In my contrary way, because this wasn’t supposed to be a thing, dammit, I still haven’t shaved properly since we started this thing. I regret that now for a handful of seconds and then decide that it’s not my problem what he thinks. I don’t care if he likes hair or doesn’t or if the patchwork situation down there is unattractive as hell. I don’t care because none of this was supposed to be…anything.
“Do it.” What was supposed to be an order to make him hurry up and get it over with sounds like a plea.
“I’ll do it when I’m ready,” he replies with a quelling look. “You’ll sit there and you’ll wait.” A grim smirk. “My rules now.”
And here’s the thing: the rulesarehis, suddenly. Entirely his. He’s taken the stupid contract and twisted it around and now we’re not here for me at all.
I didn’t sign up for this.
“Stop.”
He glances up at me, searches my face, then slides his gaze down my body again. “You don’t want me to.”
“Jake…” My voice trails off into nothing.
“Myrules.” Rough hands on my knees stroke up to my inner thighs. “You want me to stop, you say…” While he tilts his head consideringly, eyes glued to that hot, needy place between my legs, his hands turn and his knuckles make their lazy way back to my knees and then up again. “What do you like?”
“Um… Chandeliers.”
“You gonna remember that?Chandelier.”
“What?”
“While we’re fucking? If you want to stop? Will you remember to say chandelier?”
“Are we…getting kinky or something?”
“I don’t know. You want to?”
“I don’t…” My mouth and eyes are wide open and my legs are open and I’m sitting here with him on the floor before me and the whole thing is as surreal as anything I’ve experienced. It seems wise, in this weird, out of body moment, to be entirely sure of what I’m saying. “I don’t want you to hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I…I think maybe what we’ve been doing is a little kinky already, right?”
He nods. “Probably.”
“And you want to do…more? Other stuff?”
He considers. “You make me feel…wild, Katarina. Like a fuckin’ beast. You make me want to…” He shakes his head, like he can’t actually believe what he’s saying. “I want to take you down. Hunt you. I want to bite you, claim you. I don’t know. It’s not a thing I’ve done or felt before, but it’s like…” He starts to laugh and it fizzles out when I try to close my legs and he gently, slowly, pries them back open, his gaze on mine the whole time. “Like that. Just like that.”
And though there’s no way I could describe exactly what that look, that moment, just communicated, I get it, deep in my bones. Somehow, the way we went about this opened me up to a whole new sexual…world and, like a language learned as a kid, I just know—I know—that this is how it would be between us.
How it should be.
God, admit it, Kit. This is how it is.
“I… I want an easier word. Something I won’t forget when…it’s happening.” I cast around for something. “Red. I want to use red.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
I shake my head.
“Say it.”
“Uh…” I shut my eyes through another lazy exploration of my sensitive skin. “Red.”
“You need me to stop, I’ll stop if you use that word.” His smile is diamond hard. “But you better mean it.”
