No in Between (Inside Out #4)(48)

“Before Ricco showed up, I had a panic attack in the restaurant. I don’t know why it happened. I hid in the bathroom and pulled myself together. I haven’t been myself since Ava attacked me. I think you know that.”

“And you couldn’t just tell me this? You ran, Sara.”

“No, I didn’t. That’s what you’re not getting—or I’m not getting across. I was trying to make sure you don’t run.”

“Baby, I’m not running. I never have.”

“But you just tried to get me to, over and over. It’s the same thing, Chris. You’re finally letting me into those darker places you go. I finally feel like I could win over the whip, but I see the moments when you fear my seeing the part of you it controls. I don’t want you to shut me out because you think I’m like Amber.”

He drags me to him. “You are not Amber. You will never be like her.”

My fingers wrap his wrist. “I know you want to protect me, and I love you for that more than you know.”

“Yet too easily, you found a reason to shut me out tonight. Trust isn’t a fair-weather friend. It’s about a willingness to be vulnerable and exposed.”

“And I am willing to do that. That’s why I’m here now.”

He searches my face, and I don’t know what he looks for, what he needs, or what he finds. He releases me abruptly. “Hold out your hands and lace your fingers together.”

Heat rushes through me with the certainty that I’m about to fully understand the painting he’s created of me. This is him sending me a message. He’s not holding back. My confession, as incomplete as it is, has changed nothing. I offer him my arms, aware as I haven’t been in the past few minutes of my naked body, my breasts pressed together.

Chris reaches into his back pocket and produces a roll of art tape, using it to wrap my wrists. Task complete, he bends my elbows and presses my wrists to my chest, his fingers covering the bindings. He has become dark Chris, the dominant Master who never shows emotion; the Chris who arouses me in ways I would never believe a man could.

“Sit down,” he orders, and the way he manages such force with what is no more than a whisper stirs heat low in my body.

My throat is dry and my heart beats so loudly I am certain Chris can hear. I squat and he follows me down, steadying me so I don’t fall without the use of my hands. “All the way,” he murmurs, gently nudging me until my bare backside is on the floor.

He angles my knees up toward my chest, with my feet out enough to stabilize my body. His long lashes lower, half-moons on his cheeks, and I sense him struggling with what has passed between us. He knows I need to see he won’t hold back, but this isn’t just for me. I think he really needs this, too, for me to show him, not tell him, how much I trust him.

Chris tapes my ankles and then throws the roll over his shoulder. My nerve endings are so alive, so on edge that the roll hits the ground like a thundering drum that seems to radiate through the room, through my body. His hands come down on my knees and the touch sweeps over me, awakening nerve endings in the most intimate and unforgiving of places. I feel this man everywhere, I want him everywhere. But as if he knows what I feel, and he means to deny me, he withdraws. I shiver with a sudden cold certain to linger. He will torment me, make me wait for him. Make me beg.

He stands up, towering over me, and I stare up at him, trying to read him, the anticipation of what comes next tingling through me. And it’s supposed to. I see that in his eyes, and I am reminded of his words when I’d first seen the painting. It’s about trust. The kind of trust I want from you and have no right to ask for. He’s going to push me. He’s going to take me somewhere uncomfortable. Somewhere I might not want to go, but I will. With Chris, I will.

He walks behind me and then shows me a red silk cloth, proof that my assumptions are right. He means to take trust to a whole new level. “Have you ever been blindfolded?”

“No.”

“Any objections?” he asks.

Nerves dance frantically in my stomach and my nipples tighten to the point of pain. “Yes. I mean, no. No objections.”

He lowers his head, his warm breath shimmering on my cheek. “I could do anything to you right now, and you couldn’t stop me.”

“I don’t want to stop you.”

“Anything, Sara,” he emphasizes.

“I trust you, Chris,” I say, my voice laced with a breathless quality that he’s too observant not to notice. He knows how he affects me and that is part of his power.

“Lean on your elbows,” he orders.

I ease forward and he gently presses his cheek to mine as he says, “I’m not going to spank you.” He frees me and I sizzle with the certainty that this wasn’t meant to comfort me. It was meant to make me wonder what he is going to do to me. He’s testing me, something I’d hoped we were beyond, but I’ve put us right back there again. Perhaps we never left. Actually, until the day he has to choose me over the whip, we won’t leave.

Leaning forward, I rest my weight on my elbows, the angle lifting my backside in the air. If this isn’t exposed and vulnerable, I don’t know what is. He doesn’t touch me but I feel the heat of his stare, and I hear the rustle of his pants as he rises and the pad of his bare feet on the floor as he crosses the room. With the absence of sight and music, my nerve endings prickle with every sound. I hear Chris’s footsteps as he nears again but still I gasp when he is suddenly beside me, his arm wrapping my waist. Heat rushes through me with the touch and he lifts my body, lowering my elbows onto a cushioned pad, then scooting it beneath the rest of my body.