Page 79 of Dual Surrender

“I’ll be back in town Tuesday.”

“Tuesday morning then,” she said.

“Afternoon. Or Wednesday,” I tried.

I propped my elbows on the kitchen counter and rested my face in my hands, staring down at the seconds clicking forward on the call. The door to Colton’s bedroom opened and he shuffled out, sitting next to me without a word.

“Tuesday afternoon,” she conceded.

“I’ll have Hank confirm a time,” I told her.

She ended the call and my screen went black.

“Work on a Sunday?” Colton asked.

“I work a lot. Ronan works a lot. We’re basically always working.”

“Are you looking forward to being married to a doctor?” he asked, one of the boldest questions he’d engaged me with since our fight upon my arrival.

My days in Colorado had been tense, mostly broken up between strained silences and Darius’s attempts to tease Colton back into some semblance of humanity. He’d softened a little bit, never apologizing and never explaining, and I tried my best to let it slide by. I knew what it was like to be preoccupied with things and snappy because of it.

Earlier in the week when I talked to Ronan, I’d conveyed my suspicions to him, that Colton had maybe run aground with some kink in the bedroom and it had ruined his life because he liked it. Darius had hinted at the same, but Colton had snapped up like a bear trap, refusing to budge.

“I’m looking forward to marrying Ronan,” I corrected, which was the absolute truth.

Thursday night, after Ronan had said I could come home the following Tuesday, he’d called me before bed, his voice hushed and breathy. He’d relayed to me the story of what had happened in the morning. How he’d gone to see Foster. The way Sage had made Foster…apologize…and atone for forcing our involvement. I could tell by the way he talked he’d been turned on, but I didn’t worry if it was Foster that had turned him on because I knew it wasn’t anything more than that.

It was the submission, the game. It was the calculated way Sage knew how to bring Foster to his knees in such a dramatic and necessary way, even though Ronan had tried to beg them off. Because Ronan did the same thing to me. When he pierced me, when he made me bleed, when he made me a table. All the things that pleased him were necessary for us, and for the first time since our anniversary, I could really see our future taking shape before us.

He’d let me touch myself while he jacked off on the phone, but as every night, he’d refused to let me come. I worried I’d drown in it before he let me release, but then he’d promised me Tuesday.

Tuesday.

Everything on Tuesday.

“Do you want to go into town?” Colton asked.

“With you?”

He winced. “I think I deserved that. But yes.”

“Sorry,” I quickly apologized. “You didn’t deserve that. I’d like to, yeah.”

“I did deserve it,” he muttered, standing up and shaking his arms out. “I’ll go get dressed and we’ll head out.

My phone rang again and I braced myself for a follow-up from Carmen, but exhaled when it was Ronan’s name on the screen.

“Hey, you,” I answered.

“You busy?” he asked.

“No. Just getting ready to go into town with Colton.”

“How’s he?” Ronan asked.

“The usual, but I think this might be the icebreaker.” I leaned back and threw a quick glance down the hallway.

“That’s good. Everything else okay?”