Chapter 23
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Had she changed her mind already? No, that didn’t make sense.
Maybe he should give her a safeword to help her feel more in control.
Perhaps they could use the stop light system.
He wasn’t a Dom. He wasn’t a member of any BDSM clubs.
He didn’t like to play or scene. But he was a dominant guy.
He liked being in control. And he enjoyed giving sexy spankings. And punishment ones.
Maybe he would enjoy some aspects of being a Dominant. He knew a bit about it from one of his cousins who was a Dom. He was often trying to convince Harvey to come to a club.
Which was how he knew about the stop light system.
“No, no! Don’t stop. I just wanted to check .
. . you are going to kiss me properly, right?
” she said demandingly. “None of this brushing your lips against mine and then hugging me lightly before tucking me into bed. I mean, that stuff is nice and all. But I want the passionate kisses. I want to feel it in my bones. I want to go weak at the knees.”
Wow. That was the most passionate and demanding he could ever recall her sounding. Some of that wall that had surrounded Lily was crumbling down and she was starting to show her true feelings.
And he couldn’t be more pleased.
He didn’t mind fire. He didn’t mind sass, as long as she was keeping herself safe. And Lord knew, he didn’t mind helping with that either.
The only reason he’d stopped was because he thought it was something she didn’t want.
“Oh, this kiss is going to have plenty of passion. Did I make a mistake pulling back, baby?” he asked.
Tears filled her eyes, and worry flooded him. What had he said? “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“You called me ‘baby’ again.”
“I’m sorry I stopped. I didn’t realize I had.”
“You did. Ever since I said I didn’t think I could be spanked. I just didn’t know whether I would like it or not, because I’ve never experienced it. Well, not in this context, obviously.”
He cupped the side of her face. “That was definitely me pushing too fast and too hard. I should have taken things slower.”
“But not as slow as you became,” she pointed out. “Not snail pace.”
He smiled down at her. “All right, so no snail pace and no cheetah pace. Somewhere in the middle?”
She sighed with what looked like relief. “Somewhere in the middle would be great.”
“Now, before I kiss you silly, is there anything that needs to be turned off or rescued? Have you got anything else in the oven?”
“God, no. Oh my God, I forgot about this disastrous dinner! I’m so sorry. I ruined it all. I just really wanted to create something nice for you.”
“Hey, it’s all right,” he soothed. “Nothing is ruined. There’s nothing broken that can’t be fixed.”
“I don’t think that roast can be fixed.”
“Screw the roast. There’s plenty more meat in the freezer. But right now, that’s not what I’m thinking about eating.”
Her eyes widened even further and she bit down on her lip. Grasping her around her waist, he lifted her onto the counter.
Yeah, it was dirty, but at this point, she was covered in stuff anyway, so it didn’t matter. Then he pushed himself between her thighs, spreading her legs wide.
“Too much?” he murmured.
“I don’t . . . I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never really done much of anything.” She glanced away and swallowed heavily. “I mean, I’ve had sex, but it wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
A surge of rage filled him as she hesitated over her words, and he grabbed hold of her chin, tilting her head back so he could stare down into her face.
“Was it Rick? Did he force you?”
Why hadn’t that occurred to him before now? If he’d forced her, he was a dead man.
Why the fuck hadn’t he taken her from him earlier? Had he left her in an abusive relationship? He felt bad enough about leaving her with her mother.
But this might be enough to rip away his control and send him spiraling.
“No! Ew, no, it wasn’t Rick. I hated him touching me.
And, honestly, he didn’t seem that interested in me.
No, I had boyfriends before Rick. A couple of them.
Nothing really lasted that long. They were men that Mother approved of.
The relationships were nothing to write home about.
Certainly nothing that you see or read about in romance movies or books. But maybe that doesn’t really exist.”
“Oh, it exists, baby,” he said to her. “You just hadn’t found the right man. Before now.”
“That could be true, because the way I feel when you touch me is nothing like when they did.”
“And how is that?” he murmured as he moved his hands. One went up her back toward her head to hold it still. With the other, he grasped hold of her hip.
Her cheeks went bright red. Was she embarrassed? That was super cute.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me how it feels when I touch you.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Sure you can. Tell me. If you want me to make you feel that way again, I need to know how it felt in the first place.”
