I Belong to You (Inside Out #5)(6)

“If we’re clear up to this point,” I reply, sliding the contract across the table, “then you understand why it’s so important that we’re equally clear on what our relationship is or isn’t going forward.”

Her eyes hold mine and she swallows hard, before her gaze drops to the contract. She stares at the first line, “Master and Submissive Contract,” for two beats and then calmly hands it back to me. “I told you. I will never be your submissive.”

“This is how I operate.” A contract is about my responsibility for her well-being, being in charge of everything that she is and does. Yet that’s not really what I want right now. I want lust, desire. Short, intense BDSM sessions that let me exert the control I need in the rest of my life, strengthening me—but right now I’m too far to the other side to make that happen.

“This is how you operate,” she repeats slowly.

“Yes. The only way.”

“It’s not how I operate.” She stands up, in full rejection mode.

I push to my feet as well. “Have you ever been a submissive?” I ask, intentionally pushing her buttons. “Did you have a bad experience, and that’s why you’re resisting?”

She makes a frustrated sound. “All you need to know is that I will never be one with you.”

She walks away and I have to clamp down on a sudden urge to grab her, pull her to me, and demand to know what the f*ck she meant. She is not for you, I remind myself. She is not for you.

She puts the desk between us. “I’d like to get back to my work now.”

Her voice quivers with hurt—not my intention, and proving how bad this could get if it continued. And what’s bad for us would also be bad for my mother. Slipping the contract back into my briefcase, I go for the close, standing directly across from her and pinning her in an unwavering stare. “Submitting to me would teach you things about yourself that I know, and you don’t.”

The hurt disappears, replaced by red-hot anger blazing from her eyes. “You know about me? Seriously? You don’t even know about you right now.”

Goal achieved. Believing that I’m an * lets her hold her head high; lets this end on her terms.

I press my hands on the desk, leaning toward her. “Oh, Ms. Smith,” I purr, “you’d be shocked to know just how well I know myself. You’d be even more shocked to know how well I know you. After f*cking under my rules just once, I’d own you.”

She presses her hands to the desk and leans forward, too, yet I see her bottom lip quiver. “Fucking me,” she bites out, “pleasing me, doesn’t make you own me.”

My blood heats with desire. “Sounds like a challenge to me.”

“One you’d fail,” she assures me.

“Should I remind you yet again, how easily I made you beg me to lick your—”

“Don’t,” she warns calmly. “Don’t keep pushing me.” She straightens her spine and crosses her arms. “I’m done. We’re done.” She sits down and pulls her folder in front of her. “I’m getting back to work.”

Control. She wants it desperately, but we both know it’s mine. I’ve won, despite my body’s scream that the only win would be bending her over the desk and burying myself inside her. I curve my lips as if I’m amused at her efforts, though I’m not. “Carry on, Ms. Smith,” I say, arrogantly enough to singe every control-freak nerve ending she owns as I turn and head to the door.

As my hand touches the knob, she says, “Objective achieved.”

The simple words are as good a power play as any I’ve ever delivered. Intrigued despite myself, I turn and arch a brow. “Objective achieved?”

“You had a message to give me tonight, and I got it. You love your family too much to risk letting us become a problem. It won’t. As I’ve said before, we didn’t happen.”

We didn’t happen. She’d challenged me with those words right before I’d followed her to a restaurant bathroom and proved I could make her say, “Mr. Compton, please lick my *.” I didn’t like her words then, and I don’t like them now.

“Denial is weakness,” I tell her. “It means that I’ll have you tied up and tormented before you know it. I’ll own you before you can blink. You need to come up with a better plan, or you’ll belong to me in no time. Unless that’s what you really want.”

I leave, giving her no chance to reply.

Crystal . . .

He disappears into the hallway, his musky, spicy, deliciously provocative scent lingering. After his footsteps fade, my shoulders finally slump and my breath gushes from my lips. I knew this was coming, and thought I was prepared. I’d spent the last few days telling myself that I’d welcome the day that he pushed me away, because he’d gotten under my skin. But I hadn’t been prepared for his trying to turn me into a mere contract that expires—and it scares me that he still affected me after he gave it to me. He’s still everything I don’t want, and somehow everything I crave.

No. No. I shove off the desk. The man I just dealt with is not the man I crave. He is not the man I’ve known these past weeks, the man I’ve started to fall for in a huge way. The one who has a tender side, who’s vulnerable yet strong.

This man is cold and hard, an arrogant *, and I should welcome these realizations. Falling in love with a man who’s grieving for a woman he’d loved and lost is nothing but a heartache. And Mark Compton is not a man you let tie you up, or he’s right: He’ll own you. I’ve worked too hard to find myself and my freedom to let that happen.