“Kayden,” I breathe out, emotion tightening my chest, so many emotions I cannot even begin to name them. Things I’ve felt in the past and present, things I know and do not know, colliding and erupting inside me. I need him and I know he needs me, and I have never felt such a thing with anyone, ever.
“Not can’t,” he amends. “I won’t lose you. Do you understand?” He doesn’t give me time to answer, or to let my fears that I will become his weakness take shape. Already he is kissing me, deeply, fiercely, kissing me and lifting me as he does. And even this, the way he holds me and I cannot hold him, not with my hands behind my head and my forearms taped. So I just savor the taste of him, of us together, and all we are here and now.
He settles me on the couch, my hands going to his chest as he comes down on top of me, lifting himself long enough to pull his shirt over his head, the sweet weight of his big, muscular body quickly returning to settle onto mine. “Lace your fingers behind your head again,” he orders, helping me move my hands to rest there. “I don’t want you to hurt your wrist. Keep them there.”
“Are you still making a point?”
“If you have to ask, I haven’t made it.”
“Is that point that you have control and we aren’t going to Paris?” I ask.
“No. That is not the point. At all. Now. Don’t move your hands.”
“And if I do?” I ask, challenging him to give me everything, to take everything including the memories I want to erase. To show me how he erases his. “Is this where you show me that dirty sex you say is your escape?”
“Is that what you want, or what you fear?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Kayden. Any part of you.”
“Good. Then you know this isn’t about control.”
“Then what is it about?”
He leans in, pressing his cheek to mine, his breath warm on my neck. “What do you think I should do to you if you move your hands?”
“Un-tape me so I can touch you.”
“That’s not a punishment for you or me.”
“Why do we need to be punished?”
“No risk, no reward,” he says. “And if you move your hands, you’ll pay a price.” He nips my ear, a rough bite that has me yelping, and then moaning as his tongue strokes over the offended skin. “And I’ll use my imagination as to what that will be.” My mind conjures the memory of him promising all kinds of naughty ways that he escapes with sex, but before they run away with me he declares, “You have on too many clothes.” And just like that, he is sliding down my body, leaving me breathless with my imagination, trying to decide where his will lead us. And for reasons I don’t question, I really want to move my hands right now. But it’s his hands that dominate, his that cover my breasts, in what becomes a tease of a caress, as he slides down my body, his tongue doing a quick stop at my nipple for a sultry swirl, which I feel everywhere he isn’t touching and I hope he will be soon. But there is no time to savor his touch or hope for where it will follow next. He answers that question when his palms find the naked skin at my waist, branding me, while his lips press to the bare skin above my jeans, his fingers working down my zipper.
“I should help you,” I whisper, but he dismisses that idea with actions.
I blink and he’s not only pulled down my jeans, but my boots and socks are gone. Suddenly, I am naked, hands over my head, breasts thrust in the air, and he is standing over me, towering over me. Tall and broad, he is power and male dominance, while I am exposed, vulnerable. “What do you feel?” he asks.
“Naked,” I answer honestly. “In every way. Can you please be naked, too?”
His lips, those sexy, sometimes brutally arousing lips, quirk on the sides, and too many seconds pass before he moves. He sits on the arm of the couch, taking his time to remove his boots, leaving me naked, as I have proclaimed myself in every way, thinking about that promise of a price to pay. Wondering why I want to move my hands and find out what it is. Finally, he stands, giving me his back, and suddenly I’m staring at the circle of skulls tattooed there that now includes two new ones. One for my mother and one for my father, both of whom have joined his family, including his godfather and fiancée, who were slaughtered by Niccolo.
A burn starts in my chest and I have a flashback of my father lying in his own blood. My breathing turns shallow, and I fight some place my mind wants to go, thankful when Kayden slides his pants and underwear down. Suddenly I have a view of his tight, perfect backside to focus on, and a moment later he’s turned around and there is much to appreciate. His broad shoulders, light brown hair sprinkling a perfect chest that tapers to rippling abs and long, powerful thighs. A thick, jutted cock that is somehow a part of his power, and of course, so much a part of his incredible, forceful masculinity.
He returns to the end of the couch. “Now how do you feel?” he asks.
“Hot,” I whisper. “I feel very, very hot.”
“What if I told you I was going to spank you and clamp your nipples?”
If I was hot moments before, I am hotter now, heat gathering with slick arousal between my thighs. “I’d say you don’t have any clamps.”
“I’m going to spank you and clamp you.”
I’m shocked at just how aroused I am in this moment, just how curious I am about what he will do to me. Just how much I want the escape that he’s claimed sex can be for him. An escape chosen with him. “I’ve never . . . I don’t . . .”
“I do. I will.”
Butterflies flutter in my belly. “Can you just do it now so I don’t have to be nervous?”
“Are you afraid, Ella?”
“No,” I say, meaning it. “I am not afraid.”
I blink and we’re face to face, his back against the couch, his shaft thick and hard between my thighs. He pulls my hands between us and he cradles me, his palm on my backside. “I told you I would spank you.”