He loved the way her lower lip dropped. It was wet and slightly swollen from where she’d been biting it.
Oh, they couldn’t have that, could they? He didn’t want her hurting herself. Cupping the side of her face, he ran his thumb over her lower lip. “Don’t bite this again,” he warned.
“What? Why not?”
“Because it hurts you and that’s unacceptable.”
“You’re very overprotective, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am. Of you. I’m overprotective, overly possessive, and definitely demanding.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen that,” she said.
“I tried to keep myself under a tight rein in order not to scare you, Mo bhreáthracht. But now that you’ve told me you like me that way, that you need me that way, well, all bets are off.”
“It didn’t take you long to return to your caveman instincts,” she said dryly.
He just grinned. “Oh, it was hard work to keep my hands off you, to stop myself from giving orders. I was basically hiding from you in the end.”
“Hiding from me? What? Why?”
“So I wouldn’t be tempted to throw you on the bed and have my way with you. So I wouldn’t command you to sit there and eat more of your breakfast or dinner, or, better yet, feed it to you myself. Which is what I’m going to be doing from now on if you’re not eating.”
She groaned. “You know what? Maybe we could reverse things a little bit. You know how you said we could meet somewhere in the middle?”
“This is somewhere in the middle,” he said.
“Oh my God, you can be worse?” she asked.
He threw back his head and laughed. “You know that I can. Now, tell me how it makes your body feel when I touch you, kiss you, boss you around.”
“Those are not at all the same things,” she told him.
“I think you like when I take control, because you know everything I do is to protect you.”
“The last thing I want is for you to think I look at you and see my mother. I know you’re not like her at all.”
“That means the world to me, hearing you say that, baby. But if I do take things too far, you can slow them down. We can use the traffic light system.”
“The traffic light system?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that if I need to check in with you, then you can use a color. Or if you need to tell me something and you can’t get it out, you can just say the color.
So, I might say to you, what color are you at right now?
Green is you’re all good. Go ahead. Yellow would mean proceed with caution.
Red is let’s stop everything. Do you get what I’m saying?
Or if we were doing something and you started to feel uncomfortable, you might say yellow, and we’ll slow down and talk.
You might be really uncomfortable, in pain, can’t go on, you yell out red and I stop. ”
“And what happens when you stop?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you get angry, upset with me? Does that mean that you pull back and close down, and you won’t touch and kiss me or anything anymore?”
Oh, shit. He’d really fucked this all up, hadn’t he? In a bid to make her feel more at ease, he’d made her more upset.
“Baby, no. I’m not ever going to do that again, okay?
I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that would make you feel better if I pulled back.
I didn’t want you to feel forced into being with me.
You’ve already had so much taken from you without permission that I didn’t want to add to that trauma. But if I upset you more, I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m the one that’s sorry because I know I’m back and forth.
I don’t know what I want. I feel so indecisive.
I do like when you take control. Maybe I’m worried I like it too much.
That I won’t be able think for myself anymore.
What if I can’t make decisions? What if I can’t do simple things?
What if I’m too scared of life to live?”
Her breathing was growing faster, and her panic was palpable.
“Hey, easy. You’re being too hard on yourself,” he said.
“It hasn’t even been two weeks and look how far you’ve grown.
You detoxed off a drug that you never even consented to being on.
You’re missing patches of memory. Your mother was a complete bitch, forcing you to marry a horrible man.
We haven’t got all the answers that we need, and life as you knew it has completely changed.
Not to mention, you got kidnapped by a handsome, sexy, intelligent man whom you’re wildly attracted to. ”
She stared at him for a long minute, and then she suddenly burst into laughter.
“Hey, I might take offense to that. But I know you’re not laughing at the wildly attractive, sexy man.”
“Of course not. I could never laugh at him. Where is this wildly attractive man?” she teased.
“You brat! I’m the wildly attractive man! So attractive it’s wild.”
“You know, we really need to do something to build up your self-esteem. I’m quite concerned about it.”
“Smartass,” he muttered.
The humor dropped off her face. “Is that all right?”
