by Cox, Chloe
“What do I want?” he said. “What do I fucking want? I want my wife to keep her fucking legs closed. I want my wife to know better than to go on television with Soren Andersson.”
“Jason, he’s my client,” Cate said.
“Are you fucking him?” Jason demanded. He was practically spitting.
Cate stared at him, horrified that she had once been married to this man. She’d married him. He was so unambiguously monstrous, yet she’d married him.
She’d thought that little of herself.
Worse, she found herself actually questioning her conduct. Had she given anything away? Had she been somehow less than professional in public? She’d been so careful, she’d worked so hard, how could everybody know? There was a genuine, terrible moment of self-doubt, a moment that reminded her what every moment being married to this man had been like.
But then she looked at the veins throbbing in Jason’s neck and remembered: he was the one with a problem. Not her.
So she said the bravest thing she could think of.
“None of your goddamn business, Jason.”
It was brave, but not smart. Because while she was right, she’d also antagonized a man who she knew to be abusive and nuts, even if it felt like she couldn’t have said anything else.
Where did that come from, anyway?
“You are my wife,” Jason seethed. “Don’t you forget it. I swear to God, Cate, I’ve been indulging this little temper tantrum of yours, but you better get it out of your system soon. If you fuck him, if you even let people think you’re fucking him, I swear you will regret it.”
Cate fixed her eye on the door behind him. She figured she might remember this moment later as the moment when she knew she was truly done. She had nothing more to say to this man.
“Get out of my way, Jason.”
“Don’t you walk away from me,” he said, and grabbed her arm. “If I wasn’t waiting on this offer from Cheedham, I’d kill him. Don’t test me.”
Cate looked down at where he held her arm, his knuckles white, his intent obviously to hurt her.
“If you don’t let go of me, I will scream, and I will press charges,” she said evenly. “I have photo evidence of the last time you hit me, Jason, and I have sworn statements. We both know I have agreed not to use them provided that you agree to a divorce on my terms, but if you ever, ever touch me again, I will ruin what remains of your life. Don’t test me, Jason. I’m a much better lawyer than you are.”
“I was drunk,” he said, as though that mattered. Cate noticed he let go of her arm, though the vein in his neck looked like it was about to burst.
“You’re often drunk,” she said. “And I mean it, Jason. I’m done with threats like this.”
“So am I,” Jason said. Then he smiled this nasty little smile. “Be careful, Cate, because when you come to your senses, you’re going to regret pissing me off. And if I find out you’re spreading your legs for that piece of shit, I’ll do it.”
Cate froze.
“I’ll enjoy it,” Jason said. “I’ll release all of your dirty, slutty little fantasies. Every chat log, every story, every photo, every little thing you thought was private. You don’t think people will be interested in the sex life of Soren Andersson’s slut lawyer? Everyone will know what a fraud you are. Everyone will know the real you. You will be over.”
***
Cate used the drive out to Malibu to try and decompress. Leave it to Jason to try to ruin the one thing she’d been looking forward to all week by scaring the shit out of her before she got to Soren’s.
And she had been scared. Truly scared, once again. The man was an artist at terrorizing her. “Everyone will know the real you?” Way to zero in on her greatest fear and then just…stab it.
Ironically, if Jason were a different person, he could have used that sort of perceptive sensitivity for good. The world had lost a talented psychologist the day Jason Whittier had gone over to the dark side. Cate remembered how enraged he’d gotten back in law school when she’d did better than he did on exams—it was always because a professor was trying to get her into bed, or because she had flirted her way into the grade. He always needed to cut her down.
And now he’d try to do it again, only this time the whole world would believe him.
All of that was almost par for the course. The truly remarkable thing, she thought as she got closer and closer to Soren, was that it wasn’t devastating.
She was still standing!
Just a few weeks ago the very idea that Patrick Cross might see her at Volare and tell Jason about it had been enough to send her literally diving for cover. Not that she wasn’t on edge and freaked out, but she wasn’t hiding, either.
So that was interesting.
It was so interesting that by the time she pulled into Soren’s circular drive she was smiling ear to ear. Because Soren Andersson was waiting outside the door of his home, leaning against a sleek modern wall under the front light, looking sexy and dangerous and so damn promising, she could melt.
And he was waiting for her.
Not even Jason could take that away from her.
Cate had been thinking about it all week. She’d been thinking about everything Soren had said, everything he’d done, and everything he didn’t do—and he’d been right. And because he’d been right to wait, because he’d held back and he’d done what he thought was best for her even when he could have had her, she did trust him.
Clever man.
Clever, gorgeous, muscular, sexy man.
Holy shit, did she want him.
She waited while he walked up to her car, and couldn’t quite believe how pleased she was when he opened her door for her. Little thing, that. Simple thing.
Made her feel…feminine.
As did the look on his face when she extended her leg out of the car.
“You’re late,” he said gruffly.
“I’m not!”
“Any time would be late. I’ve been waiting all week.”
