by Anna del Mar
“I did, I do.” I pulled out my cell from my pocket and dropped it on the table. “Call your editor. Tell him you’re not doing it.”
Her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed on me, a look that combined annoyance with contempt. “Do you know who Annette Collins is?”
“No clue.”
“She’s the biggest name in online publishing.”
I’d have to look her up. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Annette Collins has given me the opportunity of a lifetime.” She pushed away the cell. “I’m going to write that piece, whether you like it or not.”
“Then you better tell me why, Clara. There’s more to this. There’s something that you’re not telling me. Why are you so keen on learning about BDSM?”
She let out an exasperated groan. “In order to write about it, I have to experience at least some of it. I already told you, but you don’t want to believe me.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. The acid churning in my gut corroded my insides. A fast brain, an enormous heart and a compassionate soul accounted for the brightness Clara shone on the world. But she was also proud, stubborn and self-reliant to the extreme. I doubted any of that had changed with time. In fact, listening to her now, I suspected those traits had strengthened in her. Luz locked, I used to call the obdurate combination. It had been a problem back then and it was bound to be a problem now.
The dread that had been weighing down my gut consolidated into a brick of solid fear. Clara was not going to back down, no matter what I said. She was going to go out there. She was going to get hurt, physically, emotionally or both. The worst part? I couldn’t do shit about it. I couldn’t go after her and protect her like my instincts were telling me to do. I was marooned on this island, trapped between these fucking walls.
But I’d be damned if I was going to let anything bad happened to Clara. Not this time. Not on my watch.
“Noah?” Her voice rose from a tentative whisper and yet it pulled on my loins like a leash. “You need to believe me. I wasn’t going to fuck Mark Walker.”
I swallowed a roar, thinking furiously—or was I trying to think through the blinding fury? I was jealous. After all these years. Jealous.
I had no right to Clara. None whatsoever. As far as she was concerned, I’d left her years ago without explanation. Part of me thought I deserved her contempt, because I’d swallowed the hook, believed Felix and underestimated the formidable Margaret Luz. What a moron I’d been. What an insecure imbecile.
The guilt gnawed at me. Maybe Clara was right. Maybe her mother had bought me with a recommendation to the academy and I’d left Clara wounded on the battlefield. The letter had never been enough of a rescue attempt. I should’ve challenged Senator Luz. I should’ve challenged her security detail too, especially her grizzly-faced bodyguard. I should’ve cared less for my record and more for Clara. Instead, I’d been a coward by default. I’d failed Clara once. But not now. Not again. I was going to find a way to protect her come hell or high water.
“Here.” She took a folded piece of paper out of my robe’s pocket and dropped it on the table between us. “Take a look at the paperwork if you’d like.”
The sight of that paper on the table had me biting down on the inside of my cheek, fighting the new raging spin threatening to blow my top. “You signed paperwork?”
“A legally binding confidentiality agreement and this,” she said. “Read it.”
I picked up the piece of paper and, taking small, discreet breaths to cool down, made a show of reading through it. It was a standard agreement used by consenting partners. It contained a long list in tiny print, from commonly accepted BDSM practices to stuff so extreme as to shock even me. Only a few boxes at the very top of the list were checked and yet the rage tightened my throat.
“See?” Clara said. “I only agreed to a test session, a very limited one, no direct sexual contact, a little intro to submission and bondage, that’s it.”
The paper crumpled in my fist. She’d set some limits. Great. It didn’t make me feel any better. She’d put her name on not one but two pieces of paper.
I struggled to keep my voice in check. “Do you know what I think about paperwork like this and especially about confidentiality agreements?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “No, what?”
“They were created to be broken.”
“I looked it up,” she said. “The courts uphold them more often than not.”
“My point exactly.” I dropped the crumpled ball of paper on the table. “By the time a confidentiality breach gets to court the whole thing is a moot point.”
“Oh.” She blanched. She got my point all right, but then she rallied. “I’m not an idiot. I took precautions. I planned every last detail. I researched everything and I’m working with someone I trust. I even had Mark Walker investigated, even after Annette vouched for him.”
“So you’re a control freak, check.” I drew a mark in the air. “And book smart, check. But street smart?” I buzzed and drew an X in the air. “You were never built for a dirty street fight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Human behaviors that are out of your control.”
“Oh, please.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Now you’re being paranoid.”
Maybe. Okay, probably yes. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off and that Clara was somehow in danger. I had, however, zero proof and no intention of giving credence to her accusations. The intelligence analyst in me knew exactly what to do. Watch. Stalk. Wait. Clear the suspects or nail them.
“In any case—” I held up the crumpled paper “—why the hell are you showing me this?”
“I don’t want you to think I’ve turned into a slut.”
I let out a bitter cackle. “No offense, but the experience you’re looking for may require you to become exactly that.”
“Noah!”
“Just saying.”
She slumped in the chair.
I wanted to kick myself in the ass. I was such an insensitive pig.
She mumbled. “It didn’t go very well.”
