Page 37 of Dare to Love Again

“I’m glad I meet with your approval, lass. I can assure you, I like what I see, but I want to see more. Your hair is a lovely color, but the twist doesn’t work for me. I prefer long and loose, which gives me something to sink my fingers into, or to wind around my wrist should I take the notion.” His hands dropped to her hips, and he took a half step back. “Take it down.”

She didn’t hesitate, searching for the pins in the loose bun. She’d used eight that morning. A couple fell from her nervous fingers, bouncing with a ping on the hardwood floor before she located all of them.

Master Finn brushed her hands aside, using his steady, long fingers to fluff the thick, wavy mass that tumbled over her shoulders and down her back. Next, he pulled it forward in two skeins to stream down over her breasts.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

Feeling shy at his praise, she looked down, watching as he picked up a springy curl and rubbed it between his tanned fingers. The back of his hand brushed the hard peak, which tightened in reaction.

“Relax, lass.” The deep cadence of his voice made it almost impossible not to. “Nothing will happen here if you don’t want it to.”

It wasn’t a comforting thought because she wanted this man to do everything, her body needing him to, so badly. Swaying slightly, she leaned toward him, his pull on her magnetic.

“You’re called Esme, an unusual name.”

“It’s my middle name, actually. My mother lost a bet with my father.”

There was a pause. “I don’t follow.”

“He won and got to choose my name.” She shrugged. “It’s rather a long story; my parents were rather nutty.”

“A feeling most children share, but best left for another time, perhaps,” he suggested as she felt a button release on her blouse.

She breathed out, glad for the change of subject. Thoughts of her parents, always bittersweet, didn’t belong here, in a sex club of all places, where a practical stranger had less than wholesome intentions in mind for her.

“What was that?”

“Sir?” she asked, her eyes coming up to meet his.

“You had a disturbing thought.”

“Oh no. It was nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t make you frown. I’d like to know what it was.”

“I, uh...” With the good came the bad: observant, demanding, intent on getting inside a sub’s head.

“If you’re to be mine, whether for an hour, the evening, or beyond this first session, you will be mine in all ways. Mind and body, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered, responding to the firm authority in his demand.

“Then tell me what disturbed you.”

“Our conversation seems to circle back to, well, rather inappropriate things, like my folks, when soon—”

“I’ll be using their daughter’s body,” Master Finn finished for her, having no trouble putting it into words, “in whatever depraved way I see fit, baring her, fucking her, taking a crop to her ass if she doesn’t please me? Perhaps it is inappropriate, but considering we’re in a torture chamber, not much about our situation is what you’d call proper. Is it?”

“I guess not, sir,” she replied, a rasp present from her mouth and throat having gone suddenly dry.

“Which is half the fun.”

He tugged on the curl he still held, then his hand fell away, and he walked across the room. A few moments later, she heard the creak of leather.

“Come here, Esme.”

Turning, she scanned the shadows until she found him. It took a moment despite the flickering sconces because his black T-shirt and pants blended with the dark high-backed chair where he reclined. He crooked a finger, summoning her like a medieval lord ready for a tankard of ale and a lot more from his serving wench.

She padded in bare feet across the tile floor. When she drew near, he shifted, spreading his black boots wide apart. She didn’t misconstrue his silent command and stepped between them. Her gaze inched up his leather-encased long legs and thickly muscled thighs, and she couldn’t miss the outline of his cock behind the button fly and how the impressive length angled down his inner thigh. Immediately, a flood of wetness rushed to her pussy, and she could think of nothing except him stripping her bare and filling her, wherever and however he wanted.

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