“Is what all right?” he asked, slightly confused. Then he realized what she meant. “Is your being a smartass all right? Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you wouldn’t like that. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been accused of being a smartass. I didn’t know I was one.”
“Maybe you just needed to be in the right sort of headspace, where you felt safe enough to let the real you out.”
“So this is the real me?” she asked, gazing down at herself. “Messy, still unable to cook, somewhat of a smartass, completely unsure of what she’s doing, sometimes she feels lost and out of control, and other times she’s angry and upset. I’m just a mess.”
Lily waited for him to tell her that she wasn’t a mess.
But he just smiled. “Yeah, you are a mess.”
She gaped at him. Had he really just said that?
“But it’s okay to be a mess. It’s okay not to know everything. It’s all right if you have moments of doubt, fear, and anger. That’s all normal. I’d be more worried if you were completely fine. That would concern me.”
She guessed she understood that. “I suppose I’m just frustrated because it feels like I’m not where you are at. I mean, in the beginning, my plan was just to go along with what you wanted so you’d fall into a false sense of security and then I could escape.”
He raised his eyebrows and gave her a look.
Oops, maybe she shouldn’t have told him that. She gave him a wide smile.
“So that was your plan, was it? Interesting.”
“It’s not my plan anymore, of course,” she reassured him.
“I mean, I don’t know exactly when it changed.
Maybe it was you taking care of me while I was ill and detoxing.
There was no way that my mother would have done anything like that for me.
I couldn’t imagine anyone else bathing me and holding my hair back while I was sick.
But I actually think it was a culmination of lots of different things that sort of exploded when you kissed me. ”
“And now we’re back to how your body feels when I touch and kiss you. Because you still haven’t explained that to me, you know.”
“I haven’t?” she asked weakly. Drat. She’d been hoping he would forget about that.
“No, baby, you haven’t. Are you saying that your body wanted me before your mind?”
Yeah, she hadn’t thought about it quite in that way, but she guessed he was kind of right. Her body had wanted him before her mind had caught up to that fact. And then she hadn’t been quite ready to figure it all out before he’d shocked her with that whole spanking thing.
“It’s just taking me a while to process everything. And not all of us have amazing self-esteem.”
“You should,” he told her. “Because you are perfect.”
“I’m really not, and I hope that when you find out I’m not perfect, you’re not going to be really disappointed.”
“I won’t be disappointed. But you’re right, we can’t be all perfect. If we were, life would be boring. When I say you’re perfect, I guess I just mean you’re perfect for me.”
Wow. Had he really just said that?
And she knew he meant it because he wasn’t the sort of guy to say things he didn’t mean.
“I don’t even know what to say to that. Sometimes I feel like I’m a hundred miles behind you. And I feel bad about admitting that.”
“Why would you feel bad about that?”
“Because you noticed me, but I don’t think I ever really saw you.
Which is crazy, because how could anyone not notice you?
Look at you, you’re the sexiest guy in the room.
You’re . . . you’re . . . you. And I hear how ridiculous I sound.
It’s like I don’t have words in my vocabulary to describe how you look and how I’m attracted to you, and that’s so frustrating.
” She slammed her hands down against her thighs, and he quickly took grabbed them, holding them steady.
“You are not allowed to hurt yourself. There is nothing wrong with being unsure and wanting a bit longer to process something. But you need to make sure that you are not harming yourself or you’ll be in trouble.” His voice was stern, and a shiver went up her spine.
“Did that just turn you on?” he asked.
What? How could he tell that? She thought she’d hidden her reaction well. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case as he grinned.
“It did, didn’t it? You like it when I get a bit stern. Perhaps you need a different kind of consequence for when you break the rules. At least until you’re ready to try being spanked.”
Eek.
She shook her head. “No, I’m good. I don’t think I need any consequences.” She was all too aware of how high-pitched her voice had grown.
“Hmm, no, I think there should be a consequence for you not answering my question about how your body reacts to my kiss.”
Oh, hell. He really wasn’t giving that up, was he?
“And for you smacking your hands down on your legs. Also, for calling yourself things like a coward, or saying that you ruin everything. Let’s see. How could we do some punishment that doesn’t involve you getting turned over my knee? Maybe I should make you write lines.”
“No!”