Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 67211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
You tasted delicious, my body chimes.
God. Being in here with her is doing crazy shit to my head.
She opens both eyes and stares at me. “What happened to you?” she asks. “When did you leave the priesthood? I heard rumors, but I want to hear it straight from you.” I don’t expect her boldness, but I should. It’s one of the things I loved best about her.
What happened to me? Besides losing every single relationship that meant everything to me?
She deserves the truth.
“I left the priesthood shortly after we broke up,” I tell her. “I had no business being with you and you know it.”
“Depends on who you ask,” she says, looking away. “But we were consenting adults then.” Her voice trails off. There’s a pregnant pause, then her eyes come back to mine and she swallows. “We’re consenting adults now.”
I ignore the need to gather her up in my arms and kiss her into silent submission. I swallow, pretending that my whole world isn’t crashing down around me, and continue. “I left the priesthood and went off on my own. Got into car repair.” I should have chosen hard labor from the beginning instead of believing I could purge my sins with celibacy. I had no family to speak of and she knows that, but the priests I knew would no longer talk to me, parishioners naturally shunned me, and I needed to find my way. I deserved the shunning. I broke my vows. “I left our town and moved away.”
“And I found you like a needle in a haystack.” She smiles, but the smile is soft and sad, and her eyes grow wistful.
“Something like that,” I say with a smile. “Now, your story.”
Her eyes shutter, and she looks away.
“You can figure out mine, no?”
It’s an evasion tactic, and now I need to know what she’s hiding.
“No,” I say, my voice taking on a stern edge that’s natural to me. To us. “You tell me.”
She looks back to me and lowers her lashes in submission. God, I missed this. She responds so beautifully to my commands. When I’d give her an instruction, she’d melt into me and cling, warming me through like sunshine. She thrived under my firm hand. Chandra was created to submit and flourished under my love and dominance.
“I don’t want to tell you everything,” she says, shaking her head. “Not now.”
“Chandra,” I warn. What is she hiding?
Her lower lip trembles. She always hated defying me, and she hates it now.
She takes in a deep breath and looks up at me. “I, too, did the right thing. I left my home. I broke off my engagement.” She looks away. “I moved to NYC and went to school.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
Something’s got a hold on my throat, it’s tight and I can’t speak. The woman I love has been right here, near me, for years and I didn’t even know.
I pull out a chair and sit down across from her. “What’d you study?”
“Writing.”
Interesting. My girl always was a creative one, and my heart surges with pride that she claimed this for her own. “Yeah? What kind of writing?”
A corner of her lips quirks up. “I write romance,” she says. “My parents don’t know, of course. But I have three published novels, and I’m working on my fourth.”
I blink. Her parents were modern-day Puritans and didn’t believe in fiction, and she’s written romance?
“It was… how Marla and I hit it off,” she goes on, twisting her fingers together. “I don’t know if you know this, but she has the largest, most comprehensive stock of kinky romance novels of any bookstore in NYC.”
“Yeah,” I say with a laugh. “Of probably any store in the world.”
And then it dawns on me. Chandra writes romance novels and loves Marla’s store for her kinky books.
I quirk a head to the side, both pleased and curious. “Do you write BDSM novels?”
Her cheeks flush a lovely shade, brightening her eyes. “Yes and no. Some aren’t classic, consensual BDSM. Some are… Dubious consent. Darker.”
Dubious consent? I don’t even know what that is, and I’m already hard. I adjust myself under the table.
“Under a pen name?”
She nods. “Of course.”
“I want to read them.”
“Noah—Axle… they’re for women. And you’d be shocked if you read them.” She crosses her arms over her chest as if to protect herself. “They’re really dirty.”
I laugh out loud. “Good girl,” I approve. “Very good girl. If we weren’t shut tight in here because of the snow, I’d be at Marla’s today.”
Now she’s so red I bet she can feel her own cheeks flame but then her eyes grow concerned. “What do you mean, stuck tight in here?”
I tell her what Tobias told me.
“I have to go,” she says.
I shake my head with finality. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until it’s safe.” As if on cue, the wind howls like a mourning woman outside the break room window, and snow swirls heavily. She stands and peeks out the window. The streets are nearly vacant.