She laughed. “No, but he doesn’t own me. Nobody owns me. It was a gift. One I choose to wear. Nothing more.”
He leaned in, and this time she didn’t back away. Her gaze fixed on him, curiosity gleaming, and even anticipation. She felt it too. That magnetic pull between them. She’d have to be blind and in denial not to feel it.
“If you wore my collar, you’d damn well know you belonged to me,” he growled. “Furthermore, you wouldn’t regret for a moment that you gave yourself wholly to me. If you were in my care, you’d definitely belong to me. There’d be no question. And you wouldn’t hesitate when asked who your dominant was. Nor would you say it was a gift like it was nothing more than a piece of jewelry thoughtlessly chosen on a whim. It would mean something, Josie. It would mean fucking everything, and you’d know that.”
Her eyes widened and then she laughed again, her eyes twinkling. “Then it’s too bad I don’t belong to you.”
With that she turned and hurried away, bag over her shoulder and him still standing there holding the drawing she’d done of him.
He watched as she walked away from him, hair sliding down her back and lifting in the wind, a glimpse of the flip-flops and the ankle bracelet that tinkled softly when she moved. Then he glanced down at the drawing in his hand.
“Too bad indeed,” he murmured.
chapter two
Ash sat in his office, door closed, brooding over the report in front of him. It wasn’t a business file. No financial chart. No email he had to respond to. It was a file on one Josie Carlysle.
He’d acted quickly, calling in a favor from the same agency he’d used to do a background check on Bethany, which had solidly pissed Jace off at the time. They were good, and, more importantly, they were fast.
After his meeting with Josie in the park, he hadn’t been able to shake her from his mind. Hadn’t been able to shake his fixation with her, and he wasn’t even sure what he’d call it, other than he was acting a lot like Jace had when he’d first met Bethany, and Ash had been quick to call his friend on the stupidity and rashness of his actions then. What would Jace think if he knew that Ash was basically stalking Josie?
Jace would think he’d lost his damn mind. Just as Ash had thought Jace had lost his—and well, he had—over Bethany.
According to his report, Josie was twenty-eight. An art grad who lived in a basement studio apartment in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. The apartment was leased to her. Not another man. In fact there was little evidence in the report of this other man’s presence, other than him arriving to pick her up at different intervals. The report only spanned a few days, since it had only been since then that Ash had met Josie and immediately requested the information.
More often than not, she spent time in the park, drawing or painting. Some of her work was displayed in a small art gallery on Madison, but nothing had sold, at least in the amount of time since Ash had someone keeping an eye on her. She also designed funky jewelry and had a website and an online shop where she took orders for some of her handmade stuff.
From all appearances, she was a free spirit. No regular work hours. No regular schedule at all. She came and went seemingly on a whim. Though it had only been a few days, it seemed that she was also a loner. His guy hadn’t spotted her with anyone other than the man Ash assumed was her Dom.
It didn’t make sense to him. If Josie was his, he damn sure wouldn’t spend so little time with her, nor would she be alone so much. It appeared to him that Josie was an itch this guy was scratching and that either he, or she, didn’t take the relationship that seriously.