He knelt upright and slid his hands beneath her back. Helping her sit up, he left his arms wound loosely around her waist while he looked up at her in the haziness of waking from her post-coital nap.
“You weren’t asleep longer than an hour. I planned to let you recharge, but I couldn’t wait anymore.”
Now she was awake.
“What is it?” she asked worriedly.
His hand reached up to pull her bottom lip free of her teeth. She hadn’t even realized she was biting it.
“I need you to be mine.”
There was something about how he said the word “mine.” Like it had a meaning beyond what the dictionary could impart. Her skin flushed and broke out into a slow burn.
As if he heard her brain tumbling through its scattered thoughts, attempting to understand what he meant, he explained further. “Being mine isn’t just about being in a recognized relationship with me. It means more than riding on the back of my bike or living with me. Hell, it’s more than wearing my ring or a piece of ink tattooed on your skin that reflects me. Although all of those things will happen, Glennon.”
Broad, strong hands smoothed around her waist, gripping her just above her hip bones, and slid her into the middle of the bed before covering her body with his. Their sexes lined up,his hard shaft against her mound, as he braced himself on his forearms beside her head.
“I need you to focus on what I’m telling you. I’m not demanding submission from you. It’s not mine to take. Everyone else has taken from you. I refuse to do that. But I am asking for it.”
His eyes bored into hers, the intensity clearing away the final remnants of fogginess and delivering absolute awareness to every inch of her skin where they touched, demanding every microscopic bit of her focus.
“There’s a symmetry in this type of relationship that doesn’t exist in others. Both parties give up some of themselves to help the other flourish. Without that sacrifice, neither individual feels complete. But what each side sacrifices is different in each relationship. That’s what many don’t understand about a Dominant/submissive paradigm.”
Gentle hands brushed back the hair from her face, making sure nothing obstructed her from seeing his sincerity, ensuring she was completely with him in this moment.
“If you become mine, you give me your submission.You give it,” he emphasized. “It’s a gift. Precious. Fragile. Important. Beautiful. If I become yours, it means I take care of that gift, no matter the cost to me. Because if I take it for granted, break it, neglect it, make it ugly, then the relationship becomes ownership.”
He waited, as if allowing his words to sink in. When he didn’t see her struggling to understand or fighting to keep from saying something, he continued, “To belong to each other means we both help each other achieve what we can’t do on our own. To make the other feel capable of rising and soaring when we feel like we can barely move. To help carry the load of the bad, not to carry it for each other. To make sure we never feel like less because we are everything to each other.”
He’d already wormed his way into her defenses. Now, his words brought down the walls—not with a thunderous crash and a pile of rubble to scramble over because freedom was in view, but by meticulously stripping away each brick in the wall and clearing the path before her.
“I can’t promise everything will be perfect. But I promise you this, Glennon. Be mine, and even the bad will be better. You may feel sadness, anger, and frustration at times, but because you share those emotions with me, they will be so much less since you don’t have to feel them alone. You may struggle, but I will struggle alongside you. And I may frustrate you by being everywhere in your life, but it will never be because I worry you can’t survive on your own. It will be because I never, ever want you to feel alone again.”
She’d been ignored for so long. Invisible. Expendable. She’d been without for so long, she’d even become ignored, invisible, and expendable to herself.
Now? Triumph was offering her the only thing she ever wanted. The only thing she needed. To be important to someone.
“Be mine, Glennon.”
It wasn’t a question, but it did require her to speak. “I already am, Triumph.”
This was it. Time to lay everything on the line.
She drew in a deep breath.
“I love you.”
RULE #1
Triumph
There it was.
“I love you too, Glennon.” He smiled and kissed her softly. “All right, we’ll start with one simple rule this time, then renegotiate to add more as we go, okay? So once a rule is in place and agreed to, it stays in place.”
He could tell she was too stunned to speak. He’d just told her the most important thing a woman ever wanted to hear, and he followed it with talking about rules.
And yet… if he taught her anything last night, it was that when she listened to him, did what he said, she had been better off every time. He recognized she was independent and capable of whatever she wanted to do, but he also understood she needed him to draw the lines because, at heart, she didn’t want to.
