But it was hard. Having her close spurred every atom in my body into action. I wanted to fuck her at the same time I begged her. And she wanted that too. I could see the way she looked at me, like her thoughts weren’t nearly as sweet as she was.
Keeping my mind on work for the next four-and-a half hours was almost impossible. My patients deserved my full attention. At six, I called Callie and asked her to close out appointments for the rest of the day. She didn’t sound pleased.
“Who was that, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“She’s…” An ex didn’t seem right. We hadn’t officially broken up. “An old girlfriend. She’s back in town for Samuel’s wedding.”
“Oh,” she said, a surprised note in her tone. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone. She’s younger than you.”
I didn’t want to blur the lines between assistant and boss, but Callie hadn’t pressed me before and I needed her. “She is. Any more questions?”
“In the almost two years I’ve worked for you, you’ve never had a girlfriend. I was actually starting to wonder whether you were gay.”
I grinned. “Not gay, Callie. Just waiting.”
“On her?”
“Something like that. You can take off whenever you’re done. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mr. Damon. What’s her name?”
I held my sigh in. “Miya.”
There was a smile in her voice when she said, “Jaxon and Miya. Sounds kind of perfect.”
“Bye, Callie.”
She laughed and hung up. I gathered my things and ignored her knowing smile on my way out of the office. I loosened my navy tie and dropped it on my passenger seat. I undid the top few buttons on my shirt and then put my mind into war mode.
Any time I was around Miya, that’s what it was. A war. Whether the fight was to get in her pants or her heart, I was warring to keep her.
I stopped at the store on my way home to get a few things. When I made it home, I spotted Miya on my front porch, eyes staring off into the forest. The sun shone onto her, haloing her in amber and beauty. She looked so stunning I sat in my car and soaked it up. Then I took out that disposable camera and took a few pictures of her. Just in case.
“You could have gone in. I’m sure Kinny’s home.”
She looked over, her eyes like claws. The moment they met mine, they reached into my heart and swiped their sharp edges across it. “Who’s Kinny?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
Jealous, my sweet girl? “My housekeeper. She lives in the basement.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
I walked past her and sure enough, my front door was unlocked. I stepped in. The smell of pink roses assaulted me; I breathed them in deeply.
I watched Miya out the corner of my eye as she appraised them. She stood still, between the kitchen and the living room. The roses had been replaced a few days ago, and they were in full bloom. Lush, pink, their soft petals pliant and swooping. I kept the thorns on the stems.
Leaving her to her thoughts, I put away the items I’d gotten at the grocery store. Chilled white wine for her, ginger ale for me. Steaks, potatoes, and a pre-tossed Italian chopped salad.
“Wine?” I called, reaching for the glasses on the top shelf.
“Please,” she muttered, touching a rose petal. “If you have a housekeeper, what happened to your chambers?”
I turned away, pouring a stream of wine into her glass. “Gone. It’s a workout room now.”
“Oh,” she repeated, and if I wasn’t mistaken, even a little sadly.
Which made no fucking sense. Didn’t she want me to get rid of it? Didn’t the moment she run say everything she needed to say? I was the problem. I fixed that. What more did I have to do?
“Here you go.” I walked over and gave her the wine.
She took it gladly, taking a long sip. I’d purposely overfilled it, and would do so until she was drunk, bold, and telling me the truth.
I drank my ginger ale. “Callie thought I was gay.” Not the smoothest segue into conversation but it was better than you’re never leaving me again.
“Your secretary?” She took in my living room with wide eyes. “Everything still looks exactly the same. Mostly.”
I murmured my acquiescence.
“But you’re not gay.” She gave me a low-lidded look, full of emotions I couldn’t entirely place. Was she remembering the times we’d been together that proved my sexuality, or was she thinking of something else? Or was this all just wishful thinking on my part? “You really haven’t been with anyone else?”
It was only about her. “No, Miya.”
“Was that hard?”
