Page 97 of To Catch a Sub

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he commanded.

“What’s wrong is that you’re a fucking asshole!”

“Undoubtedly, but watch your mouth.”

She hated that part of her mewed in need at his words and her stomach cramped with not just anger but anxiety. She wasn’t being a good submissive right now, and the disapproval in his tone made her want to kneel and apologize.

“I can’t believe you’d stoop so low,” she snapped, desperately focusing on her anger.

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” A minute ago he’d been flat and controlled, now emotion leaked into his words.

“You’re using the scene to question me. You’re using my submission against me!”

For a moment his expression shifted. Guilt? Concern? She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was there and gone.

He snorted in derision. “Don’t like it when it happens to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“When we first met, you asked me to dinner. You were going to fuck me for information. Or maybe fuck me so I wouldn’t suspect you.”

Colette reeled back. Was that what he’d thought all these years?

Why wouldn’t he? a logical voice in the back of her mind asked.

“That was never my plan,” she countered.

“Fuck off with that.” His eyes were obsidian. This wasn’t the same man she’d thrown herself against earlier because he seemed like the only safe shelter in the storm of her life. Wasn’t the man who’d held her and taken care of her.

“That dinner, and going to the hotel room, those were never part of my plan,” she said. “If I had known meeting you would…”

She swallowed, shook her head. “If I’d thought dinner would turn in to more, I wouldn’t have worn that bracelet. I didn’t have time to store…”

She trailed off once more, realizing she was in danger of an overt admission of guilt.

Landon blinked, his expression uncertain—brows lowered, lips parted.

She slashed a hand through the air. “I don’t care if you believe me, because even if I had planned to seduce you, that wouldn’t justify this.” She clawed at the space between them.

There was more she wanted to say, but she was choking on the repressed need to cry. Her anger-shield was cracked and crumbling. It wouldn’t hold much longer.

Time to leave.

Colette turned on her heel and marched towards the connecting door.

She made it three steps.

Landon caught her around the waist, hauling her off her feet. Her breath escaped in a whoosh.

Landon held her aloft, careful of her injured side, and backed up. She shouted and pounded on his forearm, feet flailing in the air.

He tossed her onto the bed, her body bouncing, hair in her face. Colette lay there, stunned and at war with herself over how to react to the manhandling. She could, maybe even should, fight. But she wanted to give in to his control of her body and this situation.

Landon stood beside the bed, a towering presence that loomed over her. He half-climbed onto the bed, putting one knee between her thighs. Hands gripped her wrists, forcing them above her head and pinning them to the mattress.

Remembered terror stole her breath, making her flush cold when a moment ago she’d been burning hot. She stopped breathing, stopped thinking.

She was blind to reality, the ceiling above her not that of a foreman’s office in an old London warehouse, but an elegant bedroom in a mansion near the Russian border.