“I’m quite clear on your tastes, Kayden. It’s not the first time you’ve . . . done that.”
“This is different than before,” he warns. “This is a real spanking, not the pats from before.”
“Those were pats?”
“Yes. Those were what I call pats. You still—”
“Yes,” I say firmly.
“After all he did to you, even beat you, you’d let me do that?”
“You’re not him.”
“Why aren’t you afraid, Ella?”
“Because you’re not him.” And then it hits me, the message he’s getting across. “I trust you completely. There’s your point. But I told you that I trust you. I think it’s you who doubts me.”
“No. I don’t doubt your trust. Why do you trust me? And don’t say it’s because I’m me.”
“You would never hurt me. Because you’re . . . safe.”
“Yes,” he says, his free hand brushing my hair back and tilting my face to his. “Safety comes first. It allows you to keep fighting the battles that need to be fought.”
Suddenly I am squeezing my eyes shut, and I’m back in time, in a gym with my father.
We are facing each other, circling on the mat. “Defend yourself at all costs,” he says, throwing a punch that should hit me, but he stops short.
“Damn it, child.” He knocks me to the ground and stands over me. “You could be dead right now. Your mother could be dead right now.”
“Don’t say that,” I hiss.
“Because of you, she could be dead,” he says. “Defend yourself at all costs.”
A growl escapes my throat and I stand back up. He throws a punch and I duck under it, kneeing him in the stomach. He catches my leg and I go down again.
He stands over me. “What do you do now?”
“Ella.”
I blink and the moment I look into Kayden’s eyes, he presses inside me. I gasp, and then pant, the feel of him stretching me, of pulling m
e down his hard shaft, stealing any thought or worry. “Now you’re with me,” he says. “That’s where I want you. With me and safe.”
I lift my bound hands and touch my fingers to his face. “I like that I am safe with you. But you are safe with me, too. I want to be that for you. You know that, right?”
His forehead finds mine. “Ah, woman, what you do to me. Yes. I know I am safe with you, in ways only you understand.” He reaches up and rips the tape, leaving it connected to my arms but freeing me. I immediately dive my fingers into the thick waves of his light brown hair.
“That means I need to be that person you can escape with,” I say, tightening my grip on his hair. “I need, I want, to be the person you escape with.”
“You already are.”
“I mean that dirty sex you talked about.”
“Ella—”
I press my lips to his, lingering there a moment, our bodies gliding just a little left and right. “I want that part of you. I want it to be a part of me. I want us to be that . . . complete.”
He cups my backside, pulling me farther against him. “You really want this?”
“Yes. I want to escape too. With you.”
He does a slow slide in and out of me, his lips brushing mine, his teeth nipping my lip. “Feel my hand,” he says, squeezing my backside.
“Yes. I feel everything.”
“I’m going to keep caressing,” he says, rubbing the sensitive skin, “and fucking.” He drives into me. Slow. Gently. He slides his hips back and forth, moving our bodies together. “Then, I’m going to spank you. Three times. Not hard, but not soft. And then we’re going to fuck hard.”
“Can you just do it now so I don’t have to be nervous?”
“If I do that, there’s no anticipation.”
“Right,” I say. “Anticipation.”
He kisses me, a long swipe of his tongue, followed by another, our bodies moving, his hand caressing. “Anticipation,” he murmurs, “is good.”
“My heart is racing,” I confess. “Really fast.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Promise? No. I know you won’t.”
“Easy, sweetheart,” he says, dragging his cock slowly back and then driving into me. “What are you thinking right now?”
I gasp. “Thinking? I’m . . . not.”
He drives into me again and squeezes my cheek. “Now?”
“That felt good.”
He does it again. “And that?”
“Better.”
He kisses me again and then says, “Now, sweetheart. One, two, three.”
“Now? I—”
He smacks my backside, with a firm, flat palm that bites sharply, and a roar of sensations erupts inside me, my sex clenching his cock, air lodging in my lungs. Already another smack comes, and then another. Then Kayden is kissing me, wild, crazy kissing me, and our bodies are melded together, the world falling away. There is this deep burn in my body, in my entire existence, that needs to be closer to him. That needs him to drive harder and faster. I have never been so lost, so explosive, and I lose everything but the sensations. Strokes. Grinds. Touches. Kisses. And then suddenly reality is spinning and fading in and out, my body stiffening. And then I am tumbling into oblivion, quaking from within. Kayden cups my head and leans into me, a low groan escaping his lips, rough and sexy, before he’s shuddering, shaking.
Slowly his body eases, and so does mine, the present returning, and awareness with it. I am limp, completely, utterly sated, my leg resting on his hip, when I don’t even remember it being there. Seconds tick by, our breathing all that fills the air, and everything comes back to me. The slow caresses, the sting of my backside. The absolute lust I felt in the wake of that sting.
Kayden cups my cheek, tilting my face to his. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Did I—”
“Hurt me? Scare me? No, you did not.”
