Kat
Good girl. Those words somehow both heal and wound me at the same time.
Maybe Delaney was right after all.
“Am I?” I ask, even though it’s a terrible, needy thing to say. I’m going to freak him out just like I’ve freaked out every guy I ever thought was boyfriend potential. Because I’m not a good girl.
I’m bad.
Rotten to the core.
But Adrian pushes my hair back from my face. “Very good,” he rumbles, a foreign warmth and approval in his voice making me turn my face to try to see his.
He drops a kiss on my temple. “You like to play bad girl, but you’re nothing but good on the inside,” he tells me.
I draw in a sudden terraced breath. I don’t know why I feel like crying again. Am I going to cry every time this man makes me come? It’s absurd.
Totally embarrassing.
Oh God, my eyes are already wet.
But Adrian doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He doesn’t freak out. He just thumbs a tear off the side of my nose.
“You’re a strong girl, Kateryna,” he tells me. He rolls us to our sides, keeping our bodies connected. He finds my clit with the pad of his finger and lightly circles it, wringing another small orgasm out of me.
I gasp and hold my breath then moan softly as I let it go.
“This quirk of yours–this fetish? It’s your strength. Your flexibility is your strength. You won’t break. No matter what happens.”
He says the words fiercely, almost like he’s willing it to be true. Or programming me to be able to handle an impending disaster.
And I guess there is one.
Because he plans to kill my dad.
But I no longer doubt he will let me walk away. He’s probably programming me now for our goodbye.
“After you kill my dad, you’re going to let me go?” I have to ask.
He goes still behind me. “You’re strong, Kat,” he repeats. “You’ll be all right no matter what happens.”
I’m silent, turning over his words in my mind. I’d heard the goodbye in them, which drew my initial attention, but now I’m really thinking about what he said. That I have a fetish.
That it’s a strength, not a weakness.
My father flew me across the continent to install me in a private English girls’ school. All because one of his men caught me giving a boy a hand job behind our house. My father had called me a whore. Had raged and spat and cursed at me. No daughter of mine is going to whore around like that. You will not be allowed back until you’ve proven you know how to behave.
So I’d proven I knew how to misbehave.
I’d played the bad girl.
Now Adrian is telling me underneath it I’m really good?
Is that why it hurts so much when he calls me that?
Adrian eases out and rolls away. I roll to face him, hating myself for being so needy. He stands on the side of the bed, removing the condom, but he turns as if he senses my weakness. “You okay?”
I hold his gaze and nod.
“Hungry?”
I shake my head. “Sleepy,” I say. It’s true. As the post-orgasmic relaxation engulfs me, I feel like I could drift off to sleep.
“Me too.” Adrian disposes of the condom and returns to the bed. He pulls the covers out and tucks me under then climbs in beside me.
The deliciousness of it washes over me. “Are we napping together?”
For the first time, I see the corners of Adrian’s lips quirk. “Da. Come here.” He arranges me on my side facing away from him, tucking his lower arm beneath my neck and wrapping the upper arm around my waist.
“Be good, Kateryna. I’m a light sleeper.”
It’s meant to be a warning, but for some reason, all it does is warm my heart. Maybe I’m still ridiculously celebrating the fact that we’re cuddling. We’re having an afternoon nap.
Yes, I know I’m being foolish. I know I’m in a terrible situation that is going to end horrifically. But I also believe whatever just happened between me and Adrian–whatever is still happening or is happening now–is real. It’s true. He’s not playing me. We shared a real moment, and we’re having another one right now.
For the first time in my life, that sense of searching for something I can’t quite find–that void that pottery started to fill–seems completely satisfied.
I found my center. I was somehow made whole again by degrading, rough sex, and a spanking.
Whole because it was acknowledged for what it was. It was an agreement. An arrangement.
A fetish, as Adrian called it.
I guess I have a fetish. And Adrian has it, too.
And he says it’s the source of my strength. The thing I always thought was very much broken inside me might be my greatest source of power.
I’m not sure how that works, but I somehow feel it’s true.