She’d short-circuited my brain. Not just the words, but how casually she’d spoken them had fried all ability to think rationally and made my dick rock hard. She was talking about doing those things to another woman, but I was picturing doing them to her.
She’d leaned forward in her seat as she spoke, so our knees were almost touching and our faces were inches apart. Her eyes flicked to my mouth like she might be thinking about kissing me, which was insane because I was thinking the same about her and couldn’t figure out how we’d gotten here.
It didn’t matter. I had to know what she’d do next if I pushed her.
“You, Lady Elena, have a filthy mouth.” I let my eyes drift to her lips. “A deceptively pretty mouth to be that filthy. I think I like it.”
Her voice was low and soft as she said, “My final question…Have I turned you on, Mr. Chase?”
I swallowed, but before I could figure out what to say, she glanced down at the unmistakeable bulge in my pants and cocked an eyebrow. “It seems I already have my answer. Despite being a decent actor, your body language is giving you away.”
Laughter rumbled in my chest when I realized how easily she’d set me up to get me back for calling her out over her fake phone call. She didn’t play by the same rules as the rest of us.
She was still leaning close and her eyes were alight with excitement, cheeks flushed. It seemed like I might not be the only one who was into this.
“Touché, Lady Elena.”
The challenge was plain in her eyes. As I opened my mouth to speak, the office door opened revealing Chad, who I was definitely going to have to fire now for interrupting one of the most erotically charged moments of my life.
He looked back and forth between us, obviously noting how close we were sitting. “Hey, kids! You can’t get down to business until we sign the deal!”
She stood with total poise, smoothing her skirt as though she could shake off the moment as easily as she brushed away the wrinkles, and moved to follow Chad.
He asked, “You coming, Alex?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Once I have a chat with my raging boner about the fact that we can’t have her.
I looked at Elena accusingly. “You still owe me a question.”
She cocked an eyebrow playfully. “I’ll have Ophelia add it to our contract.”
6
Elena
Istopped at the bathroom to reapply my lipstick. I needed a dose of Wicked Queen right about now.
The electric chemistry I’d just discovered with Alex Chase made me nervous. He was just so irresistibly masculine, between the chiseled muscles and his scruffy beard. Being that close to him shouldn’t have done anything to me if I didn’t want it to, and yet there I was, practically melting with lust.
I was so fascinated by human sexuality that I’d started breaking down the trends I noticed into core sexual archetypes I saw repeated over and over again in people. Before working in the dungeon, I’d thought that sexual power preferences were pretty binary—subs or doms. Even when the termswitchwas used, it was understood that you could be both a sub and a dom, but usually only one at a time. The reality of human sexuality was far from binary.
I understood the needs of people more deeply once I’d pinned their archetype, which could be anything from the nurturing Mother to the fearsome Disciplinarian to the tender Lover. My core sexual archetype was the Amazon, which meant that despite primarily being a submissive, I wanted my partners to prove themselves worthy of me.
Though I had one, I didn’t need a degree in psychology to figure out that the basis for that need was likely rooted in every significant figure in my formative years letting me down, but now was hardly the time to go down that mental rabbit hole. The point was, in constantly rising to meet my challenge, Alex Chase was both pissing me off and turning me on.
I couldn’t put my finger on his core archetype, which was both intriguing and perplexing. On first impression, I thought his was going to be straightforward to pin, but there were depths to him I hadn’t expected. He was a puzzle I needed to solve and it felt like I didn’t have all the pieces yet.
Could I stay in control with him? Would I kill him? Or worse, hook up with him?
I took a deep breath.
He was just another client.
I could do this. I would keep him at arm’s length going forward.
When I sat back down in the main conference room, Ophelia explained the changes they’d agreed to. I was only half listening until I caught the phrase, “PDA as necessary.” I turned slowly to look at Ophelia.
