Page 21 of Our Sadie

Sadie is downright savage with the next few moves, her right arm a curl almost as taut as her left as she plays on. If her burns were limiting her before, they’re not now. Soon we’re at five to one, her favor. When the timer goes off, it’s six to one.

Her unscarred cheek is almost as red as her other one and perspiration has beaded along her hairline, but the gleam in her eyes in one of triumph. Victory.

I don’t know why that matters to me as much as it does but watching her succeed gives me the urge to hug her. Not an embrace that’s just a prelude to bumping uglies, either, but a genuine expression of delight for her.

So, I do.

“What the hell?” she splutters, her tone incredulous, and the stiffness of her frame informs me that I’ve crossed a line.

“Sorry. I’m just so proud of you.”

“Proud?”

There’s danger in that voice. Danger and defiance.

“Uh, yeah. You won.”

“I know I won,” she barks out. “Why? Did you let me?”

I take a pace backward. “No. Definitely not.” No way in hell am I ever admitting how close I came to making that exact decision, though. It hadn’t been necessary, but still.

She’s glowering at me—there’s no other way of putting it—her eyes slicing into me like I’m nothing. Like I’m navel lint. Or maybe like she’d like to incinerate me from existence using nothing more than her glare.

I’m not entirely sure that she won’t, either.

“You won,” I insist. “Fair and square.”

She holds that ferocious intensity on me for several long seconds, and fear that I’m done for fills me. Not that this woman would actually lash out and harm me, but that she’ll toss me out on my ass.

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Yet that’s not what happens. Instead, she addresses me while stalking toward the door of the room, her gait noticeably uneven, not that I’m dumb enough to mention it.

“You should know something about me, Dom. I’ll not stand for being patronized.”

“I’d never do that,” I tell her. “I promise.”

She exits with me on her heels, and once we arrive at a seating area next to some super tall windows, she points.

“Sit.”

I obey, automatically reliving the nights I spent with a client who had dominatrix tendencies. She didn’t go full leather and chains on me, but she did order me around and shove that fucking dildo up my ass. Not that I suspect that Sadie will be into that, but something I’ve learned the hard way is you never know.

Sometimes it’s the ones you’d never think would be psychos in the bedroom who totally are.

She approaches me, the oddest expression rippling along her features. It’s a screwy mix of anxiety and determination, I think. Then, she plants herself on my lap, straddling me, before biting my Adam’s apple so hard that I hiss and jerk back.

What the hell?

“Did that hurt?” Sadie asks, sounding far meeker than she has all day.

“A little,” I confess.

“Good, because that was gross. That level of aggressiveness isn’t me, anyway.”

Baffled, I’m about to ask her what the fuck is going on when she kisses me with gusto. I’m stunned but go with it since I can suck face like it’s an Olympic sport. Tugging her bottom lip into my mouth, I brush it with the tip of my tongue, tasting her.

When she combs her hand through my hair then lowers it to examine the texture of my beard, I let her, suffering from whiplash from the one-eighty she just made on me. She’s flipped from bold as brass to tentative and almost cautious.

---