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It really was time to go.

She pivoted and headed for the door.

“Damn it, Rose!” His bellow echoed through the room. “Why are you so afraid of me?”

She stopped and spun back on him. She shouldn’t have, but she did. He didn’t get it, did he? “And why do
you
keep pushing
me
?”

He’d done the stealthy-lion thing again. He was just a foot away, arms curled at forty-five-degree angles, veins standing out against the meat of his muscles. Again that damn invisible-tether look. Again seeming like he barely held back from strangling her.

“Because I see what you don’t.” His lips barely moved with the words. His gaze made all the motion, urgently raking her face. “Because, damn it, you’re worth so much more than you see, than you allow yourself to be given, than what you believe—”

“Don’t.” It spilled from her, hot and humiliating as her tears. “Stop it! Don’t you dare make me go there! I’ve been there already, Senator, remember? And before Owen Dearborn, I’d been there a few thousand other times too.” A bitter laugh broke free. “Mother always phrased it best. ‘It’s best you stop reaching for the fruit on the high branches, Rosalind. Your arms aren’t long enough.’ Well, I now know what fruit is appropriate for me. And it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“And you’re wrong.”

Just three words. But he stamped them with the same ferocious force that overcame his whole body as he stepped and grabbed her by the elbows. “You’re wrong, Rose. She’s wrong.”

He gripped her much harder than he had that afternoon. The pressure, along with the heat flowing off him like flares from the sun, should’ve sent alarms through her. A normal woman would’ve evaluated the situation and been at least a little scared.

But Rose was wet. Aching. Her lips parted as her body hit the Override button on her brain, tingling in greeting to his nearness. Her whole body throbbed in need for his power. Her sex pulsed, her heart fluttered, her very skin came alive with craving…

More.

“What are you going to do?” Her dry rasp swirled through the inches of air between them. “Pin me to a wall again until I’m brainwashed to your will?”

His answering smile was instant but slow. Knowing but vigilant. And in the three seconds he took to make it, everything changed between them. There was a shift, like the moon pulling rank and calling the tide back out to sea, where it could break free without the limits of the shore.

This was ridiculous.
Have you really just compared the man to the sun
and
the moon at once? He’s forbidden fruit. Don’t play this high, Rose. You’re going to fall and get hurt!

“No,” he finally said, dipping the molten heat of his stare along the length of her body. “We’ve done the wall already, pet. And it clearly didn’t make a difference in your mindset.”

He tugged her closer to him. Her breath caught. Her head spun. “I…I hadn’t thought that was the…intention.”

The last syllable was nothing but a sigh, a breath that mingled with his, as he dipped his head and lips near. “So you’ve been thinking about it?”

“Thinking about w-what?”

“The wall. This afternoon. Being trapped. Being controlled. By me.”

“Of course not!” She turned her face away. He followed without hesitation or mercy, pressing his mouth against her cheek, scuffing her skin with his beard, scratching deeper into her mind, whether she wanted it or not.

“I think you’re lying. I think you’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. Just like I have.”

His confession turned her thoughts into a deeper mess. “What are you doing to me? Why do you
want
to do this to me? We can’t— I can’t—” His mouth traced closer, thickening the mental fog. She couldn’t go back to that place again. She wouldn’t. “Please…Senator— Mark—” She huffed, frustrated. She didn’t even know what to call him anymore!

“Sir will do, Rose. I love the word when it comes off your lips. Especially when they’re this flushed and beautiful.”

The mental morass worsened as he raised a hand and ran a slow thumb along her mouth. Confusion stormed her mind, body, senses. She tried to find her way out, trying to break free from him. “F-for one thing, m-my lips aren’t beautiful…and…and—”

“And that’s a perfect place to start.”

He didn’t give her a second to breathe, let alone argue anymore. Not when he jammed his mouth against hers, opening her with a sweep of passion, filling her with his tongue and even his teeth, shredding all the logic she had left. She tried to break free, but he buried a hand in her hair, securing her in place as he plunged, sucked, crushed, commanded. When he finally broke away, she actually gasped from the loss, until he stole even that from her. Her breath broke into a shocked cry as he hoisted her into his arms, then strode deeper into the gym with her.

