The Agreement (Unrestrained 1)

"Please? Just hear me out."

I exhaled. My father stood in the hallway, and he kept glancing back to us, his eyes judging. As usual.

"I was going to leave after we 'ladies' have our tea."

"OK. I'll come by your place. Can we talk inside your apartment instead of through the door this time?"

He grinned, and that smile made him look so sexy.

"I'd rather you didn't come to my apartment."

"Fine," he said. "Why don't you wait for me and I'll give you a ride home when we're done here."

My dad came over, his eyebrows raised.

"Hey, sweetie, you're detaining Drake. We have important business to attend to."

I looked between Drake and my father. Drake nodded like it was OK.

"We'll just speak in the car." His voice dropped to a lower register, sexy and deep and he had the audacity to hold three fingers up. "I won't come in. I promise. Scout's Honor."

I exhaled. "Very well."

He finally let go of my arm and he and my father walked off, my father's arm around Drake's shoulder like they were already father and son-in-law.

If the situation wasn't so upsetting, it would make me laugh so hard at my father for being so out of it.

Later, while I sat with Christie and Elaine, and we finished our tea, Elaine leaned over to me and smiled.

"That Drake Morgan is something. Quite the catch."

"Yes, he is, I guess." If you're fishing for sharks…

I laughed to myself. If they only knew…

I hung around until my dad finished meeting with 'his people' about his campaign for the House seat that was going to be vacant, all the while trying to talk myself into leaving before Drake came for me to drive me home. I could use my dad's limo service and go home by myself, but I just knew that Drake would come to my apartment and stand outside my door to say whatever it was he wanted to say.

He wasn’t some college boy. He was a grown man. Divorced. A neurosurgeon. A Dominant. Trouble, like Dawn said that night in the bar. Oh, how right she was.

I did date a 'nice guy' after Kurt and I broke up, but Greg was so nice, so accommodating, so into equality, that he wouldn't even kiss me first. I had to kiss him first, and it made me so insecure, like he wasn't really attracted to me, or didn’t really feel much desire for me.

Stupid girl insecurities, but I was used to the guy making the moves. At least then you knew he wanted you.

With Kurt, I always knew he wanted me. He said so, often. He told me how much he wanted me, and how often and how he wanted to do it. He'd whisper in my ear when we were in public and I'd be so ready when we got back to my apartment that I'd practically melt.

Then, he started increasing the pressure on me, suggesting we role play and that he'd sneak into my apartment one night and be waiting for me to mock-rape me. He wanted to smack my ass while we were having sex. Even though he promised we'd agree to everything before hand, and would only do what I was comfortable with, it scared me. Yielding power.

"Come on, sweet stuff," he said. "Everyone's adding in a bit of kink in their sex after those books."

I said no. I told him I was just an ordinary girl, with ordinary vanilla tastes. I had no interest in getting my ass hit or being scared to death when entering my dark empty apartment late at night. He did it anyway, one night lying in wait for me, and it scared me so much, I screamed and threw something at him, almost hitting him in the head. I cried, and told him to leave.

Then I called him over and over again, apologizing, asking him to come back and for us to work things out because he made me feel something again, for the first time after Mangaize.

Like I was alive and filled with desire. Like I was wanted.

Really wanted.

He never spoke to me again.