Chapter 20
Sebastian
Igritted my teeth. I’d been in a foul mood since I woke this morning. Sebastian Reid wasn’t the kind of man who woke up irritated for no reason. He didn’t do unexplained emotions. Everything had a source, a pattern, a cause. A fucking reason.
And the cause had been clear the second I opened my eyes.
Mira.
I hadn’t meant to open myself up to her. Not even a little. But I’d done exactly that the night I took her to dinner. I’d shown her pieces of myself most people would never get close to. She’d been standoffish ever since and I didn’t like it.
Yesterday she’d spent more time downstairs with Micah than she had at her own desk. Fine. They were working a case. We all were. But when I’d called her up at the end of the day to go over what they’d found?
Micah had come alone.
She went home, he’d said.
Sick.
Bullshit.
I’d seen her that morning—bright-eyed, focused, steady as always. And Mira Rhodes didn’t get sick days. She pushed through everything I’d thrown at her. She worked circles around people who’d been with me for years.
The lie had been obvious.
She hadn’t gone home sick.
She’d gone home to avoid me.
And that pissed me off.
If she’d truly been sick, she wouldn’t be up for tonight’s session. Not the kind of training we did. But when I’d texted her last night with the details, she’d responded immediately:
I’ll be there.
It should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
Because I hated being lied to.
Despised it.
And that’s exactly what Mira had done.
The worst part?
I couldn’t understand it. Something had happened and I didn’t know what it had been. She hadn’t made eye contact since I’d dropped her off at her car that night.
I’d been close enough to breathe her in.
Close enough that my restraint had snapped taut, one breath away from kissing her.
One breath away from detonating everything I’d built.
And she must’ve felt it too, because now she was pulling away like distance would fix it.
It wouldn’t.
It never did.
I shoved a hand through my hair and paced the length of the private room I’d chosen tonight, the tension in my spine coiling tighter with every step.
Everything was ready for tonight. The restraints. The implements. The scene I’d designed for complete control.
I hadn’t planned on punishment—but the thought of it… Christ, it lit something in me. Not because she’d avoided me, but because she’d lied. And lies needed correction.
I flexed my hands, rolling the tension out of my wrists. Would she have canceled if she knew who was behind the mask?
My jaw clenched so hard it ached.
I kept replaying the look in her eyes the night we had dinner. She’d been wide-eyed, breath caught in her throat, her body humming and then the next morning, she couldn’t look at me at all.
The way she made me feel, I hadn’t felt in years, if ever. It was something raw, unfiltered, but more than anything it was dangerous, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I was even less sure I could stop it.
Yesterday, she’d gone home to avoid me, but she jumped at the chance to play with her master.
What she didn’t know was that I was her master. I should tell her. I should walk away, but as much as I knew I should, nothing on this godforsaken earth would make me.
My gaze flicked to the wall where the cuffs hung, waiting for me. For her.
One entire side of this room was covered in tools—everything from cuffs to hoods to sensory-deprivation blindfolds to impact toys arranged in a way that would make most people blush or bolt.
But not Mira.
Not the Mira who knelt for me with her thighs trembling and her pulse fluttering at her throat.
In the center of the room sat the adjustable bondage chair—my personal favorite when I wanted precision.
Full restraint. No wiggle room. No escape.
A device designed for one purpose: to take a submissive apart piece by piece exactly the way I intended.
Everything before tonight had been a warm-up. This would test her.
When I was done tonight, she wouldn’t be able to move a single inch.
And oh, the things I had planned for her.
Christ.
There was something exquisitely intoxicating about stripping every sense away—sight, sound, movement—until the only thing she could feel was me.
Complete control. Exactly what she claimed she wanted. Exactly what she had emailed him—me—about.
She was walking into a storm she didn’t realize she’d created.
And when she understood?
When she felt the truth pressed into her skin, breathed against her neck, whispered into her ear while she sat helpless and bound?
She would never look at me the same way again.
Good.
I didn’t want her to.
I was going to have to end this charade eventually, but I’d be damned if I wanted to. Why did I want her like this? Why did the sight of her at the bistro do something to me I couldn’t explain? Why did every instinct sharpen the second she walked into a room?
She’d be here in forty-five minutes.
Plenty of time to shower and change before the session began.
I headed down the hallway to the locker room reserved for the private suites. Everything hit differently the moment I walked in. It was cleaner, colder, more clinical. Less CEO. More Sir. Her master.
My locker door opened with a metallic click.
Inside sat everything I needed to switch skins.
My regular cedar wood gel sat in the corner, the one I used every day, the one she’d never commented on but always seemed aware of. But here—here I couldn’t use it. Not tonight. Not if she got close enough to breathe me in.
Because in this room, in this other life, the scent was different.
Distinct. Older. Darker.
Sandalwood. Leather. A whisper of smoke.
The scent of domination.
If I walked into that room smelling like cedar and control and boardrooms, she’d know in seconds. She wasn’t oblivious, not to me, not to anything. She noticed details she had no business noticing.
Like the way I knew her by peaches.
Fresh, clean, soft. The moment she brushed past my desk the first week she worked for me, I’d caught the scent of her shampoo, peaches and something bright and sweet beneath it. Something that clung to her skin long after she left a room.
I’d never admitted it, but I always knew when she walked into a space before I saw her.
I wasn’t about to let her have that same advantage tonight.
I set the cedarwood aside and reached for Sir’s gel instead, the one I only used here. Where my voice changed, my posture shifted, and everything inside me sharpened.
I turned on the shower, steam filling the tiled stall.
If she wanted to play with her master tonight?
Then she was going to meet him—not the man she ran from, not the man she almost kissed, not the man she lied to, but the man behind the mask.
Water pounded against my shoulders, hot enough to distract me, but it didn’t touch the truth gnawing at my ribs.
Why was it that the more time I spent with her—CEO and Master both—the more I wanted to stop splitting the difference?
Why was it that every time Mira stepped closer, I wanted to show her all of me…
even the parts no one else had ever been allowed to see?