“Turned me on a little, too.” She gave him a serious look, feeling quite guilty despite his teasing. “I’m sorry for holding back.”
He shrugged. “We’ll get there.”
She so didn’t deserve him. “How did you…?”
“Quinn.” He made a face. “Bastard called you my submissive. After I threatened to kill him, he talked me down and convinced me that maybe I should know a few things about dominance and submission, and other stuff.”
She covered her face with her hands, peeking out at him through her fingers. “You can’t even say the other things!”
“Bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism.” He winked at her. “Bondage has its appeals, maybe.”
Taking a deep breath, she wiggled closer, needing to feel his arms around her. Heady relief coursed through her as he instantly wrapped her up tight in his body. “I should have told you myself.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She took a deep breath, screwing up courage deep in her belly because she’d need it. Admitting weakness wasn’t something she did willingly. Usually. But for Hunter… “I don’t have that much experience with kink, actually. And my experiences with other guys has been mixed.”
That was an understatement, and even as Hunter tensed around her, she knew she had to stop hedging. Had to tell him everything.
She pressed her hand against his chest. “Wait. Don’t…say anything. Let me get it all out, okay?” She waited a beat, then forged ahead. “I was nineteen when I went to art school. I’d tried two years of college, and it wasn’t for me. I’d always felt like a misfit, and when I got to art school, it was like coming home to my tribe. In more ways than one, it felt like at first, because people weren’t just creative in how they worked. My classmates, teachers, mentors…everyone eschewed the norm in every way. And I loved it. One of my profs had three partners, and I learned about polyamory. A female classmate was a Domme, and invited me to a local get together for people interested in kink. And when I got there, more familiar faces. It felt totally right.”
Right up until it didn’t. Hunter picked up on that right away and ignored her request to wait. “What happened?” he asked, his voice more gentle than ever before.
“Bad relationship.” She shrugged weakly. It really had been that simple. “Happens to the best of us.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not physically.” Not when she didn’t want it, anyway. “I thought we were serious. He thought we were simply playing around. And when I realized he didn’t want to introduce me to his parents—not then, not ever—because I was a dirty slut, and those weren’t just words he threw at me during sex, but what he actually thought of me all the time…it broke something inside me.”
“No.” Hunter’s voice cracked, then he dragged a heavy breath into his chest, his muscles rising and falling hard against her. “Jesus. Who is me? Let me at him.”
“Long in the past.”
“But not forgotten.” He swore again, under his breath. “You’re not dirty. There’s nothing,nothingyou could ever do that I would think that about you.”
“I know. This is why I’m telling you.” She hesitated a beat. “I haven’t been able to open up like this before.”
“So since then…you’ve just…”
“Done the vanilla thing. Or the kink thing. Either or, but never both. It’s just easier that way.”
“You deserve more than easy, beautiful.”
And now she had him, so it didn’t matter. She pressed her face into his chest and breathed him in. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Your sexual history only pertains to me in so far as how it affects our sexual future, together, and so far, I think we’ve done just fine. And now we’ll do even better.”
“Mmm.”
“But if there’s something I’m not satisfying for you… If it’s something I can give you, I will.”
She closed her eyes and remembered the feeling of being completely full as Hunter fucked her, butt plug in place. “Nope. You’re everything I’d ever want. More than I’d ever dreamed possible, too.”
“That’s high praise.”
“It’s the truth.” Another deep breath filled her head with the subtle scent of him. Spicy wood and man underneath it. She kissed his neck, his jaw, his lips. “Hunter, you’re everything to me.”
“The next time you have a fantasy, though, you should tell me about it, got it?” He squeezed his large hand over her shoulder and she nodded. No more secrets. “Now tell me more about how submitting to the big, bad Navy SEAL turns you on, because I’ve got some ideas…”
