Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Sage
Barrett brings the fork toward my lips. I’m kneeling on the floor between his legs at the dining table while he feeds me every other bite of food from his plate.
He stacked it high, with enough food for two.
I don’t have an opportunity to question him or what this is about, why he’s making me kneel here.
He feeds me the next bite the moment I’m done chewing the previous one.
But it isn’t a mechanical motion. He’s slow when sliding the fork in and out of my mouth. He wipes at the corners of my mouth with his thumb and slides it over his tongue, licking off the juices and sauce. I’m a shivering mess, desperate for his next morsel of attention.
Setting the fork down on the empty plate, he turns his body fully toward me to run his hand over my hair, starting from the crown, and ending with his palm cupping my chin. He lifts my face and kisses me, languidly sliding his tongue over every inch of mine. He ends it with a nip to my bottom lip.
“Still hungry, pet?”
I shake my head, finding words difficult. My throat is dry and my mind is sluggishly trying to catch up to him.
“Good. Let’s go.” He pushes his chair back. I start to stand but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Crawl.”
I feel the cool air hit my eyes as they widen. I must not have heard him correctly. He told me to crawl. Crawl? Crawl like the pet he calls me. As if I voice the question, he smirks and answers.
“Yes, pet. Crawl to the bedroom.”
It’s the intensity in his eyes that makes me move all the while wondering what is wrong with me. He lets me go ahead of him. The floor is hard on my knees. I press more of my weight into my palms and tops of my feet to help.
His steps are solid and steady behind me.
Chancing a look over my shoulder, I catch him staring at my ass, and I’m sure much more as he can see all of me from this angle.
Heat sears his eyes when he glances up to meet mine, and I suddenly realize the power I have in this position.
He isn’t questioning what he likes, and it might seem degrading to make me crawl across the floor, but I’m the one in control.
I can trap, tempt, and tease from down here.
I let my spine curl and my hips sway with every movement, and I glance over my shoulder again every so often to see him grinning, a touch of pride lifting the corners. I pleased him, and that makes me lift my chin higher and extend my chest.
This is as much emotional sex as it is physical sex.
When I reach the bedroom, I pause.
“Into the bathroom for a shower.” He tilts his chin toward the ensuite.
I wince when my knees hit the tile. The hardwood floor was tolerable, but the tile is entirely unforgiving.
“Up.” Barrett wraps his hand around my elbow and helps me stand, before stripping his clothes. My mouth waters as he exposes the chiseled features of his body. So easily can the power shift.
And he handles it so well. Barrett reaches out, swiping his thumb at the corner of my mouth as if catching drool. He understands this dynamic between us because he’s created it, maybe experienced it before, but I’m taking it one step at a time, floundering while looking to him for clues.
I should feel lost. Part of me wants to feel lost—there’s an excitement in that—but I don’t. My blood hums gently and my heart pounds to a rhythm that matches the butterfly wings in my stomach.
As I stand in the middle of the bathroom, Barrett drops to one knee.
Firm fingers wrap around one ankle and he lifts my foot onto his thigh.
He slowly traces up my leg, creating swirling patterns that almost tickle until he reaches the lacy top of my stocking.
It’s impossible for me to look away from the kind of man he is on his knees for me.
To do something so intimate and caring yet make it entirely seductive, pushing me further into this state.
Peeling the stocking down my leg, he follows with his lips, gently kissing my thigh around my knee before setting my foot back on the floor and repeating the process with my other leg.
I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
He pulls me into the shower like a helpless lamb, and it’s the most relaxed and aroused I’ve ever felt. Barrett touches me everywhere, washing me from my hair down to my feet. I feel like a treasure. A warm, fuzzy, aroused treasure.
“Stay here,” he murmurs in my ear, then tilts me back under the water. I sigh as the spray hits my scalp. Barrett gets out, wrapping a towel around his hips before leaving the bathroom.
An anxious knot forms in my belly. What is he doing?
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, focus on the beat of the water.
I’m sure it’s only been a few minutes, but I start to shift from foot to foot.
The water hasn’t yet turned cold. Everything is fine.
Maybe he’s tidying his room, although it looked immaculate when I crawled into it.
Or maybe he’s making his bed, although that looked perfectly straight.
I’ve worked myself up to a state that when he opens the bathroom door, I jump.
“Easy, pet,” he soothes. “Turn off the water.”
Reaching behind me, I turn the tap. Barrett is waiting for me with a towel at the open shower door.
He’s as thorough with the towel drying me off as he was with washing me in the shower.
Naked and getting chilled, he sets me in front of the mirror to towel dry my hair, meticulously separating the strands.
This all feels like too much. Too much attention that I don’t deserve. I reach for the hairbrush before he does. Barrett pauses, meeting my eyes in the mirror. Dropping the towel to the floor, he pulls back his hand. It lands with a resounding slap against my ass.
I yelp, but then I take a moment to process the sensation. It stung, but it’s warm. And meeting his gaze, I see the heat it causes between us.
Barrett holds out his hand for the brush. When I hesitate, he cocks his head and his hand leaves my skin. I place the brush in his palm.
“Good girl, pet.”
I don’t remember the last time someone brushed my hair.
The salon doesn’t count. And I don’t remember myself young enough for my mother or sister to brush it.
Barrett is gentle, and as he is in everything he does, precise.
He starts from the roots of every section and reaches the ends before lifting his arm up to repeat the process.
With anyone else, I imagine myself feeling uncertain or bored, but with Barrett, every touch, every look, sends heat through my veins and goosebumps over my skin.
Barrett sets the brush down and gathers my hair over my shoulder. By now, it’s mostly dry and lies straight and soft.
“Are you ready, pet?” He places a line of kisses down the column of my neck. “Are you ready to belong to me?”
It’s just talk. Arousing, heated talk. He doesn’t mean belong to him in the literal sense.
When I don’t answer him, he grips my chin, turning my face toward his. “Answer me.”
“B- be- belong to you?” I should let it go, but I’ve built my life avoiding that exact situation. I belong to no one, no job, no being. My life is my own to live through. My own choice.
“Yes. I let you out of the debt, but I’m keeping you.”
“I don’t want to be kept.”
He’s silent for a long time, studying my eyes.
I take a step back. “I’ve seen what belonging to someone can do.”
“This isn’t the same.” Barrett reaches for me, cupping my jaw. “I’ll never hurt you. Not like that.”
His other hand skates down my side to land on my hip.
His touch is a reminder of how I felt in the shower with him, or while he brushed my hair.
I was his treasure. “Barr…” I start, but correct myself, knowing I need to really test this.
I’ve put my trust in him this far. “Daddy. I only belong to myself. I will walk away when I want to.”
Closing his eyes, he sets his forehead to mine as he breathes his next words, changing everything. “You don’t have a choice.”