“Bullshit,” he said. “It’s all interesting to me.”
Cate didn’t know what to say.
Soren sat down on her large, comfy couch, the one facing the fireplace, and spread his arms out wide.
“Come here,” he said.
Cate obeyed. It was comforting to be given Dom orders right now. She wasn’t going to analyze that too much. She’d take what she could get.
When she got within range Soren took her hand and pulled her on top of him, situating her so that she straddled his lap, facing him. Cate sighed. This…this she knew. This she could handle. Happily.
“Right there,” Soren said, and fit her hips just over his, his hands slipping under her sweatshirt to find her bare waist.
Cate put her hands on his shoulders. She felt like she was beginning to turn to jelly.
“You said something last night,” Soren said. “About me not telling you anything about my life.”
“Did I?”
It was getting hard to think again.
He grinned.
“You did,” Soren said. “Call it male machismo, but I take notice when a lady says she has to be the brave one.”
“You do?” Cate said. “I’ll have to file that one away.”
“Watch it,” he said, and reached up suddenly to grab her bare breast.
Cate let out a tiny little sound of surprise, and then a sigh when she felt the bulge in his pants.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” he said roughly.
“I’m at home,” she said.
“God
damn
.”
Cate smiled. Score one for the sub.
“Listen up,” Soren said. He moved his giant hands to her ribcage, as though he wanted her to pay attention. She tried not to pout. “You want to know something about me? You already know, Cate. My family was shitty. My stepdad used me as a punching bag, and my mom and sister joined in because they felt like it, I guess. Fuck if I know. My mother’s a pill-head who’s never taken responsibility for so much as a fart in her entire life, and my sister is probably the one who’s been selling information about me to the tabloids. I got lucky when I got older, but there’s a part of you that always remembers what it was like to be that little kid.”
“I wasn’t a little kid when I married him,” she said.
“I was a grown man when I nearly married a liar,” Soren said. “Everyone’s gotta repeat the same mistakes a few times. Takes some practice to get it right.”
Cate looked at Soren. Really looked at him.
“Your honesty thing,” she said. “Because addicts lie?”
Soren narrowed his eyes then relaxed. He squeezed her with his hands, gently.
“That’s a big reason,” he said. “Addicts lie.”
There was something else there. Something big. Cate could feel it floating around them as they sat there together, on the periphery, always just out of reach. As though if she looked at it too hard it would disappear, like those glow in the dark stars she put on her ceiling when she was little.
“Is that why you don’t do love?” she said.
“No,” he said. “I just don’t do things I’m no good at.”
Cate’s head spun. No good at it? She had never had anyone—
anyone
—take as much care with her, pay as much attention to her,
be
with her, as well as this man had. Nobody had ever loved her as well as this man who didn’t do love.
Of fucking course.
And there was more. More than that big thing he wasn’t saying, swimming around the periphery of her perception. There was the fact that he’d come here, sd as to her house, to tell her this. He was offering her something of himself so she’d feel safe. He was doing it for her. Again.
“Why did you tell me that?” she asked.
“So you knew you weren’t alone.”
She exhaled. “Jesus, you have a silver tongue, you know that?”
“Yup.” Soren’s hands started to play around her waist again, under his oversized sweatshirt, and Cate sucked on her bottom lip as her skin began to tingle where he touched. The nerves there were so damn sensitive. “Stop hiding yourself away, Cate. No one who matters is going to think less of you. That’s an order.”
“Sure, sir,” she said. She would have said pretty much anything.
“You know why?”
Wordlessly, she shook her head. There were a lot of things she didn’t know at the moment, because there was hardly any blood left in her brain.
“Because this fear you have that you’ll lose everything if people know you is bullshit, that’s why. And you have to learn that.”
Cate snapped back to reality, shocked by what Soren had said. He knew her that well? He’d seen right through her. It was…there was no point in denying anything. In pretending.
She stared into those pale blue eyes.
“Whatever you say, sir,” she said.
“
Nuh
-uh,” Soren said, and stopped his tiny caresses on her stomach. This time Cate did pout. “I fucking meant that. An order.”
Cate swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Soren was unwavering, his eyes searching her face. He was sweet and unyielding and goddamn impossible all at the same time, and she’d never felt closer to anyone in her entire life.
And she couldn’t tell him that.
“How are you going to enforce that one?” she finally asked.
