by Chloe Cox
Cate, on the other hand, was about two minutes away from losing it. She hadn’t taken off Soren’s sweatshirt since she’d gotten home. For some reason she just couldn’t, not any more than she could shake the words he’d said to her the previous night. She had been so angry, so spooked, because he had been right—how stupid was that?
But she’d reacted to the danger of it, and her reaction…it hadn’t been wrong, necessarily. Well, she didn’t know. The truth was that everything felt different around Soren. He distorted everything, just by his presence, his influence. He intoxicated her, and that intoxication made her believe in things that couldn’t be.
She had to remember that it wasn’t real.
She just didn’t know what that meant anymore.
And then he’d started texting her. Cate had, for the first time in her professional life, hidden away both of her phones, professional and personal. That was how much she needed to be alone with her thoughts.
Except that of course she cracked and checked to see if Soren had called. And then, of course, she’d only lasted a little while longer after that, and when he’d told her to trust him…
So now she was waiting for Soren Andersson to show up at her house.
Which was making her lose her mind.
Her house. Her home. The only place where she was entirely her goofy, sometimes silly, sometimes stupid self. After she’d left Jason, she’d taken a weird pleasure in displaying some of the hobbies and pastimes that he used to mock or use against her. Usually Jason would be kind of subtle about it, because he was that good—he’d dismiss her objection to something he’d done or said by reminding her that life wasn’t like one of those romance novels she was so childishly obsessed with. After that she’d hidden the romance novels. Now that she had her own place, they were out and proud on her bookshelf.
And so it went with most of the things that brought her happiness.
Honestly, in retrospect, looking back at that relationship, she did feel like an idiot. Who else would stay with someone like that? Long after he’d ceased to be charming, long after he’d stopped bothering to try wear his own mask of decency? When it had become clear that he saw her professional success as some sort of mortal insult?
Regardless, most of those things were now on easy display in her home, because it was her home. It was private. It was very, very private. Nobody came to her house, not ever.
Except, apparently, Soren.
The bell rang.
Cate jumped. She was practically running for the door, as terrified as she was, not wanting him to wait. It made no sense, none at all, except that his sweatshirt still smelled like him, and so maybe she was already a little bit under his influence.
She opened the door to find him leaning against the doorframe, his hair falling over his sunglasses, his jeans riding low on his hips, hands in his pockets. Just a t-shirt and ripped jeans, and the man was chiseled sex. For a second her body took over and she forgot to be anxious.
For a second.
“I expected something bigger,” he said.
“I bought it with cash, quickly, when I left my ex,” she said. “I liked the privacy and the view. I don’t need much space.”
She was babbling. Kind of. There wasn’t much editing going on in her brain, that was for sure.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It makes me very…” She couldn’t say it. Scared? It sounded stupid, even to her. She was a grown woman with a house. This was beyond silly.
And yet she was twisting the ends of his sweatshirt in her hands, making it ride up her thighs. Her bare thighs.
Soren looked down. He took a deep breath, and looked back up. Then he took his sunglasses off and pinned her with those ice-blue eyes.
“If you want me to, I will leave,” he said. “But you have to ask me.”
Cate couldn’t say anything.
Soren could.
He smiled.
“You’re uncomfortable with me here,” he said, crossing his arms. “Nah, more than that. It scares the crap out of you. But you can’t tell me to leave, can you?”
Cate couldn’t say anything.
“Can you?” he said again.
Cate couldn’t say anything.
“You know why?” he asked.
Cate tried to swallow. “Goddammit,” she managed. “Just tell me.”
“Because,” Soren said, walking past her into her home, his hand sweeping over stomach through his own sweatshirt and making her falter, “you want me to see all this. You’re just too chicken to show me yourself.”
Soren pulled her away from the door and closed it behind her. He kept a firm grip on her wrist and a lingering glance on her legs.
“This psychobabble is starting to piss me off,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It pisses you off that I’m right.”
Damn him.
“It pisses me off that you pull this stuff and then distract me with sex so I can’t even think straight.”
Soren laughed out loud. “I distract you?”
