Page 36 of Wicked Queen

“You want to have girl talk with me?” she asked blankly.

I told myself to get over it and own it. “I need to know about submission.”

Georgia leaned against the car door, a wicked smile curving across her face. “I knew you had it in you.”

“Why?” I asked desperately. That was where I needed to start. She had known before I had. She’d made comments since we first met. Alexander had been drawn to me. He’d brought up submission and backed down when I’d balked at the suggestion.

“You want to know if there’s something wrong with you?”

I nodded. I didn’t know enough about true Domination to understand exactly what I was getting into or why. I suddenly found the idea easy to swallow.

“Not all of us are fucked up. Just some of us, like me.”

“I’m not saying you are,” I said in a rush, worried I had offended her. “I never thought of myself as wanting something like that.”

She gave me a hard look. “Let me ask you a question. Did you ever really stop to consider that? I mean, most people don’t. Most people are introduced to submission by someone. Or they seek it out. I think you did a little of both. You’ve always known what Alexander was. I don’t think he hid it as well as either of you pretended.”

There was a dark edge to her words and I wondered, not for the first time, how Georgia had discovered this about herself. Everything about Georgia was domineering. She was cold and calculating and deadly beautiful, but she had made no secret of her own submissive tendencies. Her personality seemed at odds with that side of her. Still, she wasn’t ashamed of it.

“I guess not,” I admitted. “When he first brought it up to me, I couldn’t imagine letting him have that power over me.”

“And now you can.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. “I take it that you no longer have to imagine.” Her eyes skimmed over me like she was looking for proof.

I crossed my ankles, keenly aware that a knowing eye might spot the slight rope burn on them. My cheeks heated at the reminder of red bindings and stinging skin.

“Good for you,” she said, and I was surprised by her sincerity. “It’s going to help.”

“Help what?” It had certainly helped my horniness, but I didn’t think that was the point.

“Your communication. He’s always trying to control you and you’re always trying to prove something. You two never talk.”

“We weren’t exactly talking yesterday,” I said dryly. I’d heard this lecture from pretty much everyone in our lives, but she seemed to think we’d found the solution.

“You want to know why he keeps secrets from you. Don’t act surprised,” she said when I stared at her. “Everyone on the security team knows that you two have been fighting. Probably most of the palace staff. You’re not exactly subtle about it. Look, he’s been keeping secrets from you because he’s been holding part of himself back. Now you’ve erased those final boundaries.”

And we had. I’d felt the subtle change.

“Of course, he loves you and that complicates matters.”

“Complicates things? Shouldn’t it make things easier?”

“Submission isn’t just about sex,” she said, “and it isn’t about romance a lot of the time. You guys have that all mixed together now. It’s going to be up to you and him to make sure that you’re clear on the difference between those areas.”

“How do I do that?”

“You should set some hard limits,” she advised. “Things you won’t do. Behaviors you won’t tolerate. Decide if you’re willing to submit to him full-time or if you’d prefer scenes.”

“Full time? Scenes?” I felt like I was getting a vocabulary lesson.

“You’re not a full-time girl,” she told me. I opened my mouth to protest but she held up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not either. I still want to choose when and how I submit to someone. I’m not interested in a collar and am not interested in being a slave.”

“Slave?” My mouth went dry. There was a lot I had to learn.

“Taking orders. Humiliation. Not my bag.” But her eyes darted away from mine. She might be willing to guide me, but something told me that there were layers to Georgia Kincaid she would never show me. “And Alexander will need some boundaries. He’s a natural Dominant, but he’s got some screwed up ideas about that. He thinks he was punishing himself, but he was discovering himself.”

“I feel like I’ve been holding him back,” I confessed.

“He held himself back, but I always suspected…”