Tell Me a Desire (The Story Series Book 2)

by Tamara Lush

  “You’re struggling against the straps. Remember what Doug said? Submissives go through stages. Struggle, acceptance, surrender.”

  At those words, I blinked and began to wonder: was that what I was doing in our relationship? Struggling? Should I be more accepting? Should I surrender to his needs and wishes? No, it wasn’t in my nature to accept. In my thirty-five years, I’d never accepted the status quo or allowed someone else to take the reins.

  Surrender wasn’t in my lexicon. I needed answers about us. About him. I deserved answers. I writhed a little, feeling caged and feverish. A tiny voice of panic popped into my mind. Was this what I really wanted? More sex? Or was intimacy what I truly desired?

  Caleb stood up and gently flicked the flogger in the air with his wrist. He trailed the fur fronds softly over my thigh and ass, and I shivered. It felt sensual, but it didn’t feel right. Not tonight.

  When he moved his hand and appeared as though he was going to strike me, I opened my mouth.

  “Caleb, no. Wait.”

  He paused.

  “Trust,” I whispered.

  Chapter 7

  I’d never seen Caleb’s blue eyes turn so stormy or watched his fingers move so fast. With shaking hands, he undid my wrists, then the strap around my waist, and then the ankles. I turned to sit on the bench, and he hugged me, hard.

  “Oh, God, Emma, I’m sorry.” He knelt on the floor, rubbing my ankles. “Did the strap hurt? Did it cut into your skin because it was too tight?”

  He pressed his lips to my right shin where the restraint had left a faint, pink indentation. His apologetic eyes turned upward and met mine, and my heart quaked. I hadn’t meant to scare him.

  “No, it wasn’t too tight. I’m okay. Really. I got panicky and… Caleb, please stand up.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Jesus. I shouldn’t have pushed you into this tonight.”

  “You didn’t push me. I wanted it. Or I thought I did. My hesitation has nothing to do with sex or submission. It’s, well…Caleb, I don’t want to have this conversation here. Can we go to my house? I feel like I need to be in my own space all of a sudden.”

  He swallowed and nodded, then reached for my dress on the hook and gently helped me pull it over my head and tug the hem firmly toward my knees.

  “I love you. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”

  “I know. It’s okay. Let’s leave.”

  I put on a bright smile as we walked out, thanking Doug along the way. I didn’t want him or anyone else there to think I didn’t appreciate their hospitality. “I’m sure we’ll be back,” I said to Doug, who shook my hand, then Caleb’s. “You’ve been incredibly kind to show us around.”

  Once in the car, though, my smile faded and my heartbeat was even faster than it had been in the club. I didn’t speak all the way to my house and neither did Caleb. It had started to rain, hard, and he chewed on his lip as he navigated through the wet brick streets of my historic neighborhood.

  Once we pulled into my driveway, he paused. “Give me the keys and stay here.”

  I obeyed, rooting around in my purse until I found them. He ran through the rain to unlock the door, then came to my side of the car, opened it, and scooped me up.

  “I don’t want you to fall in those shoes.”

  As he carried me inside, my chest hurt from the love I felt for him. Which made me all the more scared to reveal my feelings. I didn’t want to lose him.

  Inside, I slowly eased the stilettos off my feet, and between the relief of bare feet and the familiar, homey surroundings of my messy, packed-with-junk place, my muscles relaxed. I flopped onto my old, green sofa, heaving out a sigh and tossing a few embroidered throw pillows onto the floor.

  “Come here.” I was a little self-conscious because my house smelled musty. I hadn’t been there in a week, and I detected humidity and mold in the air.

  Caleb sat and pulled me into a hug, but I squirmed out of his arms so I could look at him. I didn’t want to get distracted by his kisses or his touch, and I took a deep breath. My finger found a little hole in the thin fabric of my sofa, and I dug in, probing at the foam underneath.

  “I stopped tonight because it didn’t feel right. Things haven’t felt okay for a while, Caleb.”

