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“I introduced you into a lifestyle that means a great deal to me,” he continued. “One of the things I feel strongest about is that brand-new submissives not be taken advantage of. By me or anyone else.”
“Has someone taken advantage of me without my knowledge?” She laughed. “I understand that you must think I’m foolish in many ways, Conrad. But I’m a little more sturdy than you think. Or I wouldn’t have taken myself off to live in a foreign country, all alone. And then stayed here, for a good year, taking care of myself.”
“I don’t think you’re foolish,” he said, still concentrating on the touch of her skin against his as their fingers twined. “Or if I do, I find myself charmed by it. But that’s not the point.”
She smiled again, more faintly this time. “I don’t see why it couldn’t be the point. Would it kill us if it was the point? For a minute or two?”
And he felt the weight of the past month, bearing down on him, but still. She made him want to laugh. She always made him want to laugh. He compromised with a smile. “You know you’re charming.”
“Ithink I’m an endless delight,” she said, and her nose wrinkled up a bit as she looked at him, her dark hair falling to one side. “It’s what you think that remains a mystery.”
“That’s why I came to find you,” Conrad said, very seriously. “Because above all else, it’s important for you to explore who you are. To discover where submission can take you.”
Her eyes were still gleaming. “Is it a bus ticket?”
Conrad ignored that because her hand was in his, and he wanted nothing more than to pick her up. Wrap her in his arms, put a collar around her neck, and call her his. But he had responsibilities. Hadn’t he always? And whether he thought that was fair or unfair, it was reality.
And he would acquit his responsibilities appropriately, come hell or high water.
Even if that meant restraining himself around this woman who had somehow wrecked him in a single night.
That wasn’t something she needed to know, he thought. Yet.
“I assume you’ve already experimented,” he said, amazed how much it cost him to keep his voice even. Easy. “How were those experiences?”
Rory regarded him for a long moment, a frown gathering between her eyes. “Which experiences?”
He made his gaze direct. “Many submissives find their first experience overwhelmingly addictive. As you did not show up at my door again, I’m assuming you went off to find the power dynamics you now know you enjoy wherever you could. And this is Paris. There are clubs everywhere.”
Conrad felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. Because he’d had this conversation many times before. Usually when a submissive had found it impossible to let go of him and had required him to gently, if firmly, guide her in the right direction. To tell her that everything she was feeling was normal, but not as personal as she believed.
And never once in all the many times he’d had versions of this conversation had he ever found that the thought of that woman with another...
Infuriated him.
Even back in the early days with Marie Jeanette, when he’d been so certain that they were well suited to each other forever, he never felt like this. As if she truly belonged to him, in every possible way. Her soul, her sex, inarguably his.
He ordered himself to calm down.
Rory pulled her hand from his, and he didn’t like that, either, but he let her go. This wasn’t a scene.
Since when had he had trouble telling the difference?
“I think Paris sex clubs are your department, not mine,” she said, suddenly unreadable. Her dark brown eyes were opaque. Even that lush mouth of hers was in a neutral line.
“Then I will be happy to be your guide,” he told her, proud of how calm and generous he sounded.
She stared at him for so long that time, almost as if she was frozen into place, that he could no longer continue to block out the chirpy Japanese pop in the background.
But then Rory cleared her throat, and he forgot everything, save her. “My guide,” she repeated.
“I can tell you which dominants would be good fits for you, and which would be best avoided,” he said, still fighting to keep his voice as cool as possible.
He watched her swallow, as if her throat was tight. And he flashed back to that night. To the depths of her submission, her glorious surrender...and how the hell was he supposed to move on from that?
Because for all his talk about exchanges, he had never felt anything like that before—as if the two of them were entwined at all those different points of pain and power, pleasure and release, but one.
And then she’d kissed him. He’d lost control, and he wasn’t sure he had ever felt so good, so right, in all his life.