“What?”
“The test session.”
“You mean beyond setting the house on fire and having a near-death experience?”
“It was a dud well before all that.”
Now I was plain curious. “Why?
Her lips twitched. “I... I laughed too hard.”
“You laughed?”
“In his face.” She covered her grin with her hand. “Master Mark was...ridiculous.”
“Yeah?” A smile tugged at my lips.
“Yeah.” She giggled, a sound that tickled my soul. “That’s how I ended up in the cage.”
My smile broke free. “You’ve always been an irreverent witch.”
“You’re so right.” She made a funny face. “As subs go, I may never be a good one.”
“No kidding.” I laughed. “You’d be a handful any day.”
“Which is why I need to find a better way of doing this.”
“Or better yet.” I seized my chance. “Don’t do it at all.”
“I’ve got to.”
I rolled my eyes. “Here we go again.”
“I...um...”
“What?”
She took a sip of her wine and gazed out over the sea. “I have an idea.”
“An idea?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about it. “An idea about what?”
“An idea that may allow me to achieve my objectives in a safe environment.”
What the hell was she up to? “I don’t follow.”
“I’m thinking of a temporary agreement, a defined three-week project.” She set her wine on the table and, crossing her legs, straightened on
her chair. “I think I’ve found a way to tackle the assignment.”
I was afraid to ask. “And that is?”
“You take me on.” Her blue eyes glinted like steel when she met my gaze. “I want to be your sub.”
Chapter Seven
Clara
The darkness in Noah’s eyes was so intense that I feared I’d somehow insulted him. Not a word made it through his tight lips. His usually expressive face went blank. For a moment, I thought he might throw me over his shoulder and pitch me out the front door. I had no idea what he was thinking, feeling. Shock? Disbelief? Outrage?
Throughout our conversation, I’d been trying to figure out how he felt about me. I wasn’t sure. He’d left behind a letter. A letter. There was a chance, however small, that he’d cared for me as much as I’d cared for him, even though he was no longer prepared to admit that.
Every so often, I fathomed I saw interest in his eyes, a glimpse of the powerful connection that had once existed between us. Could he be interested in me, after all this time? And yet I also sensed wariness from him, caution that felt like rejection, determination that felt like the end.
I perched on that chair, trying to look calm even though my pulse ran so fast it was making me dizzy and the wine had soured on my tongue. I’d told myself a million times that Noah was the past. Only he wasn’t. Sitting across from him, watching the lines of his face deepening with the weight of his thoughts, making my heart skip with his every blink and my belly flutter at the smallest flicker of his mouth, he took over my present. He was everything. Just like he’d been all those years ago. I was fighting to breathe, just like I was fighting to envision a new future for myself, a future that included him—this, the way I felt right now, full with his presence—a future worth living.
I inhaled a big breath and tried to think through my emotions. It hurt me to know that Noah was trapped in his house and isolated on this island. The thought of him sitting alone in the cottage made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t bear it. I had to do something, which was why I’d come up with my precarious plan. It was the only way I could think to hold on to Noah, to gain some time to find out if I had reason for hope, if there could be a future for us and, perhaps most importantly, if I could find a way to help him reclaim his life.
My plan would also allow me to pursue my original goal of writing for RelevantSex.com. I needed the merger and, regardless of how he felt about me, Noah would be the perfect teacher. The thought that he’d been with other women stung a little. Celibacy was an irrational expectation on my part, but kink? Now, that was a surprise—a fascinating one, but unexpected for sure.
As I sat there with my belly in knots, waiting for an answer that felt more like a life-or-death verdict, the practical implications of my proposal began to hit me. I was by no means a natural submissive, but something primal stirred in me when I glanced at Noah and remembered the way he’d trained my body for pleasure, patient but passionate, sweet but also ruthless.
The old need flared, an overpowering craving to have his cock in me. I pressed my thighs together, trying to calm the tension throbbing in my pussy. I was no longer the young innocent virgin who’d climbed into Noah’s bed. I was older, jaded, maybe even cynical. I’d been willing to play a role for the sake of the blog, but now the stakes were much higher. For Noah, I would step beyond the role. For him, I was willing to submit. I’d do whatever was necessary to help him.
I had to be honest with myself. For a girl with a secret like mine, need was hope and hope was promise. Noah was right. I had another reason why I wanted to push my sexual boundaries to the edge and give kink a try, a reason I hadn’t shared with anyone, a fact I tried to ignore in my everyday life.
But all of my arguments were beside the point now. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake when Noah’s silence grew long and unbearable. By then my fears had turned to panic and my stomach felt as if it had dropped to the floor and was being dragged over a field of jagged rocks. He didn’t want me. He didn’t approve of this new me either. The storm playing over the bay was nothing compared to the turmoil in his eyes. I couldn’t stand his scrutiny anymore.
Struggling to keep my composure, I slid down from the chair, plucked my wineglass from the table and rinsed it in the sink. He wasn’t interested. He wasn’t even remotely enticed. He had no feelings for me, for the idiot who’d allowed her intrusive mother to ruin everything, including our goodbyes.
