by Hannah Ford
“Oh, Callum,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I took her to rehab, but she…” he trailed off and shook his head, as if he were remembering. “She never got clean again. She checked herself out of rehab, and ever since she’s been drinking. And then about a year ago she moved onto harder drugs.”
“And that’s when you made a promise never to be with a woman for more than one night,” I whispered.
He nodded, the tortured look in his eyes apparent even in the shadows of the bedroom. He turned and looked at me. “Except for you.”
He pulled me back into his arms and I snuggled against him, feeling a lump of emotion in my throat. Nothing Callum had just told me had scared me away. If anything, it made me understand him more, and my heart ached for him, for the fact that he obviously blamed himself for Rose’s relapse.
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t responsible for Rose’s choices. But something stopped me, something made me feel like it wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear, that it might just make him return to his cocoon.
But how could I not say it? How could I let him tell me something like that and not let him know it wasn’t his fault?
“It wasn’t your fault, Callum,” I said, and I felt his body go rigid next to mine, proving that my instinct had been right.
I glanced up at him and saw his jaw twitch.
“I know,” he said. But obviously he didn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t have made it a rule that he could only have sex with a woman for one night, wouldn’t have the urge to dominate and control them so completely.
He pulled me closer to him, and I laid my head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart.
As had been the case every night I’d spent with him, I thought there was no way I would be able to fall asleep. He’d set my body on fire and my mind reeling, and every time I was with him, no matter what he revealed or what he told me, it seemed as if I was left with more questions than answers.
And yet, just like before, I was able to fall asleep, was able to sleep deeply, in fact. It was like his presence calmed me, that just having him there was a way for me to feel safe. And I did feel safe with him, even though I had every reason not to.
* * *
When I woke, the clock said 6 am, and stripes of dull light streamed through the windows and onto the comforter. I could tell it was raining out, a grey, dreary day. The space on the bed next to me was empty, and a familiar pang of sadness clasped around my throat.
He was gone again.
Then I heard the sound of pans clanging in the kitchen, and Callum humming softly to himself.
I couldn’t hide my smile, and I was glad he wasn’t there to see me grinning like an idiot. I reached for the t-shirt that was lying on the floor, the t-shirt he’d taken off me last night, and slipped it on. I crossed the room to my dresser and pulled on a pair of fresh panties.
When I got to the kitchen, Callum was cracking eggs into a frying pan. He was wearing the pair of track pants he’d shown up in last night, and no shirt. I admired the V-shape of his torso, the broad shoulders that tapered into a slim waist, the flat stomach ridged with his smooth six-pack. I shivered.
He turned to look at me, a smile lighting his face when he saw me. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said. “You hungry?”
I nodded. “Starving.” I crossed the kitchen and he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me softly on the lips, his hands snaking up under my t-shirt. I shivered as his thumbs brushed over my hipbones.
I broke out in goose bumps as his fingers lingered over my skin. He picked me up and set me down on the counter, pushing himself in between my legs and kissing me until I was breathless.
Then he pulled back and pushed my hair back from my face. I was turned on, embarrassingly so, just from his kisses. I wanted him to be dominating with me, wanted him to push me to the floor of the kitchen and make me do all sorts of dirty things.
I remembered how it had felt when he’d hit me in the face with his cock for being bad and my pussy got wetter than it already was.
But Callum must have been in the mood to tease me, even worse than if he’d pushed me to the floor and made me suck him off. He told me to go sit at the table, that it was breakfast time.
I sat down dutifully, and a second later, he put a plate down in front of me – eggs and crispy bacon, sourdough toast, and home fries that were golden and buttery brown.
“Where did you find all this stuff?” I asked.
“What stuff?” He set down two glasses of orange juice.
“The stuff to make all of this.” I gestured at the food in front of us.
He shrugged and sat down. “It’s nothing fancy, Adriana. Just eggs, bacon, bread, and potatoes.”
“You made home fries out of potatoes?”
He laughed. “Yes, Lemon, home fries are made from potatoes.”
“I’m never going to be able to eat all of this,” I said, as I took in the heaping plate in front of me. It all looked delicious, but I couldn’t concentrate when he was sitting next to me, shirtless, his skin taut and perfect, his lips full and kissable, the dark stubble on his cheeks making him look even more sexy and brooding than usual. His own plate was twice the size of mine, and he dug in hungrily.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, indicating the day’s Wall Street Journal that was sitting next to him on the table.
“I have a subscription.”
“Yeah, but how did you get it here?”
“I told you, I have delivery.”
I stopped, a piece of toast halfway to my mouth. “You get delivery to wherever you are?”
Callum nodded.
“So someone came here and brought that to you? Instead of bringing it to your house?”
He nodded again and took a sip of orange juice.
