Page 15 of Bound and Branded

She slips past me and goes into the office and I turn away from her and start to head toward the stairs. And that’s when the chime goes off on my phone. I stop.

It was loud enough for her to hear, I know that for sure.

I turn around just as she comes out of my office, her face pale and waxen, her mouth partway open. “I…”

My phone is in my hand, and I open up the message that I know she’s just sent me.

Yes, please.

I look up, and make direct eye contact with her. “Well hello, Dove.”

Chapter Four

Avery

I’ve died a thousand deaths in the last five seconds.

In each of those deaths, I’m subjected to the cruelest of torture, and I would rather be living those experiences than standing here right now.

I’m… I’ve been messaging Caleb Flynn the entire time.

He’s The Duke.

He’s… A Dom.

I am freaking out. My entire brain is having some kind of hyper connected implosion. Because there’s no way. It’s too coincidental. I’m torn between two competing ideas. The first is that he set all of this up. Maybe even all the way back. Planting a seed of some kind of submissive need in me that day that he grabbed my wrist and scolded me, and made me want to kneel before him.

That he knew he was messaging me the entire time, that he lured me into cleaning his house so that he could get me right where he wanted me – and the horrible realization that I mightjust be drawn to him because there’s something in me that needs what he has.

That the reason I feel like fighting him and throwing myself at him at the same time is that he has always been the answer to this thing inside of me.

That he has always been my damnation and salvation all at the same time.

“No,” I say.

“Of course,” he says. “It makes sense.”

“No. I… It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes it does. You know it does.”

“You had to know,” I say, because I need to make the accusation. I need to say it. I need to know.

“I did not know that I was messaging you,” he says.

“That can’t be true. I don’t believe you.”

The hot flame that flares in his blue eyes silences me. “If that’s what you think, then you can leave.”

“What?”

“I mean it. You get the fuck out. Because I’m not going to have you working in this house when you distrust me to that degree, and I’m sure as hell not doing this with you.”

“What makes you think that I would do this with you?”

“Oh, you were happier to be with a stranger than you are to be with me?”

I feel so vulnerable then. Stripped absolutely bare. He is the only person who knows this about me. Not a single other soul knows these intimate details about my fantasies. Truth be told, he basically found out the substance of them along with me. And that makes me feel so angry. So raw and vulnerable. It makes me wish that I were dead. I’ve nobody to talk to about this. Because I would have to tell my friend Monica that I even want to do this in the first place, and she would think that something was wrong with me, and…

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