by Anya Summers
“Oh, ah, no, I was just in the middle of something. So what’s next? Do I just show up?” she asked.
“You will need to meet with Dante. He oversees all the subs and gives the newbies the full tour and instructions. When are you free?”
She looked at Grace’s sleeping form. Should she still do this? Join the club and go through with all of it? She shifted in her seat, a twinge in her bottom at the thought of being flogged. Yes. Yes, it was something she needed, with or without Ram. She would rather it be with him. But, even if he was not in her life, being dominated kept her monsters at bay. She needed to keep them that way if she was given Grace to foster and raise. She couldn’t have another meltdown like she had today.
“What about Thursday? I can move some things around and be available during the day,” she said.
“Why don’t you come in at one? Dante will meet you at the doors on the first floor. Then he will get you squared away.”
“Okay. Thanks for the call.”
“Not a problem, kitten. I’ll see you at the club.” Quinten hung up. The man kept it short and to the point. Not that it was a bad way of being. It certainly made conversations quick.
Her phone jumped again as it buzzed from another incoming call. This time it was Ram. Sadie stared at his name, unsure what to do about him. Before she could answer, Grace woke up, crying.
She dropped her phone into her purse, the call forgotten—or at least, put on the back burner. “Sweetie, are you okay?”
She stroked a hand over Grace’s head. Grace’s bottom lip quivered, and tears slid down her cheeks.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Sadie asked, praying that the little girl would respond, would say something, anything.
Grace nodded. Still no dice on the talking, but Sadie could manage a bad dream. She’d had them herself quite frequently after her accident. “Oh sweetie, I’m here. You’re safe.” She comforted Grace, much like Ram had done with her not too long ago.
And it made her heart hurt to think he didn’t care about her even a tenth as much as she did about him.
Chapter 22
Sadie had just finished putting her dishes in the dishwasher that night when there was a knock on her door. Wiping her hands on a towel, she headed toward it, wondering who it could be at this hour and whether she should answer it or not. Awareness sizzled up her spine. There was only one person it could be.
“Sadie.” Ram’s deep voice drifted through the door, with another firm knock. Standing before the door, she debated whether she should open it or not.
“I can hear you thinking on the other side. Open up, Sadie. We need to talk,” Ram said in that commanding Dom voice of his that made her wet at the sound. She disliked how much power he had over her because it seemed she didn’t affect him nearly as much.
“Sadie.” He growled it this time, his impatience blaring through the wood.
She could picture him beating down her door if she didn’t open it. Sighing, she unlocked the deadbolt and tugged it open. Ram stood on the other side, looking big and bad in his blue jeans and white tee that emphasized just how ripped he was. His hair was mussed, like he had been running his fingers through it in frustration. Before she could say a word, he muscled his way inside, shutting the door behind him.
Sadie backed away, putting space between them. For all the good it did her. The dratted man prowled after her like a panther let loose from the zoo, who had just found its first meal. She backed up until she hit a wall and could go no further.
Ram bracketed her body, placing a big palm against the wall on either side of her. His face stern with a narrowed gaze, he chewed out, “When a person calls, you answer your damn phone. I’ve been worried sick all day that something happened to you, and have driven by here three times to see if you were home.”
“Ditto. You’re the one who stood me up and didn’t respond. I figured you were done with me—or were dead. I didn’t answer your calls this afternoon when you finally got around to contacting me because I was busy. You’re not the only person in my life.”
“I never said I was. I would like to know what you were doing, or whom.”
Sadie’s pent up anger exploded. She shoved against his firm chest. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think so little of me? It’s your fault I almost had an episode this morning when I didn’t hear back from you. I fought it back, and you know how I did that? By remembering how it felt to have you flog me and use the paddle on me. God, do you not know what not hearing from you did to me? It brought everything back up for me. The waiting, the wondering as I was lying in my hospital bed, completely doped up on pain meds. Unable to recall what I had heard in the ambulance, that I was the only survivor from the accident. How I waited, trying to wade through the pain med haze until the doctor finally came in, a doctor I was friends with at the hospital, who told me they were all gone. You don’t get to do that to me!”
Ram swore. “Shit. I didn’t even consider that, babe. I’m so fucking sorry. My ex-wife called when I was on my way out the door this morning. But that’s no excuse. Jesus, I’m sorry. Forgive me for not thinking of that.” He cupped her face in his hands. His anger deflated and in its place was regret.
He left out that he hadn’t thought of her when his ex-wife had called. But he ran his hands over her shoulders and slipped them around to her back as he tugged her into his arms. She was stiff and unyielding at first, not wanting to cave. But when she was in his arms, her own wrapped around his back willingly, proving she had no barriers or walls against him. In his arms, with his body surrounding her, shielding her, she felt protected and cherished, and she all but melted into his embrace. His scent, that deep exotic male spice that was him, invaded her senses. She couldn’t get past how right it felt, how right he felt. Especially when she didn’t want him to, because today had proved where she stood in the scheme of his life: that she didn’t even warrant a text message in an emergency.
“What did your ex-wife want?”
“To move my kids to London,” he said with a rough sigh.