  He stared at me with shocked eyes. Hurt ones, even. I was not handling this well, and the expression on his face made my heart crack. I hadn’t intended to inflict pain; I merely wanted to be honest.

  “I love you,” I blurted. “And I want to be your wife.”

  Well, that had escalated quickly.

  “Emma. I…what?”

  “Sorry. This has been bubbling inside of me for a while, and it all kind of surfaced tonight in the club. I’ve been holding back from you. Keeping my feelings hidden, like you always tell me not to. Caleb, I want to get married. It’s the real reason I haven’t moved in. I want us to be committed to each other. Because we love each other. Having more sex and crazy sex won’t make me feel closer to you.”

  “I am committed to you because I love you,” he said. When he scrubbed his face, I started to panic. He really didn’t want to marry me.

  Oh, shit.

  Well, there was no turning back now, so I had to press him on why.

  “So if you love me and say you’re committed to me, why don’t you want to get married?”

  He scrubbed his face again and leaned back, closing his eyes. He didn’t say anything, which scared me.

  “Say something,” I whispered as a sour feeling filled my stomach. “Please?”

  Opening his eyes and pushing out a breath, he glanced at me. The longer he didn’t speak, the more my panic grew. I realized I was close to throwing up.

  “Is it because you don’t love me as much as you loved Tara?”

  He balled his hands into fists. “No. It’s because I love you more than I ever loved Tara. It’s because I don’t ever want to have a marriage like I did with her.”

  “What? Huh? You’re not making sense.”

  Caleb wiped the corners of his mouth, which I’d only seen him do when he was nervous and talking on the phone about his business. “I thought I loved Tara. We were young, and I assumed she was the love of my life. But as our marriage progressed, I became complacent. I didn’t love her like I thought I did, and I wasn’t prepared for marriage. I was too young. And there’s nothing worse than being complacent in a relationship, Emma. There’s nothing lonelier than a loveless marriage.”

  I shook my head. “So what does this have to do with me? With us?”

  “Don’t you see? I think you and I have the perfect relationship. We’re soul mates. My love for you is stronger than any piece of paper and deeper than any vow. You’re precious. You’re special. And I don’t want what we have to change.”

  “You love me. And I love you. So you don’t want to get married? I’m still not clear.”

  “I married Tara for the wrong reasons.”

  I opened my mouth, about to say that I knew that, but closed it. Instead, I allowed him to fill the emptiness in the room. What would he say? How would he explain?

  He continued, not picking up on my suddenly sharper glance. “I wasn’t sure about Tara when we first met in class. I liked her, she was cute, but I was also casually dating a couple of other girls at the time. I was twenty-one. College, you know?”

  “I know. You were a star soccer player who wrote poetry. Catnip for girls.” And a gorgeous specimen of catnip at that, I thought, recalling the photos I’d seen.

  He gave me an embarrassed half-smile. “That’s an interesting way of putting it. I wasn’t all that, though. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Anyway, one weekend, Colin came to visit. We ended up at some party, drunk, and the next thing I knew, my little brother had hooked up with Tara.”

  I attempted to appear appropriately shocked. “And so…”

  “And so I had to pursue her. To make a point. It was ridiculous. And I fell in love with her. Or thought I did. You want to kn
ow the real reason I was scowling at you and Colin the night of your birthday?”

  “It wasn’t jealousy?”

  “No, it was. Massive jealousy. But it also reminded me of a party where I saw Tara and Colin laughing together. Tara and I had been married for about six years, maybe seven. Right before she was diagnosed with cancer. We were at a Fourth of July party, and I watched them talk and you know what? I didn’t care. I had no feelings of jealousy or anger.”

  “Okay, but I still don’t get what this has to do with us.”

  “I don’t ever want to take you for granted. Ever.”

  I sighed. “You don’t have to. What did you feel when you saw Colin and I talking?”