“Don’t test me,” he said. Still under the huge sweatshirt, he slid his hands down to her ass, which was where he discovered she was wearing a thong. “Holy shit, are you kidding me?” he rumbled, digging his fingers into her bare flesh.
She loved the gravel in his voice.
“I might have changed them after I texted you,” she admitted.
“But you didn’t put on any jeans or anything.”
“Nope.”
“Good girl.”
Cate tried s">C>
It was getting so hard not to move against that cock she could feel hardening underneath her.
“Wait,” she said, smiling.
“You must be out of your mind,” he said, and started to push the sweatshirt up.
Cate laughed and swatted at his hands. Soren growled and knotted the sweatshirt in one hand, ready to pull it over her head.
“Tell me one more thing,” she said quickly. “You know about my knitting weirdness and my craziness.
Even it out.
Tell me one embarrassing secret about you.”
“Don’t have any,” he said, that tiny muscle in his jaw pulsing away. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. “I’m just me.”
“I call bullshit,” she said.
“I promise you, there’s nothing,” Soren said. “This is coming off now.”
He pulled her forward so her hands landed on his chest again, her hair in his face. Cate just said the first thing that came to mind.
“Just tell me what you named your dick,” she said.
Soren stared at her. Then he laughed out loud.
“I haven’t,” he said.
“More bullshit!” Cate cried. “Even when you were a teenager?”
“Fuck no,” he said, still laughing. “It seemed so weird to me. Like it would start talking to
me or something
. Never did it.”
“I can’t believe you,” she said, pounding on his chest in frustration. It was amazing how little effect her fists had on him. “Really? Never?”
“Why, you wanna to name it?” He was smiling evilly now.
Cate stopped. This was dangerous territory. Then she smiled and slowly ground her hips into his, getting a literal rise out of him.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “It’s beyond words.”
Soren burst out laughing again and slapped her bare ass with his free hand.
“You really are a goddamn lawyer, aren’t you?”
Cate leaned back and smiled, just happy to hear him laughing. Especially now that she knew it was something special—it felt like her own superpower. Like something she could give back to him.
And then she saw the flash of recognition on his face.
Of insight.
And then
that evil grin
s grt size="+1again.
Whoops
.
“What’d you name your boobs?” he asked.
“Shit,” she said.
“Don’t lie,” he said roughly, pressing her hips into his and grinding her, hard. “Or I won’t let you come.”
“Jesus,” Cate said. She could feel herself blushing. She’d only done this to herself. She laughed and mumbled, “Lucy and Ethel.”
“What?” Soren laughed.
“Lucy,” Cate sighed. “And Ethel.”
Soren literally had tears coming down his cheeks.
“See?” Cate said, hitting his chest again. “It’s embarrassing! This is not in any way fair if—”
“Shut up,” he said, stripping the sweatshirt off of her. “And let me see them.”
The
look
he gave her. Like he was going to devour her whole, make
her his
.
She was already his.
“Take it out,” he ordered.
She knew what he meant. She fumbled with his zipper, his jeans stretched against his erection. Soren was done wasting time. He moved her panties aside, lifted her up, and impaled her on his cock.
“Oh my fucking God,” she cried out. She was already wet, but without preparation, without preamble, it hurt just enough. The feeling of Soren filling her blocked out everything else, and she sighed.
He lifted her up. He
lifted her up
, and then brought her down, pumping into her so hard she squealed. She held on to his shoulders while he moved around as he wanted to, not entirely sure what was happening, what would happen, but knowing she’d reached the point of not caring. Cate choked on her own breath, her body driving her to move, to contract, to take as much of him as she could, while he held her with his eyes.
“Can I come?” she asked. “Please…”
“Come,” he said. “I want to feel you. Fucking come.”
Cate felt it build fast at his words, releasing in a quick flutter that told her it would be the first of many. He didn’t even pull out, just rolled them both onto the couch, turning her around and lifting her leg. He fucked her hard like that, then slowly, then sweetly again, until she was delirious, until she’d come too many times to count, until she was as free and untethered as she’d been in subspace, floating somewhere where all the things that worried her no longer mattered, only this time it was just
Soren
that did it to her.
Only Soren.
And it was as she was coming back down from this place, her head resting on his chest, their legs intertwined, their clothes
who
knows where, that she had that moment of clarity.
That damn
awful moment of clarity.
She loved him.