Arrogant Master(84)

Is this his way of pushing me away?

“You make it sound like I’ve been using you,” I say, climbing under the covers and slinking up next to him. Last night, I woke up from a bad dream to find his arm wrapped around my side. I stayed paralyzed not wanting to move or wake him just so I could enjoy it a bit longer.

“Isn’t that what we were doing?” he asks. “Using each other?”

“I’d like to think it was deeper than that,” I say.

“You just said was…” He rolls to his back, slipping his hands behind his head and staring at the ceiling.

“It wasn’t intentional,” I say. “I don’t want us to be a ‘was’ just yet. Unless you do…”

“I’m not quite ready to be done with you yet. If I’m being honest.”

“I knew you were testing me.”

“Always.”

“Your honesty is noted and appreciated.” I want to lean across the wide bed and kiss every part of him from his deliciously curved jaw to the bow of his upper lip to his perfectly straight nose.

Instead, I refrain from ruining this moment by acting like some cutesy girlfriend because the next thing I know, he’d be calling Mathilde to pack my things and call me a cab.

“I’m still waiting on that notebook,” he says. “Your deepest, darkest fantasy. I want to bring it to life for you. You’ve done that for me already, but I’d like to return the favor.”

I bite my tongue, unsure of how to tell him this.

“I threw the notebook away.” My hands fly over my face.

“You did what?” The low tone of his voice and the storm brewing in his eyes suggests he’s angry enough to punish me, and that hasn’t happened in a good, long while. He rolls to his side, facing me, and props himself up on his elbow.

I sit up in his bed, peering at him between my fingers. The day after we returned from Nashville I tossed it out after having spent all weekend asking myself what my ultimate fantasy might be and finally getting an answer.

“Why would you do that?” His dark brows meet in the middle.

“Because what I want…what the deepest part of me wants…” I draw in a long breath. “It’s not something you’re capable of giving me.”

“I’m capable of giving you anything you want.”

“Not this.”

“I find that extremely hard to believe.”

“Believe it.”

“Tell me what it is. As your master, I’m ordering you.” His expression darkens, and his hand slides between my inner thighs until it reaches my sex where he rubs me through my lace panties. “Tell me, Bellamy.”

Just thinking about telling him makes me cringe because I know how he’ll react. It won’t be good. And I don’t want him to look at me like some silly schoolgirl.

“Please don’t make me say this.” I clasp my hands together and playfully beg though my face is winced and blushing.

His eyes drag from mine toward the pillow between us, his hand motionless between my thighs now. “You don’t feel like you can open up to me?”

“Not with this.”

Lingering silence consumes the space between us, and Dane’s expression falls somber.

“I was raised FLDS. I grew up at the Zion Ranch about fifty miles north of Claxon, Utah.” He clears his throat, pulling his hand from me, his eyes still glued to the pillow. “My father had eight wives and fifty-six children. I was the twenty-first son. Beckham was the twenty-second. We were born six months apart to two different mothers.”

I’m still as a statue, clinging to his every word.

“When I was sixteen, my father came for Beckham and me and walked us out to one of the compound’s Suburban’s, which was already filled with five other young men, like myself.” He swallows. “We were each given a sack lunch and a twenty-dollar bill and dropped off in the middle of the country. Most of us had never set foot outside the compound border.”

“Dane.” My hand flies to my mouth. I want to hold him, comfort him.

“Some of the lost boys headed straight for Vegas. Drugs. Prostitution. They did whatever they had to do.” He shakes his head, keeping the far-off look in his eyes. “My brother and I got a job bussing tables and mopping floors at some rat’s nest diner we came across on our walk into a nearby town.”

He smirks.

“The owner of the diner, Leo Fickbaum, was a spirited old bastard. I suppose he took pity on us, so he put us up in this old 1955 Airstream he had sitting in his backyard. That’s where we lived for a couple years. Working at the diner, living in a camper.”

Dane’s layers upon layers are momentarily translucent, and my aching heart is replaced with nothing but admiration.