TEN #3
‘Hmm…’ she hummed, low and smoky. ‘So you’re saying she should be more submissive? Or just… differently submissive?’
I let a beat of silence stretch, mimicking her tone unintentionally when I finally spoke, ‘You can write a submissive who still challenges a Dom without toppling the scene. A good sub knows the rules enough to bend them without breaking them.’
‘That’s the difference you want in them?’ she asked, softer, the vowels a little slower.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He isn’t breaking her. He’s guiding her. She surrenders because she chooses to. Not because he takes.’
A pause. Then, a quiet laugh – dark honey dripping through the speaker. ‘Sounds like you’ve thought this through.’
I smiled like a fucking teenager – but only because she couldn’t see it. ‘Occupational hazard.’
‘Hazard,’ she echoed. I knew she wanted to ask the question that followed that word – were Dom-sub dynamics part of an author’s occupational hazard?
No.
But they were a part of Cain D’Angelo’s.
I knew she wanted to push these boundaries because she was forged from the same steel as I was. And I knew… I wouldn’t be able to answer that part of her question.
‘How do you want it?’ she asked instead.
My mind did a complete double take, my track pants suddenly too tight.
I must have lingered too much in silence.
‘Tell me how you’d like that scene. Teach me.’
Oh fuck me…
This call was a mistake.
Clearing my throat, I bought myself some time. ‘It’s not about what I want – it’s about what the characters want,’ I lied. Like a piece of shit.
‘Sure,’ she murmured, sarcasm smeared all over that. ‘But if it were?’
I left my phone on the table for fear of breaking it. Her breath still resonated through my earbud. I was dangerously aware of every inch of fabric on my body.
‘Right,’ I said quietly. ‘Damien doesn’t rush. He doesn’t take her. He orchestrates her surrender. That’s the difference.’
‘How?’
I should hang up.
‘He…’ I closed my eyes and let the words come – as clinical and measured as they could.
Not at all the way they felt in my throat.
‘…keeps her restrained,’ I said. ‘Not for show, but so she learns to focus. On sensation. Obedience. He talks her through it, not just with orders – but reminders. Of whose body she’s in, whose pleasure she serves.
Makes her wait for it. Until the need rewires her. ’
She didn’t say a word, but I heard the slight hitch in her breath.
I fucking felt it.
‘And then?’ she asked.
I swallowed, staring at her paragraph with my fingertip grazing the stark black ink.
‘Then he lets her come.’ Pause. Breath – deep one. ‘But only when she begs for it. Properly. And not with words.’
Silence again.
‘I see,’ she said finally, but her tone was not the kind that meant she did. It was the kind that meant she wanted to.
I couldn’t help wondering if we were past the point of professionalism. If we’d quietly crossed it.
Sentence by sentence.
‘I’ll rewrite it in the morning,’ she whispered, her tone drowsier than before.
I closed my eyes against the sound, letting it roll over me like heat until my head lolled back against the headrest.
There were questions trembling on my tongue I would’ve asked other women without a second thought. Are you in bed? Where are your fingers? How wet are you when you talk like that?
But Paula wasn’t other women.
And I wasn’t the man I was pretending to be – not even when it came to her.
‘Cain?’
My name on her lips…
I gritted my teeth against it and palmed my dick through the fabric. Damn it, I was so hard I knew what I was going to have to do when the call was over.
‘Hm?’ I rasped, trying to sound distracted. Trying to sound decent.
‘Is there anything else you needed?’
So many things – all of them wrong.
I took in a slow breath, as if it could anchor me back to sanity. I knew she didn’t mean it like that.
And even if she did… Scarlett’s face flashed in my mind – her appointment tomorrow. Her role as the safe, clinical channel for my mess of a head.
I almost pitied her.
Because she would get the fallout from what this call had stirred.
‘No,’ I said finally, trying to make it sound like I’m in control of myself. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Good night.’
‘You too.’
The line went dead. But me?
Not even fucking close.
I glanced down at the ache pressing hard against my waistband, throbbing like a curse.
Yeah.
I was going to have to take the edge off.
And I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking about Paula. But her voice clung to me. Sleep-rough and soaked in sin.
And whilst I came apart, the images of Scarlett and Paula spliced together in a haze of contradiction. Boundaries blurred, projections collided. These women should never have existed in the same frame. But tonight, they did.
Scarlett had her hands around my neck, Paula had her mouth at my ear – both undoing me, ripping me to shreds.
I gripped myself harder, trying to outrun this fractured fantasy I’d never consented to. But desire never sought consent. It invaded. Hijacked.
And right now, it was rewriting every boundary I’d drawn.
It was Scarlett’s name I sucked in on a breath.
But it was Paula’s I bit down on when the release hit.