He studies me, then, “Would you—”
“Do it again? Yes, I would.” My hand flattens on his chest. “I can’t explain it, and I know that was barely anything, but it was intimate in ways that I couldn’t be with anyone else. In ways I thought that I would never be with anyone, after Garner Neuville. You are somehow dangerous and sexy and still safe, and I don’t know how that’s even possible.”
His eyes darken, some emotion I cannot name flashing in their depths, and then he kisses me hard and fast, before he eases my leg down and reaches over to the table. He relaxes beside me again with a tissue that he presses between us, slipping it where he had been. But already he is pulling me closer again, maneuvering to his back, with my head on his chest. We melt into the couch and each other, a blanket of warmth wrapping around us, and I can almost feel our bond growing. This is what safe feels like. But even as I try to revel in this moment, there’s a nagging feeling that when we leave this room, we are no longer safe.
“Ella,” Kayden says, and I wonder if he feels it too.
“Yes?”
He rolls me to my back, one arm bracketing me, light brown hair draping his forehead. Those blue eyes becoming warm in the way they do only for me. “I want you to be my wife.”
I suck in air, shocked when perhaps I should not be. I love him. He loves me. And yet I can’t seem to make myself say the magic word: Yes.
five
sara
Tuesday, February 24th
Writing this entry is rather surreal considering it’s only hours after I spoke to Ella, confirming she’s alive. Alive! I cannot believe it. As silly as it seems as I write this now, I never said it out loud, nor put ink to paper, for fear I’d somehow jeopardize my chance of ever seeing her again. But back to why this is surreal. Well, I guess there are many reasons, but ultimately one. It was Ella who handed me a journal in the first place. Not my journal, but Rebecca’s, a woman I didn’t know then, but now . . . now I feel as if she is a part of me. Rebecca certainly changed my life. Her words touched my heart, my soul. Her words scared me enough for me to look for her, and while I didn’t find her, I did find Chris. And Chris is most certainly a part of me.
And that all came about because Ella became obsessed with Storage Wars, and decided to auction hunt during last summer’s break. She found Rebecca’s journal in a storage unit, obsessing over it before I did, and then leaving it with me the night she abruptly left for Paris to elope with a man she barely knew. And since a journal was the last thing Ella and I shared before our call today, somehow writing in one now that I’ve found her again seems profoundly well timed. That journal changed my life..
So with all of this in mind, I’m attempting to start my own journal. Again. I always feel weird about exposing myself on the page, but this time I’m committing because Rebecca’s fears, dreams, and life in general drove me to be better. And I think I’ve grown enough since meeting her on that first page I read to make that growth come from reading my own fears and insecurities on the page. And if I share them with Chris, because I am able to with him, who knows where that will lead us . . .
So where are we now? I am sitting in Chris’s Paris studio, curled inside the nook in front of the window where he was painting me just two hours ago. He’s back to painting. “Take Me to Church” is still playing on repeat in the background, while he works on one of his Underground Tom paintings, all of which have been dark, and no doubt inspired by the recent and past tragedies of his life, as well as his fear that part of his life will somehow touch me and us. He is broken in many ways, as dark as those paintings, but somehow that part of him collides with all the others and equals perfection to me and the canvas. He started by painting me, quite literally, and I’m not talking about the canvas. I’m wearing his shirt now, but beneath it, I have paint all over my body. My God, the things that man does to me!
One minute he was kissing me, the next my hands were bound and
I was at the center of the studio, on the floor, his brush, hands, and mouth driving me wild. Controlling me the way certain triggers make him want to control everything around us, and yet he manages to keep those moments naked and raw. And somehow, I like it when he controls me. The control freak in me stopped fighting that months ago. I like it. I love it. He might dominate in those intimate times, but I am never as free in life as I am then, when I don’t have to be anything but his woman.
But going back to how the need for control started today, or rather, why it started . . .
The minute he’d heard I might be in danger, I knew it would be a trigger for him, for which he’d need a release, which for Chris used to mean pain. I still can’t believe how he’d . . . I can’t write it. I just . . . can’t. Now, his release is sex. Hot, amazing sex, and this time it included binding my hands, painting my body, and teasing me incessantly. Teasing both of us, because when we finally . . . it was explosive. This is how he heals now. How we heal.
We.
I like that word.
Wife.
Husband.
I like those words, too, though there are still no white picket fences for Chris and me. I’ll happily take the many shades of perfect imperfection that define Chris Merit. But I really want Ella to have her version of the white picket fence. And I know she’s not the simple happy schoolteacher she played at being. I saw her own shades of imperfection because they spoke to mine. It’s why we connected and understood each other, beyond what we dared speak to one another. But maybe we will now. I just want the chance for us to get that close. I really need her to be okay, and my gut says she’s not. The way it said Rebecca was not.
ella
“This is where you say ‘yes,’ sweetheart,” Kayden says. “This is where you agree to be my wife.”
“Wife,” I say. “I never thought . . . but I like how that sounds.” I have recovered from the shock of his proposal enough to know why I’m hesitating to accept. “But there are so many reasons—”
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