She shifted her head and looked up at him. “She what? I thought you had a good relationship with her.”
“We do, for the most part. Kelly and I try to keep things on an even keel. When her husband Brad was transferred to Dallas a few years back, she worked out a new visitation schedule so that I wouldn’t miss my kids growing up. But Brad has been transferred again, with a promotion that he can’t turn down. They leave in less than a month. I argued with her for hours today.”
Only to have Sadie not answer the phone. She realized that being involved with a man with kids and an ex-wife was going to be a bit of a dance. But for a guy who rarely showed emotion, his heartache was written all over his face. It would kill him to have his kids that far away.
Sadie suggested, “Why don’t you tell her that you want them to live with you during the school year? It won’t be easy, but it’s obvious you don’t want them far away. Why do they have to go to London?”
“I doubt Kelly would go for it.”
“It’s not going to hurt to ask. She’s the one who is changing things on you, so she should be the one willing to make compromises on this. If she is adamant and says no, then you have a decision to make on whether you stay here and miss them, or move to London.”
Sadie’s heart quivered at the potential loss. Just when she was re-entering the land of the living… The man holding her had a lot to do with that. If he moved to London, she would be crushed. But it wasn’t like she could follow him because there was Grace to consider.
He lowered his forehead to hers, never taking his eyes off her. “Sorry about today. Really. I never meant to hurt you or push you toward an episode. I’m proud of you for working your way out of it. You’ve made progress, good progress.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call this afternoon. I know your kids come first, as they should, and I acted out of hurt feelings,” she admitted.
His hands caressed the leng
th of her back, down to cup her bottom and squeeze the globes. “All’s forgiven. What were you doing this afternoon, by the way? Because I know you weren’t here.”
Because she wanted to get a feel for his thoughts, Sadie told him. Most of it. “I’ve been visiting the daughter of the patient we lost at the hospital. Grace is three, and lost her whole family. She’s hurt and alone in the hospital. And while the pediatric wing is top notch, she didn’t have anyone sitting with her, making sure she was okay not just physically but in other ways too.”
Ram stared at her, a myriad of emotions in his eyes. “You’re fucking amazing, you know that?” he murmured before covering her lips with his.
She moaned into his mouth, needing him. Her hands slid up his chest to his shoulders and finally wound around his neck as she plastered herself to him. Ram kissed her and her brain clicked the off button. The exchange was hot and needy. He guided the kiss, showing her with his mouth that he owned her, body and soul. It left her breathless. With every deft thrust of his tongue against hers, he sent her entire body up in flames. She was being incinerated from his kiss.
Ram lifted her legs up to wrap around his waist and she went willingly. Their time together was dwindling. Neither of them had broached the subject to extend their arrangement past the expiration date. Ram carried her, his lips never leaving hers, and trod into her bedroom, kicking the door closed behind them.
He laid her down on her bed and finally lifted his mouth from hers. He tugged her nightgown off over her head and drew her panties down her legs, leaving her bare to his gaze.
“I will never tire of this sight. You’re fucking gorgeous.”
Ram wasted little time with his clothing before joining her on the bed, positioning his big body between her thighs. He cupped her face between his rough palms.
“I just need you tonight, without the bells and whistles.” Then he slanted his mouth over hers for a torrid duel of tongues.
She loved the feel of his firm chest against her breasts, and the way his pelvis was wedged between her thighs with his hard shaft against her mound. She wriggled her hips, needing him inside her. She was more than fine to go straight past foreplay to the main event. She loved that her hands weren’t restrained and she could touch him. She caressed his back, enjoying the way the muscles flexed and rippled beneath her fingertips, tracing the hard-ridged contours of his obliques down to the two dimples in his lower back before she finally slid her palms over the hard-tight muscles of his ass. She gripped his flesh tight and rocked her hips, his cock gliding through her wet folds.
He growled against her mouth.
She whimpered when he drew her hands off his body and held them prisoner at her sides. His fingers threaded through hers and he lifted his mouth, releasing the bottom lip he’d been sucking on with a gentle nip.
“Please, Ram,” she canted her hips, rolling them up, “I need you inside me, Sir.”
“Then you shall have me.” He fit the crown at her entrance then surged inside, furrowing deep until his balls pressed against her ass.
He groaned low. She gasped at the exquisite pleasure of being so full. He made the darkness go away. Every. Time.
He held her gaze, propping his body up on his elbows, their hands gripped together as he began to move with a slight flexing of his hips. Slowly at first—so slowly, she felt every nerve ending ignite and ripple with pleasure as he filled her so full, she overflowed with him, only to have him withdraw until only the tip remained.
His gaze steadily on hers, he thrust in deep, so deep it felt like he was touching her soul, until she didn’t know where he ended, and she began. Nor did she care, as long as he kept loving her. Sadie rocked her hips, meeting his thrusts. Pleasure spiraled in her system. Heat rose in unending waves.
It was in that moment, Sadie knew that Marsha had been spot on. She wasn’t just falling for Ram. She had already fallen. And the sudden swelling of love inside her made her cry out and moan. “More,” she pleaded.
