He wrapped the edges of the towel over her, enfolding her while his body heat warmed her side. She could feel his heartbeat in his neck where their skin touched. His heart was beating fast.
Because of her? Because he was holding her?
“I didn’t think you’d be a cuddler,” she murmured.
“Not always.”
“Uh oh, you’re reverting.”
“To?”
“The quiet man. You talked to me during the scene, why not now?”
He inhaled, his chest rising and lifting her with it, then blew out a long, slow breath. “You were quiet towards the end. I think that is not your natural state.”
Alena huffed out a laugh. “No, it’s not. I wonder which one is the real us? Us now, or us in the middle of a scene?”
She used the term “us” deliberately, a psychological trick that would cause him to think of them together.
And she hated herself for the manipulation, however small it might be.
Get over it, you fool.
“You need water.” Alexander cracked the cap of a water bottle and offered it. She thrust one arm out from under the covering and took it. The moment it touched her lips she realized she was parched, and downed half of the large bottle in a matter of minutes.
He accepted the half empty bottle, but instead of capping it, he tipped it, pouring a bit of water onto a washcloth she hadn’t noticed.
“Give me your hand.”
Alexander wrapped his fingers around hers and with the other hand brought the damp towel to her wrist, gently wiping the flesh that had gotten sweaty from the cuffs.
Damn it, he was being so tender. Emotion tightened her throat as a slimy, sick feeling pooled in her stomach.
He carefully wiped the damp cloth over her palm and fingers, all the while cradling her elbow with his other hand.
The tender care made her throat tight with emotion. How could she manipulate him, lie to him, after he’d so tenderly cared for her?
He’s just a good Dom. Good Doms perform aftercare. That’s all this is.
Maybe when he wasn’t touching her, she’d be able to believe those words. She’d have to, because one way or another she was going to get what she needed from him.
“It’s been a long time since a scene, a partner, made me feel this good,” she murmured, and this at least, was true.
“Good?” He laughed softly, and it made his chest rumble against her back.
“Perverse thing that I am, I do consider sitting here on your lap with my ass on fire ‘good’.”
“When was the last time?”
“Too long ago, apparently.” Alena shifted, cuddling tighter against him. “But now…you woke the dragon.”
“Pardon?”
She sat up, pressing both hands against his chest as she twisted, bringing them face to face, so close their noses almost touched. “You go a long time without something—good sex, good wine, good food. You get used to it. Then you have it again, and that need that had fallen asleep—the dragon—wakes up. That’s when you realize you can’t have just one nice meal, one excellent bottle of wine, one night…” Alena let the word trail off and looked away.
“One night that reminds you why you need this,” he said softly. “And all it does is make you desperate for more.”
“Yes, the dragon is insatiable.” She’d hoped he’d laugh, but he remained serious.
“Tomorrow is the last night.”
“Do we…I mean since we…” Alena didn’t have to feign nervousness. She gave Alexander a moment to save her from her own stammering, but he, predictably if disappointingly, was silent.
“Do you want to scene with me again tomorrow night?” Her question hung in the air, heavy and expectant.
Alexander’s lips quirked and he nodded.
“And I want to amend my list.”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t decide now.”
“I know what I want, Alexander.” She used his name deliberately, to remind both of them that the scene was over.
“You do. You chased me.” He sounded bemused.
“Next time, don’t run away.”
Alexander’s gazed moved over her face with a seriousness that was at odds with the playful note she was trying to strike.
“We should not plan for tomorrow. I have undue influence in this moment.”
“I asked you to scene, not the other way around.”
“You are naked in my lap.”
“I’m not naked. I’m wearing this fancy towel.”
He sighed, and his lips twisted as if he were struggling with something. “You plan to amend your list to include sexual elements?”
“Yes, because I’m pretty sure the first thing each of us is going to do when we get back to our hotel rooms is masturbate.”
“And after you pleasure yourself, you might feel differently.”
“Or I’ll fantasize about what you’ll do to me and masturbate more.” Under her hip, she felt his cock twitch.
“I should not.” Alexander was holding himself so stiff and still that his arm and shoulder muscles were straining the fabric of his shirt.
“How about this?” She stroked his shoulder and arm, feeling the muscles slowly soften, his body going limp. “Tomorrow night, if I feel the same way, I’ll wear gray.”
“Gray?”
“They say life isn’t black and white, but I think it’s people who aren’t black and white. I know I’m not always on the side of the angels.”
“You confuse me,” he said softly.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s a…” His face relaxed into a grin. “It’s a gray thing.”
She had him now. “What about you?” she asked. “You might change your mind about having me as a partner. How will I know? Do you have a gray bowtie?”
His lips quirked for a moment. Then his expression became serious once more. “I won’t change my mind.” He pinched her chin, tipping her face up ever so slightly. “Tomorrow night, you’re mine.”
