She actually got two steps before I realized she was serious. She was going to leave.
And I didn't want her to.
I reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her as I closed the rest of the distance between us. I looked down at her, the six-inch difference in our heights putting her right at my chest. I was suddenly aware that I wasn't wearing a shirt.
I could smell her now, the scent of that same shampoo and soap she'd used back in Texas. The same clean, crisp smell I'd come to recognize without consciously trying to.
The wanting hit me right in the gut, a sharp, painful twist that was stronger than any desire I'd felt before. If I'd thought I wanted her after that dream, it was nothing like what I felt now. This was more primal, more urgent.
“What did you mean?” I asked. I kept my voice low, my grip loose. I kept waiting for her to pull away, to tell me I was overstepping. “What did you mean when you said learning from you?”
She looked up, a lock of that nutmeg brown hair falling across her forehead. I wanted to push it back, trace my fingers across her face, but I restrained myself. I still wasn't sure what this meant yet.
Her eyes met mine. “I want to teach you to be a Dom. To me.”
Fuck me.
Chapter Two
Nori
When the idea occurred to me, I knew it wasn’t a good one. Aside from the fact that I was seriously playing semantics with the ethical line, I wasn't sure X was in a healthy enough place for the trust it would take for this to work. But I also knew I wasn't letting him go without a fight. I wasn’t able to save my brother, but I’d be damned if I couldn't save X. No matter the cost was to me.
It was harder than I'd thought to try to explain things to X. Not that I really thought it would be easy to tell anyone about the world Tanner introduced me to, but I'd always assumed that talk would come when I was in a relationship with someone else, discussing the things I needed sexually.
I'd never expected to have to try and tell someone under these circumstances. Hell, I was pretty sure no one ever in the history of the world had a conversation like this before. But, again, if it meant keeping X alive, then my embarrassment be damned.
At the moment, however, it wasn't just embarrassment I was feeling.
When I started to walk away, for a moment, I really thought he was going to let me go. That I'd go back to my room, pack my bags and call the priest. Get a flight back to Texas and write this whole thing off as some sort of mental break or something.
Then his fingers wrapped around my arm and he was right behind me. I could feel the heat of him. Smell the masculine scent that mingled with his sweat. And, suddenly, the heat flooding me wasn't because I was freaking out about what I'd almost said.
It was arousal, pure and simple. Or, at least, I tried telling myself it was simple, that it was only lust. He was attractive, not in spite of the scars, but with them. It was just because I'd gotten so used to sex on a regular basis and had been without it for...well, okay, it'd only been a week, but that had to be the reason.
And then he said it, asked it. He wanted to know what I'd been trying to say.
So I told him. Put it all out there. And I made myself look at him while I said it.
Then I waited for the explosion. It had to be coming. He exploded at everything. I wasn't any different, no matter what Father O'Toole thought. Besides, X may have apologized for what he'd said, but he'd used the word 'freaks.' Funny, because he'd also used that word to refer to himself too.
I wondered if that meant we were actually the same.
Before I could explore that any further, he spoke.
“Okay.”
Okay? Had he seriously just said okay? Like he was just agreeing to what we were going to have for lunch?
I needed to put some distance between us. I was having a difficult time thinking clearly with him standing so close, gazing down at me like that...I needed space.
I took a step back and he released my arm, but those azure eyes didn't leave my face. As if I needed to be more flustered.
“So, how does this work?” He broke the silence that had fallen between us.
I took a slow breath and forced myself to focus on something other than the heat flowing through me. This would be toeing the line as it was. I needed to maintain as much distance as possible.
“We're not going to have sex.” I almost winced at how bold the statement sounded, but I needed to make sure X didn't misunderstand what I was doing. “I'm going to teach you how things work in this world, how a good Dominant controls his or her Sub. There'll be some physical contact.”
I flushed at the thought of his hands on me. I really needed to get that under control and fast. I couldn't let X know that I was attracted to him. We couldn't be together, and right now, I wasn't sure how he'd take the rejection. If he even wanted me to begin with.