Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
“Do I need to tie you down?” Logan rasps when I shift again.
“No. I trust you.” I give him a nervous smile.
Nothing. He’s still wearing the mask. A black one tonight. With his silk shirt and slacks, he’s a thin mustache away from sexy Zorro.
And now I want to smile. I must be nervous. That’s why I’m making bad jokes, even if just in my head.
But the thing is, I meant what I just said. I do trust him, in spite of everything that’s happened. He’s never betrayed or hurt me. So I take a deep breath and still all my twitching limbs.
“Since you wore the nipple clamps so well.” He holds up a tiny jeweled ornament. Similar emeralds, but no clamp attached. It takes me a second to recognize what it is and when I do, the breath leaves my body.
Oh shit, he’s going to pierce me.
This is permanent.
“No comment?” he smirks at me. I shake my head slowly.
If this is what he wants, then I want it too.
Is it really that easy? Has it really been that easy all along? All I needed to come alive again this whole time, to find my freedom— the solution was never to clench tighter and try to control things like my life was a series of scientific labs steps to follow.
What I didn’t know, what I could never know without Logan coming back into my life and showing me, was that the truest freedom can only be found in ultimate surrender.
I don’t tell him this. Instead, I let my body sink into the table as he briskly brushes antiseptic over my nipples. The sharp, clean scent stings my nose. The act is supremely erotic. The silence, the slight tickle of the brush. The care Master takes with his slave. My breathing deepens, my body slipping into that submissive state, readying me for what’s to come.
I feel like a new creature. Like my life is just beginning.
“You told me you liked pain. That it made you feel alive.” Logan’s voice is level, but his fingers tremble slightly as they pass over my breast. Even without me saying it, he knows something of what I’m feeling. That’s how attuned we are.
“It does. I do.” I raise my chin. “Give me the rose with the thorns.”
He turns back to bend over the tray, but his cheek curves. “Leave it to you to see the beauty in pain.”
“The way I see it, life is equal parts hurt and love. If I numb myself to one, then I miss out on the other.”
“You speak as though you’ve had a lifetime of suffering.”
Silently I tally up everything I’ve been through. My mother’s death, my father’s grief. The illnesses that have shaped my entire life. My own striving for love. “I’m not saying I’m the only one who’s suffered. Or that I’ve suffered more than most.”
Logan remains silent and I keep babbling. I feel like I’m having such huge revelations and I want to share some of it with him.
“Socrates says if all the world’s suffering was laid in a pile, most people would choose their own portion. I wouldn’t change my life for anyone else’s. But I’ve been numb for too long.” I lock eyes with him. “I’m ready to be awake to my life. Even for the parts of it that hurt.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just stands there, ice blue gaze searing straight into my soul.
Then suddenly he starts stripping out of his shirt and my mouth goes dry. Crossing the room to a sink, he washes his hands, then returns to show me the needle.
I can’t stop my smile. “I’m not afraid of needles.” I’ve encountered enough in my lifetime.
He shakes his head and starts to sterilize the needle. “This will earn you twenty patents,” he says gruffly, still turned away from me. The muscles of his back are as chiseled as the stone walls of his castle.
When he comes to my side, I grab his hand. “No.” He is missing the whole point.
His nostrils flare and his gaze is a blade. “This is happening, Daphne.”
I drop my hand and soften my voice. “That’s not what I meant. You don’t have to give up patents for this. I want it.” I want you. But I’m not quite brave enough to say that yet.
For a moment he’s frozen except for a slight widening of his eyes. The blue of his iris is a thin circle of ice. Then, in a growl, “What game are you playing?”
“No games. Not any more. I want to do this.”
“No patents?” The furrow between his brows is etched deep, he’s so confused.
“No.”
He stares at me a long moment. See me, I plead silently. See us. What we could become.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he says, and pinches my nipple in preparation. I watch him, not the needle, as if I could communicate everything I’m thinking telepathically.