Chapter 4
Two days later, Leo has to work again, and he tells Dane to keep me entertained for a few hours.
We eat lunch at the kitchen table, and Dane asks me about the store where I work, what I’d want to paint if talent weren’t a factor, whether I’ve read any of the poetry book he gifted me yet.
The conversation meanders, and I catch myself relaxing.
After lunch, I’m loading the dishwasher while he cleans up the rest of the kitchen. I’m reaching for the last plate when his hand closes around my wrist.
“Alice.” His voice drops, and everything shifts.
My thighs press together as my entire body tingles. I’m aware of how close he’s standing and the faint scent of sandalwood on his skin.
“Yes?”
“Leo told me you had trouble following a rule yesterday.”
My stomach flips. Oh, shit. Yesterday, while Dane was out shopping, I came without permission. Leo had laughed it off and called me a greedy little thing, but apparently, the intel had been shared.
“Yes or no,” Dane says.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He releases my wrist. “Finish the dishes. Then come to the bedroom.”
He walks away without looking back. My hands shake as I rinse the last dish and set it in the dishwasher. I press my palms flat against the cool granite countertop and try to slow my heartbeat. The anticipation is already building low in my belly.
Is he going to punish me? This is what Dane does. He doesn’t rush the experience, which works me up even more.
By the time I push open the bedroom door, I’m wet and my pulse is loud in my ears.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed. His posture is relaxed, but his eyes. Holy hell. Dark and focused, tracking every step I take into the room. I feel exposed, and I’m still fully clothed.
“Close the door,” he says.
I do.
“What’s your color?”
“Green.”
“Come here.”
I cross the room on legs that feel liquid and stop in front of him. He’s seated and I’m standing, but somehow, he still feels like the one looking down at me.
“Strip,” he says.
I pull my sweater over my head and peel off my leggings. My bra joins them on the floor. When I push my panties down and step out of them, the cool air raises goosebumps across my bare skin and my nipples harden.
Dane doesn’t touch me as he looks, slowly, thoroughly, the way someone studies a painting in a gallery. It’s more exposing than if he’d grabbed me and thrown me on the bed. Standing naked under his gaze while he takes his time, my skin is burning, and he hasn’t laid a finger on me.
“You came without permission yesterday,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Leo wouldn’t have asked why. He’d have spanked me and moved on with a grin. But Dane wants me to think about it, and thinking while I’m standing naked in front of him isn’t easy.
“It felt too good. I couldn’t stop it,” I manage.
“Couldn’t? Or didn’t try hard enough?”
My face burns. Fuck. “Didn’t try hard enough.”
“Honest.” His voice warms a fraction. “Now kneel.”
I drop to my knees on the soft carpet. Dane leans forward and tips my chin up with one finger, making me look at him.
“This just means you need more practice,” he says. “I’m going to take you to the edge, and you’re going to count. Every time you get close, you tell me. And you don’t come until I say. Understood?”
My pussy clenches. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Approval flickers in his dark eyes. He stands and walks to the bedside table. When he comes back, he’s holding a glass with ice in it.
Um…I swallow hard, but I know whatever he plans to do with that, I’m 100 percent on board.
“Get on the bed on your back.”
I climb up and lie against the pillows. The sheets are cool and smooth beneath me. My nipples are still hard, and I’m practically vibrating with the thought of cold ice cubes against my skin. This is going to be bad in a wonderful way.
He reaches into the glass and takes out an ice cube. “Color?”
“Still green.” My voice comes out breathy.
He touches my collarbone with the ice, and I gasp, arching off the mattress.
He drags it slowly across my skin to the hollow of my throat, down the center of my chest. Water trails behind it in thin rivulets that make me shiver.
When he circles my left nipple, the cold is so sharp my whole body tenses, and I cry out, fingers curling into the sheets.
“Count,” he says.
“One,” I whisper, even though I’m not close yet. The cold is a shock, but underneath it, arousal is building. My pussy pulses with every circle of the ice, and the contrast between the freezing cube and the heat between my legs makes my head spin.
He moves the ice to my right nipple, circles it until the peak is stiff and aching, then replaces the ice with his mouth.
Hot, wet, his tongue flat against the cold skin.
I moan and arch into him because the temperature shift sends a spike of pleasure straight to my clit. My hips rock, and my thighs clench.
“Dane!”
“Shh.” He takes another piece of ice and drags it down my stomach, slowly, tracing the lines of my ribs and the curve of my waist. I’m trembling and so wet I can feel it slick between my thighs. When the ice reaches my hip bone, I whimper and squirm.
“Stay still,” he growls.
I try, but he slides the ice lower, tracing a path along the crease of my inner thigh, and my hips jerk.
He stops and waits, making me settle before continuing.
