Page 65 of The Dark Before Light

I look up, meeting Sven’s eyes in the rearview before he refocuses on the road.

“Should I be raving?”

“Guess not.” He clears his throat. “Do you, uh, need me to listen or whatever?”

A smile cracks my frozen face. “Fuck off.”

His shoulders drop with relief. “Home, then?”

“No.” I brush imaginary lint off my jeans. “Stirling’s.”

Sven brakes too hard approaching a stop sign. “What? I thought—when you came out, it seemed like…”

I chuckle. “Take a breath, buddy.”

He swerves to a stop outside a dark storefront on Wilshire and twists in the seat. “What the fuck happened?”

“What happened is she thinks it’s transference.” My voice is eerily calm and sounds a bit freaky. “Remember me ranting to you boys about it last weekend?”

Sven grunts.

I shrug. “She doesn’t know I’ve already disproved the hypothesis.”

He drags a hand over his buzzed head. “Are you sure about this?”

I’m not. There’s a knock-down, drag-out fight going on inside me, my conviction clashing with doubts. But I hold tight to what she couldn’t hide from me tonight. Her passion. Her tears. The pain in her eyes before she shut down.

The fact she knelt for me.

She knelt.

Tonight is just one more battle, but I’m going to win the war. And when I do, when she surrenders to this, I’ll give her the crown. Everything I have. Everything I am.

I’ll lay it all at her feet.

“I’m sure.”

“Your funeral,” mumbles Sven as he puts the car in gear.

I spend the drive planning out exactly what I’m going to say and exactly what I’m going to do to her first—bury my face between her thighs until she comes. Twice.

By the time we reach her house, I’m so hard it’s painful. Not helping are the near-constant flashbacks of Talia on her knees, swallowing my cock and cum like they were candy. I’ve had some great blow jobs in my life, but every single one of them faded into obscurity the second she put her mouth and hands on me.

Because Sven is a sneaky bastard, he drives past her house to the next side street and parks. We have a line of sight to her house, but she won’t see us when she turns onto the street. He keeps his thoughts to himself as we wait, probably because he knows that when I set my mind to something, nothing short of a missile will stop me.

Twenty minutes pass, then thirty. Around the forty-minute mark, I almost change my mind as doubt creeps back in. I start thinking about that blond who hugged her after the lecture. Who she smiled at and whose cheek she kissed to the delight of the crowd. There was a physical familiarity between them that told me they were lovers at some point. I’d wager money on him being her last submissive.

“Why are you muttering about blond men? What did we ever do to you?”

I look up at the rearview, taking in Sven’s bored expression and dark, knowing eyes.

I’m spared an embarrassing answer when headlights flash across the tree we’re parked behind. Unlike the last dozen times, the car doesn’t drive past. I recognize her Lexus as it slows and pulls into her driveway. The garage door rises. She parks inside.

“Sven,” I say tightly.

“What?”

“If the blond is with her, you have my permission to tackle me and get me back in the car by any means necessary.”

---