Chapter 8
Ash had been right.
This had been a fucking terrible idea.
My blood pumped like gasoline as I paused outside the door to Mia’s room. My fists clenched at my sides, and my jaw tightened as the rush of what’d just happened came pounding through my head.
What had just happened, and what had almost just happened, too.
I’d gotten too close. I’d taken showing her who was in charge, and showing her the discipline I could mete out and pushed it way past what I’d intended. I’d gone to that dark place inside — the place I only went to when I was ready to make a woman submit to me, body and soul.
And that is not what I’d gone in that room to do.
Except, she’d gotten the better of me. Fuck, just being around her shattered my control and seemed to erase any sense of self-restraint I had. Because being around her made me want her — primally, animalistically, in every conceivable way. Being around Mia Thorne made my cock hard as steel and made my blood run hot like fire. It made me want to get her on her knees — submissively, subserviently, her hands tied at her back, and those big doe eyes looking up at me as she learned to say “yes, sir.”
Possessing a woman — dominating her and making her your submissive, was not about force, or some sort of dark, evil desire to subjugate her. It was about showing her how good it could be to give me control of her — all of her. It was about showing her how sweet I could make it if she trusted me, and gave in to me.
And I wanted that with Mia Thorne more than I’d ever wanted it in any woman I’d ever met.
And yet…
I swore silently as my eyes squeezed shut.
Mia wasn’t like women I — or we — had had before. We’d paid for her, as we’d done in the past with women at the Auction House. But again, this was different. Things had changed, and buying a woman against her will?
That was different, and I knew that.
This wasn’t a plaything I’d outbid a competitor for. This wasn’t some nervously eager sub who’d only heard the stories of what Erik, Ash, and I would do to her — the ways we’d dominate her body like she’d never felt before and the ways we’d make her shatter so sweetly.
No, Mia wasn’t that girl.
She was a prisoner. A real, actual prisoner. Yes, her being here kept her safe. And yes, the alternative of letting Ryan Cunningham use and degrade her would have been impossible to let happen.
But that did not mean I could go down the familiar path with her.
In fact, it meant I had to keep my distance. It meant as much as I wanted to march right back in there, blindfold her with my tie and bind her with her own panties before I felt those sweet lips slide down my cock—
I hissed as I slammed my fist against the hallway wall outside her room.
I heard her gasp inside.
Her being her meant I couldn’t do that. And if I knew what was good for me, I’d stop thinking it as well.
Before it was too late to stop myself.
I shook out my fist, my eyes narrowing at the locked door to her room, before I whirled and stormed away.