“I can’t do it. I don’t get…excited. Not the right way. And the things I want…” She sat up, pulling away, and huddled on the edge of the bed. She felt so worthless, used up. A whole cauldron of emotions she couldn’t handle was bubbling up. Why the hell was she saying these things? Because she’d dreamed of having someone understand. No, she’d wanted someone she loved to understand. But no one loved her. And she was having to explain it to this handsome, charismatic man, a Master who could have anyone. Multiple anyones, such that a cop had thought she was “one of his”.
The bed shifted as he rolled off the other side and came around the end of the mattress. Any other time, she would have watched him, because she loved to watch him move. But today, seeing such a thing could lacerate her heart even more deeply. She wondered if a cardiac surgeon had ever been asked to do a heart transplant merely because the heart had been slashed to ribbons from too many serrated emotions.
When he stood in front of her, she kept staring at the floor, her bare feet beneath the floppy cuffs of the pajamas braced on the bed railing. “Jon, I know this sounds so ungrateful, but can you please go? Just leave?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes.” She forced it past the hard lump in her throat. No, no, no.
Reaching out, he stroked his hand through her limp, unwashed hair. She closed her eyes, not wanting to revel in the male strength in that touch, but unable to keep herself from turning her head into the stroke, pressing hard into the heel of his palm, holding there while his fingers made short caresses of the area around that pressure point. It was a long moment before he spoke.
“For a year, you’ve kept me at arm’s length with that wedding ring, making me believe something that’s untrue. I should have followed my intuition sooner, because I knew it didn’t fit. I don’t pursue married women, and yet I kept coming back to your studio, unable to stop seeing you. I asked you a question just now, and you lied to me as well. Rachel, look at me.”
His fingers dropped to her chin. When she couldn’t manage the motion herself, thinking of how swollen and blotched her face must look, no makeup, he forced her face up to meet his intent gaze.
“You won’t lie to me again. Do you understand?”
With that trace of steel in his voice, her reality shifted. She was standing in an open doorway, and he was ordering her across the threshold. Her trembling soul recognized it, even as the rest of her wasn’t yet brave enough to wrap her mind around it.
“Do you understand how to answer me, Rachel?”
She swallowed. She couldn’t. He didn’t know how often she’d stood here. Her dangerous decision to visit Club More had been evidence of what taking that step could do to her. There’d never been anything across that threshold except a sickening drop into disappointment, humiliation and a complete loss of self-worth. She was at the bottom of that well now, with nowhere left to go unless someone gave her a shovel to start digging. And she was terrified that was what this was.
He dropped his touch from her chin, but only to turn his hand over, offer it to her. When she placed her hand in it, his fingers closed over hers.
“Rachel.”
“I can’t, Jon. I’m afraid.”
“Good. An honest answer.” Tugging her off the bed, onto her feet, he walked backward toward her bathroom, bringing her with him. As he studied her features, his serious mouth curved unexpectedly. “You have such thick lashes,” he said. “A doll’s lashes. And a mouth so soft and pink, it makes me think of your p-ssy, how soft and pink it must be.”
Words so sensual and graphic at once. Though she knew men still saw her as a sexual being, there was a significant difference between recognizing it and letting it in. Responding rather than blocking it off or neutralizing it. Her reservations, all the reasons she shouldn’t be doing this, were going down the drain as if Jon had reached inside her and pulled that plug.
He switched their positions, so he was backing her over the bathroom tile, cold on her soles. Then she was on the lavender bath rug, which she scented with that herb so that the movement of her feet over the pile brought the aroma to her.
Stepping away from her, he nevertheless held onto her hands until their fingers were templed against one another. Sliding free, he turned her vanity chair around and straddled it to face her, his forearms crossed on the top and thighs braced out wide.
“Take off your clothes, Rachel.”
“Wh-what?”
“You heard me.” That same tone of gentle steel and steady unwavering gaze. He was pushing that door open wide inside her and she lacked the ability to shut it, to refuse him. “Remove your clothes and get in the shower. Leave the door open. I want you to wash yourself thoroughly. Do you shave your p-ssy?”
When a doctor asked personal things, there was a clinical detachment to it that saved it from being inappropriately intimate. The way Jon was asking her this, it was in-the-deep-end-of-the-pool intimate, but his confidence made it appropriate, as if he had every right to demand answers. Her quaking stomach wasn’t disagreeing, even as her knees were beginning to wobble at what this was doing to her. As he’d proven already, this was normal for him. For her it was a dream, one that she’d had for so many years it had become a painfully obsessive addiction. Her breath was coming short again, and she reached out for the shower door to steady herself.
In an instant, he was back beside her, pressing her against the wall, holding her to him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You’re so new to it, aren’t you, beautiful?”
“I’m hardly beautiful,” she managed. “Especially at the moment.”
He cupped her face in both hands, and he was so close. “Yes, you are. Now, back to my question. Do you shave your p-ssy?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Some of the leotards you’ve worn are pretty formfitting.”
“You must have been straining your eyes.”
“What good is being around lots of women in snug clothing if you don’t look?” A glint of humor in those blue eyes gave her a shard of reassurance, then it broke into butterflies as he brushed her temple with his lips. “And since the teacher is the best looking one…”
She had a good amount of twenty-somethings in her classes, with figures much better than hers, but she decided she would believe him, just for a second. She wasn’t up to arguing.
“No more procrastinating. I want you to bathe and shave yourself.” Reaching in the shower, he turned on the hot water. She was leaning against his hip as he kept his other arm around her waist. His throat was within a breath of her mouth, so tempting. She closed her eyes to quell the urge, then opened them as he stepped out of reach again, only this time he leaned against the sink counter. “Clothes, Rachel,” he said firmly.
She swallowed. She couldn’t possibly, not while he was watching. “You know, formfitting or not, those leotards cover a lot of things.”
“I know. That’s why I want to see it all.” His gaze roamed over her then came back up. “Lower your eyes, Rachel. To your feet. You’ll keep your attention there unless I give you permission to look at me. Now take off your clothes.”
Her stomach clutched at the order, delivered in that even, formidable tone. “Jon…”
“Obey me, beautiful. I promise it will be all right.”