he could ever really be.
But oh, how she’d hoped.
Then he pulled away, smoothed her hair back from her face, and smiled at her.
And Rory felt as if they really had taken a dive over a cliff, but instead of falling, they were flying. Soaring high, with no fear at all of any hard landings.
Not as long as they were together.
And when he pulled away, his eyes had gone stern again, and the spinning in her heart sank through her, making her molten hot and fearful in the most exciting way possible.
“Conrad—” she began, but he put his finger over her lips.
“That’s enough now, I think.”
Just like that, everything around them shifted. Like a shimmer in the air, and suddenly, they were in that red-hot circle that was only theirs.
And Rory understood in a flash that this is how it would always be. That they would shift between their different worlds, wherever they were, at his whim.
“No talking,” he told her, his voice a dark command that she didn’t just hear. She felt it. Everywhere. “We’re going to get up from the table. You’re going to take me back to your flat, and when we’re there, you’re going to strip down and present yourself to me. I’m going to inspect my property. And then, Rory, there will be a reckoning, which I doubt very much you will enjoy.”
She was so happy she thought she might die, or come, or break down into sobs, right there.
Instead, she stood with him, unable to contain her joy. Because it was streaming down her face. It was the way she was breathing, or not breathing. It was making her cheeks hurt from the wideness of her smile.