“What the hell?”

“I think you mean, what the hell,
Sir
?” He plunked her down on a padded sit-up bench.

“Wh-what?”

She might as well have spouted Swahili for how much he heeded the retort. She was too stunned to move, watching him stalk to a rack with a dozen jump ropes, then wrench half the inventory off their pegs. “Why are you— What’s—”

“Are you
now
ready to tell me you how beautiful your mouth is?”

He stood back in front of her, legs braced, a pair of the jump ropes stretched between his hands. Despite his ominous stance, she fired off a deep glower. “No! What do you think—”

“Suit yourself.”

His serene intonation gave her no clue what he intended next. Before she blinked again, he twisted a rope around one of her wrists, crisscrossed it, and then captured the other arm too. He pulled that truss tight with one hand, then looped the second rope through the small gap between her wrists. Once he was able to hold her tight with one hand, he grabbed her waist with the other. His hold relayed pure strength, solid control, and no patience for a struggle. Still, Rose couldn’t believe she complied without a word as he turned her over and laid her flat on the bench, her face down and her arms now stretched over her head. In another second, he looped the rope around the bench peg, securing her into that position.

“This is crazy! What do you think—”

“The subject isn’t me right now. It’s you.”

She pivoted her head to glare at him but was stopped short by his face, now tilted and just a few inches away again. And the look on it…was a transformation. A spell of golden magic. His mouth twitched with sexy-as-hell adoration. His eyes were twin hearths of warmth and wonderment. The bastard made it damn hard to figure out what she felt right now. Pure fury or pure fascination?

“What in all of
hell
are you doing?”

He actually looked like he fought back a chuckle. “Hmm. Not as interesting as your previous outbursts, but still enchanting. Especially because you’ll be issuing no more statements like it for a while.” She drew breath to tell him where he could go with that pomposity, but he jammed two fingers against her lips. “I said no more, Rose. Let me explain myself. I’m not going to hurt you. You know that as well; I don’t see a speck of real mortal fear in your face. What I’m asking right now is that you trust me. That you acknowledge I’ve been a few steps in life farther than you, that I see an important lesson you can learn here, but that restraining you may be the only way you’ll pay attention and absorb this knowledge.”

His features intensified as he stroked a hand down her back. “If you don’t agree, now or at any time, then you say the word. I’ll let you up, and things return to normal between us. But that word isn’t ‘no.’ Or ‘stop.’ You’ll have to work harder, think harder, than that. Your word is ‘worth.’ Since you find it impossible to think of the term, let alone apply it to yourself, then it’s a perfect word upon which you can focus.” He finally released his fingers from her lips as he slipped his other hand beneath her shirt. His touch was a series of light, magical strokes against her skin. “Is all this clear? Do you understand?”

Her breath only cooperated in shallow spurts. He was right. He wouldn’t physically hurt her. His touch on her back alone, steady but gentle, proved it. The only trouble was, she wanted him to press harder. She yearned for the raw, rough command he’d exerted this afternoon, trapping her against the wall. God, didn’t that make her some kind of sicko? She knew what they called it. Submissiveness. The kink thing.
Weird
. She wasn’t any of those things…was she? She was raised to be the perfect North Shore wife. She wasn’t supposed to know about things like that, let alone like them.

But maybe that’s what Owen had seen. Maybe he’d seen the true, wicked mistake fate made in her. Maybe he’d just known, after that night when they’d finally been alone in the suite at the Fairmont, and she’d dared to let him see a little of her true desires…

Maybe he’d gotten it right way before everyone else.

She was wired wrong, plain and simple.

“Rose.” He broke into her thoughts with the ramrod of a syllable. “Thoughts
here
. Right now. I won’t ask so politely next time.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Though she grumbled it, he actually smiled. But best of all, he turned his caress on her back into a stronger, rougher possession. “That just flows from you, doesn’t it?” He shook his head, as if bewildered. “Such a natural, and you don’t even know it. Oh, Rose. Sweet Rose…”

His voice trailed as his gaze followed the path of his hand down to her lower back, sliding along the curve above her buttocks. He stopped for half a second before tucking his fingers beneath the band of her running shorts.

