Chapter 21
21
SAMANTHA
“ I f you turn to page twenty-seven, you’ll see the relevant language.” As I wait for Trap to catch up, I switch on my desk lamp.
“Where am I looking?” Trap looks frustrated on the video feed. We’ve been going over this insurance contract for more than an hour.
“The paragraph with the heading Subrogation. You have the right?—”
I cut myself off as Braiden strides into my office. He’s confident as a lion, all lean muscle behind his sharp-toothed smile. He’s wearing yet another of his expertly tailored suits, complete with a flawless white shirt.
He holds the pink flowered skirt in his right fist.
“Shit,” I say.
Trap looks up from his copy of the contract. “What’s wrong?”
Braiden moves behind me. “Nothing serious,” he says.
He’s lying. What’s wrong is very serious. Braiden set a rule, and I broke it, and now I have to pay.
When I don’t come up with a diversion quickly enough, Braiden smiles at my boss and says, “Samantha just remembered we had plans for dinner. Our first Valentine’s Day together.”
Trap’s gaze goes to the corner of his screen. “I didn’t realize how late it is.”
“Give my best to Herself,” Braiden says like a perfect gentleman. But he reaches across me to end the call before I have a chance to wrap things up.
“You can’t do that!” I yelp.
“I just did.” He spins my chair around, trapping me with his body.
“Trap Prince is my boss .”
I’m thoroughly pissed. It’s one thing for Braiden and me to play in the privacy of this castle he calls home. I’ll admit that his bossy arrogance turns me on. I enjoy fighting with him. Losing to him.
However, my professional life is completely separate from those games. He doesn’t have the right to embarrass me in front of the man who pays my salary.
Braiden apparently thinks otherwise. With a deceptively mild voice he asks, “What time is it?”
I glance at the clock on my computer screen. “6:07.”
“6:07, sir ,” he prompts.
I snort my opinion of his bossy honorific.
Without changing his expression, Braiden throws me over his shoulder. I’m so astonished, I forget to fight for a moment, but then I pound his back with both fists. My belly is pressed into his shoulder, so it’s hard to grab a full breath. I twist in his grip, trying to squirm free, but he merely swats my bottom, hard enough to make me shriek. I try kneeing him in the chest, but I can’t get the angle right.
He carries me down the hall. Across the landing at the top of the stairs. Past Aiofe’s nursery. Past my room. Into his bedroom at the end of the hall.
“Put me down!” I manage to shout as he slams the door closed.
“ Sir ,” he reminds me.
“I’m not saying that. I’ve never said that, not like you mean.”
“Why don’t we agree up front there are a lot of things you’re going to do tonight that you’ve never done before.”
As nerves explode in my belly, he shoots the deadbolt on the door. Why does a man have a deadbolt on his fucking bedroom door? What the hell am I doing here?
He dumps me on the mattress. The bed is huge, with four posts, a footboard, and a headboard, all made of some dark, carved wood. As Braiden drapes my skirt over the footboard, I scramble to the top, taking refuge in a pile of tailored, hunter-green pillows. I clutch one, holding it to my chest like it’s some sort of armor.
I can’t look away as he drops his jacket on the floor. He strips off his tie, fingers slashing through its emerald knot. When the silk gleams on top of his jacket, he starts unbuttoning the cuffs of his snow-white shirt.
Something ripples deep inside me as he folds back his sleeves—one precise turn. Another. Another.
“What are you going to do to me?” I whisper, sounding like I’ve eaten an entire box of saltines.
“ Sir ,” he repeats for the third time.
I shake my head. I can’t say it. Won’t say it.
He walks to his dresser, a massive chest of drawers carved in the same style as the bed. Sliding open the top drawer, he takes out a flat black box, bound in leather. As he approaches my refuge at the head of the bed, I make out a line of tiny hinges along one side.
Watching me, drinking in my reaction, Braiden opens the box. It’s lined with black velvet, so dark it looks like a hole to another dimension. Nestled against the velvet is the most gorgeous necklace I’ve ever seen.
The central stone is an emerald as large as my thumbnail, cut in a gleaming rectangle. It’s set in platinum, a lustrous braid that flows inside the box like starlight. The clasp is a delicate padlock made out of the same metal. A key waits to be turned.
My fingers stretch toward it, like iron drawn to a magnet. “It’s gorgeous,” I say.
“It’s yours.”
“You can’t—” I cut myself off. Braiden won’t take kindly to my telling him what he can and cannot do. Instead, I settle for, “It’s too much.”
“It’s not enough,” he corrects me. “But it’s the best symbol I could buy.”
“Symbol of what?”
“Your submission.”
My gaze jerks from the emerald to his eyes. “No.”
“Trust yourself, Samantha.”
“That’s not who I am.”