“No. It was surprisingly easy. No one turns me on but you. I could have had sex with anyone. Sex wasn’t special. Having sex with you was.”
She looked into her glass. “Jaxon.”
I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted copper. I wanted to say everything on my mind. “Tell me about Vegas. Will you stay for dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“I bought steaks. To repay you for lunch.” To keep you longer.
“Just dinner,” she clarified, following me into the kitchen and sitting at the counter.
I smirked at the steaks, feeling her eyes on my every move. I liked the pressure of her gaze. Missed the weight of her presence. “Who bought you the perfume, Miya?” I asked.
She smiled a little. “I did.”
“I love it,” I stated, my tone darkening with lust. “What’s it called?”
“Independent,” she stated snippily.
I grinned. “You like being independent?”
“Yes. Even though I work my ass off for every dime I have, I earned it. It’s a good feeling to be in control of my own life.”
I set the grill top on the stove and turned the overhead fan on low. “Money tight?”
“It’s fine, Jaxon.”
“If you need help…”
“I don’t. I won’t. But thank you.”
I sighed, gazing down at the marbling on the steaks in a daze. “Where do you work?”
“Some sports bar. It’s a few blocks away from the strip called Zones. It’s pretty cool. I waited tables until I turned twenty-one, and now I work the bar, too. I’m strangely good at making drinks.”
In all honesty, she did sound proud. I wanted that for her. But I wanted to be beside her when she was proud, not two states between us.
“That explains the newly required taste for alcohol. Or is that a side effect of being around me?” I teased.
In response, she held out her empty wine glass with a cheeky smile.
I refilled it. “What about the boy?”
“Axel? He’s not a boy. He’s my age. Going with your logic, that would make me a girl.”
“You’re not a girl. You’ve been through too much to be a girl. Which makes me positive you’d never pick another man. You’d pick boys you were more in control of. Like him.”
She growled low in her throat. “You don’t even know him.”
I ignored her anger. It was better that way. Otherwise I’d shut her up by plunging my tongue into her sweet sugar mouth and eat every word she ever tried to speak again. “Have you been back to school?”
“Jaxon, please don’t aggravate me.”
“Answer me,” I ordered, not caring how it sounded to her.
“Yes,” she hissed. “I’ve been attending classes in Vegas.”
“What for?” I dropped the steaks on the grill top.
“Cooking and business. I want to open my own bakery someday. Like the ones we used to eat at. We always had good times around desserts and food.”
I smiled at the steaks. “I love you.”
She gasped behind me. “Do not say that to me.”
“I love you so fucking much I can’t think about anything else.”
“Jaxon!”
I spun around and marched to her. I grabbed her cute ass face between my hands and brought her to a standing position
in front of me. “I love you, Miya Reemond, from the bottom of my monstrous soul. I love you all day, all night. And I loved you every single second you were gone.”
Her mouth formed a shocked little O.
I bent my head and leaned in, raising my eyebrow in question. She gave me a small nod. My heart sang, and my monster thrashed. I pressed my lips to hers.
I kept my eyes open, to watch her reaction. Every damn ounce of want she’d ever felt flared in her eyes like a fire. She doused me in her flames and left me ablaze. She sighed longingly into my mouth. The sound went straight to my cock. I backed her up against the counter and let go of my restraint. I had her in my arms and I wasn’t letting go. I kissed her with all that I had.
She turned to liquid in my arms. Her body went slack, and her fingertips dug into my shoulders. She whimpered against my lips, clawing at me. I drove my tongue deep into her mouth. She tasted like white wine and sugar. I swallowed her sweet taste, drunk off her essence.
Her reaction told me every single thing I needed to know. She still wanted me. I still affected her. She still loved me.
She was still mine.
I reached down and sank my grip into her ass. Still plump, still curvy. I used my grip to lift her up. Her legs wrapped around my waist. I turned her around and slammed her back into the fridge. She moaned against my mouth, attacking me with vigor.
I wasn’t a dominant anymore. But I still liked it rough. And apparently, so did she.