He shifted and brought her legs up high to wrap around his waist, changing the angle of penetration so that he plunged deeper. And he increased his pace, his hips arching in their pounding rush. She whimpered and writhed beneath him, loving that he had freed her hands.
Their bodies grew slick with sweat. Her hands slid down his back to cup his ass and tried to pull him even deeper inside. He captured her lips, kissing her like she mattered to him as he pounded his cock inside her quaking channel.
It shifted from a slow burn into a thundering race to the finish line—an erotic, heat-infused finish line that glistened with the promise of ecstasy. The orgasm rolled over her. Her hips bucked. She keened into his mouth. Her nails dug into his ass as he frenziedly fucked her. He lowered his face into the crook of her shoulder as he hammered his shaft in hard, brutal digs as he came. His rough groan filled her ears.
When they were spent, they lay together, breaths coming in short, shallow pants as their heartrates returned to normal. She placed a chaste kiss on his shoulder. He was still embedded inside her. And if she had a fairy godmother, Sadie would wish to keep him here with her, to build a little fantasy world where all they did was make love, and eat to refuel their bodies.
But life, real life, wasn’t a fairytale and oftentimes, it wasn’t pretty or easy.
Sadie didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted. She knew she should just come right out and say it. But there was that niggle of fear that life and loss had taught her: to be cautious. That bad things happened not because you were bad or deserved it, but because it was just a random occurrence. Life wasn’t fair; it was gritty and unforgiving.
And she wasn’t ready to lose him. She wanted—no, she needed—more time before it all ended. Because deep down, as much as she wanted to believe that there was a future, she didn’t think he would choose her. He might care for her, but not enough. Not enough to warrant a reply when the shit hit the fan in his world. Sadie wasn’t willing to settle for less than what she wanted. And she realized, she wanted it all. The whole messy, gritty enchilada.
She shifted beneath him, trying to tell him without words that she wanted him to move. Otherwise, she would do something stupid, like tell him how she felt about him. And she didn’t foresee that ending well.
He lifted his face from her shoulder and looked at her, the corners of his sexy mouth upturned. He brushed his lips over hers. “As much as I wish I could stay, I left Angela and Rocky home alone.”
“They seem pretty easy going to me.”
“That’s what you think. They can still fight like rabid dogs that I have to separate.” He gave her another quick kiss before withdrawing from her.
Sadie sat up and watched him climb out of bed and get dressed. For someone who had a fake left foot, you wouldn’t know it by the way he moved, confident and fluid. She marveled that just watching him dress made things ping low in her belly, and she shook her head.
“What?”
“It’s just a shame you have to leave.”
A sexy smirk spread over his lips. “If I could, I would spend the rest of the night fucking you.”
Then why did he want it to end between them when he left to ferry his kids to Dallas? She gave him a smile. “I would like that too. But I know you need to go.”
She slipped out of bed and grabbed her satin robe, then she walked him to her front door. He groaned and pulled her into his arms, giving her a scorching kiss.
“Tomorrow, after the group session, would it be all right if Angela went with me to the hospital? She wanted a tour. It would give you time to get some errands run,” she said.
He pulled her close and stroked a hand down her hair. “Have I thanked you for being so great with my kids?”
“I think you just did,” she teased.
He kissed her goodnight, gave her a scorching look, and then he was gone. Sadie locked the door behind him and headed into her bedroom, shutting off lights as she did. It was a long time before she fell asleep, her mind churning over the last
two weeks, and what to do about her feelings for Ram.
Her last thought before she finally went to sleep was that she hadn’t a clue. All she did know was that her heart was in play, and she was terrified he didn’t feel the same way.
Chapter 23
After the Survivors’ Group on Tuesday, Ram dropped Sadie and Angela off at Saint Mary’s Hospital. Sadie took Angela to the Emergency Room and showed her where the OR was, introducing her to fellow nurses and doctors they passed.
She even took her up to the ICU, where Luc was filling in a shift.
“Sadie, it’s good to see you. And Angela, this is a surprise, where’s your dad?” Luc asked, eyeing Sadie with a raised brow.
Angela spoke first, a blush coloring her cheeks. “Doctor Beauchamp, Sadie was just showing me the hospital. Giving me a tour.”
“Oh really?”
“Angela is thinking about going to nursing school when she graduates from high school,” Sadie filled in.
Luc smiled. “Is that right? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I can show you a few things if you want to follow me. I’m just making my rounds.”
Luc was fantastic with Angela, who was damn near on cloud nine with a dreamy expression on her face, hanging onto every word Luc uttered. And Luc didn’t notice that his friend’s daughter was crushing on him, big time.
After the tour in the ICU, Sadie took Angela down to the cafeteria for lunch. That was where Ram stopped by to pick her up, with Rocky in tow, playing on his phone.
“You want a ride home?” he asked Sadie.
She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m going to go visit Grace for a while.”
He studied her. “If you’re sure. I will see you in the morning.”
In front of his kids, he gave her a tame hug and brushed his lips against her temple before he left. She watched him walk away, the tall, rugged man with his daughter on one side of him and his son on the other. And her heart ached because no matter what she did, she wasn’t part of that unit. She got it—on a cerebral level, she did. It was her heart that was having a hard time with things.