For a crazy second my brain produced a tableau, me with my hands bound, face tilted up to Brodie, who stared down into my eyes with tender command. I blinked hard to dispel it, then stared at the books, trying to think. His nearness was wreaking havoc with my senses. He was too close, and conversely too far away.
It was its own paradox.
“I guess.”
“You sound unconvinced. The sub willingly gives the dom power, because they trust them. They don’t abandon their power, though. They can take it back at any time.”
“Is this something you do with your...girlfriends?” His finger was still on my neck, stroking a hypnotic line up, then down. Without realizing it, I was holding my breath.Breathe, Cotton.
“I don’t have girlfriends.”
“So who do you—” I shut my mouth with a snap. “None of my business. Forget I asked.”
“I want you, Emery.” The press of his lips ghosted along my neck, and then his finger was back. I shivered, then steeled myself and put a fraction more space between us.
“I’ll never willingly relinquish control, Brodie. Consider that a warning.”
His finger stilled and then lifted, and when he spoke his voice was chill. “To be perfectly clear, I have no need to rape a woman to get my rocks off.”
I flinched. I couldn’t help it. Turning blindly from the bookcase, I made to move past him, get away from the heat his body was throwing off like a furnace.
He trapped me with an arm on either side of me, effectively pinning me to the bookcase without even touching me. I had poked the bear, I realized with a delayed flash of intuition. Brodie had not appreciated my insinuation, not one bit.
Swallowing, I lifted my eyes to his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest…I didn’t mean it.” The eyes that looked back at me were bright with anger, and something else I didn’t want to examine too closely. “You’ve been very good to me so far, all things considered,” I added grudgingly. “Considering it would be better for you if you just killed me and got it over with, I mean. Not that I want you to anymore…I’m grateful that you haven’t.”
Brodie reached out a finger and traced the bow of my upper lip, his attention focused there. I couldn’t figure out if he was messing with me or as transfixed as he appeared. “This fucking mouth,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It’s either pissing me the fuck off…” He punctuated the words with a little tap of his finger. “…or annoying the fuck out of me…” His finger travelled with belly-twisting slowness to my bottom lip, where he centered it and rolled my lip the slightest amount down. Playing with it. Toying with me. I could feel my breath coming faster, and wasn’t sure if it was fear or something else that prompted the reaction. “And then there’s that,” he continued, his tone simultaneously musing and threatening.
I didn’t want to ask, but the devil on my shoulder forced the word out of me. “What?”
“Begging me to kiss the fuck out of you.”
His mouth was on mine with the last word, and I inhaled his own exhalation on a soundless gasp. This kiss was hard where his first had been soft, explorative. It was more confident, more demanding, more avaricious …just…more. Ignoring the twitchiness rising within me, I met his tongue stroke for stroke, my hands coming up to curl into the cloth covering his chest. Breath soughed hard through my nose as I tried to catch and reel it in. Control it.
But I couldn’t.I was lost the second his mouth touched mine, my every cell leaping inerrantly towards his like a compass needle to its true north. My body knew he wouldn’t hurt me, even if my mind had reservations anchored firmly by my past. I smiled against his mouth at the awareness and he pulled back, his brow bisected by a frown. “What are you smiling for,macushla?” His accent was thickened, syllables collapsing at the ends of the words.
I shook my head. It made no sense, not even to me. I couldn’t explain it, but his kiss made me feel less broken. It sang to me of potential, of the possibility that I might one day havemeback. Maybe not the same blithe, carefree me, but a me whose self had been shattered and then painstakingly repaired.
I pressed a soft kiss of my own to his chin, the highest part of him I could reach, and felt his scruff tickle me. “Thank you,” I whispered, and pushed gently past him. Let him make of it what he would.
In the kitchen, I looked around for something that would still this churning in my chest. One part of me had settled with his words and kiss, but another, one I didn’t want to look at too closely… it needed something. What, I wasn’t sure. The heart of me was spinning, my core throbbing faintly with dissatisfaction. I stood in front of the sink and looked unseeingly out the window behind it.
That word he had called me. What was that? I pulled a mug from a cabinet with the vague idea of pouring a cup of coffee, but it slipped from my fingers to land on the floor and splinter into a thousand pretty pieces. They surrounded me on the wood floor, some large and jagged, others so tiny as to almost be dust. Something clicked.
“Shite,” Brodie said, coming my way. “Don’t move—you’re barefoot.”
I held up my hand to stop him. “Wait.” They were me. Squatting in the midst of the mess, I began to pick up the larger shards, the obvious ones. These were the pieces others saw, the ones whose edges were raw and cutting. These were the circles under my eyes, the food pushed uneaten on my plate. The tension I carried in my shoulders. “I need the pieces. All of them.”
He opened a closet door and pulled a hand broom and dustpan from its depths. “You can have the pieces; just don’t cut yourself.” He joined me and began to sweep the fragments into the pan. “What do you want to do with them?” The question was careful, devoid of any judgment on my strange behavior. I felt a near-hysterical giggle rising and shoved it down. I looked like a crazy person, I was sure.
“Put them in a bowl. And then I need some glue. I need to fix it,” I replied, the last words a whisper. Brodie was sweeping up the smaller remnants. These were the ones you didn’t notice, until the drink you’d tried to pour was leaking through the fissures. These were the nightmares, the private panic. The feelings of shame and thoughts of death.
Brodie tilted his head closer. “Em, you don’t need to worry about fixing the mug. There are plenty more.”
“But there’s only one of this one.”
“Emery—”
“No.” I cut him off sharply and held a bowl out for him to empty the pan into. He did so, the pieces clinking together as they fell. “We don’t just throw it away when it’s broken, damnit. We fix it.” To my horror, I felt a tear slide down my face. I turned away and set the bowl of broken pieces down on the counter, walking quickly into the bathroom before I made a fool of myself.
There, I sank to the floor and curled my arms around my knees. I would fix the mug. Fix those broken pieces.
And in the doing, I’d fix me.