Cate took his hand and pondered that. Had he been thinking about this as much as she K mueight="had? The thought made her feel slightly giddy, and then slightly weak, and the combination was powerful.
She looked up into Soren’s face—and felt her stomach drop. God, he was even more beautiful now that she knew what he could do. And totally, utterly unreadable. He looked almost…stern?
She didn’t know what to say.
“Inside,” he directed her.
He helped her onto the walkway where her heels wouldn’t be such a hazard and led her toward the door of his magnificent house. It was all white walls and water elements and strategic lighting, and Cate was pretty sure she heard the ocean on the other side, even though it felt completely private. It looked like a great place to forget about the rest of the world.
Except as soon as they were inside, in the light, she could see: Soren hadn’t forgotten about the rest of the world.
He looked troubled.
“What?” she asked.
He had been about to speak, but she’d preempted him. It was something she did when she was nervous. They hadn’t even made it past this wonderfully minimalist foyer yet, and she was nervous.
“Can’t get anything past you, huh?” Soren said, and gave her one of those devilish grins. She smiled, but not knowing was killing her.
“What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk before we get started,” he said, seriously. “About that press conference you did on TV.”
“What about it?”
“It was too aggressive.”
Cate blinked. She looked over the man in front of her, six feet and change of a man no one in their right mind would mess with, a man who’d come after her in the most aggressive way possible, a man who’d actually put his hands on her and taken her under his protection before he even knew her name, and tried to make sense of the words that had just come out of his mouth.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she said final
ly.
Soren smiled slightly, and put his hand at the small of her back, guiding her into his beautiful house. He had a bottle of wine out already, two glasses, a nice set-up in the open-plan industrial kitchen.
“You stopped just short of calling Daniella a lying whore,” he said. “She’s not.”
“But she is,” Cate said. “Well, she’s at least a liar. And I didn’t say the other thing.”
“Cate…” Soren shook his head. “You made her out to be a monster.”
Cate wanted to tear her hair out. She could already feel her dream weekend fading away, and it was making her feel sick. She needed this. After Jason, she needed this. Maybe even before.
“Soren, she is lying!” she said.
“Not out of malice. Not even greed,” he said. He was perfectly calm, perfectly controlled. Just disapproving. And it hurt. Inexplicably, Soren’s disapproval hurt. He held her with those stern blue eyes, and said, “She’s not that kind of person. There’s something else going on.”
“She’s lying because she wants to hurt you, Soren,” Cate said.
“Then find out why,” he ordered.
He ordered.
Cate felt the words shiver down her spine. It was the voice. He’d used the voice, the unmistakable Dom voice, and he was looking at her now with those burning blue eyes.
“Are you angry with me?” she said. She sounded so lost when she said it, so sad, even to herself. It made her feel vulnerable all over again, and it made her feel stupid. Only Soren Andersson could disorient her so effectively.
For a second, Soren just looked confused. And then he was coming toward her, his face still calm, composed. In control.
“I’m angry at the situation,” he said as he reached for her.
His hand around hers delivered a jolt of electricity to her entire body, something that knocked her sideways and back into a memory of what it felt like to have this man touch her. Of what he’d been like the last time they’d seen each other.
She sighed as he pulled her into his arms.
“Daniella’s gotta be in trouble to do this, and I don’t beat up on people in trouble,” he said, his chin resting on the top of her head. “Not even metaphorically. And especially not a woman that I’ve tied down and flogged.”
Cate stiffened. That should not be an image that bothered her. She decided to let it go and enjoy the feel of this man around her.
She enjoyed it so much that it took a moment for his words to sink in. The contrast between Soren and Jason could not be starker. She felt completely, utterly safe.
“I was looking forward to this,” she said into his chest. “I thought maybe…”
She felt his chuckle through his chest. “You’ll see,” he said. “Tell me what was bothering you.”
Dammit, really? He had to figure that out?
She sighed, and in response Soren bent down and picked her up, fast enough that she yelped, grabbing his neck Kingnt size="-for support. He looked down on her and shook his head, a slight smile on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“What I should have done before I mentioned the press conference,” he said. “Getting you in my lap.”
Cate had to admit this: the man knew what he was doing. It felt exponentially more difficult to evade or dissemble or otherwise avoid the truth when he was holding her like that. And it felt less necessary.
He took her through to a sunken living room off the kitchen and a gray couch in a warm corner. He didn’t turn the lights on, just sat down and arranged her in his lap the way he wanted.
Which apparently meant unbuttoning her shirt.
“Tell me what was bothering you before you came here,” he said. Casually. Like he wasn’t, at that very moment, slipping his hand inside her bra.
Cate sucked in her breath while her chest fluttered under him.
“Cate,” he said again. “Tell me.”
What was she even supposed to say? More than ever she didn’t want to talk about Jason. Jason was the past that she was desperately trying to leave behind; she wanted to be in the present, now, with Soren. She wanted to be the woman strong enough to live in Soren’s world, where evidently men cared about women, even ones who tried to hurt them.