  “I wanted to walk over and physically remove you from the conversation. And then punch him. My own brother. I was shocked at the force of my feelings. That’s why I was so troubled. I don’t often feel so out of control.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this. It didn’t please me how Caleb had a possessive streak. But the fierceness in his voice filled me with something primal, something I couldn’t quite process.

  “Here’s the thing, Emma. I don’t think I actually knew what love was until I met you.”

  I scowled away tears. I felt the same way about Caleb, but to hear him say it was overwhelming. “Really?” I whispered, moving closer to his body. I clasped his hand in mine, and for the first time ever, his palm was sweaty.

  “Really. We’re equals. You don’t want me because I’m rich or who my family is or because I was a star on the university soccer team. You get me, Emma. You understand me. You let me sit in silence. Then you make me think. You make me question what’s right. You make me a better person. Why would I want anything more?”

  Snuggling into the crook of his arm, I inhaled his masculine scent. “I still don’t get why you’re against getting married.”

  “I’m afraid it will change us.”

  The weight of his words hung in the air. Admittedly, it was something I hadn’t considered. Could marriage change people? Even at my age, I didn’t know many married people. Most lived together or were single. Or had already divorced.

  I shrugged nonchalantly. “What if it changes us for the better?”

  “What if it doesn’t? I’m in my comfort zone with you, Emma. I’ve gone to the same dry cleaner for fifteen years because they starch my shirts the exact way I want. Remember how long it took you to convince me to give money to my private chef so he could open a restaurant in Tampa?”

  I held up my hands. “I know. You didn’t want him to go. But he did, and he’s successful, and we love cooking together when we don’t go out.”

  He nodded. “Yes. But I like things just so, and when I get them to a certain level, I don’t want to change. Why fix something that isn’t broken?”

  Because I want a family, I wanted to say. Because I’m not an object. But I didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to face his answer to my true desire. Not now. Not after what he’d already said. Because the answer seemed obvious: he wanted our life to be as-is. No true commitment, no child.

  Never mind that lately, I’d thought up a list of baby names. Charlotte was topping my list for girls, and Dorian for boys. I squirmed away from him and folded my legs under me. “A comfort zone is cozy and warm, but it’s also stagnant. Nothing grows there, nothing improves or gets better. We need to go beyond great sex. We need to go deeper, Caleb. Together.”

  I sat up so we were no longer touching. He laced his hands together and stared at them. Nodded. I reached to stroke his silver-and-black hair, to trail my thumb down the edge of his ear.

  “You can’t freeze me in time,” I said softly. “If we love each other and really work to understand one another, how would our marriage, our relationship grow stagnant?”

  “It’s difficult to explain. It’s the day-to-day hassles and drudgery. It’s the little nags and the erosion of boundaries. Marriage is hard, Emma. You don’t know how hard.”

  “How difficult can it be? We get along so well.”

  The muscles in his jaw bunched up, and I could tell he was grinding his molars. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his hair. “Marriage is utterly impossible and also rather easy, depending on your expectations and where you place the bar. I don’t know if I want to subject us to that paradox.”

  The flash of his blue eyes and his sharp words made me rear back. Whoa. How bleak was his worldview about relationships? Far bleaker than mine, apparently, and I’d been raised in a house filled with dysfunction.

  My mind immediately went to the darkest possible scenario.

  “Did you have an affair when you were with Tara?” I whispered, not wanting to know the answer but needing to know. Was he like all the others I’d known in the past?

  He shook his head vigorously. “No. I didn’t. I could have, easily. There was one woman who I thought I had a connection with, but I avoided her because I knew it was wrong to get involved. I thought it better to divorce before I got to that point. You know the rest, how Tara fell ill right when we separated.”

  I nodded and swallowed. I had to believe him. Had to. Although I didn’t exactly have the best track record of trusting men or reasons to do so. I’d dated plenty of guys who’d cheated on me, and my boyfriend immediately before Caleb had been married, although the guy had hidden that crucial fact.

