Page 23 of Red Flagged
“Say it again,” I breathed, already chasing the sound like it was oxygen.
She smiled, slow and sated and feminine. “Camille,” she said again, slower this time. Velvet and silk and sin.
I swear I felt the name crawl beneath my skin and settle in my bloodstream. My whole bodyreacted, like it had heard something sacred and didn’t know how to recover.
“Aurélie Camille Dubois.” It came out sounding like a vow. Like destruction. Like it was meant to be carved into my bones and inscribed on the inside of a ring pressed against my pulse for the rest of my life.
Her name didn’t just sound beautiful. It tasted like surrender, the syllables burning like scripture on my tongue. I tasted every letter, and for a heartbeat, I wasn’t just in love with her. I wasconsumed. This wasn’t just about sex. It wasn’t even about love. This was aboutdevotion.Worship.
And I was about to fall to my knees for her all over again.
Slowly, she sat up, that wild gold hair falling over her shoulder like spilled champagne. Her limbs were loose, graceful in that feline way she had when she was on the edge of surrender. She padded across the room on bare feet, the hem of my shirt fluttering at the backs of her thighs.
Christ, that view alone was enough to make me sin.
And then she opened the drawer. The one that held something she wasn’t supposed to know about yet.
All the air left my lungs when she pulled out the black leather riding crop I’d ordered a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t used it yet, but I bought it because I had imagined her exactly like this. Lips parted, eyes heavy with lust, skin glowing with that flush of arousal coursing through her.
She turned slowly, backlit by the bedside lamp, tits bouncing softly under the red cotton of my shirt. The handle of the crop dangled from her fingers as if it weighed nothing, but the look on her face sent my heart rate haywire.
That wild look. The one that told me she was in as deep as I was. Theplease, hurt me the way only you know howlook.
“I’ve thought about this,” she murmured. “So many times. I didn’t know you bought it for me.” She wet her lips nervously. "But I kept thinking about how it would feel—how you would feel—holding it. Using it on me.”
My lungs refused to cooperate. Every part of me narrowed on her. The crop. Her body. The need bleeding out of her like a confession.
She crossed the room slowly, shifting back and forth on her feet, then climbing onto the bed like a girl walking willingly into the lion’s den. She knelt, spine straightening, and extended the crop out to me with both hands like she was presenting me with a sword—a holy relic, her version of an offering.
“Utilise-moi,” she whispered. “Use me, Cal. Not because I’m broken. Because you make me feel worthy again.”
My heart cracked clean open. “Comforting you makes me feel worthy too,” I said, my voice barely audible. “That you need me and trust me. So it works both ways.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Then show me. Own me. Make me yours again.”
And just like that, the shift happened. That primal instinct raced to the surface, responding to her surrender as if it had been caged too long. My spine snapped straight, blood roaring, dominance clicking into place like a mask I never took off. My cock twitched so hard, it made me lightheaded.
I rose from the bed in a slow, measured manner, every movement calculated as I sauntered toward her. Her eyes tracked me carefully, uncertainty and hunger written all over her as she stayed perfectly still. The space between us was thick with tension so charged it tasted metallic.
I stopped right in front of her, letting the silence speak for me, my gaze never leaving her face. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and anticipation painted her skin with a sheen of sweat.Her hands trembled as she held the crop out with both palms face up.
It shouldn’t have made me proud. It should’ve made me reach for her, ease her burden, take the tension away.
But it didn’t. It thrilled me that even in her discomfort, she didn’t lower her hands. Didn’t break her position. She trembled—but sheendured. For me. Because I told her to.
Aurélie tilted her chin down, eyes flicking to my mouth, then my hands. They stayed fixed there, unwavering, like she was praying for a verdict. For direction. She didn’t ask with words, but I saw the question in every tight line of her posture. In the way her fingers twitched, how her breaths caught.
Would I take the riding crop… or punish her for presuming?
I waited one more beat. Just long enough to make her question the ache.
Thatwas submission.Thatwas fucking everything.
I took the crop from her hands, and let my fingers graze hers. It was a barely-there touch, but she shivered from the contact, and her nipples puckered beneath my shirt. She glanced up at me through her lashes, relief flooding her eyes and desire darkening the color in her cheeks.
I nodded once toward the floor. She obeyed immediately. So graceful, so willing, somine.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful when you kneel for me, baby,” I rasped, testing the weight of the crop in my right hand, tracing the ridges on the handle with my left. Then I reached out and tilted her chin up with the crop. “Look at you, topping even when you’re on the bottom.”
