“Something like that,” I said, looking back down at my plate. Because as honest as we were being, pride was a hard thing to swallow.
The man sitting across from me was a billionaire. And was I going to sit here and admit I had nothing? Less than nothing? I didn’t even have a college degree.
And I hadn’t forgotten the disgust on his face when he talked just a minute ago about gold-diggers.
He respected me because he thought I was here on some sort of rebellious lark. He thought we were equals.
“Still going to play mysterious?” he prompted, and I didn’t miss the frustration in his voice. But all I could do was pick up my scone, smile coyly, and shrug, while inside, a little more of me crumbled away.
Still, it was a turning point. I wouldn’t say we went back to our old selves like we’d been before. No, we didn’t go back to Master and submissive twenty-four seven.
But after his work was done, or during extended lunches, we would… play.
The next month passed far less painfully than I would have expected. There were a few Trials, but, and I don’t know if the Elders had decided to take it easy on us after the last disastrous one or something—which didn’t seem like a very Elder thing to do, but hey, I wasn’t complaining—they weren’t bad at all.
Going downstairs for some public orgies didn’t really bother me. Especially when they seemed to turn Emmett on. As long as he wasn’t expected to share me, his Dom self seemed to get off on the voyeuristic nature of showing off just how far he could push me—and make me beg for it.
And when things were good like this between us, damn, they were good.
During our first month and a half, I never knew if Emmett would want to pause work for meals, but ever since the Hunt, he always made time for them. Especially breakfast. Sometimes we’d spend a couple of hours in the breakfast nook chatting and reading parts of the paper to each other, doing the crossword together, laughing over the dumb comics. He was always sweet about the crosswords, which I bet he could do in his sleep, but he let me puzzle over the clues before suggesting an answer he’d probably known all along.
I never realized before getting to know Emmett that a man could be so sweet and also be the most badass, sexy, dominant lover I’d ever known.
This morning, for example.
I was sleepy. One thing I liked about being here was sleeping in. Mom never let me sleep in at home, even though I was a grown-ass woman. She’d bang on my door at ungodly hours of the morning, wailing about how we didn’t even have a woman to cook us eggs anymore and how we were starving now! And she’d keep it up until I dragged my ass out of bed and went downstairs to put on the coffee and make some sort of breakfast out of whatever was left in the pantry.
But I had to say, being woken by the gentlest kisses on the back of my neck was the kind of wake-up call I didn’t mind.
It was full light out, so Emmett had given me time to sleep, even though I knew he liked to get an early start.
I smiled as I wiggled my tush back against him and—oh! I smiled even wider. Yes, somebody was very awake.
But when I tried to turn around to envelop him in my arms, he caught my wrists and urged me forward again, his chest still to my back. His arms came around me, hands on my wrists as both our arms hugged me, tucked close to my breasts until I was surrounded on all sides by him.
The head of his cock nudged between my legs, and I opened to him, my breath hitching as I did. Even after months, the feel of him still affected me so. There was no growing tired of this man. I couldn’t imagine this ever getting old.
His hands clenched with pressure on my wrists as he thrust his hips forward, spearing into my pussy with one great thrust.
“You’re so beautiful when you submit to me so completely like this,” he said, clenching me to him tighter as he pulled out and then thrust back in again. “It makes me want to fuck you like a maniac, to take you to that place I know you love—when you’re mindless and completely free in pleasure.”
I could only grunt out a desperate, “Please.”
It was early morning still, and I was half-befuddled with sleep, but waking to this—my domineering master wanting to take me to the mountaintop with him as he played my slickened body like a maestro—oh God, yes, please, I wanted to go on the ride.