“I needed to get home to clean myself up for work.” Her voice was muffled.
Self-respecting men didn’t converse with blankets.
“So, if you were in such a rush to get to work, why aren’t you there?”
“I’m not feeling well. You need to leave, please.”
Maybe a vanilla guy would respect her request, but he’d done this to her, and he had an obligation to fix it. More than that, he felt desperate and out of control, and he didn’t want to leave without trying to make this right.
Honestly, he’d barged in for himself as much as for Kate.
He’d always considered himself a good man. Now he wasn’t so sure. More than anything, he wanted to train Kate’s body to recognize him as its Master and lead her mind along the path to deeply submit to him. Forcing her to meet his emotional and sexual needs was completely unethical, but the idea of giving her up made him want to break things. How could she make him so crazy without even trying?
He tugged the blanket down and Kate threw an arm over her eyes. The way her face was streaked gnawed at him. This was all his fault. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?
Aftercare, then he’d walk away, like a gentleman.
Kate drew her arm from her eyes and blinked up at him. “What do you want from me?”
A vision of her kneeling at his feet, gazing up at him with the soft look she got when she was hitting subspace came to mind. That was what he wanted. For her to give in and let things between them sort themselves out. Would twenty-four-seven with him be that bad? He’d been picky in his choices of who to get serious with over the years. It’d figure that he’d finally found the woman he wanted to keep, and she wanted him to fuck off.
“You have to let me take care of you until the feelings you’re having pass. It’s part of my job as a Dominant to help you through this. I think you’re in the middle of sub drop, and that means I can’t just leave. You’re feeling this way because of what we did together, and this is the aftermath crash. It happens to a lot of people. Doms get drop, too, sometimes.” He shrugged and sat on the edge of her bed. It dipped under his weight, which made her roll closer. Before she could scramble back, he put the hot chocolate on her night stand and stretched out beside her. He yanked her into his arms before she could protest too much.
“I don’t need this from you. I just need some time alone,” Kate grumbled, and he ached to kiss her adorable nose. Being in love with her was making him into an idiot.
Shit. This was love, wasn’t it? The feeling made him want to puke.
“I need this. I’m not leaving unless you use your safeword. If you safeword during my cuddling I will judge you.” He frowned menacingly, and she snorted but settled into his arms.
“You’re lucky that dubious-consent cuddling is only on my soft-limit list.”
“Tolerate the love.” It was a phrase he and his buddies used all the time when they were being dicks to one another, but as soon as he’d said it he wished he could take it back. She wouldn’t hear the L word from him again. Not even as a joke.
She didn’t laugh or respond. Did she know how he felt? Had it been obvious to her even before he’d realized it himself?
“So feeling like this is normal?” Kate sniffled and burrowed into his chest.
“Yes, it’s normal. It’ll pass, Trouble.” He buried his face in her hair. The scent of her warmth and shampoo made his chest hurt. Feelings he didn’t want kept crowding in. Watching the other men covet her last night had been torture, even though he’d arranged it.
If I was your Master I would worship you. As my slave you would be my queen.
The tumult of feelings that cascaded through him was raw and rough and far from sane. Crazy, creepy thoughts crept in, urging him to steal her away somewhere remote, where he’d keep her until she understood.
Understood what? That he was more evil than he let on?
God, he was losing it.
He stroked the silent tears from her cheeks and held her until he thought he’d die. This was the kind of obsession that landed men in jail.
Ambrose would fix this.
Ambrose had to take her away from him, before it was too late.
***
Banner paced the immaculate and extensive patio again. Ambrose must have given up on trying to stop him. He was glad they were in the shade of the house, considering his head felt as if he’d drank five pots of coffee. Someone was taking a file to his nerves, and his jaw hurt from clenching it.
“Fuck, man. You need to blow off some steam before you snap.” Ambrose set a beer down on a table near him and backed away, as though he was a bomb in danger of going off.
