I didn’t expect her to smile back, that would take some more time, so long as she kept talking to me, I’d be okay.
She pushed up from me a moment later, turning away from me, giving me her back, and my heart thudded painfully. Fuck. Was it the wrong thing to say?
I sat up, Lucy watching us carefully, but I didn’t say a word. She needed to work through this too. I would help her, push her along, but she needed to be reminded of the strength she had.
Olivia gripped the edge of the bed tightly, her shoulders tense. “Something takes over,” she explained, looking over from the corner of her eyes. “I see black.”
Okay, I understood that a little. Not much. I was younger when I got the taste of blood, of death. It was easily taught out of me, but this was a lifetime worth of anger. She was 23, untrained. She had an untethered anger in her that she couldn’t control and that scared her, but it was manageable. “We startfirst with training,” I told her, pushing myself to the side of the bed, sitting just beside her. “We move on from there.”
“Training? Like what Rae did with Jack?”
I nodded, giving her a soft smile, glancing to her lips and back. “Exactly. You have to learn how to weaponize it in a less chaotic way, that takes focus, accountability, a clear vision of what you want the outcome to be. Every step calculated, determined. Clear and concise,” I reminded her softly.
Her eyes flicked down, training on my lips. “Clear and concise communication,” she corrected. “That’s what you said, and it was ruined.”
“It wasn’t ruined. You didn’tnotcommunicate clearly, Olivia, you stopped altogether, but I always knew what you wanted.”
She watched my lips for a long time, so long that my heart began to beat a little faster. Her eyes fell a little further, to my throat, and her own bobbed. Her hands tightened in her lap, her fingers sanding together.
“It’s okay,” I told her softly. She was in control. She was. She had to know that, she had to understand that, no matter what happened, she was in charge of where we went, what we did, how we moved around each other now. It was all up to her, but fuck. Before, I had been so hesitant, and now I wondered why? Why had I hated showing her how much I cared about her? All I wanted to do now was touch her, have some form of physical contact with her. In all of that rage I felt during those months she was missing, I had missed the moment when the shift happened in me too.
Grey was right, she had a power over me I could barely understand.
“You said your voice is your only power, but you forgot about another power you possess,” I went on, her skin slowly flushing. “I was the one tying you to that wall, but you were theone controlling what happened. The moment you say ‘Red’, the second it becomes too much, you stop everything. That’s your power. You control us.”
Her pupils suddenly grew so large, they nearly drowned out the color, causing my cock to throb. Did she want it too? She could take it. She could take it all whenever she wanted. I’d give her the whip if she asked, and then I’d take it right back if that’s what she wanted.
A power shift. It wasn’t uncommon, I had read. There was power in each position, a slightly different kind, and people often found a kind of rush taking on both roles from time to time. Maybe the best way for us both to regain control was for the dynamic to shift until things started to make more sense again.
Sitting on my knees in front of her while blood dripped from her hands, her nails digging into my neck. Fuck, I rubbed myself raw after that. I wondered how much I would have to beg for her to do it again. Get me on my knees, choke me, force me to do whatever she wanted.
“Every pup needs her master,” she said quietly.
I found her eyes, a smile touching my lips.“Call me a dog and I’ll bark just for you, Olivia. Woof woof.”
Her eyes fell to her right hand, studying it, sanding her fingers together, her eyes flicking to my neck again, her lips parting as her breathing picked up.
She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“I commemorated it,” I began when I saw that I was losing her, “because it made me realize that things are different now. It’s not a bad thing,” I assured her as her eyes found mine again. “It’s good. We evolve together. We learn. We don’t need sex, we need trust. Everything else comes later.”
She watched me for a long time before her eyes fell back to my throat, studying the way the artist had depicted herbeautiful hand. After another few seconds, she lifted her right hand, hesitantly at first, my heart racing as she slowly closed the distance between it and my throat.
“Don’t react,”I told myself, but as her hand slowly closed around my throat, her nails pressing into my skin, I felt my eyes roll back, and my lips part on a longing breath.
Fuck.
My cock throbbed painfully as her grip tightened. She certainly wasn’t strong enough to cut off my oxygen, but it didn’t matter. My head was spinning, my skin warming, my cock hardening. I never knew I could like something like this, but fuck me, I wanted her to choke me until I came.
“Everett.”
My eyes flashed open at the whisper of my name to find her eyes locked onto mine. She said my name.
She said my fucking name.
Her nails bit a little deeper into my skin. “I want you to touch me,” she requested hesitantly.
I couldn’t ignore the excitement that exploded in my chest. “I don’t have to—”
