"What stopped you?"
"I don't know. Fear, maybe. Or never meeting anyone I trusted enough to explore it with." I turn to face him. "My last boyfriend thought I was too aggressive in bed. Too demanding. He wanted me to be softer. More passive."
"And you couldn't be."
"I didn't want to be." I straighten my shoulders. "I spent my whole life learning to fight for what I want. I'm not going to unlearn that because some man thinks I should be more ladylike while he fucks me."
Callum's eyes darken. "Being submissive isn't about being passive, Nadia. And it certainly isn't about being ladylike."
"Then what is it about?"
He closes the distance between us, and suddenly all that controlled power is right there, inches away. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
"It's about trust. Surrender. Giving someone else control not because you're weak, but because you're strong enough to let go." His voice drops lower. "The best submissives I've known were the ones who fought the hardest. Who challenged every boundary and made me earn their submission instead of just handing it over."
My pulse is racing. "That sounds like a lot of work for you."
"It's the only kind of work worth doing."
We're standing close enough now that I can see the individual threads of silver in his hair. Can count the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Can feel my own breath coming faster than it has any right to.
"This doesn't change our arrangement," I hear myself say. "We're still just pretending for the weekend."
"Of course."
"And I'm not agreeing to anything by being in this room."
"I wouldn't expect you to."
"But." I swallow hard. "If I were curious. Hypothetically. About what this might feel like. What would that look like?"
Callum's hand comes up slowly, giving me plenty of time to pull away. His fingers graze my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.
"It would look like a conversation. About what you want. What you're afraid of. What you've imagined but never had the courage to ask for." His thumb traces my lower lip, featherlight. "And then, if we both agreed, it would look like me showing you exactly how good surrender can feel."
My knees actually weaken. Like I'm in some kind of romance novel and my body has decided to follow the script.
"The storm has us trapped here anyway," I whisper. "Might as well make productive use of the time."
"Is that a yes?"
"That's a maybe." I step back, putting space between us before I do something irreversible. "Ask me again in the morning. When I haven't had whiskey and no sleep and a complete breakdown of my normal decision making process."
The corner of his mouth curves up. A real smile this time, small but genuine.
"Fair enough." He moves toward the door, gesturing for me to precede him out. "Get some rest, Nadia. We'll talk more tomorrow."
I walk past him, hyperaware of how close we are in the doorway. Of how easy it would be to turn around and close the distance and find out what his mouth tastes like.
But I keep walking. Up the stairs. Into the guest room. Into the bed that's too big and too cold and too far from the roomdownstairs with the burgundy walls and the promises I'm not ready to make.
The storm rages on outside. Inside, a different kind of storm is just beginning.
I don't sleep much after that either. But for entirely different reasons.
CHAPTER FOUR
CALLUM