I ground my hard cock against her core, soaking up the heat emanating from her center. The contact was deep and consuming. I wanted more. Needed more. I sucked her tongue into my mouth and she moaned from so deep inside I felt her abdomen contract.
“Don’t you dare cum,” I growled, stilling my hips.
She cried out. Her eyes opened, and she looked downright starving. “Don’t stop. Please. It’s been so long.”
I looked down, sending my hips into her pussy through her black jean capris. I brushed up and down her heat and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. I was stunned by how little contact sent her over the edge. I wanted to give her what she craved. I dry humped her crudely, stroking her through her jeans. The desire to feel her, skin to skin, was almost too much for me. I thickened in my pants, so hard lust pulsed around the edge of my eyes.
Her entire body tightened, and she met my gaze. The soft pink lids of her eyes were lowered in intense lust. Baby blue and damaging. I lost myself in her gaze just as she had her first orgasm with me since leaving.
I wanted to keep going. Slip my hand in her pants and plunge inside of her tight wet cunt. I knew she’d be pulsing and creamy for me. Wet and mine.
She breathed hard, licking her plump bottom lip. “Thank you for stopping.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly. “You’re welcome.”
She gave me a drunk smile. And then she started crying without warning.
I wrapped her in my arms and rubbed her back. I brought us over to one of the kitchen chairs and held her to me. “Miya? What’s wrong, baby?”
“I’ve been gone two years, and nothing I’ve done has felt as good as you dry humping me against the fridge. I was supposed to grow. To be someone different. But I’m still the same damn me.”
I closed my eyes and thanked all things holy for that. “Good. I loved that you. I love this one, too. Miya, I don’t blame you for leaving. So please don’t blame yourself. We needed that distance, as hard as it was to get through. It did good for us.” I pulled back to cradle her face.
“It did? Oh, Jaxon. I need to know that I didn’t waste two years apart for nothing.”
“You didn’t. You’re independent now, remember?” I smiled in encouragement, but that only made her cry harder. I kissed her tears, her closed eyelids, and her just-kissed lips.
“The steaks are burning,” someone said, causing both of us to jump in surprise. I looked over to find Kinny watching us from the entryway to the basement.
“Could you get them?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes, glared at Miya’s back, and then walked over to tend to them.
“Let’s go upstairs.” I kissed her cheek once more and then rose with her in the same position. Legs around my waist, heated center pressed tightly against my groin; she jostled in my arms as I jogged us upstairs. “You’ve lost weight,” I noted.
“So have you,” she retorted.
“I work out a lot. Helps get rid of the negative energy inside of me.”
I set her down in our bedroom and closed the door behind me. She took my room in the way she’d taken in the living room.
“It looks exactly the same. Is that my nightgown on the floor?” She gaped at me.
“Kinny isn’t allowed to touch this room.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to keep it the way you left it.”
She stared at me, heartbreak all over her beautiful face. “Jaxon,” she started, but stopped, putting her face in her hands.
I did that to her. Broke her down. Forced her to touch on emotions she didn’t understand. But that went the other way around, too. She turned my emotions upside down, and she made me better because of that.
I splayed my palms in front of me. Bared. Hers to own. “The control is yours now, Miya. We do what you want. How you want it. When you want it. I will never leave. I’ll always be here waiting for you. I’m yours,” I insisted gruffly.
She sank onto my bed, peering up at me with the weight of my words shimmering in the depths of her eyes.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to give me more time.”
I nodded. “How much?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” My jaw ticked. “Long enough to go to Vegas and close all those ties.”
“I can do that.” I couldn’t do that. But I gave her the control and didn’t stand the choice.
“But until then, we still have now.”
“When are you leaving?”
“The afternoon after the wedding.”
“Three days?”
“Three days,” she confirmed.
“A lot can be done in that time.” I took a step toward her.
She put her hand up. “Don’t.”
“Let’s go down and have dinner.” I extended my hand to her.
