My brain stalls. "I don't have one."
"Pick one. Right now. Something you'll remember."
I search his face. He's serious. Completely, absolutely serious. He has one hand on my neck and the other cradling my jaw and his mouth tastes like whiskey and he's asking me to establish an emergency exit before we go any further.
"Kandahar," I say, because it's the word that lives in the back of my throat at all times and it will come out when nothing else will.
For a moment, I swear I see a look of recognition on his face, but it’s gone in an instance. He nods once.
"If you say that word, everything stops. No questions. No hesitation. Everything stops and I take care of you. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
I know what he's asking. I’ve done enough research on the lifestyle to know what he needs, but I also know what the answer means. And the fact that my body responds before my brain can catch up tells me everything I need to know about what I want from this man.
"Yes, Sir."
His exhale is controlled but I feel it shake through him. He presses his forehead to mine and stays there for one breath. Two. Like he's steadying himself against the force of what I just gave him.
Then he pulls back and the man looking at me is not the same man who offered me risotto three hours ago. This man has purpose. This man has command. And when he speaks, his voicecarries the quiet absolute authority of someone who has been in charge of keeping people alive and takes that responsibility more seriously than breathing.
"Stand up."
I stand. My legs are trembling and I don't try to hide it because something tells me he wants to see it. He wants to see what he does to me.
He stays on the couch. Looking up at me with the firelight painting shadows across those sharp features. His gaze travels from my face to the collar of his flannel shirt hanging loose on my shoulders to the hem where it grazes my bare thighs. I changed out of the wrap dress in the bathroom an hour ago and I'm wearing his shirt over nothing but my underwear and the way he's looking at me makes me feel more naked than skin.
"Take the shirt off."
My fingers find the top button. I undo them slowly. Not because I'm performing, but because my hands are shaking and I want to feel every second of this. The flannel falls open and the fire is warm against my bare stomach and my breasts and the thin lace of the bra I wore because some stupid optimistic part of me thought tonight might end exactly like this.
I let the shirt slide off my shoulders and it pools at my feet.
He doesn't move. Doesn't reach for me. He just looks, and being looked at by this man is its own form of possession. His eyes trace the scar on my collarbone. The curve of my waist. The stretch marks on my hips that I stopped hating three years ago when I decided that a body that survived two deployments gets to look however it wants.
"You're extraordinary," he says, and the word is rough. Not a compliment. A fact. An observation delivered with the same certainty he uses for everything.
"I'm standing in my underwear in a stranger's cabin during a snowstorm," I say because humor is the last fortification I have left and it's crumbling fast. "Extraordinary is generous."
"You're standing in my cabin," he corrects, and the possessive weight on the word my makes my knees buckle, "because you're brave enough to want something that terrifies you and honest enough to chase it. That's not generous. That's the truth."
He reaches for me then. One hand. Just his fingertips, trailing from the scar on my collarbone down between my breasts and stopping at my navel. The touch is so light it barely qualifies as contact and I feel it in every nerve ending I own.
"We're going to go slow," he says. "And you're going to tell me what you feel. Every sensation. Every response. I want to hear you."
"I thought the whole point of submission was shutting up and taking it."
"Whoever told you that doesn't deserve to be in the same room with a submissive." His hand flattens against my stomach and the warmth of his palm spreads through me like a current. "Your voice is part of this. Your voice is what makes this work. Without it, I'm just a man in a room. With it, I can give you everything."
I don't know what everything looks like with this man. But standing in his warm cabin while snow buries the world outside and his hand rests steady against my skin and his eyes hold mine with a focus that makes me feel like the only person who has ever existed, I know I want to find out.
"I feel your hand," I whisper. "And it's warm. And I'm terrified. And I don't want you to stop."
His thumb traces a circle below my navel and the sound I make is involuntary and raw and he closes his eyes when hehears it. Just for a second. Like he needs to absorb it somewhere no one else can reach.
"Good girl," he murmurs. "Keep talking."