I shook my head, marveling at what it was like to be so wealthy you could literally get whatever you wanted. I wondered if it was true, what they said, that money didn’t buy happiness. I figured it probably was – Callum wasn’t exactly unhappy, but he was twisty and tortured and dark inside.
“What’s it like,” I asked, “being able to get whatever you want whenever you want it?”
He gave me a wry smile. “Is that what you think, Lemon? That I get whatever I want whenever I want it?”
I shrugged. “Kind of.”
The smile left his face and his eyes turned serious. He set his fork down on his plate, then reached out and took my hand in his. His hand was warm in mine, his grip strong and comforting, but I didn’t like the look on his face. It was the look someone gave you when they were about to say something they knew you weren’t going to like, when they were about to try and let you down easy.
Was he going to let me down easy? I wondered. Was he going to tell me he enjoyed being with me, but we had to stop? It would be an improvement over him just taking off the way he’d done the last two times we were together, but not by much. The end result would be the same.
“Adriana,” Callum said. “I woke up this morning, and my first instinct was to run.”
A strangled sound escaped my lips. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself think for even a second that bacon and eggs and toast meant commitment. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because you were right, what you said the other night about how I can’t just keep chasing you around the city, pushing you up against buildings and kissing you.” He sighed. “I tried to stay away from you, Adriana, but it was impossible. I’m unable to control myself around you.”
“Then let’s just be together,” I said. “It can just be simple. I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
His grip around my hand loosened a bit, and he turned my palm over in his, stroking it lightly with his fingertips. “It’s not that simple. Yesterday, while I was running, I kept turning it over and over and my mind, trying to figure out a way for this to work.”
“And?”
“And I came up with som
ething.”
“Okay.” I waited for him to tell me what it was, and when he didn’t, I prodded him. “What is it, Callum?”
“I want you to know that you can say no to this. In order for this to work, we are going to have to be completely honest with each other, and that means right from the beginning. If you have any misgivings about this, you cannot, under any circumstances, keep them from me. Do you understand?”
My heart was galloping through my chest, so hard I could hear the blood rushing through my ears.
Callum reached underneath the folded up Wall Street Journal and produced a clasped envelope, the kind that held official business documents. He slid it across the table toward me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A contract.”
Shivers slid up my spine. “What kind of contract?” I reached out and ran my finger over the flap of the envelope, remembering the contract he’d made me sign in Florida, all the rules about how I could only be with him for one night, about how I would have to pretend not to know him if I saw him.
“One that lays out a way for us to be together.”
He was watching me intently, and a silence fell over us. I stared at the envelope and pulled my hand from his, not because I wanted to get away from him, but the opposite. I wanted to be close to him, wanted him to touch me, take me, fuck me senseless until he’d taken over my body and my mind. But whatever he was laying out in that contract, whether I agreed to it or not, I needed to make sure I was making the decision on my own with a clear mind, not one that was caught up in a haze of lust and desire.
“Are you going to open it?” he asked.
“Just tell me,” I said, raising my gaze to meet his.
“Adriana – ”
“No.” I twisted the bottom of my t-shirt in my hand. “Please, Callum, just tell me what it says. You said we’re supposed to be talking honestly about things so just go ahead and tell me.”
“Okay.” He nodded and straightened in his chair, placed his hands on the table and folded them together. “It’s a contract that lays out the parameters of our relationship.”
“Which are?”
“That I will have control of every aspect of your life.” His gaze never left mine as he said this, his voice never wavering.
“What do you mean? Like, give me a specific.”
“Well, the biggest one will be where you live.”
“Where will I live?” I took a sip of my orange juice, because I wanted to have something to do. My body suddenly felt tightly wired and humming with electricity.
“The apartment we were at the other night.”
I almost choked on my juice. “The apartment where I found your ex-girlfriend passed out with a needle sticking out of her arm?”
“Fair enough. We’ll get you an apartment of your choice. Any place in the city you’d like.”
“So I wouldn’t be living with you?”
Callum shook his head. “You know I don’t do that.”
“But why can’t… I mean, if you want to have control over me, then why can’t I just live with you?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how ridiculous they sounded. Why can’t I just live with you? I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live with him. Moving in with a man after only knowing him a short while? It seemed insane under the best of circumstances, like if we were really in love and he’d done something over-the-top, like asked me to marry him. Instead he was telling me he wanted to control every aspect of my life.
“You cannot live with me. I need to make sure I exercise precise control to make sure this will work.”
I took in a deep breath. “What else?”
“You would wear what I said. Talk to only who I said you could.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, and I wondered if he was thinking about Dean. “You would eat what I said. You would give yourself to me, and in return, I will keep you safe. You will be available to me in any way I desire, sexually, spiritually.” A devilish look moved over his chiseled features. “Physically.”
I twisted my t-shirt harder, so hard that when I finally looked down, my skin had begun to turn red and I could feel my fingers started to tingle.