Both of them held their breaths. Rose almost held back her next words. Giving voice to them…it would, she sensed, take them across an unseen bridge, deeper down the sensual path he’d let her peek at this afternoon. She was terrified. And yet, it would’ve been easier to hold a burning match behind her lips.

“A natural…at what?”

When he gave her nothing but another enigmatic tilt of his lips, she frowned. “Are you really not going to let me up, unless I do what you say?”

His stare traveled down her body. His study was slower this time. Deliberate. “That’s the plan.”

She could actually hear herself breathing now. “Unless I say stop.”

“Unless you say
worth
.”

“Whatever. I can use it at any time, right?”

“I don’t think you will.”

He ended that with a bolder slide of his hand, molding it all the way around one of her butt cheeks. Rose gasped, jerking away by sheer instinct, shooting a what-the-hell gape up at him. He didn’t relent his hold by a centimeter.

And she didn’t utter a word.

“You have a lovely ass too, Rose. It fits perfectly against my palm. And it’s getting warmer. Everything down here is.”

He was right about that too. Oh God, he was right. As he curled his fingers against her skin, kneading one buttock, then the other, deep shivers of pure heat spiraled into her upper thighs, down to her knees and her toes, then back up again, centering in a pool of liquid magma right between her thighs. It was all she could do not to buck and squirm, simultaneously wanting to flee him and beg him for more.

She whipped her face away, digging her forehead into the bench pad. If her ass was that hot, everything from her neck up must be the shade of ripe turnips. “Oh God!”

He dug his fingers in a little harder, nipping the meat of her ass. “That’s not what I want to hear, pet.” Though the words chastised, his tone was nearly a knight’s courting croon. “Turn your face back to me, so I can see you say the words. ‘My mouth is beautiful.’”

She was so tempted to give him a snarl, the damn safe word, or both. But part of her, a growing part, wanted to simply lie there in silence, pushing his patience, wondering what he’d do if she did. The part that never wanted to be without his warm, knowing touch ever again.

“Fine!” She flipped her face back toward him. “My mouth is beautiful.” She deliberately rushed it. “Pleased with yourself?”

It was a ridiculous question. The man beamed. “Of course. But I’m more than happy to share my pleasure, honey.”

He’d barely drawled the last of that before dipping his fingers deeper between her legs. The contact with her sex only lasted a second but hit her like the tap of a wizard’s wand. Every nerve ending in her clit pulsed, zapping energy up her body. She jolted her head up, a cry escaping before she could help it.

“Easy, sweet Rose. We’re not done yet.”

The hell we aren’t!

“I— This— I really can’t—”

“Of course you can. And you will.” He coaxed her head back down by pulling the elastic band free from her ponytail, then spidering his hand against her head. “Next you’re going to tell me, ‘My
body
is beautiful.’”

“This is crazy! What if somebody comes in here and—”

“That’s my concern, not yours.” He let a long moment go by, working deeper magic into her scalp and her ass with his kneading, exploring hands. “Now don’t you have something you’d like to tell me?”

She huffed, and once more, he pinched her ass in reprimand. He did it harder this time, once on each cheek. The brief pain acted like a switch in her brain, channeling her attention thoroughly on him, on what he’d requested of her. No, on what he’d ordered of her. And how much she yearned now to obey. To bring that smile to his face that seemed to radiate from his whole being.

“I— My…my body is beautiful.”

She didn’t rush it this time. Because it didn’t feel so stupid this time. It felt kind of amazing. Kind of like it could be…the truth.

“Rose.” His own reply was low and husky. “Your body
is
beautiful.”

Just like that, his words pulled them across another unseen bridge—then burned that passage down right behind them. Rose saw it in the transition in his face, his jaw jutting and nostrils flaring. She felt it in her most intimate core, so deep inside, sending tiny streams of need down into her pussy, shaking her from the inside out. She moaned and shivered from its force. He only made things worse, and better too, as he withdrew the hand in her hair and dipped it beneath her shorts, as well.