Reluctant Surrender (8 page)

There was no question in Ethan’s mind. Full disclosure was the only way to go with her. He wanted her completely aware and once she was he’d help her make the necessary decisions to deal with her predicament. He hadn’t meant to use the lure of her blog followers to get her to agree, but when she balked he’d found himself dragging them up front and center. Misleading wasn’t his style so he wanted things clear before they got in this too deep. Better she backed out now than three days from now.

“All done.” She came into the room like a prisoner waiting to be strapped in for lethal injection.

“Good. Have a seat.” Taking note of her furrowed brow, he held back a grin. “Nervous?”

“Yeah.” The stiffness went out of her and her face contorted in a comical and wholly unattractive manner. An expression that any other woman, given the chance to spend time with him, wouldn’t be caught dead making just before words rushed out of her. “That obvious, huh?”

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Stop biting your nails.” He loved her beautiful fingernails. Not too long, but natural and elegant. He hated that his presence made her so on edge that she felt the need to chew on them. When she stopped and shoved her hands underneath her thighs, he sighed. “I’m going to be honest with you, Colin.”

Her eyes shone the color of the Mediterranean Sea on a cloudless day. “Okay.”

“We have a situation here and I want you to know that I would never take advantage of it.”

“So you’re not going to ravish me?” she joked.

“I didn’t say that.”

She wasn’t smiling now. Clearly his answer had made her uncomfortable. Hunching her shoulders forward, she let out a pent-up breath. “We’re not very good at this are we? Last week in Mazer’s office you said if I wanted to know the real reason you’d orchestrated this intimate get together you’d tell me. I should have stayed to hear you out. I’m listening now.”

Brave girl. He sat on the arm of the couch and dove right in. “I know you’re committed to exploring the concepts I’m going to show you about a BDSM environment for your readers’ benefit, but I want you to be fully aware that there’s something that may affect the experience for you personally. It’s that ‘something’ that has me intrigued and caused me to make this arrangement with you.”

“Okay.”

“Sweetheart, you’re a submissive.”

She blinked.

He waited.

She blinked some more. “Submissive what?”

It was his turn to blink. “A submissive. Period.”

Pursing her lips, she appeared to contemplate the matter and replied, “Nope.”

He didn’t hesitate to counter, “Yes.”

Taking a moment, she adjusted her blouse before crossing her arms and leaning forward to rest them on her knees. “Ya think?”

At the moment he was thinking he could get used to that nose scrunch of hers, but then she unwound her arms and sat up straight. “Lord love a duck! You think I’m one of you?”

Ethan had been prepared to be patient with her. He would be patient. But there was patient and then there was patient. “One of us?”

She waved a hand. “Oh, you know what I mean.”

He sure did. “Again, one of us?”

“Casper said you’d try to mesmerize me into turning kinky.”

Ethan didn’t doubt that for a moment. Casper was probably from the old school. Where one held the belief that sexual preferences, even of the kinky variety, were a conscious choice. He assumed it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to automatically believe that one adhering to the BDSM lifestyle could recruit the vanilla population into kink against their will. But this wasn’t about Casper and his archaic thinking. This was about Colin’s truth.

He leveled a direct stare on her. “What do you think?”

“I think Casper’s heart was in the right place.”

“I’m not interested in Casper at the moment. I’m interested in you. What you’re thinking. What you’re feeling. You.”

“Me—really? This is why you insisted on us spending time together? Why it had to be you and not one of your partners staying with me. Really?”

She was looking all over the place. Right. Left. Up at the ceiling. “Colin.”

“What?”

He loved the way she sounded upset and pissed off at the same time. He supposed that came with frustration. “How do you feel when you’re around me?”

Scowling, she looked right at him. “Angry.”

“I think it’s time for you to be honest.”

“I am angry…sometimes.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Angry and what else?”

“This is crazy.” She groaned and looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Colin, honey, stop chewing on your nail and tell me. This is important.”

She shot up and started pacing. Interesting enough though, just like every other time he ordered her, she’d stopped biting that nail.

