“Oh no. The famous Zion Mason glare.” Lamé’s eyes go wide and faux frightened. “I’ve seen all the movies, honey. You don’t scare me.”
He snorts. I bleat out a surprised sound when Zion’s warm foot overlaps mine. “Guess we’ll have to resort to playing footsie under the table.”
“There you go. Least he’s a quick learner.” Lamé looks at me. “You both are. Anyway. The cottage is open.” They start to skate to where the line at the bar’s now ten deep, and swing back, pointing a long-nailed finger at us. “No sex there either.”
“Got it,” I reply.
“My wife’s moving into my cabin,” Zion says with a certainty that raises my hackles, even while the meaning sends a thrill through me.
“Excuse me?”
“You belong in my bed, Twyla.”
“I belong where I want,Zion.”
“We settled this last night,” he says, voice resonating deep and final. “You’re mine.”
Every muscle in my body tightens up, ready for a fight.
“Oooooooh, she hasreleased the Kraken!” Lamé announces melodramatically, skating a gleeful circle out and back to our table. “We need thoughts and prayers, everybody. ’Cause hell hath no fury like a possessive Dom.” They skate off again, yelling to the room at large, “And this Dom’s finally met his match.”
I stand up to go, turn back for my coffee, and stop when he rises, his body towering over me. “I need sleep, Zion. This has been…” I look up at him, breathe deep, and will myself down from the unbelievable high of every interaction we have: angry or affectionate, loud or quiet, soft, painful, emotional. “A lot. Okay? In a short time.”
After a few long moments, he sniffs, nods, backs up a half step. “Good idea. You need rest.”
“Don’t you?”
“Nah.” His smile’s way too slow to be trusted. “I’ve got work to do.”
27
Twyla
I wake up after hours spent sleeping at Lamé’s, feeling pasty-mouthed, but otherwise well-rested. Beside the bed, my phone vibrates. I pick it up, see the number of notifications, and set it down again. No. No, I’m definitely not ready to face the outside world.
Like a ton of bricks, the past couple of days come back to me. For the first time since I got here, I take a minute and let it soak in. Reality, as I knew it, has changed.
Am I okay?
I think of the many faces of Zion, his possessiveness, his demands. My body squirms, stretches, my thighs tighten. Okay. Okay, yeah. I like that side of him. A lot.
Really, though? Do I really want that? A man who’s perfectly happy to make demands of me, but unwilling to even give me a kiss.
One after another, memories fly through my brain—Zion kissing my shoulder, my neck, my pussy. My forehead, my cheek.
My lips, on the red carpet.
But that wasn’t real. This is.
Is it, though? Will we be together when camp’s over? Will this last?
I want it to, I admit, with an almost embarrassing rush of emotion. Right behind it is the certainty that this will go nowhere. It can’t.
How, for example, will we ever get over the video, in the public eye, at least? I mean, I’m over it, mostly. Or I’m pretending it didn’t happen, I guess.
I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.
Except I do. I think about him and that woman in that hotel room. I think about her tied up on the bed, her arms and legs stretched out like mine were on the flogger last night, and I imagine him doing the things to her that I want him to do to me. Under the sheet, my hand slides down my body, dips between my legs. I’m wet. Of course. When have I not been since he came into my life?