I may be the heiress of an illustrious political dynasty and the proud owner of a famous last name augmented by the best genes money could buy, but obviously, I wasn’t very bright. I wasn’t pretty enough to seduce Noah, or smart enough to draw him out of his illness and back into my bed... Stop. It wasn’t my voice saying those things. It was my mother’s voice nagging in my head, deriding me. Snap out of it. I had a bad habit of believing my mother.
The truth was that I needed to get out of here, now, before I fell apart in front of Noah. Falling apart was something I did in private, never in public. After all, I may have made a fool of myself today, but I had some pride left.
His voice caught me by surprise, strong and soft at once. “I accept.”
I whirled on my heels. “What did you say?”
“You want to become my sub?” He rose from his chair and met my stare. “I accept.”
The air stopped flowing through my lungs. I plummeted down a dark precipice and I didn’t know what would happen when and if I ever hit bottom.
He was on me in two steps. His arms propped me against his body and kept me on my feet. The contact transported me back to a time when my heart thrived and my body existed in a constant state of high.
“Clara?” His gaze studied my face. “Are you all right?”
“Uh-huh.”
The expression on his face was so serious and intense that it reminded me of that day long ago, when he asked me to be his girlfriend. This was nothing like that, far from it, and yet in his arms, I felt new all over again.
He trailed the line of my jaw with his fingertips. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
No, I wasn’t sure. In fact, I was at the verge of reversing my decision, thinking that it was a very bad idea after all. Noah did strange things to my brain, not to mention my body.
But then the smell of him enveloped me, a fresh whiff of Irish Spring. It was the same type of inexpensive, simple soap he’d used years ago and, in that instant, I understood that although he was a different man, parts of him hadn’t changed at all. He was still the first and only boy I’d ever loved.
“I’m sure.”
“You do realize that if we agree to this, it won’t be a mock tryout,” he said. “It’d be the real thing. We’ll have sex. Lots of sex.”
Sex. With Noah. My throat squeezed. I tried not to squeal. “Yes.”
“Hell, Clara.” He cupped my chin, his gaze perusing my mouth. “You were never one to play it safe, but now you’re being reckless. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I tried, but I can’t say no to you.”
He lowered his face to mine and kissed me, a contact that wiped all thought from my mind. I couldn’t remember what had transpired in the past fifteen years, where he’d been, where I’d been. His body vibrated beneath my hands like a dam about to break. My own body lit up with a glow that warmed my soul. His kiss reconstituted my shriveled heart and transformed my body from a dry husk into flowing, fertile ground. I got lost in his arms and would’ve gladly stayed lost forever as long as he held me.
A rumble grew in the back of his throat and turned into a groan. He wrenched his mouth from mine and exhaled a rattling breath. “If you want to do this, we do it on my terms. We do it all in or not at all. You don’t get to pick and choose.”
I wavered on my feet, still reeling from the impact of his kiss. “What do you mean?”
“It means that you give up sexual control
,” he said. “I get to choose and you get to obey me, because you trust me.”
My knees buckled, but I braced myself on the table. I’d trusted him. Once. But that was a long time ago. My mind was iffy, but my body wanted to trust him again. And him? Did he need to be trusted in order to heal?
“I want access,” he said. “No holding back, honesty all the way. You want an agreement? I’ll give you a goddamn agreement.”
He flattened the crumpled page on the table and, snatching a pen from a drawer, crossed out Mark’s name and wrote down his name. He marked off entire sections from the paper, then pushed it in my direction and hammered me with his stare.
“These are my no-gos,” he said. “Your turn. Think carefully.”
My brain was in a tizzy. The words danced before my eyes. I’d forgotten how to read, how to think. I tried to focus on the paper in front of me. He’d crossed out the things I’d never agree to. As to the rest, I wasn’t sure.
I cleared my throat. “What if I don’t like something you like? What if I hate something that you ask me to do? What if it’s something that hurts or frightens me?”
His eyes widened and his mouth worked the air, grappling for words. I squirmed beneath his glare, all too aware of the shock and affront exuding from him.
“I would never, ever hurt or harm you in any way,” he said. “And so that you know, Clara. I’m not into inflicting pain. I’m into inflicting pleasure.”
Nuclear meltdown. Liquid fallout drenching my panties. Heat radiating from my pussy and jolting through me in devastating waves of need.
“All I ask is that you try the things I choose for you.” His voice softened. “I ask that you keep an open mind and put forth your best effort. I won’t lie to you. I so want to push the envelope with you...”
Those eyes. Those lips, they were moving, saying some other things I ought to be listening to, even if I couldn’t. Oh, yeah. I wanted him to push the envelope with me. No, I wanted more. I wanted to stuff myself into that envelope and let him push me in and out of it, fast and slow, gently and harshly. Whatever he wanted to do with me, at this moment, it was fine, more than fine. I wanted to do it too.