“Look, a small part of me may have agreed to the ten days because I’m curious. However, my life is just fine the way it is, so if you want some distance from that, that’s cool. With the extra money I’m making doing the buffed-up PR on the resort for you guys, I may be able to realize a dream. And yes, my readers may have sucked this up like hummingbirds to sugar water, but if you think it’s not a good idea for me to explore aspects of the lifestyle with you too deeply, because it’ll mess me up somehow tell me now. Just don’t use the excuse to bow out of it by saying there’s more between us than there really is. I couldn’t take that.”

“Colin.”

She stopped and whirled to face him. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m attracted to you, but I can’t let that get in the way of my goals. I might have toyed with the idea that I may,
may
have a teensy-tiny-miniscule—as in, smaller than a speck of dust—desire to submit to a strong, hunky guy who may or may not look like you. But, and this is a biggie, I’m ignoring it. I can do the ten days without letting my feelings get the best of me as long as you don’t make me believe there’s something else going on here. I plan to remain completely objective in the process.”

He got up and headed straight for her. “I don’t think you can.”

She squared her shoulders and stood her ground. “I will.”

The second he put his hands on her she was toast. Her cheek pressed into his palm and she let him crowd her. She might have even groaned. He couldn’t be sure. “You can’t ignore this draw. You feel it, don’t you?”

“No, I…”

“Yes.” He tapped her nose to get her to focus. “You’re craving the experience. You’ve got the desire to be with me. To submit. You want to be dominated, and not by someone who looks like me, but by me. Period.”

“Do you always end your sentences by speaking the punctuation out loud?”

“Colin.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Colin.” He held her gaze.

“I…”

He waited nearly a full thirty seconds. When she didn’t look away, remaining silent, he dropped his forehead down to hers and whispered, “Thank you for not lying to me. Now, let’s be a brave girl and tell me some truths.”

“Courage is overrated. Can’t we just—”

“Shush. I want you to pay attention. Listen.”

“All right.”

“Good.” When she eased he asked, “Do you feel restless and out of sorts when you’re around me?”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Have you been dreaming about me?”

“You told me to.”

“Colin.”

“Yes.”

“Have you fantasized about me?”

“Uh-huh.”

He rubbed his forehead against hers. “This is very good, Colin. Very good.”

Her knees buckled and he caught her up. “Hey, don’t check out on me now. I want to know what you need to make you happy.”

Her eyes snapped opened and she frowned. “T-that’s a broad question.”

Leading her back to the couch he sat down with her and said, “No. It’s the right question and I want you to answer it.”

“Loyalty.”

“Good. What else?”

“I can’t believe this,” she whispered, but more to herself, before she half grumbled, half groaned, “I feel like I’m going to cry and I don’t know why.”

“That’s all right.”

“No it’s not.” She sniffled and wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “I don’t cry, okay?”

Ethan brushed her tears aside with the pad of his thumb. “Maybe you should. Maybe if your tears belonged to someone else they wouldn’t be so painful to shed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tears skipped in an uneven pattern down her cheeks as he pulled her into his arms. Tucking her head under his chin he squeezed her up tight. “I’m not afraid of your tears. Let me own them, even if it’s just for a little while.”

Chapter Five

Colin was one hot emotional mess. Take now, for instance. Ethan pulled her into his big arms, murmuring encouraging and kind words. Crushing her in the comfort of his embrace so securely she should be blubbering hard and soaking his shirt, but she wasn’t. Instead she was reveling in the rise of his chest against her cheek as he breathed in. Dying a sexy death as he exhaled and she sank deeply into his warmth. He smelled like cooling rain and the way new leaves did after a downpour and she loved it. She could get used to this. Used to him.

When that came to her so did her common sense, along with a heavy dose of despair. What was she doing?

“Let me go.” She angled back enough to get her palms on his chest. “Please.”

