“Aye, aye, Captain Baine.” I tilt my head, smiling as I take the wine opener from his grasp. “Or do you prefer I call you Chef Baine?”
He chuckles, but his expression is pure heat. “What I really want to hear you say to me tonight is ‘Yes, sir.’”
I freeze, startled by the weight of that single word.
He holds my gaze and those deep, ocean-blue eyes are possessive and hot on me, stripping me bare without permission or apology. There’s no mistaking the erotic implication in his reply. And even though his tone has a playful edge to it, my pulse responds with full awareness of what he’s suggesting. Control and capitulation. Domination and surrender. Master and submissive.
“Is that what you want from me?” I ask, my voice soft.
Nick slowly turns away from the counter to face me full on. “I want everything from you, Avery. Not as my submissive, or because I want you to serve me as anything close to that. That’s not where I’m at in my life.”
My heart stutters when I hear the admission he’s not putting into words. “But you were.”
“Not for a long time.”
“With Kathryn?” I can’t help how quickly her name leaps to my tongue. I’ve been trying to puzzle out what she means to him. Now that I’ve finally dared to ask, I dread the answer.
I see Nick’s displeasure at her mention and I swallow, wishing I could take it back.
His eyes harden. “Kathryn was in my life for a short time, years ago, when I first got to New York. The other part of my life has nothing to do with her, and never did. She has nothing to do with us either.”
Some of my wariness eases at that. I believe she’s not part of who he is now, or who he is with me. I want to believe there’s nothing more to the story about this other woman and him, but I can see from his forbidding gaze that, at least for now, the subject of Kathryn is firmly closed.
He steps closer, the tight confines of the galley kitchen shrinking around us, until there is less than an inch of space between our bodies. His sculpted, bare chest and bronzed, broad shoulders fill my field of vision, crowding me with the warmth of him, with the enticing scent of his skin.
“I want more from you than you’ve ever given another man, Avery. More than you’ll ever want to give another.” He caresses my cheek, and I lift my gaze up to his. To the handsome, often unreadable, face of this man who’s becoming a vital part of my life whether I want to allow it or not. “I want your pleasure—your complete surrender—and to truly give that to you, I need your trust. You won’t need a safe word with me. Tell me no, tell me to stop, and I will. I promise you that. But if you trust me, I will take you to the edge of your steepest, most private desires.”
Memories of last night on his terrace balcony flood my mind—the way he asked for my trust, then took me to the dizzying edge of pleasure, pain, and fear.
Then again, today when we were sailing, the way he commanded both my body and my release. The way he asked if I was ready to go further with him—away from safe ports.
Now, the sum of all these things sends a deliciously dark shiver over my nerve endings. If he were still into that lifestyle, I’m sure I’d know it by now. But that doesn’t make his suggestion any less unsettling. Nick is dominant by nature, alpha to the core. Given my background—my broken past—I should find fear in that part of him. Yet there is no fear with Nick. Only delicious, dark anticipation.
And the thought of submitting to him sexually—in all ways—makes everything female in me quicken with curiosity . . . and desire.
“No limits between us,” he says, his voice quiet with demand and promise. “No boundaries. No holding back. Not ever, Avery. Not with me.”
God help me, the way his gaze is burning me up—the way my body recalls in vivid, sensual detail how masterfully he knows how to please me—I would be willing to try anything and everything with him. I’m starving for the kind of freedom he’s describing. I’m terrified of it, too, even though in a distant corner of my conscience, I realize I’ve been heading down this path with Nick from the very beginning. Ready to submit my body and my pleasure . . . if not my soul. Eager to entrust all of myself to him, regardless of any warnings. Regardless of all the risks.
I lick my lips, and watch his eyes drift to my mouth and stay there. His jaw tenses and then his inky lashes lift, and I’m drowning in a storm of turbulent blue.
“I want more than you think you’re capable of giving to anyone, Avery. But you’ll give it all to me.”
It’s not phrased as a question, but I nod, the only movement I’m capable of when he’s looking at me with such raw hunger. His mouth curves at my almost instinctual agreement to his demands. I am his. Since the moment we met, I have belonged to him and no other, and he knows it as well as I do.