Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Natalie
The door to his townhouse is lighter than Dominion's. I notice everything differently when I stop composing what I'll say and just let myself arrive.
The streetcar rattles past on St. Charles as I stand on his front step. I called ahead. He said one word. 'Come.' Then he hung up, because Sebastien doesn't fill silence with reassurance and I didn't need him to.
A few days have passed since the warehouse on Tchoupitoulas. Days since Gaudet. Andy has the recordings, the evidence, and enough to take to a grand jury. Claire's case belongs to the justice system now. The only thing that belongs to me is the question I drove across town to answer.
He opens the door. Dark shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearms. Worn jeans. No shoes.
The worn jeans and bare feet on heart-pine floors do something to my composure that his leathers never managed.
This is Sebastien without the club, without the booth, without the title.
This is the man underneath Obsidian, standing in his own doorway, waiting to find out if I came to end this or to keep it.
He steps back. I walk past him into the hall. The twelve-foot ceilings swallow the sound of the door closing behind me.
Neither of us speaks. The silence sits between us like a held breath, charged and waiting.
His study is the room at the end of the hall. He doesn't tell me which door. He doesn't need to. The room looks like him.
The antique partners desk fills the center of the space, wide enough to spread a life across. The drafting table sits against the far wall. Light from the back garden comes through the window, and the afternoon sun turns the wood the color of honey.
The consideration collar is on his desk.
Braided black leather, ruby teardrop in blackened steel, the lock still open. Sebastien put it here and left it. That's who he is. The leather has lost the warmth of my skin. The ruby sits dark against the desk.
I pick it up. The heft is familiar. The braiding presses against my fingers like it pressed against my throat for weeks. Every scene, every negotiation, every night I knelt at his feet and told myself it was research. The leather remembers all of it. So do I.
Sebastien stands in the doorway. He hasn't followed me to the desk. He hasn't reached for me. He's gone completely still, the kind of stillness that costs effort, and Sebastien only holds himself that tightly when something matters enough to keep him in place.
I cross the study and place the consideration collar in his hand. His fingers close around it. His eyes don't leave mine.
Then I turn around. Lift my hair off my neck. Offer him my neck.
The silence behind me stretches long enough to hear the streetcar two blocks away. He doesn't move. The leather doesn't settle against my skin.
"I'm not putting this one back on you," he says.
My hand is still in my hair. The refusal lands like a fist between my ribs.
"Turn around."
I turn. He sets the consideration collar on the desk. Then he opens a drawer in the desk. The box inside is larger than the one he pulled from his jacket the night he collared me the first time. The hinges are brass, the leather blacker.
He sets it on the desk between us and opens it.
Four strands of black pearls lie against dark velvet.
A large ruby teardrop pendant is set in blackened gold, deeper in color than the steel setting of the consideration collar.
The lock mechanism is visible at the back closure, small and precise.
The pearls are luminous, each strand slightly different in size, layered to sit flush against the throat.
'And a different collar.'
His words at Dominion, weeks ago. He's been waiting.
"Natalie." His voice is low. Steady. "I'm asking. Not telling."
"Yes," I say.
He lifts the collar from the box and steps behind me. His fingers gather my hair, lifting it away from my neck.
The touch is unhurried. Intentional. The back of his knuckles brush my nape and the contact sends heat down my spine.
The pearls settle against my throat. Four strands, cool from the velvet, warming fast against my pulse. The ruby finds the hollow between my collarbones. The geography of me that his leather already mapped.
His fingers close on the lock.
The click is small. Definite. The quietest sound in the room and the loudest thing he's ever said to me.
His hands rest on my shoulders. He doesn't turn me around. He stays behind me, breathing against the crown of my hair, his palms grounding me in the specific, physical reality of what I just agreed to.
"I know what this costs," he says. Quiet. Stripped of everything except the truth underneath. "I won't waste it again."
I kneel.
He didn't tell me to. He didn't challenge me or dare me or construct a scenario where kneeling was the only option that proved I was ready.
I lower myself to the heart-pine floor of his study because this is what I choose. One knee, then the other.