Kinny had managed to save the steaks, but the knife stuck into my counter not so much.
“She likes you,” Miya noted as I plugged the potatoes in the microwave.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Where did you find her?”
“She’s Nina’s sister.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “I like Nina better.”
Once dinner was done, we settled at the kitchen table, sour cream melting into our baked potatoes. Steaks overcooked. Hearts in the air. Frustration on the tip of our tongues.
But she was here.
I only had three days to break down each and every wall she had.
“We still need to talk,” I reminded her gently. Three days or not, this conversation needed to happen.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to go back to Vegas.”
“Noted.”
“I want you to move back in with me and let me prove to you that we can be different this time.”
“What’s your idea of different?” she asked.
“Me.”
“Why?”
“I’m not seeking out control. I’m seeking out you. I have a good job. I interact with normal healthy people every day. I see a therapist once a week. I’m working through the sexual trauma from my childhood, my mother, and my fucked up fantasies of turning control into foreplay. I got rid of my BDSM chamber. I no longer seek out that lifestyle. I’m trying to be what you want.”
She shook her head sadly. “I never wanted you to turn your back on who you are. That’s who you are. Even now you ache to control. I understand that. Your control was stripped from you at such an early age in a horrible way. It makes since for you to do ever
ything you can to get it back. And it made sense for me to connect with a man who needed that. I had no control. It was freeing giving it all to you. But I’ve met with a therapist the entire time I was gone too, and I realized that that’s not good for me. Giving up my power strips away my sense of self a little more every day. It was doing the same thing to you. How different would things have been if we’d been normal?”
That was a loaded, unfair question. I was twelve years older than her. Our pasts brought us together in a way. Made it so we found the best match for our brokenness. Without all of that, who knew who’d we be. Who knew anything?
I studied her for a moment before replying. She’d thought herself sick over every choice she ever made. “There’s something you’re not saying. You haven’t said it once. And I know you’ve always wanted to. Just say it, Miya.”
She closed her eyes. “I want to be loved, safely, and completely. I don’t want to be in a BDSM relationship anymore, but I still want mind blowing sex. I like a little pain with my pleasure. My therapist says it’s normal. What’s not normal, though, is being a fucking doormat just to be loved,” she hissed.
I paled. “Is that what you think you were to me? A doormat? Miya.” Denying her would only disrespect her feelings. Prove her right. And maybe she wasn’t the one who’d needed to accept that. Maybe I did. I treated her the way I wanted. Made her choose me. Thought when she gave me her heart, she gave me control over her entire soul. And she hadn’t. That had been wrong of me, a dominant’s way of thinking. Not a man in love.
I reached across the table and held her hands in mine. “Look at me.” She did, angry and broken. “I’m sorry I abused your heart. I was only thinking about what I wanted and assumed you wanted it too. It was a single sighted selfish way of thinking. It was what a dominant would do with his submissive. But you weren’t a submissive, and I was so desperate to prove to myself that you were, and then I fell in love with you, and the lines were so blurred I couldn’t see them anymore. The only thing I knew was that I had to keep you. I am so sorry for doing that to you. I’m sorry, baby,” I promised, tears burning in my eyes. I blinked them away to see her better.
She clutched my hands and closed her eyes, a peace falling over her. When she opened her eyes, she looked like my old Miya. Innocent and brave. But she was her own woman now, too, and that was just as sexy. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I needed to hear that for so long.” She squared her shoulders. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to go back to Vegas. Talk to Axel. Live out the rest of my lease or help him find a roommate. He’s a good guy and doesn’t deserve to be cheated on or abandoned. Then I’m going to come back. Find a job, finish school. And in the meantime, you and I are going to rebuild our relationship. Slowly. The way we should have done it the first time. Because I can’t live without you, Jaxon. I tried. I tried to be someone else, but I realized that I don’t know myself unless I’m with you. We’re so combined, our souls are one, that we need each other. Is it healthy? No. But we can make it healthy. I want to love myself as much as I love you.”
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