Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
I did my best not to shift from foot to foot, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, standing in the middle of the room without anything in my hand, nothing to distract me from my discomfort.
He looked like he was going to say something. And by the intensity on his face, the furrowing of his brows and the weight of his stare, I assumed I wouldn’t like it. Because it was going to be real. That’s what Elliot Shaw was. Real. That’s what this thing with him was. Real. It was becoming increasingly hard to escape that.
“Sit.” He motioned to the armchair. “I’ll make you dinner.”
I licked my lips, my stomach growling with hunger since I had indeed missed dinner and hadn’t indulged in appetizers at Nora’s.
Though a different kind of hunger sparked within me, mindful of how long it had been since I’d had Elliot’s hands on me. Not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but a second longer seemed unbearable.
“I don’t want food right now,” I purred, feeling more content lapsing into a sexual tête-à-tête. My comfort zone. Where there were less emotional landmines and intense looks.
Based on the hedonism I’d seen in Elliot’s eyes since I saw him, since that fucking kiss on the beach, I didn’t think he’d be opposed to the idea of some tawdry sex. Behind the easy smile he was a kinky fucker, and a hungry one at that, with stamina that impressed and delighted me.
Though his eyes flared at my words, he shook his head. “No, I’m going to feed you first.” He pointed. “Sit.”
“You’re really going to tell me when I eat?” I raised my brow at him. “I’m a big girl. I can decide that for myself.”
He didn’t answer straight away, just looked at me blandly, stretching the silence long enough for me to want to fidget.
“You want to be my good girl?” he finally asked, liquid sex in his tone.
My throat closed from the intensity of the lust that coursed through my body in response to the simple question.
Though my first instinct with any other man was to fight, my muscle memory with Elliot was to submit, so I was nodding slowly before I realized what I was doing.
A wicked smile stretched across Elliot’s face, so different from the warm smiles from before. It had my mouth watering with need.
“Then you’ll do as I tell you.” It felt like the oxygen in the room pulsed at his murmured words. “For the rest of the night, until I tell you otherwise, you do as I say. You sit where I say, you eat until I say stop. Then I’ll reward you with my mouth on your cunt, my cock inside you until I decide you’re done.”
The list should’ve been offensive to me on many levels, even if I wasn’t a woman who operated off the need to control everything and everyone around me. Generations before me had marched, protested and screamed until their lungs hurt in order to free themselves from the shackles of a man’s orders.
But Elliot wasn’t telling me what I couldn’t wear, what I could and couldn’t do with my life. No, he was specifically dictating the borders of this … arrangement? His house. This night.
Though I considered rules, laws and any other markers of authority to be utterly suffocating, I somehow felt comforted by the concept of surrendering to him. Knowing that for the night, Elliot was in charge of me. Even what I ate—something I usually monitored with a militant precision. Unhealthy, bordering on eating disorder, but it didn't so much relate to my body image and self-worth than my ability to ensure that I was not a victim of my own willpower or desires.
All complicated things I had never really explored and likely needed a very credentialed therapist to wade through over years and thousands of dollars.
Not things to go deep into at that time, but it was all brought to the surface by Elliot’s uncomplicated proposal.
Let go of the reins.
Trust.
Trust a man to take care of me. To know what I want. What I need.
“It’s your choice.” His expression was a little more grave, serious. “For us to move forward here, you need to understand that I like taking control of you. Not because I want to take away your rights. I love that you’re a strong woman everywhere else and that I’m the only one who has the privilege of giving you orders. The privilege of you trusting that I’m never gonna take advantage of it.” His voice was soft, caring as he laid out the arrangement I’d somehow stumbled into.
Who would’ve thought that by walking onto that dock to collect a debt, I’d acquire one good deed—helping to save a little girl’s life—and also somehow unearthing the Dom side of the outwardly easygoing, handsome fisherman.