Shallow end of the pool.
Although looking back, it seemed like, somehow, he’d ended up way past the shallows and was now staring at deep open water ahead of him.
When she tipped her head up and back, he spotted how glazed her green eyes looked. Fully back down into subspace.
Happy.
He helped her up, pulling her body against his and leaning in for a kiss. “Thank you, baby.”
Kill or die for that smile? Sure. Absolutely.
Without hesitation or second thought.
“Thankyou, Sir.”
He reached behind him and laid his hands over hers, sliding them down his ass until they were tucked into his back pockets.
Then he leaned forward and engulfed her in his arms again, waiting.
Didn’t take her long.
A soft gasp as her right fingers found and explored it, then her hand emerged holding it.
“If you think you can live with me, and be patient with me, then I’d like to make it official and not just with a collar.” He took it from her and slipped it onto her left ring finger. “Maybe we can do things right this time around, now that we’re older and wiser.”
“Yes!”
“Will I be enough for you like this? If I can’t push myself any farther?”
Now she was crying, but she nodded, eagerly. “Yes, Sir. More than enough.”
“Okay.” He leaned in for a long, sweet kiss, her arms draping around his neck, practically hanging from him now.
“What changed your mind?” she softly asked when he lifted his mouth from hers.
He had to think about it. It wasn’t any one thing. “Watching. Actuallyseeing. Listening. Tilly told me that when my fear of losing you grew stronger than my fear of what I was doing to you, then I’d really start making progress.” He shrugged. “She was right. I am more scared of you walking out of my life again than I am of walking forward with you through this.”
In the dim light, her curly red hair fell around her shoulders, messy, gorgeous.
His.
Onlyhis.
“I know there are other guys out there who can give you this, who are better at it than me, but you wantme. I don’t know why. I can keep trying to hold on to some arbitrary moral high ground that doesn’t really exist, or I can start living and leave the past behind me. If you’re my future, I think it’s worth trying.”
* * * *
Everett and Wylie arrived shortly after, so Skye didn’t have to wait long for relief. After cleaning the blade with alcohol, Axel led her back out to the far side of the lanai and to one of the loungers. Stripping her again, he had her lie facedown on it with her legs spread wide and knelt next to it. He’d tested the knife already, the point and edge, on his own inner arm after cleaning it, to see how it felt.
“Do not move, baby,” he whispered.
“Yes, Sir.”
She closed her eyes as she felt the tip of the knife touch her flesh at the base of her neck and slowly move south. Not hard enough to even leave a mark yet, but as he gained confidence with the weight and feel of it, and made his way down to her already tender ass, he increased the pressure until she felt that awesome scratch that bordered on pain. She’d look like a cat had gone after her tomorrow, but he likely wouldn’t draw more than the faintest traces of blood.
Up and down and around, the backs of her upper arms and her upper thighs. After a few minutes, he slid two fingers from his other hand between her legs, into her pussy, and slowly finger-fucked her, even as he kept drawing patterns in her flesh with the knife’s tip.
“Don’t come.”
