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Chapter Four

Rebecca

Good Lord, the things he was saying to me. The way he was looking at me, like he was the lion and I was the wounded prey. He’d eat me up and swallow me whole. This was a side of Bennett I hadn’t seen before and I wasn’t altogether sure I wanted to see more of.

Already I knew I couldn’t show up at work Monday and forget the way his words were making me feel. Feverish, hot and tingly all over.

But it couldn’t be desire causing the ache between my legs. No way. Not at the image he’d just seared into my brain.

“You don’t even have to respond,” he said, still whispering. His warm breath cascaded across my cheekbones, down the column of my throat. Yet somehow, I wasn’t moving away. “I can see the flush of your cheeks. You might not like that I’ve thought of it, but admit, you’re curious. That’s why you’re here, on a night like this.”

Ah, but that was where he was wrong. Dead wrong. I wasn’t curious. Not at all.

“I came because my friends, my neighbors, invited me.”

“But you watched me take a crop to Kaila’s ass because somewhere, deep inside of you, you’re intrigued by all of this.”

He was wrong. He had to be. I wasn’t intrigued. I asked Miranda questions because I wanted to ensure she was safe in her relationship. I asked her questions because what I saw in her house scared me. And I hated that stupid emotion. I lived most of my youth in fear. Knowledge was power.

“Stop,” I said. I was breathless. He’d stolen it with his husky voice and nearness. Inside the office Bennett Ashby was a bossy prick, but here, standing way too close to me, he was overpowering. All-consuming.

“You’ve spoken to Miranda about BDSM, I presume?”

“Yes.” I faced him, uncertain where he was going with this. In return, I was greeted with a flare in his eyes that sent a heated pulse to my sex. Crapitty crap crap. He couldn’t be right.

“Then you know that ‘stop’ isn’t an acceptable safe word. If you want me to leave, Rebecca, all you have to do is ask. But, if you’d like to experience something more beautiful and pleasurable than you ever have before, I’m asking you, give me your hand and give me one night to show you all that this lifestyle has to offer.”

My hands shook so bad I set my glass of water down. Curling my hands around the edge of the bar, I steadied myself. Everything he said rocked me back on my heels. I was shaking, a trembling mess of nerves and fear, but that wasn’t the only thing. I could deny it all I wanted, but I’d be lying.

Bennett was one of the sexiest men I’d ever laid eyes on. He was emboldened and brash. Rude and bossy. Yet confidence poured from him like the richest scent of the finest wine. If anyone could deliver on what he was saying, it was him. I didn’t take many men to bed. I was too particular. I sought out soft men, kind men with manners and chivalry, but at the end of the few recent dates I’d had, a simple kiss on the cheek had done nothing for me. I had no desire to see them again. And the ones I did take to bed, the sex was perfunctory. Finished with little warm-up and foreplay and the rare climax.

I’d figured I was broken in some way. The way my body was responding to Bennett’s mere words told me perhaps I wasn’t.

He was still standing close, but he’d pulled back. He was leisurely sipping his drink like he controlled the world around him, had all the patience, all the time to wait for my answer.

“What would it entail?” Was that my voice that sounded so raw?

As if sensing my nerves, how drastically far outside my comfort zone this entire conversation, this night was, he had the grace not to smile in victory. He set down his glass and leaned forward, hands clasped together on the bar.

“We’ll go somewhere. Talk. See what you would like to experience, and go from there. But if you know anything about BDSM, you know that nothing happens without your informed consent, and you have the power to stop it any time.”

He made it sound so simple, yet my heart was rioting inside my chest like a runaway freight train.

“If it helps you relax, I can tell you that what you saw tonight is not typically what I prefer.”

He’d used a crop on a half-naked woman. From my conversations with Miranda, I knew a crop barely left a sting, much less any pain. So was it less or more than he preferred? I didn’t have the guts to ask.

“I’m not sure that helps, no.”

“Then perhaps I can allay all the fears I see swirling in your mind, and tell you that I don’t prefer to use toys or tools. When I drive a woman to orgasms, when she’s writhing beneath me, I prefer knowing that it’s my hands causing her delicious ache, it’s my hands and my words and my body that is driving her mindless, over and over and over again.”

His hand settled on my shoulder and I shivered from the heat of his palm. What he described was fantastical. Not nearly as scary as the cross or the floggers hanging in the armoire in Miranda’s guest bedroom. He described things I wanted to experience: raw, mind-blowing, multiple-orgasming sex.

I opened my mouth to say yes, when I reached a hurdle that couldn’t be jumped. “You’re my boss, Bennett.”

“And what happens on our personal time can be kept personal. One night, that’s what I’m asking for, and when we’re done, if you can tell me that you never want to experience anything close to submission again, I’ll respect it.”

“With no pressure?”