Sage had taken care of herself for a long time. With the exception of putting up with Gail, she never backed down, ever, and she wasn’t about to start now. Why then, couldn’t she hold his steely gaze? Her emotional and physical responses were all over the place. One minute her stomach was so tied up in knots, she thought she might throw up. The next, it danced all over the place in gleeful relief that at last, someone had figured her out, seen through her façade. Sage knew to hold his gaze was to offer him the proverbial window to her soul. He would be able to read all her thoughts and emotions, all her needs and secrets.
She watched him reach to unbuckle his belt. The pulse between her legs increased, beating so hard, she was surprised he couldn’t hear it.
“Now, Sage, or your first kiss won’t be from Daddy’s lips but from his belt.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the corner, gently nudging her in the direction of the fireplace. When she hesitated, he patted her backside gently, but the unvoiced threat was palpable. She winced but went where he directed her.
“Who are you?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
Chapter 7
Who was he? How could she not know that? She had given him life, although she might be regretting that right now, but she hadn’t given him agency—that and his freedom, he’d taken for himself.
He was used to watching Sage’s train wreck of a life play out as she wrote her novels. Granted, he could only see what was right in front of the laptop when it was open, but it was enough. He only had glimpses of the events that influenced her life but was able to see the effects and aftermaths. He had tried repeatedly to get her to let him deal with the heroines of her novels in a more meaningful way. Sage had consistently written them as silly shills for herself. He’d wanted to keep them safe and help them to flourish and grow. Instead, she’d made each one a self-contained story that never allowed her hero or heroine to evolve.
In each novel, a woman found herself in peril. Roark would come in, at the behest of some person who professed to care for her, then become annoyed with the heroine so he could justify spanking and fucking her. The result had become predictable; the lady in question always fell in love with him. Then inexplicably, she would escape his watchful eye, and he’d have to save her before spanking and fucking her again. Then instead of letting the relationship expand to any kind of meaningful conclusion, Sage would have him merely drop her off with her father, fiancé, or dreary little life before he returned to his suite in the Savoy. Nice touch. The way she wrote Roark, he really was a bastard.
What Sage failed to realize was there was so much more to him… there could be so much more between them. Sage needed a loving dominant, someone who could see to all her needs—structure and support for boundaries and consequences, as well as those for pleasure and pain. Sage would be quick to tell anyone she wasn’t into pain for pain’s sake. She had just enough of a touch of masochism that pain freed her from her self-imposed limitations and rigidity. What she needed was to know there was someone who cared enough about her to hold her accountable and see that she behaved in the best ways possible to achieve her goals and dreams.
And pleasure… he smiled, his cock growing hard. There was a deep well of pleasure in Sage no one had guessed existed. He meant to explore her hedonistic need for erotic and sensual stimulation and satisfaction. His little girl was a proverbial alley cat in heat when it came to sex. She’d almost let her assassin fuck her before he killed her. He might be her tomcat, and he might well fuck her under a bridge sometime, but by Christ, it would mean something to her, and she would stay safe.
It was difficult to see only the parts of her life visible from the laptop or the pages of her manuscript—either on the printed page or from her screen. In the past, all he could do was observe what was directly in front of him or hear what was going on in the same room, occasionally eluding the bonds she had created to invade her dreams. He could touch her and have sex with her, but had never found a way to pull her over his knee to administer a spanking when she needed one. He hadn’t been able to escape his prison on the written page for any length of time.
Last night had been different…
As usual, he’d been imprisoned in Sage’s laptop. He felt uneasy when she hadn’t returned before dark. He’d begun casting about—sifting through emails, linking up with the Savoy’s vast computer network—anything that might reveal her whereabouts.
He’d all but given up when he felt her presence, stronger than he ever had in the past, and looked up, expecting only darkness. She had closed the computer before she’d taken a shower. Pity that… he did enjoy seeing her naked—voluptuous curves, beautiful auburn hair, and eyes the color of a soft, summer sea. Instead, he saw Sage’s room, which meant someone had been in her room and opened her laptop.
Someone had tried to access the system but failed. All he could see was the room and couldn’t hear anything. He started to turn away when the room began fading into a shimmering soft focus, and he wondered if the battery was dying. Roark tried looking through what appeared to be gathering fog.
Suddenly, two figures came into sharp relief—Sage with her leggings and panties pulled
