back exposed. Her arms were stretched up and out, cuffed to the bed’s posts, and her dark hair was loose down her back, the ends brushing the top of a gorgeous, heart-shaped ass. A hard, trembling ache went through him. Of all the women he could’ve played with tonight, the universe was going to torture him with one who looked like the very one he couldn’t have. He set his toy bag on nearby table, his hand shaking more than he liked.
“I’m here,” he said, the words harsh in the thick silence.
Her arms sagged in the chains, her head dipping forward—in relief or surrender, he wasn’t sure. “Thank you, I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
The softness of her voice, the way her consonants rolled over each other, went straight to his cock and nudged at something in his brain. He wet his lips, a weird electric feeling crackling over his skin. He stepped closer, letting her hear his heavy footsteps, feel his presence. “Tell me why you’re here.”
Her fingers twisted around the chains, her body rocking with that edge of nerves. “Because I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
The response hit him like a swift blow to his sternum, her voice morphing in his ears into Cela’s. He rubbed his forehead, a sick feeling knotting his insides. Now he was going to turn every woman into a version of her?
He let out a long, frustrated breath. “Stand up and turn around.”
Her body went still for a moment, obviously surprised by the command. But after the beat of hesitation, she rose to her feet and turned, crossing her hands above her head to accommodate the bindings. She kept her head down, her hair curtaining her blindfolded face.
Her breasts sat high in her lacy black bra, and the warm glow of her golden skin could inspire prayers of worship, but Foster couldn’t bring himself to take advantage. He could play the jerk when needed, but he couldn’t use a sub while thinking of another woman.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I can’t do this.” He reached out to lift her chin and pull her blindfold off. But when the swath of black silk fell away, everything inside him seemed to short circuit.
Cela’s dark eyes blinked back at him, her teeth tugging at her bottom lip. “Hi.”
He stared back at her, wondering for a moment if he really had lost his mind and was having visions. The two worlds he lived in smashed into each other like cars going the wrong direction on the highway. The sight of Cela here, in this place, was almost too much for his brain to compute. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She winced, and he immediately regretted the coarse words. But his filter had shut down along with everything else.
“I forced my brother to get me in,” she said, a tiny tremor weaving through her voice.
“You what? Why?” Blood rushed through his ears in a deafening roar. Even with the confusion, his body was reacting to her presence, seeing her like this in front of him. His cock pressed against his leathers, and he had to fist his hands at his sides so he wouldn’t touch her—or demand she touch him.
“I wanted to see you. Needed to see you …” Her gaze traveled down the length of him, her cheeks darkening in a way that made his skin feel too hot.
He raked a hand through his hair, his libido and good sense waging a battle inside him. “Cela, angel, you’re killing me. We agreed to no more.”
“You don’t want me here?”
“Want you?” He scoffed. The universe really did want to fuck with him tonight. “That’s an understatement. You standing here like this is like waving the most tempting of fantasies in front of me. But you know why we can’t.”
“Because I’m leaving.”
“Yes,” he said, frustration building, making his back teeth clamp together. Why did she have to come here and make it worse—extend the torture? Maybe she was the sadist.
“So ask me to stay,” she said, her voice as unsteady as the candlelight flickering wildly in his peripheral vision.
Her words took a moment to translate in his twisted-up mind. Then it hit him—what she was really suggesting. “What?”
She smoothed her lip gloss, her nerves palpable. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the other night. Or any of the nights with you, really. I don’t—I don’t understand this. And I’m scared. I’m not going to pretend I’m not. I don’t know if I can even be … submissive. But ever since I graduated, anytime I think of moving home, I can’t even picture it—leaving my place, leaving a chance at a job I know I would love, and now, leaving you.”
He closed his eyes, the words everything he wanted to hear but nothing he could accept. “Angel, I can’t ask you to stay. You have a whole life waiting for you. What if you walk away from all of that and this doesn’t work out? You’ve only seen a sliver of who I am. You may hate being submissive. It may make you hate me.”
The thought terrified him down to his marrow—the idea of her submitting to him, then realizing she wanted something else, someone else, and walking away after he was already half in love with her.
She smiled. “This isn’t a marriage proposal, Foster. I understand that this could blow up in my face at any moment. But what if I leave and realize this was real, that this feeling I only get with you is more than initial attraction? I wouldn’t be staying for you. I’d be staying for me. I’m tired of following some script someone else wrote for me. I want to live in a place I choose. I want a job that excites and challenges me.” She looked directly at him, her eyes fierce. “I want to try this—with you.”
“Cela …” Desire wrestled with the cold fear curling around his gut. He knew what she was saying. This wasn’t I want to be your submissive. This was I’m curious and want you to show me why this excites me. What they’d done together had stirred up things inside her that she didn’t understand. Home for her meant the status quo, the life she’d always had. He represented the unknown, the wild, the rebellion. And right now, with all the outside pressures on her, she wanted to rebel.
She held his gaze, her eyes shiny in the ambient light. “I can’t promise you that everything is going to work out. This is a gamble. For both of us. I’m asking you to take it with me.”
He reached out, fingering a lock of her hair, her bold bravery wrenching something inside him. Even realizing this was probably a passing whim for her, he couldn’t help but recognize that she was laying way more on the line than he could ever have asked her to. Putting her job back home and plans on hold. Not to mention being willing to try a lifestyle she had no experience with.
Like everything else with her, he found it hard to say no to that kind of leap of faith. “What will happen if you tell your dad you’re not coming home to help him?”
Her gaze shifted away. “It won’t be good.”
He frowned. “Angel, I don’t want you to mess up things with—”
“You were supposed to help me finish my list, right?” she said, cutting him off. “So here’s the rest: Never have I ever … been in a real relationship. I know we’re not there yet. And it scares the crap out of me to even say that word out loud. But I feel something different with you. And I know I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’ve never felt that before. I don’t want
