Power Trip(28)

Her velvety eyes widened. He counted every long, deep breath he took while she considered his question.

Finally, she nodded. Oxygen flooded his veins, making him giddy.

“But I want to control the next experiment.”

He raised an eyebrow at her challenge.

She faced him squarely. “I let you have your way with me. Now I want to strap you to the table.” He sensed where she was going with this. His electrons surged. She smiled and he saw the reflection of blue sparks in her dark eyes. “Fair is fair. I want you naked and immobile while I’m hooked up to monitors and very safely, carefully, consensually touching you.” His ears rang as if his head was a bell and she had just hit it with a hammer.

“What’s that?” she asked and he blinked, amazed that she had heard it too. Then he laughed weakly.

“The perimeter alarm.” He chuckled again. “Jake’s back.”





“Audrey—”

He was going to say no. Damn it. She should have kept her mouth shut. It would have been better to have had one hot night with him, a night she could remember forever, and skip the inevitable rejection. He was too cool for her, anyway.

“Forget it.” She jumped off her stool and took her bowl to the sink. When Jake got to the door, they were leaving. Immediately.

“Audrey, I’m not laughing at you.”

Right. She kept her back to him.

She felt him come to stand behind her. “I’m laughing because you turned it all around on me. I was going to push your limits, break down your barriers. I want you, Audrey, so bad I’m willing to consider breaking the only hard limit I have—not letting a sub touch me.”

“I’m not a sub,” she said automatically.

“You don’t want to be a sub,” he corrected her. “The fact that you submitted to me last night, so easily, so completely, says differently even if you claim you were only doing it to explore your talent.” She heated at his reminder and was glad he couldn’t see her face as she fought the arousal his words caused.

His breath feathered against her neck. “I want to take you downstairs and pick up where we left off, but you’ve just asked me to do the one thing I’m honestly not sure I can do—give up control. That is no small thing, so please have as much patience with my inexperience as I was planning on having with yours.” There was still an echo of laughter in his voice.

She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “So is that a yes or a no?” She reached up to tug the ridiculously square wire-rims off his face.

He took them from her hand and tossed them onto the island. “It’s a maybe. Eventually. BDSM is a complicated game and you don’t know the rules.”

“You said you can teach me.”

“Yes, I did. And I want to teach you. But we hardly have a typical scenario here. I’m dominant not only because I like to be but because I need to be…with most women. You’re a neutral, but you might not be completely safe from my powers. The idea of having vanilla sex excites me to the point of losing control just thinking about it, which adds a whole extra level of head fuck for me. And let’s not forget someone attacked you last night and tried to abduct you today. Can we just take it slow and do things my way for a while? Please…I beg you.” Humor glinted in his eyes again, making her aware of the irony in his word choice.

The doorbell rang.

Cal didn’t move.

“I really want to touch you,” she admitted. She looked at his chest, broad beneath the cotton of his shirt, and bit her lip. She wanted to press her open mouth against the strong column of his neck and kiss his shadowed jaw.

The doorbell rang again. Twice.

One of them had to bend if they wanted to make this work, and the patient look in his eyes told her he knew she could bend. Because she already had. Last night. And if she was honest with herself, she had to admit she wanted to try it again.

She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her desire and whispered, “Damn it.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” His voice sounded strained as he used her words.

She saw need in his gaze when she opened her eyes and it gave her the courage to sigh, “Yes.”

“Thank you.” He bent and quickly pressed his lips against hers, a gift and a promise that weakened her knees as he turned and moved toward the front door. She sank back down on her stool and picked up her glass of water. Her lips tingled as she drank the cold liquid, slaking her thirst but not cooling her desire.

“Geraci works at Genecorp,” Jake said, instead of hello. He eyed the soup pot on the stove and Cal reached for a clean bowl.

“What?” Audrey asked, noticing with irritation that Jake knew which drawer held spoons.