Being Me (Inside Out #2)(41)

“Enough, Ms. McMillan. Tell Chris he’s done a good job of arming you with reasons for me to agree, but make sure you bring me back clients.” He hangs up without saying good-bye and I hold out the phone and stare at it.

Chris laughs and takes it from me. “Stop looking like it will bite.” He pulls me beneath him. “I believe I owe you an orgasm or two.”

“Six,” I correct. “One for every time you spanked me.”

His eyes twinkle. “Five. You had one already.”

He leans in to kiss me and I press my fingers to his mouth. “If you make good on this, you can spank me again.”

“I’ve always enjoyed a good challenge.” His mouth covers mine and I am quite certain that no matter what the final number is, this is a challenge I can’t lose.

? ? ?

Three orgasms later, I am naked when Chris carries me to his bathroom and sets me on the edge of the sink. Chris heads to the towel closet and I study the dragon tattoo, thinking about the wounded, lost teen he’d been when he’d gotten it. How young was he when he entered the BDSM world, and what is he keeping from me?

“Have you ever had a reaction to the adrenaline rush like I did tonight?” I ask, hoping to get him talking.

He freezes as he’s about to toss the towels over the top of the shower, and it’s clear I’ve hit a nerve. “No,” he says, completing his task, and glancing at me before opening the shower. “I told you. I’m always in control. I take people for the ride. I don’t go on it myself.” He turns on the water.

“But how do you do that and have someone inflict . . . pain? Isn’t that what you said you need?”

“Needed,” he corrects, walking over to me and lifting me off the counter. “And sex is never involved.”

“You just have someone beat you?” I choke out, appalled.

“It’s past history,” he says, pulling me toward the shower and inside, the warm water enveloping us. He molds me to him and stares down at me. “If I need to get lost, I’ll get lost in you.” His mouth comes down on mine, and the kiss is laced with the torment and pain he never lets me see. He is so much more damaged than I’ve imagined, and I wonder what I have yet to discover about my talented, beautiful artist. I wonder if I will ever truly reach him, if I will ever truly be enough to stop the pain inside him. If I dare love him for fear I won’t be . . . but then, it’s too late. I already do love him and I yearn to tell him so, to have him feel the same way. But there are other things I must confess first—things sure to bring me more pain than the whip he’s vowed to never use on me.





Fifteen




I do not like public floggings, but I don’t have a say in the matter. He is my Master, and I’ve agreed to do as he bids. It’s better than when he shares me, though. I hate it when he shares me and I don’t care that he says it’s to please me. It pleases him, not me, as do the many watchful eyes I endured tonight. The flogging went on endlessly, with me tied to a post while he circled me, paying equal attention to every part of my body. When it was over, my nipples were sore, my back raw, and my backside red. I was upset. I do not know why tonight was different than any other night, but it was, and I was. And then . . . he was.

I am not sorry it happened. It pleased him, and after the flogging he seduced me as perfectly as he’d punished me. And as I sit here writing this, I love him more than I ever have, but I can’t help but wonder what price I will pay for such an emotion. He’s made it clear there is no room for such things in his life, and mine too, for that matter. He believes claims of love complicate life and make people react irrationally. He says there is no such thing as love, only different shades of lust.

I blink awake with Rebecca’s journal entry in my head, and the soft glow of light in the room drags me from the hauntingly provocative entry. The dream fades, and my lips curve as I realize that Chris is holding me. His body is curved around mine, one of his gifted, artistic hands on my hip, and for once I’m not thinking of his talent on a canvas, but his skill at pleasing me. A girl could get used to falling asleep after being thoroughly sated and waking up with a big hunk of hot man wrapped around her.

“I like you in my bed. I think I’ll keep you here.”

My smile widens and I turn around to face him, finding his hair a sexy, rumpled mess partially because of my fingers. “It’ll be hard to catch our flight from bed.”

“I mean ever. Move in with me, Sara.”

I blanch. “What?”

He caresses my cheek. “You heard me. Move in with me.”

“You’ve only known me a few weeks.”

“I know enough.”

But he doesn’t. “You didn’t even invite women to your bed before me and you want me to live with you?”

“They weren’t you.”

I am warmed by his words, tempted to dive into a deep blue sea of risk with Chris, and I would, if not for my secret. “Chris—”

“Don’t answer now. Think about it over the weekend.” His cell phone rings and he rolls over to grab it from the nightstand. “Morning, Katie.”

I sit up against the headboard at the mention of his godmother and watch as he hits the remote control to open the electronic blinds over the window. Slowly, the gorgeous glow of the San Francisco skyline comes into view but I can’t appreciate it. I am reeling from the knowledge that I am out of time. I have to tell him everything and I am not ready.