There’s one door at the top and her hand pauses over the knob. She looks back to me. Says nothing. I watch her shoulders lift with a breath and then she opens it.
The room beyond is vast, even with the slope to the ceiling and the heavy wooden beams that cut through. It’s swathed in moonlight from a glass wall that extends along the back, its view overlooking the rear of the house. It’s a sympathetic conversion, one that blends with the street from the front, but from the inside it’s something else and I realise this is the master bedroom, not the room we were in before.
This is the room she shared with her husband.
She continues to walk ahead of me, to where a bed floats in the centre covered in pure white linen. There’s a roll-top bath in the corner, two more doors that I imagine lead to a toilet and a dressing room since the only furniture I can see includes a plush grey chaise longue, a wall-mounted TV and a chest of drawers. A display of artwork that even without the artist’s name I can recognise as expensive and original.
She kneels before the bed, reaches beneath and pulls out a drawer. I’m too far away to see what’s inside but then she’s lifting out what she wants...and for a second I forget what we’ve come up here for. Until she turns and there it is, in her outstretched hand—a riding crop. Her other hand is still tucked behind her back.
Hell, when I thought he used it on her I freaked. When she told me it had been her using it on him I freaked even more. It wasn’t what I expected. And from all I know of her, how she can hold a TV audience spellbound, a conference centre full of hundreds captivated, head a charity for years and inspire millions into supporting it... She is a woman to bow down to, to submit to, but...
She walks towards me, a fire in her eyes, a lift to the corner of her mouth as she raises it to me.
‘It’s actually new. I bought it in the hope...well, I’m not really sure...call it a moment of crazy and an internet shopping spree fuelled by wine.’ She shrugs, all coy now, and raises her other hand. ‘Same with this.’
I swear I stop breathing as I take in what else she has procured. A collar and chains. Not minutes ago, I was livid at the very idea of Nathan doing this to her, and he was with her for years and years. I’ve known her personally for all of five minutes... It feels like more though, so much more.
And I know jealousy is burning as bright as any other emotion. But she’s not mine to be jealous over and it’s freaking me out as much as turning me on that we’re here like this.
‘Are you okay?’ She frowns a little and I give myself the mental slap I need.
‘This is what you want, yes?’
She wets her lips as she looks up into my eyes. ‘With you, right now, absolutely.’
Fuck. My insides clench over the rush her words trigger, and I take them from her grasp.
‘Tie your hair up, Little Kitten.’
She gives me the smallest of smiles and walks to the chest of drawers, pulls open the top drawer and takes out a brush. I watch as she combs her hair through, lifts it from her nape and secures it, her eyes on her reflection in the little oval mirror above. They meet me when she’s done and I smile my pleasure.
‘Very good.’
Her lips lift.
‘Now come and kneel before me.’
She turns slowly and my gut clenches ever tighter. I’ve never done this before either. I’ve fantasised all right, but even Layla and I...
I swallow back the memories, shutting down the voice in the depths of my brain that tells me this is going deeper than a one-night affair. Because it’s not deep—it can’t be. She’s broken free of a husband that I believe she loved, but I also believe controlled her, kept her fixed on a path that wasn’t always to her liking and now...she’s free.
And this is just another step in her life plan as she relishes her freedom. Just as her free-climbing incident, her rash car purchase, her visit to Electra was, I’m just another string in her bow. Nothing more.
But as she walks towards me, her eyes fixed on mine, I feel a surge of possession so powerful I feel winded.
Get a grip and go with it. Then walk away, as she expects you to. Just as you should want to.
You’re never going to tie yourself to another woman again. You’ve done that, been there and suffered the consequences.
She pauses before me, lowers herself to the floor and gazes up at me, acquiescent, obedient, waiting.
My grip around the riding crop flexes, the collar too. I want to keep her.
And she’s not even a possession to be kept...though like this...treating her as she so desires, she is.
Maybe that’s the problem, the messy avenue my brain—hell, my heart even—is too eager to explore. That she could be mine like this. Always.
‘We can go downstairs if you’d rather?’
Her voice is so loud in the silence of the room and she moves to stand, her hesitation evident in the widening of her eyes. ‘I should have thought. It’s usually weird enough for me to be up here, but...’
‘It’s not that.’
‘No?’
Hell, don’t fuck up her fantasy just because you can’t get a handle on your own feelings.
‘Hold this.’
She starts as I offer her the riding crop and I know it’s the way I blurt the instruction, doing my damnedest to drown out the inner critic.
And then a soft smile curves her lips, a smile that I know she’s working to control. She’s enjoying this.
‘What shall I
