Page 63 of Safe Word

Grimacing, I dragged myself upright. Get it together, Cain. You’re a sadist, not a fucking teenager.

‘You’re quiet. Is it working?’ she asked, glancing back – just in time to catch me in the act of pulling myself out of the abyss. Her expression was calm. But her eyes? Yeah. She knew.

‘There,’ she said brightly, rising to her feet and dusting off her hands like she’d just prevented the world from tipping over – unaware that my fucking brain was leaking out of my ears.

And something else, too.

‘Is the net back on?’

The net? A black rope lattice maybe… a single one. Wrapped around her bare skin, the strands biting lightly as I drew it tighter, crossing over curves and soft hollows until she was nothing but breath and tears. Knots like kisses, restraint like worship. One slap to the back and she’d arch, one whisper and she’d break.

Shifting in my seat, still coiled and frayed, I pretended my gaze wasn’t trailing her walk back to the desk like a fucking leash.

Leash…

I rubbed my face.

I need therapy…

‘I’ll reboot the router,’ she might have said. My ears were ringing.

Sure, I thought inwardly, and I’d reboot that part of me that had just imagined you gagged, bound and begging.

‘Thanks,’ I said, my voice brusque, trying to play it cool despite the heat scorching me from the inside out.

‘No problem,’ she replied breezily, completely unfazed, her smirk widening just enough to make me suspicious.

I shifted uncomfortably, glancing at my monitor and pretending to focus on the long list of emails I needed to respond to.

My phone buzzed then.

I pounced on it as a distraction, but when I unlocked the screen, it was just an update from the weather app.

Sunny all day. Fantastic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her watching me with a knowing smile.

‘Stop pouting, D’Angelo,’ she echoed as she typed away at her keyboard.

I glanced back at her, deadpan. ‘You’re not the boss of me.’

Laughing lightly, she stood again and reached for her coffee. The moment she turned, I shifted my chair to face the desk more directly – just in case.

Christ, I wasn’t going to make it.

TWELVE

‘Paula?’ His voice pulled me from the lines on my screen. I blinked up at him, realising too late that he’d been talking to me for a while now. I hadn’t heard a single word, engrossed in the story.

‘Sorry,’ I said quickly, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks. ‘I was focused on the text. What did you say?’

Cain sat back just a touch, one brow arched in that effortlessly commanding way he’d mastered. A faint smirk graced his lips – an almost-smile, as infuriating as it was captivating.

‘How do you do that?’ he asked curiously.

I shifted in my seat, suddenly hyper-aware of how completely I’d ignored my boss. I really needed to start getting used to having one again.

‘Do what?’ I asked, glancing briefly at the screen in front of me as though it held the answer.