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I wasn't prepared for him to swing around on me, his face actually displaying real emotion. "Damn it, Annie, keep the fucking robe on, though I don't know how you're not roasting in it. I don't care. But please – fucking kneel. I can't think with you at eye level, with you not responding to anything I say."
It was an odd request and not one I should have honored. Or had to honor. But true emotion from Cole was rare. I knelt. My ass rested on my heels and my feet were crisscrossed, the insoles flat on the floor. It was the most comfortable position for kneeling and he didn't order anything else. No stress positions. No hands locked behind my head, elbows wide spread.
It was as close to compromise as Sir was capable of.
He stopped moving and stood and stared at me before he settled at the desk across the room. There was a silence between us and then he said, "You came back."
Suddenly, I wasn't meeting his eyes. I looked down as demurely as I would as a slave.
"I'm not back," I said softly. "I came just to warn you."
There was a flurry of motion and he was on his knees in front of me, his hand around my jaw, but gently, pulling my head up so my eyes met his. "You came back." He was asking.
I swallowed. "I knew about the raid. I knew that if anything was found and you were arrested or it got into the media, it could hurt your business."
He nodded. "You could have called. You could have texted. You could have emailed. You could have sent carrier pigeons."
I could have emailed, I realized, but emailing him was strange and surreal. It had happened a couple times, so rarely I'd forgotten I had an email address for him. "I tried. I forgot about email but Cole, I tried." He winced at his name. I ignored it and kept going. "I texted you and I called you and you didn't pick up and I ran out of time and I believe in what you're doing, oh don't give me that, I mean the opiate research, the rainforest cures. And I didn't want to see you hurt and you do matter to me, of course you do, not just because of what you've done for me – or for fuck's sake, what you've done to me – but I –"
His mouth stopped mine. His tongue was in my mouth, his hands in my hair, but he wasn't pulling, he wasn't hurting, he wasn't growling my name or crushing a nipple, he wasn't holding me gently, no, because there was too much passion.
But there was no pain.
He stood, somehow taking me with him at the exact same time and though he's about half a foot taller than me somehow our mouths stayed together. He pulled me up and he pulled me into his arms, swinging me up until he carried me, one arm under my knees, one arm under my shoulders and still his mouth on mine.
We only moved far enough to reach the bed again. He laid me gently on top of it like I might break and the idea made me want to laugh, inappropriate, terrible timing, nothing I wanted to interrupt and my mouth was too full of his to really laugh but – break? As if I were delicate? And thinking about the laddering game where he marked me from mid-ass to mid-thigh, up and down until the marks looked like a ladder and I'd lose count of how many cane strikes I'd already endured and he'd start over, the pain of the caning increasing and fading depending on how hard he struck.
I thought of the crop, stinging my nipples, dipping between my legs to slap so hard I'd cry out every time, wincing without being able to stop myself no matter how much I knew it was coming.
No matter that sometimes I'd all but asked for it.
But the pain. The discipline. The games. The times it was fury and not game, when I'd done something he thought made me unsafe, when I'd done something he'd told me not to or not done something he’d told me to, the pain then because he wasn't kidding, he was in charge.
The times he'd spank me on my bare ass, my hips over his knee, his hand hurting more than an implement, more than his belt, more than a slapper, a paddle, a strap. Those times when I cried and howled and protested.
Those times I lay awake dreaming, wondering what he'd do to me the next morning. The next day. Those times he did nothing and I ached for it.
All that, and he treated me now as if I were breakable?
He followed me down onto the bed, moving the robe away and half laughing, half groaning at the running clothes. Because they meant I was not planning to stay. Because having dressed in them I was as much as announcing my determination to run.
I didn't run. I turned in his arms and wrapped mine around his neck. He pulled me close to him, my breasts pressed hard into his chest. He kissed my mouth, my jaw, my throat, he bit at my shoulders and sucked on my nipples and then he was somehow not dressed anymore. Like magic. Like I'd lost time. He was naked.
He was sliding into me.
My head went back on the bed, my eyes seeking out the ceiling, unable to focus on him, on anything. My nails scoured his back and he growled and dug into me, slamming me with every thrust and I met him, hard, needy, wanting to give and wanting to take every single thing I could from the encounter.
In case we didn't find a way for me to stay.
I was sobbing by the end of it, some kind of idiotic release, some kind of dam broken inside me. I wanted to stay. I wanted to pull him tight into my arms and hold him against me and comfort him as if he were the broken one.
Maybe he was.
But I was only just starting to find myself, 25 years old and figuring out who I was. I liked what I'd put together for myself.
Hesitantly, I said, "Sir."
He sat up and tugged at me, turning me over so I lay face down on the bed. "Put your arms under your head," he told me. "Keep them there."
