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She went still, pulling back just far enough to look at me. Then, gently and entirely on purpose, she did it again. Those teeth, harder this time. I gasped, and my hands flew to her shoulders and dug in.

"You like that," she said quietly. It wasn't quite a question.

"Maybe."

She caught my nipple between her fingers and pinched, slow, watching my face the whole time. My eyes fluttered shut. My hips rolled toward her before I could stop them.

"Harper." Her voice was very low. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You're going to anyway."

"Tell me what you like." Her hand stilled on my breast. "Not what you think I want to hear. What you actually like."

I opened my mouth to make a joke. I had several lined up. One about her reading too many romance novels, one about how this was a hookup and not a job interview.

None of them came out. She was just standing there waiting, those amber eyes steady on mine, and she was so obviously going to wait as long as it took.

I made it about five seconds.

"I like it rough," I said. "Sometimes. With the right person. I like being..." I chewed my lip. "I'm usually pretty submissive. In bed. When I'm with someone I..."

I stopped.

The word was right there. Trust. It was sitting on my tongue, and I could feel it, could feel what it would mean to say it out loud. The last person I'd said that to had sat at my kitchen table, pretending to work with the noise canceling function on his headphones shut off.

Cam saw it. I watched her see it, watched her eyes sharpen and catch the flinch before I could hide it. She didn't say a word. She didn't push.

"I trust you," I said, too fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. "Weirdly. Horrifyingly. So..."

My heart was going so hard it ached. I'd said it. To a closeted basketball player in her foyer with my tits out. My therapist, when I started seeing her again, was going to immediately need a vacation.

Cam was quiet for a long moment. Then she let out a breath, and when she spoke, her voice wasn't quite steady.

"I like being in control," she said. "In bed. I don't..." She stopped. Started again. "I don't usually say that out loud."

Oh.

I stared up at her. At this woman who controlled every inch of her life, every interview, every post, every word that came out of her mouth, admitting the one place she actually wanted to.

"Okay," I whispered. "So be in control."

"Not yet." Her hand came up to cup my jaw, her thumb resting under my ear. "If we do this, we do it right. You need a safeword."

I blinked. "A safeword? Wow, you actually know how this works."

"Yeah. A safeword. You say it, I stop. Not slow down. Stop. No questions, no hard feelings."

"Oh." I trembled, and it had zero to do with being turned on. It was the way she'd watched me stumble over trust and answered it with this. With a rule that protected me. "That's very... responsible of you."

"Pick one."

"Uh… basketball?"

Her eyebrows went up. A laugh broke out of her, the real one I'd only heard a handful of times. "Basketball,” she repeated.

"What? It's the first word that came to mind! You've completely colonized my association with the sport!"

"Fine. Basketball." The laugh faded into seriousness. "And if you can't talk, you tap. Three times. Anywhere you can reach."