The little gasp she let out was gratifying, but not as good as the fact that she clutched his shoulders as he set her on the kitchen counter.
Kyle moved forward between her knees, so he could look at her and she had nowhere else to look but him. “I’m not expecting you to get up early and cook us breakfast, darling.”
She didn’t react to his closeness, and that said everything about how unsettled she was. “I thought…”
Kyle ran his fingers over the leather of her cuffs, teasing the skin around it. “You thought what? That we’d have you be our servant?” Her expression said that, yeah, that was exactly what she’d thought.
Well, no wonder she’d been so nervous walking into the place if she thought she was going to have no safety net, if she truly expected to be treated as a slave.
But that wasn’t it. She didn’t think it out of nowhere, not with the shadows in her eyes. She’d concluded it because of something she’d seen before, something she knew.
“What had you thinking that?” He continued to stoke her soft skin, trying to ease her, rewarded by her heart not racing as it had been.
He tugged softly at the restraints on her wrists, a way to try to focus her on his question.
“I’m not stupid,” she said, her voice low. “I know exactly what a slave does, what’s expected of one.”
“When have you seen slaves, darling?”
She blinked slowly, as if waking up.Well, she said more than I thought she would.
After a moment, she drew her eyebrows toward one another. She pulled her wrists, and he released her.
Part of being dominant was knowing how far to push someone, and he’d pushed her plenty.
Even though he let her go, though, he didn’t move away. It kept her on the counter and temptingly close. “You’ll tell me the truth,” he assured her.
“Good luck with that.”
Ah, there it was, that hard look in her eyes that dared him to challenge her. It drew him in, especially after seeing the softer side of her, after seeing her for that one vulnerable moment before she’d put on her armor again.
Kyle stroked his thumb across her pouty bottom lip, mesmerized by how it gave beneath his finger. “You will. Now, as the one in charge, I say you should sitright there and keep me company while I cook. Do you eat eggs?”
He pulled back and grabbed a fry pan from the hanging rack above them. When she didn’t answer, he twisted toward her and raised an eyebrow.
Pink spanned her cheeks, but she nodded.
Fuck, I like when I win with her.
What the hell was I thinking?
Alison couldn’t figure it out, no matter how much she thought about it. She’d stood in that kitchen, feeling like she was staring at her past.
She’d remembered the way her mother walked through the large kitchen of her childhood home, effortlessly, as though drawn by routine.
It had been routine, though. Her mother, Sasha, had known exactly what she was supposed to do, what was expected of her. Alison’s father had always made his expectations clear—to everyone.
Alison recalled the way he’d grasped her chin and cleaned a smudge from her cheek when she was six, his lips pulled down in disappointment.
Nothing in his world was ever out of its place, and he’d had the same hard attitude with Alison.
And worse than her little walk down memory lane? The way Kyle had witnessed it.
She’d all but blurted out the truth to him, drawn somehow by the way he’d moved her, the way he’d seemed solid when she couldn’t tell past from present.
Thank god I didn’t say it all.
At least Kyle hadn’t pushed. He’d cooked food, moving around the kitchen while Alison had remained on the counter. She’d thought about getting off it—mostly because he’d told her to stay—but she’d lacked the energy for that.
