Page 3 of The Dom

I gestured between the two of us. “This. I’m not asking with a specific answer in mind. I want nothing more than clarification. I want to know what to expect.”

He was silent for several seconds, but I could see him thinking and didn’t rush him. I wanted a real answer, not something he felt obligated to say because he hadn’t had time to consider every possibility.

“I suppose the answer to that depends on you,” he finally said.

“Me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a complete asshole, contrary to what rumors might say. What happens next isn’t a decision for me to make on my own. What do you want?”

Shit. I should’ve known this was going to come back to bite me in the ass.

He leaned forward and took my hand, applying gentle pressure to my fingers until I met his eyes. “I want the truth. Always the truth.” He raised my hand and brushed his lips across my knuckles. “You’re safe with me.”

I wanted that to be true, and in some ways, it was. I trusted him with my body. I just wasn’t so sure I could trust him with my heart.

“I don’t want this to be an end,” I said honestly. “But I also want to see if what we are can be more than just sex.” I kept going without pausing for a reply. “If sex is all you want, I’m okay with that too. I just want to know so I can…prepare.”

One side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile. “Prepare makes it sound like you need to find armor or a fall-out shelter.”

I laughed, and the knot in my stomach eased. The last thing I wanted to do was freak him out with all the serious talk, but we had so much going against us already that going in blind would be another strike against us from the start. If he could see my questions for what they truly were, then I had hope.

“To be as honest as you’re being,” he continued, “I don’t usually do things in this order. Generally, when I’m ready for something other than a single encounter with someone, I already have in my mind what I want before I approach them, whether a woman will be just a sub or a girlfriend or both.”

His statement wasn’t surprising in the least. Control was important to him. I’d known that before we’d slept together the first time.

“And me?”

He shook his head and chuckled, that low rumble that made things inside me flip. “I didn’t see you coming, and even if I had, I doubted I could’ve planned for any of this.”

I was glad I wasn’t the only one who’d been blind-sided. It made me feel like the two of us were on more even footing than I usually did. I had a clear picture of just how unmatched we were, and it was one of my biggest worries.

He was gorgeous, rich, successful, and experienced. I didn’t have some distorted image of myself where I thought I was ugly, but Nate could’ve stepped onto any runway in the world and fit right in. Money-wise, I didn’t even come close to comparing. I was far from poor, but his tax bracket was so far above mine that I couldn’t see it. He was at the top of his field, and I’d never known what I really wanted to do with my life. Experience…we were as far apart in that area as we were financially.

“I want a relationship with you,” he said, pulling his chair closer until his knees bracketed mine. “I don’t know what that means, exactly. Not yet, anyway. But it has to be your choice because, if we do this, you need to understand what it means. All of what it means.”

I took a deep breath that did little to settle the butterflies that had suddenly taken up residence in my stomach. If my voice so much as wavered, he’d hear it, and it might make him back away. I wasn’t ready for this to be over yet.

“Like what?”

He ran the tip of his index finger in circles over my knee, a hypnotic sensation that made his words even more sensual. “Like all the ways a good little sub can please her Dom. How close the line is between pain and pleasure. What it means to truly want to be punished. The limits I’ll push until you aren’t certain if you want me to stop…or if you never want me to stop.”

Fuck.

“I’ll introduce you to things you never knew you wanted. Teach you to find pleasure in ways you can’t even imagine.”

I let out a shuddering breath.

“You’ll learn a whole new vocabulary. A new way of thinking, of being. You’ll crave the things I can do for you. To you. You’ll beg for me to do things to that beautiful body of yours, consumed by what only I can give you.”

I was beginning to think that he could make me come just from the mental images his words painted. If I’d been wearing panties, they’d already be soaked.

“I suppose that means I should get in research mode.”

His eyes darkened, and he stood up, towering over me even more than usual.

Shit. Not the right thing to say, apparently.

But, fuck, was that hot.

---