Abruptly he opened his arms and she nearly fell off the couch. Managing to grab hold of the cushion, she used that to propel her upward and into an awkward stumble to the counter. The whole trip she silently berated herself for being an ass. She had no business— Wait, this wasn’t her fault, it was his. He knew more about all this stuff than she did. He was an experienced Dom. A Master, both figuratively and literally. Her eyes narrowed as his earlier words came to mind.
We have a situation here and I won’t take advantage of it.
Yeah right.

“Don’t use your hypnotist hocus-pocus on me, big guy. I’ve got tricks too, you know.”

“You think I’m trying to trick you?” He slapped his hands on his knees and pushed his massive body into a stand. “Sweetheart, we need to get you off this merry-go-round. Even I’m getting dizzy.”

Where was he going? “Hey, wait a second. I’m not joking. I have goals and you’re going to mess them up being so…being—”

“Nice?” He paused with his hand on the fridge door. “Honest?” He opened it and turned to look at her. “Helpful?” He pulled out a container of juice and poured himself a tall glass.

“No, no and no. You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Would you like some juice?”

She’d been prepared for the equivalent of verbal fisticuffs so it took her a moment. “Juice?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. His gaze was penetrating. Intense before he brought his index finger up and drew a line across the smaller text on the bottle, slowly saying, “Fresh squeezed orange juice not from concentrate.”

The only two words that stuck out in her mind at the moment were “squeezed” and “concentrate”. Probably on account of the heavy waves of achy desire that were squeezing the life out the sensitive flesh they were currently concentrating on.

Damn.

“No.”

He put the bottle down and stacked his palms, one on top of the other, covering the cap. “No, what?”

“No I don’t want any orange juice.”

His smile was tight. “The polite way to respond is with a, ‘no thank you’.”

She blushed.

He stared.

She blushed some more.

When he didn’t move she instantly knew what the phrase “time stood still” really meant. Swallowing, she croaked, “No thank you.”

That was it. She fully expected a long lecture or his continued censure. Something. But there was nothing in his demeanor as he put the juice away and turned back to her to indicate he’d given her rudeness another thought. It was quite refreshing and put her totally at ease. Wow. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”

He took a sip of his drink and put it down. “Good at…?”

As if he didn’t know. “Seduction.”

She wanted to die when he grinned. Her knees went all rubbery and that ache between her legs turned to liquid fire.

“Is that what you think is going on here?”

All she could do was nod.

That to-die-for grin slid into a crooked smile that took her breath away. “Colin, if I had a mind to seduce you right now, you wouldn’t have to ask me if I’m good at it. You’d know I was.”

Unbelievable! He wasn’t even trying to put the moves on her and she was ready to jump him? Not good. Not. Good. At. All. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I never should have unpacked.”

She was halfway across the room, heading back to get her stuff when she stopped and spun around. “You purposely had me unpack because you knew it would make all of this harder.”

“Harder? I’m not following.”

He may not have been following her train of thought, but he was following something. Her. And the closer he got the more out-of-sorts she felt. “Stop. Please. I don’t— I can’t…”

“Yes?” His big hand clamped over hers, dwarfing it as he pulled, until she was back in his powerful embrace. “Talk to me, Colin. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

What could she say? She’d never been any good at lying.

“You’re gonna win because I’m gonna cave,” she groaned. There were a number of thoughts flying all over the place in her head and why her mouth chose to utter that one she had no idea. God, he smelled good. And when his hand pressed into the small of her back and stroked up and down in a lover-like manner? She knew for a certainty if he kept this up she’d be tempted to do anything he wanted her to do.

“This is not a game where someone wins and it’s not a challenge either, so no one will be caving. It’s two people coming together to meet their specific, but respective needs. Does that make sense to you?”

He held her at arm’s length, which was good because once there was some space between them his words started to penetrate. “I think so.”

“Go back and sit down. No, not there,” he directed, “on a barstool.”

She bypassed the couch and did as he told her, figuring the more distance between them the better. Shimmying back, she eyed him. “I want to get something straight here. I have a plan, you know, and you aren’t part of it.”