“You’re not the woman who grabbed my shoe and begged for my forgiveness?”
“I didn’t have a ch?—”
“You’re not the woman who spread your legs and took a spanking, dripping cunt and all?”
“You said I had to!”
“You could have safeworded, any time. The way you did when you let me tie you up in the greenhouse. When you let me eat you raw. When you came so many times you lost all your fancy lawyer words. You’re saying that wasn’t submissive?”
“I can’t be… I don’t want… I’ve worked hard for the life I have. I’m valued at the freeport. I’m respected among my peers. I can’t throw all of that away, just to be your…”
“Sub. Say it. I’m your Dom, and you’re my sub.”
I shake my head. I won’t give him this.
“That’s who we are already. You just have to say the words out loud.”
Part of me aches to do what he’s asking. The words are right. They’re true. I can only imagine how satisfying it will be to say them out loud. And Braiden will be so proud of me for doing it.
But another part of me is disgusted—with the man I married and with myself. How can I be a woman who gets wet at the very thought of being controlled? How can I possibly be fighting that inner flutter this very second?
I’ve struggled so hard to get past That Night, to become the woman I am today—successful, strong, independent. I can’t give that up, not even for the pleasure I know my husband can give me.
Braiden’s thumb falls on my lower lip. Until I feel his heat, his pressure, I don’t realize how hard I’m biting down. I shift my jaw and my tongue flicks out. I taste blood.
“This doesn’t have to be so hard,” he says. “You’re only my sub when you wear the collar.”
“And when is that?”
“In this room. You’re mine here.”
I glance at my wedding band. Is liomsa tú. I’m his everywhere. But he’s offering me an out. A condition. A way to test the desperate creature scrabbling deep inside me.
“And in the rest of the house?”
“If you want to wear your collar, you’ll get no fight from me. But it will be your choice. Your decision. The only absolute is within these four walls.”
“I keep my safeword?”
“Always.”
I can’t bear the intensity of his stare. I have to look away. I find myself staring at the skirt draped over the footboard—symbol of the broken rule that got me to this place.
Its pale pink is gorgeous. I want to be a woman who deserves pink. I want to be worthy of something that pretty. Something so soft.
But that will never be possible, not after what happened That Night.
Braiden makes the rules though… If I’m required to submit… If…
I pluck the necklace from its velvet bed. I center the emerald over the hollow of my throat. I pass the padlock to Braiden, and I turn my back, pulling my hair to one side so he can fasten the shackle.
The collar is tighter than I thought it would be. It doesn’t choke me. It doesn’t even cut off my breath. But every time I swallow, I feel the gemstone’s pressure, a hard-edged reminder of the agreement we’ve just struck.
“ Mo chailín maith ,” Braiden says as he turns the key in the lock. His lips brush against the nape of my neck, and a shudder ripples all the way down to my heels.
And then he orders, “Strip.”
“I— What?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
I don’t know what he wants me to do—if I’m supposed to get undressed as quickly as I can, or as seductively as possible, or something in between. I want to do this right. I want to satisfy him.
But I also want to know what will happen if I make a mistake.
He’ll punish me. I know that. But will he spank me? Will he pinch my nipples? Will he make me come so many times my legs turn to honey?
“I’m waiting,” he says.
I drop my blazer on the floor, next to his jacket. I pull my top over my head, not bothering with the buttons. I step out of my pumps and shimmy out of my tailored pants.
My black bra matches my panties. Both garments are simple. Plain. Intended to serve a practical purpose, not to seduce. I cross my arms over my chest, feeling like I’m already naked.
A twitch starts in Braiden’s cheek. The fingers of his right hand open and close, like he’s barely restraining himself from ripping off my underwear.
I know what I’m supposed to do. I understand the game we’re playing. But I don’t make a move for the double hooks behind me.
I want him to punish me.
The thought sizzles between my thighs, spearing something deep inside me. I want Braiden Kelly to test my limits. I want him to measure out every ounce of sensation my nerves can bear.
I don’t know when I became this woman. I’ve never hungered for this with any other man.
No other man I’ve been with would have a clue how to do this.
I’m arguing the case in the silence of my own brain. It’s wrong to want this. Wrong to feel the shudder-thrill that makes my breath come short even though Braiden hasn’t touched me yet.
Maybe I should throw myself on the mercy of the court. Maybe I should argue I’m not guilty by reason of insanity. Maybe?—
His fist closes around my hair and he yanks my head back, hard enough that involuntary tears spring to my eyes.
He brings his lips dangerously close to mine. “Let’s go, lass. Because nothin’ yer thinkin’ will save ya now.”
As if he wants to prove his point, he closes his fist in the front of my panties. He yanks me toward him, hard enough to make me stumble. He rams three fingers between my legs, hooking upward and stealing my breath.
And my brain shatters into wordless panic.