Callum reached out and gently loosened my grip from around the fabric.
“Hey,” he said softly, rubbing the pad of his thumb over my chin. “I know it’s a lot.”
I nodded, and a lump rose in my throat.
Callum reached for me, picking me up out of my chair and sliding me onto his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his neck, inhaling his scent. He smelled woodsy and with a lingering note of whatever cologne he’d been wearing yesterday.
I pulled back and ran the palm of my hand over the smooth planes of his chest. “If I say yes,” I said slowly. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re mine.”
“I know that,” I said. “But what does it mean as far as…” I trailed off, the words catching on my tongue, not sure exactly how I wanted to phrase it. “Does it mean you’re my boyfriend?”
He sighed. “We shouldn’t get into labels.”
“Why not? You want to label me yours, so what’s the difference?”
“It’s not the same, it’s…” he trailed off and I buried my face against him again, feeling his arms tighten around me. “I don’t want to make you any promises.”
“But you want me to make you a promise that you’re going to own my entire life.”
“It’s what I need to move forward with this,” he said. “And I want to, Adriana. I want to more than anything.” His hands were tangling in my hair, pushing the strands back from my face, his fingers moving up under the edge of my shirt, sliding the material over the bare skin of my hips. “Please, say yes.”
He cupped my chin and tipped it up so that I was looking into his eyes. The sexual energy between us crackled, invading my veins and taking over my entire soul. The way he was looking at me, like he saw me, really saw me, like he wanted to get to know every part of me, caused my pulse to race and my heart to thrum against my ribcage. I had never felt anything so amazing, so intense, so perfect.
It went beyond lust, beyond a physical connection. The thought should have comforted me – I wanted something more than just sex, than just physicality. And yet our deep connection scared me more than it provided comfort. This man had demons, had secrets and scars and a history. The fact that he had a problem with alcohol should have been enough to make me pause, and when you added in his history with Rose, that he was basically taking care of (enabling?) her, and his penchant for expressing love by whipping me, you got a huge army of red flags that should have sent me running for the hills.
Yes, the way I felt went beyond sex, even though I’d never experienced anything close to the kind of ecstasy I felt when he was playing my body. But all that meant was that he had the ability to hurt me even more.
If I were just in this for the sex, it would be so much easier. I could give myself over to him, I could trust him with my body and my heart, because I would know that even though I might be disappointed if it didn’t turn out to be forever, he would never be able to destroy me.
But if I gave him that kind power, with the way I felt now, he wouldn’t just have the ability to break my heart. He’d have the ability to shatter it. He was already so in my head, I couldn’t imagine what it would look like if we took this even further.
“Adriana,” Callum said. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I don’t understand.”
He brushed his lips against mine. “Do you understand that?” he whispered.
I nodded.
“Do you understand this?” He kissed me again, his tongue parting my lips, his hands slipping up under the back of my t-shirt and over the small of my back. I shivered and he pulled me closer, his kiss becoming more intense.
I felt him harden against me, and he grabbed my ass and slid it across his lap, pushing my legs apart until I was straddling him, my pussy right
against his dick.
He took my hands and placed them on the chair arms, and then he began kissing me again.
I reached for him, wanting to feel him, to touch his chest, his face, to feel the back of his neck, to run my hands through the soft locks of his hair. But he placed his palms over the top of my hands.
“No,” he growled. “Hands here.”
His fingers pushed my panties over to the side.
“Adriana,” he breathed into my ear. “Say yes. Let me own you.” His lips sucked my ear lobe into his mouth, and my body flooded with desire.
I tipped my head back and he licked a soft line down over the pulse point of my throat, his hand twisting my panties and pulling them away from me, causing my center to clench in anticipation.
“Callum,” I said, and pulled my head back up. I touched my nose to his, and we froze like that, staring into each other’s eyes. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and he was pulling me over the side, insisting I come with him. And I wanted to come with him, I did. I wanted him to own my body, to surrender to him, to submit to him, to let him take care of me and make decisions for me. I wanted to feel safe with him.
But how could I do that when I knew that the only thing he was promising me was heartbreak?
“Say yes, Adriana,” he commanded gruffly.
Say yes, I told myself. Just do it. Say yes.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t do it without a promise.
“Why can’t you just say you’ll be my boyfriend?” I reached up and brushed a strand of hair off his forehead, and he flinched. “Why, Callum? You said you can’t stay away from me. I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll sign the contract, I’ll live wherever you want, just…can’t we say we’re together? Or at least that there’s a possibility of that?”
He reached up and took my hands, grabbed my wrists and pulled them away from his face. “I can’t,” he said. “It would be a lie.”
He held my gaze for a long time, and I held my breath, waiting for him to give in to me. Even then, I would know it wasn’t real, that I couldn’t trust it. I wanted to be with someone who wanted to be with me, not because I was forcing him to, but because he wanted to.
