Being Me (Inside Out #2)(92)

“My passport—”

He reaches into his pocket, then pulls out my passport and tosses it on the bed. “It came while I was out of town.” He pushes to his feet and he still hasn’t touched me. Why won’t he touch me?

This is too sudden. My head is spinning. “Chris, please. Let’s talk about this.”

“No. No talking. No in between. All or nothing, Sara. I’m offering that to you, and you have to decide if you really want it. There’s a reservation in your name with American Airlines. I’ll be on the plane. I hope you will be, too.” He walks away and the door opens and shuts behind him.

He’s gone, leaving me with confirmation of what I’ve already sensed in him. There is more to his pain than I know, more secrets to be revealed. He’s left me with another one of his tests, and I have only a few hours to answer. Not knowing what secrets he holds, am I willing to take this risk with him?





Thursday, August 2, 2012

I told him good-bye today, but he didn’t believe I meant it. His lips curved in that sensual way they do, and he murmured wicked promises of pleasure in my ear. But this time those promises weren’t enough. He looked shocked when I told him that pleasure was the fa?ade he used to hide from love. I saw something deep in his eyes, a flash of torment. And I knew I was right, that there is more to him than he allows me to see. I’m not blind anymore, though. I know now that I’m not the woman who can reveal the man beneath the Master. I’m simply a part of his journey and he of mine.

Ah, but there is a part of me that hopes he will miss me. That maybe we will find each other again someday. I didn’t dare see him again, or touch him again, for fear I’d be weak and change my mind. I left him a handwritten note on his desk, and said all there was left to say. “Good-bye—Love, Rebecca”





Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peek at Lisa Renee Jones’s spicy final installment to the Inside Out trilogy

Revealing Us

Available September 2013 from Gallery Books





The elevator opens and he waits for me to enter, and I do. With fast steps, I rush inside and whirl around to confront him. He stalks forward, and this time he doesn’t avoid looking at me, his expression etched with pure determination and some raw, dark emotion I cannot fully name. I don’t get the chance to try.

Before a word is out of my mouth, and I have many intended, the bags he’s holding hit the floor and he has pressed me back against the wall. My purse tumbles from my arm and his powerful thighs encase mine; his hips mold my hips. I gasp with the rough tangle of his fingers in my hair and the blaze of his eyes as they capture mine. I am angry with him. I am aroused. And when his mouth claims my mine, his tongue slicing past my lips with a delicious lick followed by another, demanding my response, I am at his mercy. My fingers curl around his T-shirt and I eliminate the tiny space between us, molding myself against him. He owns me and, considering how the past thirty minutes have gone, this terrifies me, but I’m all in with him. I decided that long ago. I am his to command, moaning with the taste of him, sultry and male, on my tongue.

His hand sweeps up my side, fingers flexing over my ribs, palm covering my breast. My nipple tightens in anticipation of the tug that follows and I moan, my need to touch him almost unbearable. I reach for his shirt, intending to push beneath, but he doesn’t let me.

His fingers close around my wrist and I know he is in that dark place, where he doesn’t let me touch him—but I am in a dark place, too, on edge, ripe with my anger and unwilling to be submissive to him. Challenging his silent message of control, I reach for his shirt with my free hand, and he shackles my other wrist as well and tears his mouth from mine. Our eyes lock, the sound of our heavy breathing filling the air, and the motion of the elevator I didn’t even know was moving sways our bodies. The floor vibrates slightly beneath our feet and I sense that the doors behind him slide open, but still we stand there, staring at each other.

“They don’t get to tell you who I am,” he says. His voice is a rough growl, low and tight. “I do. I tell you and I show you, so you get the truth—not their fabrication of it.” A muscle in his jaw flexes. “Understand?”

My anger and fear dissolve instantly. He’s not pulling away from me. He’s angry that Amber and Tristan might taint my view of him, when he’s already convinced I’ll hate him before this discovery process is over.

“Do you understand?” he demands again when I apparently don’t answer fast enough.

This time I don’t fight the bark of his order, understanding the desperation beneath its surface. “Yes. Yes. I—”

His fingers tangle in my hair again, tugging my head back in that deliciously rough way he does. His dark side calls to me and I no longer fight answering.

“Do not go there without me again.” His voice is gravelly; raw like the emotion I’ve seen in his face and tasted on his lips.

“My going there wasn’t what you think it was.”

His eyes flash with disapproval. He is not pleased, or accepting of what I’ve said, and his mouth closes down on mine, punishing, controlling. His tongue thrusts and tastes before he repeats his words, his fingers stroking my breasts, teasing my nipple. “Do not go there again without me, Sara.”

“I won’t.” The words come out a hoarse groan as his hand strokes a path up and down my side, and back over my breast. His touch is heavy, the air thick, and I’m certain he isn’t convinced. “I won’t go back without you.”