My hands settle on my thighs. Palms down. The position isn't textbook. It's mine. It was mine the first time, when he told me to stop performing and be here. It's mine now, when nobody told me anything at all.
From the floor, the study changes. The desk is enormous above me. The light from the garden window cuts across the room at a different angle. He comes around to face me. Looks down. The angle changes the geometry between us, just as it did in that private room weeks ago.
His expression is stripped of everything I've watched him use to control a room. What's underneath is specific and raw, and the raw version of Sebastien is more devastating than the polished one because the control is still there. It just costs him enough that I can finally see the price.
"I'm going to touch you," he says.
"I know."
"If you want me to stop, the word is the same."
"Savannah."
"Savannah." He extends his hand.
I take it. He pulls me to my feet and into him. The contact is full and immediate. His body against mine, his arms closing around me, one hand flat against the small of my back. The pearls press between us.
His mouth is on mine and the kiss isn't gentle. It's the first honest thing his mouth has done since he told me about Claire.
I kiss him back with five years of grief and weeks of fury. With the undeniable need that has lived in my body since he put rope on my skin and found the version of me I'd been avoiding.
His hands move to my hips. He turns me and presses me back against the edge of the desk.
The wood is solid behind me. His body is solid in front of me.
The arrangement is simple and ancient: him between my thighs, my back against the desk he'll sit behind tomorrow morning while I'm still in his bed.
I pull back from the kiss. Not away from him. Just enough to see his face.
"I want to give you something," I say.
His breath catches. Not with suspicion. With the controlled hunger of a man who just heard something he didn't expect.
I slide down his body. Slowly. My hands trailing from his shoulders to his ribs to his hips until my knees find the heart-pine again. A different kneeling from the one I chose for the collar. That one was ceremony. This one is hunger. My fingers close on his belt.
"Stop."
My fingers freeze on the buckle. His hand closes over both of mine and moves them to my thighs. Palms down. The position he taught me.
"You don't get to rush this." Low. Unhurried. The Dom, not the man who kissed me. "I decide the pace. I decide when you touch me. You offered. I'm accepting. On my terms."
He unbuckles the belt himself. Opens the button. The zipper. He's hard. The sight of him freed from the fabric, thick and heavy, makes my mouth water in a way I don't bother being ashamed of.
His hand cups the back of my head. Fingers threading through to my scalp, the grip firm enough to direct and loose enough to feel like permission. He tilts my face up.
"Open."
I open my mouth. He guides me forward. The first taste of him is salt and heat and the specific intimacy of a man who trusts the woman on her knees in front of him.
The pearls press against my throat as I take him deeper. His cock filling my mouth and his collar tightening with the angle of my jaw. The dual sensation collapses the distance between surrender and desire until I can't separate them.
His grip tightens. He sets the rhythm. Slow at first, measured, controlled. His hips rocking forward while his hand holds me steady. Each stroke precise, testing how deep I'll take him, finding the answer and coaxing me further.
I hollow my cheeks on the withdrawal, suction and pressure. The groan he makes vibrates through the hand he's holding against my scalp.
"Look at me."
I look up. His face from this angle is bare. The control is still there but it's costing him. I can see it in the cords of his neck, the set of his jaw, the way his stomach muscles clench each time my lips drag along his length.
I use my tongue on the upstroke. His exhale is sharp enough to hear.
"Again."
I do it again. He swears under his breath. The hand in my hair tightens to the edge of pain, and the pain focuses everything. The pearls against my pulse. The ache in my knees. The slick heat between my own thighs, untouched, building with every stroke he feeds me.
His rhythm falters. One stuttered thrust that tells me he's closer than he wants to be. He pulls me off him, hold firm. The loss of him leaves me breathing hard with swollen lips and an ache that runs from my throat to my core.
"Not like that." His voice is rough, raw at the edges. "Not the first time back."
He pulls me to my feet. Backs me toward the desk. One arm sweeps the surface clear. The consideration collar slides off the edge. Papers scatter across the heart-pine floor.
His hands close on my hips. He lifts me onto the desk, and the wood is cool against my bare thighs where my skirt has ridden up. He pushes the fabric to my waist.
His fingers hook the waistband of my underwear and drag it down my legs in a single motion. Gone.