Chapter 5
He wore all gray—steel gray slacks, and a dove-gray shirt. “May I?”
“Oh, I’m hoping you will.” Alena smiled at Alexander as he took a seat on the barstool beside hers.
She’d known he’d wear gray. Well, she’d been relatively certain. Eighty percent at least.
But as he sat, the knot in her stomach eased.
There was only a scattering of people here this early. Lillian, the club’s administrator, was moving briskly around the ballroom/dungeon. Alena had spoken with Lillian when she arrived and changed her checklist restrictions. It was one of the reasons she was so early. In fact, she’d been the first attendee.
“What are you hoping I’ll do?” Alexander’s voice had deepened.
And just like that, Alena’s body started to heat and soften. In the cold light of day she’d wondered if the chemistry between them was real, or if last night had been a fluke.
Now she knew that what was between them was all too real.
“What do you want to do?” she countered.
His brow arched. “Is that carte blanche?”
“And if it was?” Alena leaned toward him, the draped bodice of her silver dress gaping to show the tops of her breasts.
“I would call you a fool.” His tone was serious, killing the playful banter.
Alena sat back in surprise. Needing a minute, she reached for her half-full champagne flute, waiting on the tall cocktail table.
There were four of these cocktail tables, and a few long dinner tables set up to facilitate attendees enjoying a meal. Once the event was in full swing, the food buffet and tables would be removed, while the bar remained open.
At just after eight, it was headed towards dinner time for many Europeans, though her granny would never have served dinner so scandalously late.
Thoughts of Grammaw and home made her shoulders tight. She didn’t know what her grandmother would have thought about who she’d become. She would have b
een…puzzled, Alena decided.
Puzzled but hopefully pleased because Alena had found her place in the world, a way to thrive, and that would have been the most important fact to the woman who raised her.
Alena turned to look at the bar, wanting a minute to school her features. Now that Alexander was here, she needed to bottle up and put aside the contradictory feelings she’d been fighting all day.
“I’ll go.” Alexander stood, turning away from her.
Alena realized she’d been quiet long enough that he thought she’d taken umbrage at being called a fool. She lunged and grabbed the back of his pants.
Alexander made a noise that might have been called a “yelp” of surprise and looked over his shoulder at her.
“Are you going to make me chase you again?” she asked.
“I scared you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Then you are a fool. Because you should be scared.”
Alena tugged on his pants. “What’s wrong, Alexander? Sit down and talk to me.”
He frowned, looking at her as if she were crazy. “You’re…”
“Amazing?” Alena released his pants and arched a brow. “I can’t wait to hear how this sentence is going to end. I assume you wouldn’t be so rude as to call me a fool for the third time.”
Alexander’s frown disappeared as he huffed out a laugh. “You’re surprising.”
“Surprising good, or surprising bad?” Alena asked with narrowed eyes. She wasn’t actually upset. Right now her predominant emotions were fading panic and relief that he hadn’t walked away.
Because you need him for the job. The inner voice was cold and sneering.
Because you want him to top you and fuck you. The second voice was warmer, the voice of her need, her inner submissive.
Alexander slid back onto the stool and swiveled to face her. He braced one foot on the rung of her stool, his thigh brushing hers. Alena grabbed her glass, but before she could take a sip, he plucked the flute from her hand.
“First you insult me, and now you take my drink?”
“I need to know your consent is uninfluenced.” He set her glass down on the table.
“I was sober as a judge when I talked to Lillian.”
“Sober as a judge…” He smiled a little as he tried out the colloquialism.
“Alexander, what’s wrong? We clearly want to play together tonight.” She gestured between his gray clothes and her own silver dress, which was actually bespoke sleepwear. If she slipped off the spaghetti straps, the whole thing would slither to the floor.
“You are so…”
“Outspoken?”
He shook his head. “Honest.”
Oh, that hurt to hear.
“I tell plenty of lies. We all do.”
“Not when you submit to me.” It was an order, and a warning.
“I won’t lie to you in a scene.” Carefully worded, that was a promise she could keep.
Before and after? Well, that was another kettle of fish. Now, and again after the scene, during the aftercare, was when she needed to work him, build a relationship that she could leverage to manipulate him.
She took a sip of her champagne, faux glaring at him to ensure he didn’t attempt to snatch her glass again.
Alexander held up a hand and one of the bartenders came out from behind the bar to take his order.
Once he was done, she tried again.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” The perverse part of it was that she really wanted to know, wanted to understand what was going on in his head. That had nothing to do with the job, and everything to do with their chemistry.
“I didn’t say anything was wrong.”
“Of course you didn’t say it.” Alena waved one hand in the air. “You don’t talk. But I can read your body language, just like you read mine last night.”
“You think you know me?” There was bite to his words, and a bit of bitterness.
“No, I don’t know you.” Lie. “But I know that the man who topped me last night wasn’t this angry, so something happened, and I want to know what.”