Seriously, who was this man? Jason threatened her with ruthless exposure; Soren worried that the woman trying to ruin him might get her feelings hurt.
Dammit, he was waiting.
“I ran into an ex,” she blurted out.
Soren didn’t say anything for a long minute while he toyed with her nipple, rolling it between his fingers, pinching it. It was a constant sensory barrage. Cate knew she was ruining another pair of underwear.
“A bad one?” he said.
“Aren’t they all?”
“No.”
Cate huffed in frustration, her nipple painfully erect, her sex throbbing.
“Yes, then. A bad one,” she said. “The worst one.”
Soren’s voice pitched lower. “One who hurt you.”
Cate shook her head and gripped at his shoulder, wanting, suddenly, to bite down on him. He was driving her insane. If he demanded it, she’d probably tell him everything, just because she wanted him to keep touching her. It was torture.
“You don’t want t Kon It waso talk about it,” he said.
“Is that ok?”
“For now,” he said, and pinched her nipple hard enough to make her gasp. “Talking isn’t always helpful. Let’s start over.”
And then he removed his hand.
Cate looked up at him with blatant disappointment and was greeted with a mocking smile.
“I said, ‘start over,’” he said. “How do you think you should start off the weekend as my sub?”
Oh, come on. All she wanted was for Soren to throw her down and ravish her, or at least start playing with her breasts again, and now there was a pop quiz?
Cate simply could not. She was too jacked up, too nervous, too raw.
“Like this?” she said, and impulsively tickled him.
Soren convulsed under her, this great big giant of a man, all those muscles sliding under the skin, and there was one of those moments of silence before he started to laugh.
God, she loved that sound.
It wasn’t until he flipped her over, onto her back on his couch, that she realized she was laughing, too. There were tears falling down the side of her head while he held her down and tickled her, mercilessly, his own laughter echoing hers.
“What the hell made you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Cate said. “Genius?”
“Or lunacy.”
“No, no. I’ve been tested. Definitely genius.”
“For a genius trying to submit, you’re wearing way too many clothes.”
They were both breathing hard, Soren straddling her while she lay on the couch, her arms above her head. Cate felt the heat of his eyes on her body and blushed.
“Let me get out of them,” she said, and moved her arms.
“Too slow,” Soren said, and pinned her hands above her head.
Then he ripped off her shirt.
Cate laughed in pure delight.
Next was her skirt, a skirt she would hardly miss. And then Soren saw that she was wearing stockings.
“This is genius,” he said.
Cate bit her lip while he savagely attacked her bra and her panties, leaving her disheveled an Kdist sid naked and still underneath him. She squirmed, her core aching, her hips moving all on their own.
He had stripped her naked, item by item, and there was a chance she might actually come before he touched her. Pretty soon she was going to be beyond speech; pretty soon her brain was going to stop working properly. She needed to say something first.
“You were right,” she blurted out. “Last time. It mattered. I do trust you now. You were right.”
“Of course I was right,” Soren said. He loomed above her, huge and powerful and so fucking dominant. He took one finger and traced it fr
om her cheek to her neck, down over her breast and belly, until he dipped between her legs and into her folds.
Her legs had already begun to shake.
“Now it’s time for you to forget your name,” he said, grinning.
Then he pulled her off the couch, thrust his arm between her legs, and threw her over his shoulder.
chapter 10
Soren resisted the urge to run up the stairs with Cate over his shoulder like a prize, but that was the only urge he planned on resisting from here on out. She was his.
She wriggled in his arms, her wetness spreading on his arm where he kept it between her legs, her breasts pressed against his back, helpless to move. On impulse he turned his head and bit her naked hip, and reveled in the sound of her cry. She felt even wetter, if that was at all possible.
From the second he’d touched her again he’d felt it building, and now he was on fire the way he had been back at Volare, when he’d had her naked and writhing under him. Only this time he would have her. He could see in her eyes, her body language, the way she held nothing back—she was ready. She had tickled him, for Chrissakes. He would have her.
He would own her.
Soren took a deep breath and savored it.
Then he threw Cate down on his bed, took in her flushed, glowing face, her hard, pointed nipples, her soaking wet sex, the expression on her face, and took a deep, satisfied breath.
His.
“Take my jeans off,” he ordered.
He wanted to see her face when she looked at him for the first time. He wanted to see her face through all of it. Goddamn, he loved seeing her feel.
She didn’t hesitate, and only tried to conceal her smile a little bit. She was nervous and excited, and she had very good reason to be.
He was pretty sure he had never been this hard before in his life. That had never been something he’d ever had to worry about, but this actually hurt. And the expression on her face when she saw it told him everything he needed to know.
“Can I…?” she asked.
Soren smiled. “Yes.”
She kissed the tip of his cock, eyes looking up at him, and Soren threaded his hand through her hair. Fuck, she was gorgeous. She was gorgeous, and his, and he needed her to know that. Needed her to know what submission meant, needed her to see that it was for her.