This is nothing like Leo. Leo would have me screaming by now. Dane is unhurried, and his patience is worse than roughness because it gives me nowhere to hide.
He presses the ice against my clit.
I shiver and have to stop myself from coming. “Oh god, two, I’m at two.”
“Good girl.”
A shiver rolls through me, and those two words almost make me come. Fuuuck. This is bad. But so so good.
He pulls the ice away and replaces it with his thumb, circling my clit slowly while I pant and grip the sheets. The warmth of his hand after the cold is overwhelming, and pleasure builds in waves. My thighs tense and my hips rock against his hand, chasing the ecstasy.
“Three,” I gasp. “Dane, I’m close.”
He stops.
I groan, my body arching toward his hand, trying to get more pleasure. This is cruel. Actual cruelty.
“Breathe,” he says.
I breathe, and the edge recedes, slowly, leaving me shaky and desperate. My pussy throbs with denied release. Everything is swollen and sensitive and pulsing.
He waits until my breathing evens out, and then he starts again.
Ice tracing my stomach, my breasts, circling each nipple until I’m writhing.
Then his mouth, hot on the frozen skin, his tongue replacing cold with scorching wet heat.
He slides his fingers against my pussy again, pushing two inside me while his thumb rubs my clit.
Every touch is amplified, and the pleasure builds faster this time, the tension coiling so tight my thighs tremble.
“Four,” I choke out. “Please—“
He withdraws, and I’m breathless. Sobbing. Desperate. I was so close.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, his voice calm, like he’s asking me to pass the salt.
“To come,” I beg. “Please let me come.”
“What else?”
I stare at him, panting. “What?”
He leans close, his lips brushing my ear. “What do you need?”
And there it is. He doesn’t just want my surrender. He wants what’s underneath—the things I barely let myself think.
My eyes sting. Arousal and vulnerability tangled so tight I can’t separate them.
“I want to belong somewhere,” I hear myself say. My voice cracks. “I want all of this to be real. Not an arrangement. Not temporary. And I want a baby.”
Fuck. I can’t believe I said that out loud.
Dane pulls back and looks at me. His dark eyes are intense, and his gaze sharpens.
“That’s what I needed to hear,” he says. He slides his fingers inside me and presses his thumb against my clit, and this time, he’s building me with no mercy. Pleasure surges fast, spiraling through me, and my toes curl and my back arches.
“Five,” I gasp. “Please, I can’t—“
“Look at me,” he says.
I force my eyes to his. His face is close, those dark eyes locked on mine, and the intensity of the eye contact while his fingers curl inside me and his thumb circles my clit is almost more than I can take. If he doesn’t say it soon, I’m not sure I can stop it.
“Come,” he says.
“Oooooh, fuck!” My body goes rigid, and then I come apart, my pussy seizing around his fingers.
I’m free-falling from pleasure, and the orgasm tears through me so hard my vision whites out.
Pleasure radiates through me. My legs shake, and I’m half-sobbing through it because the release after all that denial is so intense it borders on pain. Holy fuck.
Dane doesn’t pull away. He works me through every aftershock, his pace slowing as the waves ebb, his other hand pressing flat against my stomach.
When I go limp against the mattress, he slides his fingers free. I’m boneless. My skin is oversensitive, my pulse hammering in my throat while I stare at the ceiling and try to reboot my brain. I’m floating and tingling and don’t have a care in the world.
Dane lies next to me and pulls me into his arms. “Color?” he asks.
“Very, very green,” I mumble, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
“You did well,” he says.
The praise settles into me like warmth from a fire. I roll onto my side to face him, and he brushes a strand of damp hair off my face. This is Dane’s version of aftercare.
“Dane?”
“Hmm?”
“That thing you said about going where the contracts take you.” I hesitate. “Does it have to be that way?”
He’s quiet for a beat. “My work is remote and has been for a while. The traveling is more habit than necessity.”
I don’t push further. Habit, not necessity. He could stay somewhere more permanently if he wanted.
He pulls the blanket up over both of us and tucks it around my shoulders. I press my forehead against his collarbone and close my eyes, breathing his scent in deeply.
With Leo, I’m consumed. Swept up in his heat, his wildfire energy that burns through every hesitation. With Dane, I’m seen.
I want both of them, as crazy as it sounds with how short a time I’ve known Dane.
I can’t imagine giving up Leo, but Dane adds something to the dynamic that I didn’t expect.
The certainty of my feelings scares me half to death, because wanting two men isn’t something I ever imagined for myself.
But it feels right, and I’m scared I’m going to lose one or both if I push for this.
Dane wraps an arm around me, and I lie there with my heart hammering and the terrifying knowledge that I’m going to have to say goodbye to him soon.