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Her brows furrow, gaze clocking my every move, every breath, every muscle twitch, like the brilliant, perfect little sub she is.
And I’m the worst Dom imaginable, because I broke the most important rule. She had all the signs—Every. Single. Sign. I could have gone down any one of my lists, and she’d have checked them all off.
We had been in a session, more or less, in my very own bathroom. Moving her wrists under my direction, the dazed look in her eyes when I snapped my fingers. The tracking of my finger and being so open and vulnerable and… I was so blind, so caught up in myself, I steamrolled over the one thing a Dom never should.
Sex doesn’t even have to be part of a session for aftercare to be needed, and I put her in such an exposed, raw state, only to run out the door in the middle of her break.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
"I'm sorry I said what I did," she blurts in a rush, taking my silence all wrong. "I didn't mean to imply you were like the others. I didn’t mean to make you angry when I said I wish it was you. I-I just nev..." She draws in a ragged breath and frowns.
“I made myself angry, and failed to notice how badly you needed me. I don’t deserve you,” I force the words through gritted teeth, closing back in on her and clutching her face again, “or your forgiveness. But I need both, Lucy.”
She bounces her gaze from one eye to the next, searching, learning.
“You need me?” The question is small, thin, high-pitched, and beyond precious. “I–yes, I forgive–you need me?” She somehow finds a higher pitch, and I can’t help my smile.
“More than you know,” I murmur, kissing her deeply for only a second.
When I pull back, she’s flushed and stunning.
“Now. Tell me how you got home, if you didn’t walk the whole way.”
“Well…” She fidgets a little, flicking her gaze to the left.
“Ah, ah.” I tap her cheek. “Eyes on me.”
“Remember when you asked me when I’d talked to…Roman?” She fidgets, her knees tightening on my hips. “That… That was when I left. Right before I left.”
Rage, fear, deadly possessiveness boil to the surface in less than a heartbeat. The Cartwright patriarch is a known predator who keeps multiple women under lock and key in various apartments throughout New York. And they spoke alone… Fuck. I could have lost her in a way worse than death.
I take a slow breath. “Yes.”
“He-he was nice, like I said. He asked where I lived, but I was careful. I didn’t tell him much, really. My name. That I was leaving. He called the Norman guy, but he kept missing my turns and texting a lot. It weirded me out, so I told him I lived somewhere else, got out, and walked the rest of the way.”
I blink. It’s all I can manage. Not only did she talk to Roman alone, she was in one of his cars, with one of his men. I was this close to never seeing her again. There’s no doubt in my mind Roman fully expected his driver would deliver Lucy to a holding space, or his keeper, or however it is he manages to snag the women.
“He texted Damian,” she continues. “The driver. I don’t know how they know each other, or-or what he told him. But Damian was waiting for me at the house.”
Norman must be the inside connection they were planning on leveraging to get into the Cartwrights. But it still doesn’t add up. You can’t buy access, not full-fledged positions, anyway.
I let my hands fall to her shoulders.
“You’re doing wonderfully, Lucy.”
The relief at my praise is tangible, her muscles loosening under my fingers.
“Did Damian say anything other than the half-baked plan to kill me?”
She nods, her eyes flitting for only a second before locking back on mine.
Blood rushes through my body, but I wait. “Go on.”
“He wants your code, whatever that means.”
I straighten, hands falling to my sides, mind racing. Code. The only code that would matter to anyone would be…
I yank out my phone and hold up a finger to Lucy. “One second.”