Banner had been waiting for Ambrose in his driveway when he’d come home from his trip, but he hadn’t known what else to do. Now he got the feeling he was making Ambrose worry more the longer he was there.
“There’s no other way. You have to take her, Ambrose. No one else is good enough, except Konstantin, and by the time he comes back it’ll be too late.” He ran a hand through his hair, not caring if it was sticking up at odd angles.
He let his gaze wander to the newest addition to the grounds, the manmade waterfall that poured into a lagoonlike pool. It was completely ostentatious and made Ambrose’s backyard look as though he were expecting a school of mermaids to come hang out. He was case in point that money couldn’t buy taste. The setup was pretty enough, but if Ambrose ever settled down with a woman, she’d probably have a hell of a time trying to make the place look classy.
That woman might be Kate, soon enough.
“Quit ranting. I said okay. I’ll meet her and try to date her, then the two of us can just pretend you don’t want to kill me every time I hold her hand. But think . . . What if I fall in love with her and we get married and have kids? Are you going to stand in the wedding and smile at the baptism and promise to be the godfather while you not so secretly want to kill me? This will seriously fuck up our friendship.”
Visions of Kate in white, marrying one of his two best friends had to be pushed aside before he lost his shit. “If the two of you fall in love, maybe this mess in my head will mellow out. Maybe I’ll get over her if I see your collar on her neck.”
“But I don’t get it! Why is my collar on her neck okay and yours isn’t? ‘Slave’ is just a word. Why don’t you call it something else and keep her?”
He’d been awake all night trying to make himself okay with that very idea. “Sneaking in the side door isn’t how I’m made. You’re willing to bend on what you want from a submissive, but I’m not. I can’t trick her into being my slave by using pretty words to disguise it, or our whole relationship will be based on lies. She doesn’t want my cage.” He rubbed at his forehead. “The feelings I have for her won’t fix differences this big. Eventually, it would end our relationship. Better to cut our losses now, before the real suffering starts.”
“Fuuuuuuck.” Ambrose leaned back on the patio chair and sipped at his iced tea. “You really do love her, don’t you?”
He thought of her face, the expressiveness of her eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t draw breath. The things they talked about in the dark, in the wee hours, had nothing to do with the way their bodies fit together or the way she responded to his touch or his dominance.
Kate was a deep, complicated woman whose soul was filled with reverence for the other souls of the world. Cruelty and nastiness weren’t part of her makeup. Her spirit was lively and kind, and her humor and strength of character shone from her, even when she was silent. His attic workspace was slowly filling with canvases of her—asleep, awake, smiling, serious, radiant. She’d become his muse and his obsession, and she’d done it all by accident.
Banner cut off his thoughts with an impatient gesture. It drew his attention to the clean scent of her that still clung to his clothes. “I’ll bring her by tomorrow. There’s no way you won’t want her. She’s fucking perfect. She’ll fall in love with you right way.” He picked up the beer and swallowed half of it. “It’ll be over before I know it.”
Ambrose sighed. “You need to figure out how to bend, jackass. You’re going to give her away and regret it, but by then it’ll be too late.”
“It’s what’s best for her. She needs someone that appreciates her the way she is, without wanting to change her.”
He shook his head then looked out across the green expanse of his parklike lawn. “I’ll do this for you for now, to keep you sane. I’ll hang on to her until you pull your idiot head out of your ass.” He leveled a frustrated glare on Banner. “Just don’t kill me when she goes back to you still screaming my name, beyotch.”
***
The late-afternoon air was still but cool enough to keep them from feeling as if they were baking among the trees at the end of his mother’s property. Rook squinted despite the shade.
“I really prefer admiring the outdoors from inside the house. It’s like my own private terrarium.” They had just set their easels up, but Rook probably wouldn’t want to stay out for long.
They settled in, and Banner tried to decide which part of the landscape to paint. He could feel Rook watching him, but he was too wound up to be good company.