She was silent for a long moment, the tension palpable. God, I would give anything to know what was running through her mind. “Marly…” I said. “You’re killing me here. Please say something.”
“That’s… that’s a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Her chin tilted as she looked up and down the shelves. “Most of it I recognize. I mean… not from experience. But like movies and stuff.” She stepped deeper inside the closet; deeper inside the dragon’s lair.
“Marly, maybe you shouldn’t look too closely in here.” I followed her into the walk-in closet, that sick feeling spreading like a virus to other areas of my body. “I haven’t even been in here in over a year—” Marly stopped at the back wall so abruptly, I nearly slammed into her. She paused at a hook, where a diamond studded collar dangled off of it.
My blood turned cold. No, cold didn’t even begin to describe it. It turned to dry ice. Brittle and so desperately freezing, that it would physically harm you to touch it. That’s what I transitioned into. I’d forgotten that collar was there.
Marly gently lifted the collar off of the hook and ran her newly manicured nail over the largest center diamond. “Wow. Was it Layla’s?”
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how fucked I am. How fucked up Layla made me. And the monster I turned into after she left.
Chest heaving, I launched toward her, wrenching the collar out of her hands and put it back on the hook. But Marly didn’t seem phased. She stood there, maintaining her wide stance, her hands now falling to her slim waist and her spine went rigid.
Her tank top showed the taut, smooth skin of her shoulders and sternum. Tanned and silky-looking and the low neckline offered an exquisite view of her neck. A view that I shouldn’t be taking.
“What happened tomehaving the control until midnight?”
“What happened to respecting a person’s limits—hard or soft?”
Her gaze dipped briefly between my legs and I felt the ice in my veins thaw. Not only thaw, but spike to molten lava with one second of her attention directed at my cock. Jesus Christ, what was I… twelve-years-old? A girl glances at my penis and all of a sudden I’m rock fucking hard and ready to plunge inside of her?
“How can I respect your limits when you didn’ttellme what they were?” Her voice grew louder with each word and her chest heaved. Each angry breath sent her breasts pulsing with the inhale-exhale.
“Part of being the one in control is reading your partner’s signals.” Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she tell I didn’t want her in there? I tried to stop her from coming into my room. She wanted to regardless. I tried to block her from entering the closet. She barreled through anyway. I tried to convince her not to go deeper inside… and that’s when she found the collar.
Her face softened, albeit only slightly. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Well, I’m pretty fucking new at this. Maybe you could cut me a break.”
Ishouldcut her a break. Every cell in my body screamed in agreement. “I’m always cutting everyone else a break. When does someone finally givemethat courtesy?”
We stayed locked in each other’s narrowed gazes a moment longer before Marly spun away and stomped out of the closet, heading back to her room. Everything about this woman put me on the defensive. She made me feel brittle, when I’d worked so goddamn hard to become impenetrable. She made me feel vulnerable, when I’d spent the last two years building walls so I’d never feel so exposed again. She enraged me. Ignited me. I hated it.
I hated it so much… that I might actually love it.
I ambled after her, catching the door as she stomped into her bedroom. “I’ll come in to tuck you in after a few minutes.” A few minutes. That’s what I needed. A few minutes to calm down. Pull myself together.
“Don’t bother,” she sneered, barely looking over her shoulder.
“Marly—” I didn’t mean it to sound so threatening. But her name rolled off my tongue in a growl.
She spun around and even as she leaned against the sink’s counter so casually, so carefree and composed, her eyes gave her away. They were shrewd and assessing. Anything but aloof. “What time is it, Jude?”
I sighed, checking my phone. “Twelve minutes until midnight. But—”
“ThenIam still in control. And I want to go to sleepwithoutyou tucking me in.”
“Going to bed angry is never a good idea.”
“Neither is blaming someone else for your own baggage.” Her blue eyes flashed like a flame that had just been doused in accelerant. “You said it yourself.” She pushed off the counter, stalking toward me in slow, predatory steps, backing me out the door. “Respect the limits. Read your partner’s signals.” Her eyes went wide, but her mouth stayed pressed into a firm line.
“Fine. But if you’re the one in control, then as part of yourlesson, you should know it’s your job to make sure your submissive is okay. And pushing the person you’re in charge of out because you’re angry, isn’t the answer.”
The tense curve of her mouth relaxed. “So, what do you do when you’re at an impasse like this? You need some sort of validation—to tuck me in or something affectionate to try to smooth this over. And I need to be left alone to process.” She shrugged. “What do we do?”
I closed my eyes. I knew what I needed to do. “It starts with me apologizing.”
