Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“When are you flying to New York?” she asks.
“Sometime tomorrow.”
She clears her throat. “Would you like to—”
I hold up a hand to stop her. I know exactly where this is going, and it’s not happening. No way are we going to Black Rose Underground. Not until she figures out why she wants me to choke the air out of her.
God, the thought of it…
“Take you with me?” I finish for her.
She gasps. “No! Where did that come from?”
“You begged me to take you to New York last week.”
“Yeah, and we all know how that turned out.”
“Yes, we do.” It’s always on my mind. All of it. The distraught look on her beautiful face, the pleading in her eyes, in her voice.
“Why is everything black-and-white with you, Braden?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I asked you for something you didn’t want to give me. Instead of working it out, finding a compromise, you ended our relationship.”
“I wouldn’t have ended it if you could have answered my question.”
She pauses a moment. “Maybe I need your help to find the answer.”
“Do you?” I ask.
“I…don’t know. Maybe.”
I shake my head. “You don’t. If you needed me, you wouldn’t have come here. To your hometown. You would have come to me.”
She doesn’t need me to find her answers. She needs to look inside herself.
But the irony is that for my answers, I do need her.
And I hate that I need her. It disturbs me. It perplexes me.
“Stop fighting yourself, Braden,” she says.
She reads me so well. It’s unnerving, but also warming, in a way. “I don’t know how to.”
She lifts her brow. Clearly my response surprises her.
It surprises me as well.
All my life I’ve been fighting against my past. Leaving it in a small part of my brain, safely hidden so I can do what needs to be done. I’ve built a fortune by anyone’s standards, but I still haven’t dealt fully with my past.
“Will you come up with me?” I ask once again.
“My father—”
“Your father knows you’re an adult.”
“True, but—”
“Please, Skye. Come up with me. Make love with me.”
“You just said you weren’t asking me to have sex.”
“I’m not. I’m asking you to make love.”
“Meaning…?”
I draw in a breath.
I need her. I need her so badly. And I want to be with her. Just the two of us. I want to experience something with her that I’ve never felt the need to experience with anyone. Ever.
“Meaning just you and me. No toys. No games. No bindings and no commands. Just the act itself. I want to experience something special with you.”
“What’s so special about vanilla sex?”
I pause a moment, staring out the windshield at the street. The town of Liberty is almost awkward in its simplicity, but beneath the surface, there’s a deeper rhythm, a connection that roots itself into every whispered story of its inhabitants. I can feel it unveiling, a soft awakening to something both familiar and entirely new. It’s not perfect, but it’s unforgettable in its honesty, and I know this town will leave an imprint on me that will linger long after I’ve moved beyond its borders.
Much like Skye herself.
And much like making love—simply making love—must be.
What’s so special about vanilla sex? she asked me.
I turn then, and I answer her.
“I’ve never done it before.”
Chapter Thirteen
Her mouth drops open. “Never?”
“How can that possibly surprise you?”
“I…” She pauses, and again I can almost see the cogs working in her brain. She knows about my sexual history with Addie, that it involved kink. She knows I own a BDSM club. She knows my proclivities. Why is my revelation so surprising?
“You’ve really never just made love?” she finally says. “Without all the…”
“The word you’re looking for is kink, Skye. Without all the kink.”
She clears her throat. “Yeah. The kink. The dominance.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because”—I clear my throat—“I’ve never had the desire to. Not until now.”
It’s the truth. The unadulterated truth. I want to make love. I want to kiss her flesh, and I want her to kiss mine. I want to sink my cock into her pussy without her being bound, gagged, blindfolded.
“All right, Braden. I’ll go up with you.”
A few moments later, we’re in my hotel room. The bed is queen-sized, not what we’re used to when we’re together, but still, it seems perfect.
It’s understated. Old. Vintage.
I stand and stare at Skye.
“Well…?” she says.
I smile, which is unusual for me. I’ve smiled a lot since I got to Kansas. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“You’ve never had that problem before,” she says.
“You’re right, because I’ve always known where I’m going. Even when you challenged me at every corner, I knew where I was going and I ultimately got there. The fact that you made me work for it was part of the game.”
“We were a game?”
“I don’t mean it in a bad way, Skye, but you know as well as I do that we were playing a game of cat and mouse.”