Page 54 of Safe Word

I knew she wanted to push these boundaries because she was forged from the same steel as I was. And I knew… I wouldn’t be able to answer that part of her question.

‘How do you want it?’ she asked instead.

My mind did a complete double take, my track pants suddenly too tight.

I must have lingered too much in silence.

‘Tell me how you’d like that scene. Teach me.’

Oh fuck me…

This call was a mistake.

Clearing my throat, I bought myself some time. ‘It’s not about what I want – it’s about what the characters want,’ I lied. Like a piece of shit.

‘Sure,’ she murmured, sarcasm smeared all over that. ‘But if it were?’

I left my phone on the table for fear of breaking it. Her breath still resonated through my earbud. I was dangerously aware of every inch of fabric on my body.

‘Right,’ I said quietly. ‘Damien doesn’t rush. He doesn’t take her. He orchestrates her surrender. That’s the difference.’

‘How?’

I should hang up.

‘He…’ I closed my eyes and let the words come – as clinical and measured as they could. Not at all the way they felt in my throat. ‘…keeps her restrained,’ I said. ‘Not for show, but so she learns to focus. On sensation. Obedience. He talks her through it, not just with orders – but reminders. Of whose body she’s in, whose pleasure she serves. Makes her wait for it. Until the need rewires her.’

She didn’t say a word, but I heard the slight hitch in her breath.

I fucking felt it.

‘And then?’ she asked.

I swallowed, staring at her paragraph with my fingertip grazing the stark black ink.

‘Then he lets her come.’ Pause. Breath – deep one. ‘But only when she begs for it. Properly. And not with words.’

Silence again.

‘I see,’ she said finally, but her tone was not the kind that meant she did. It was the kind that meant she wanted to.

I couldn’t help wondering if we were past the point of professionalism. If we’d quietly crossed it.

Sentence by sentence.

‘I’ll rewrite it in the morning,’ she whispered, her tone drowsier than before.

I closed my eyes against the sound, letting it roll over me like heat until my head lolled back against the headrest.

There were questions trembling on my tongue I would’ve asked other women without a second thought. Are you in bed? Where are your fingers? How wet are you when you talk like that?

But Paula wasn’t other women.

And I wasn’t the man I was pretending to be – not even when it came to her.

‘Cain?’

My name on her lips…