  “If you feel this way, why do you want me to move in? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.” I scowled at him, and he responded with a sharp inhale.

  “You’re at my house so much. I love having you around. It makes sense to share our space. It’s really pretty simple. Plus, living together is different than being married. I’d like to think it is, anyway. I’ve never lived with a woman other than Tara, and we didn’t live together before our wedding.”

  For all of his intelligence, all of his logic, all of his success, Caleb was a man. Which meant he could be stupidly frustrating and illogical at times. This was obviously one of those moments. I cleared my throat, annoyed. “So how can we make this work long-term? How can we be together, be married, without losing our spark? I want a commitment eventually.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s my biggest fear—losing the magic I have with you. You’re one-in-a-billion, Emma. I don’t want things to change.”

  I screwed my face up, not knowing if I wanted to cry or strangle him. “That’s a copout, though. It’s a bit half-assed.” I shifted so I was on my knees, sinking into the sofa, my butt on my heels. The cushion was threadbare. I’d resisted his attempts to buy me a new sofa.

  “Caleb, unless it’s crazy, all-in love, it’s a waste. It’s a waste of our time and a waste of our life. There’s too much mediocrity in the world. Let’s not be mediocre. Let’s not settle because we’re afraid.”

  He pulled me in for a fierce hug. “Let me think about it, okay?”

  I nodded into his chest and decided not to be the passive-aggressive girlfriend any longer. “While you think about it, I’m making a decision. You asked me to move in with you, and I’m going to say yes, if you still want me to. Maybe it’s the next logical step. But I’m not willing to wait forever for a proposal. You need to be aware of that. I’ll give it six months. Then, our future’s in your hands.”

  His hands cupped my face, and he stared into my eyes almost mournfully. He nodded slowly. Eventually, we stretched out on the sofa and kissed until we fell asleep in each other’s arms, fully clothed and exhausted.

  Chapter 8

  “You ready?”

  Caleb’s hands covered my eyes as we stood in the doorway of his bedroom— our bedroom—and I laughed and jumped up and down.

  “I’ve been ready all day. I can’t believe you’ve made me wait to see this.” Although I moved most of my stuff into his penthouse over a two week span, he hadn’t let me near the bedroom. We’d been sleeping at my house while the designers and painters and builders worked on the redesign. The messy-chic décor at my house was making Caleb a little anxious, I thought,
and he was eager to return to the stark cleanliness of his penthouse.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  I squirmed against his body as he tightened his hands over my eyes and kissed the back of my ear. “Please, let me see, Caleb. You know I can’t wait for surprises.”

  “You smell good, you know that?” He licked my earlobe, making me wait. “Like vanilla and coconut. Or maybe caramel. Makes me ravenous.”

  “I always smell like caramel. Now show me the room!”

  He slipped his hands off my face, and I froze, open-mouthed. I couldn’t have better decorated a room if I’d had access to the Art Deco offerings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The walls were a rich cream, which set off the dove-gray curtains. A blonde-teak headboard shimmered in the golden light of the geometric lamps…and of course, the gorgeous vanity he’d bought me for my birthday.

  “It’s like a perfect replica of the hotel in Paris.” I recalled our first romantic trip together and grinned. “How did you remember every detail?”

  I ran my hand over the duvet, then to the smooth wood of the headboard.

  “I found out the name of the hotel’s decorator and hired him. I wanted it to be perfect for you. It’s our room now.”

  “And this? God, it’s gorgeous.” I petted the velveteen, golden chaise and sat down.

  “I thought you could read on it.”

  I blinked back a tear because a flash of my childhood bedroom came into my mind, and I remembered how I’d slept on a thin futon in our trailer for the entirety of high school. How my room was barren of a bureau and how I’d had one pile for clean clothes and one pile for dirty. How I’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear the plastic skirting around the trailer rattle and wonder if it was the night everything would be blown away like the places I’d seen on TV.

  This new bedroom, this lavish, luxurious space, was something I could have never dreamed of as a child.