“Right now. You’re touching me. You can’t touch me like that. It makes me crazy.” She looked up at him. “It’s not fair.”
Soren took a deep, deep breath, and Cate watched his chest expand with rapt attention. Even his abs were visible through that thin material. He brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist and then, with a frustrated exhalation, he let her go.
“You need to see that nothing bad happens,” he muttered. “You need to have one damn experience where you let someone in and they don’t hurt you with it.”
“Stop talking about what I need!”
“Quiet,” he said, eyes flashing. “Tell me I’m wrong, Cate. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll leave. Otherwise I am here as your Dom and you had better behave yourself. Am I clear?”
The voice.
Cate felt Soren’s voice reverberate through her body, chasing away some of her anxiety, her terror at being exposed in such an intimate way. She railed against it, knowing it was that influence again, that Soren intoxication effect, but to no avail.
Soren touched her cheek and she instinctively turned toward his touch. He said, “Am. I. Clear?”
Cate’s stomach fluttered and she felt herself close to something. Relief. Was it relief?
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You ran out on me this morning,” he said softly. “That’s not happening again. You redeemed yourself by giving me your address so promptly, so I haven’t decided if you’re going to get punished yet.”
Cate blinked.
“Punished?”
“You heard me.”
Cate’s mind whirled at the implications of that word. It meant something different coming from Soren, in this context. It wasn’t a threat; it was more of a promise of…honesty? Of commitment to these roles they played? She knew she had her safeword, and yet her whole body tensed at the idea of punishment for a grown woman. For her.
She felt dampness between her legs. Wow.
Soren slid his hand over her hip to the back of her ass, pushing her toward the entrance to the living room. As he pushed her ahead, he said, “I like you wearing my clothes. Now get your ass in there and prepare to give me a tour.”
Then he gave her a slap that sent another shiver straight to her core.
Cate tried to think through the usual Soren buzz that dominated her thoughts and feelings. A tour? What did that even mean? She looked around her living room, a big, open space with arched doorways and a direct entrance to the massive deck, and tried to figure out what that could mean.
There were her books, her embarrassing books that she loved, and, when she thought about it, didn’t find embarrassing at all. Except, of course, that she did. There were truly a lot of self-help books in there, romance novels, whole shelves on hobbies and interests she never got to pursue. Really, she was a book hoarder. She had a problem.
Then there
was the knitting. A whole little corner devoted to it, complete with a comfy chair and a truly awesome pile of yarn. She didn’t want to explain knitting groups and yarn bombs to anyone who wasn’t…well, it was hard to explain. Yes, she did enjoy temporarily adorning public items with fitted knitted covers made in concert with her internet friends who were also strangely obsessed with knitting. What, that was weird?
And then there were the board games.
Really, looking around, what filled her with dread was not that any of it was stupid or silly or whatever. It was that it was all so boring. So uninteresting. Out in public she was this famous badass lawyer who regularly destroyed the opposition like some latter-day Valkyrie, and in here she was just…Cate.
She was starting to panic.
“Cate,” Soren said. His voice brought her back, but just barely. She was pulling at the sweatshirt again.
He looked at the knitting pile. “You knit?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, high.
Soren walked over and started flipping through her scrapbook, the one where she kept photos of her group’s most impressive yarn bombs. She felt her stomach clench. Jason had mocked this to high heaven.
“This is invasive as hell, Soren,” she said.
“Yup,” he said.
When Soren looked up, he was chuckling.
“These are fucking great,” he said. “See? I’m laughing. The stone statue has been moved by your awesomeness. You did all these yourself?”
“I…” She didn’t know what to say. He looked delighted. “There’s a group of us.”
“How do you even do this?” he said. “These are the three dancing pigs on Canyon Drive, right? How did you get goddamn onesies on them?”
For the first time in what felt like ages, Cate smiled. “Trade secret.”
“And the books, you read them?”
“I try. I always say I will. Some of them.”
“Which ones?”
“Look, none of this is very interesting,” she said, shaking her head. She was standing in the middle of her own living room, feeling out of place. Soren looked at her.
“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.
“Goddamn.”
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, 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 not to smile at that. She really
did. She failed.
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.