“And if I told you?”
“Then I would…do absolutely nothing but listen.”
He laughed, and finally the tension in his shoulders relaxed. A second later the bartender arrived with his drink, a glass of red, which he gently tapped to her flute.
They sipped in companionable silence, though it took a good measure of self-control to keep from leaning towards him like a moth to flame.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you today.” Alexander’s low statement caught her by surprise.
Alena lowered her glass, which she’d had halfway to her mouth. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent most of my day alternately remembering and fantasizing.”
Alexander swiveled to face her, once again bracing a foot on the rung of her stool.
Alena turned too, the outside of her thigh pressed to the inside of his.
They regarded one another, two strangers with a night of shared intimacy to bind them, the specter of what they would share tonight looming over them.
“The more I thought about you, the…harder…my fantasies got.” Alexander took a sip of wine. “No, not harder…darker.” His gaze met hers. “More brutal.”
Alena shivered, then reached for her glass, trying to cover up how much his words affected her.
“Alena, you should not submit to me.”
“Will you ignore my limits? My safeword?”
“No. But you’ve already said you changed those limits. That’s dangerous.”
“I changed them to add in sexual contact. Clearly you and I are attracted to one another, which doesn’t always happen between play partners.”
“True.” He ran his hand through his hair, brow furrowed.
Alena slid off her stool, standing so her hip was in contact with his thigh, her pelvis almost touching his stool.
“Alexander, I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be.”
“Then you should be afraid of me. too.”
He raised his other foot, bracing it so she was caged between his legs. “I should?”
“Yes.”
He had no idea how true that was. She reached up and pulled the silver clip from her hair, letting it spill over her shoulders. “After all, I’m the one who keeps hunting you down.”
“True.” His gaze roamed over her head and shoulders, lingering on her breasts for a moment.
“Today when I was touching myself, I was thinking about you.” Alena leaned in enough that her breasts brushed his chest and she was able to whisper in his ear. “Did you think about me while you stroked your cock?”
Alexander growled—an alarming, sexy sound—and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her back.
Had she gone too far? Her thoughts scrambled as she tried to figure out how to backtrack. She shouldn’t have been so aggressive. He liked submissive women, and while he’d seemed to respond well to her pursuing him last night, maybe—
Alexander hooked his fingers under the straps of her dress and yanked them off her shoulders.
Alena gasped, instinctively raising her hands to press the bodice to her chest, halting its descent.
“Drop your arms.” It wasn’t a request, but a command.
Again she shivered, even as she dropped her arms to her sides.
The satin slithered down her body, the friction hardening her nipples. As she stood trapped between his legs, naked except for a red-satin g-string, she had a sudden foreboding that what happened tonight would change her.
Alexander relaxed even more, as if the sight of her submissively naked calmed him.
“Your safeword.”
“Sherman.”
He looked around the dungeon, caught Lillian’s attention, and nodded to her. She inclined her head and hustled out.
“We’re playing now?” Alena asked softly.
“Not officially. Not until I have your list.”
“Then I’m going to keep talking to you. Keep asking you what’s wrong. Why you think I should be scared and run away.”
He stroked her stomach with the back of his fingers. “If you ran, I would chase you.” It sound like a threat.
“I chased you,” she reminded him.
“True. But if you ran from me, when I caught you I would punish you.”
The mention of punishment made her breath catch.
“You should be afraid, because every time I find myself distracted by thoughts of you, my plans become harsher.”
Alena felt a stirring of true fear, the words more impactful while she was mostly naked and trapped by his legs. He was larger than her, stronger than her. In a pure physical contest, she would lose.
“Scared?”
“Should I be?” she countered.
Alexander reached out and cupped her neck, running his thumb up and down her throat, from the notch where collarbones met sternum, to the underside of her jaw.
“If you knew the things I’d imagined, you would be.”
“Tell me what you imagined.”
His thumb shifted, pressing against the pulse point on the right side of her neck.
“If I do, you’ll run.”
“I won’t. And even if I did, you’d chase me.”
“Don’t run, then. Use your safeword. Walk away.”
“Who are you trying to scare, Alexander? Me? Or yourself?”
“Scare myself?”
“Do you scare yourself?”
He frowned, his thumb once more idly running up and down the front of her neck. “Perhaps I do. No man wants to admit they’re the beast rather than the knight.”
The mention of “knight” made her wince internally, since she’d dubbed him the black knight in the game she was currently playing.
She met men who reveled in being “the beast.” She’d suffered at their hands.
Alexander wasn’t like them. “You are most definitely a knight.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. Your armor is tarnished, and you might ignore the rules of courtly love…” Alena put her palms on his chest, the first time she’d dared to touch him like this, though she’d been snuggled against him last night in aftercare.
Alexander stared at her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. It was both remote and hopeful. As if he were simultaneously distancing himself from what she was saying, while also hanging on each word.
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