ARROGANT MASTER (27 page)

BELLAMY

“You have tens of thousands of dollars to your name now and
a wardrobe easily worth six figures.” Dane’s words come out of nowhere as I
climb into his bed Monday night wearing nothing but his favorite velvet
lingerie and an untied satin robe in a shade of deep scarlet. His hands drag
across my stomach, but he refuses to look at me. “I suppose it’s only a matter
of time before you’re done here.”

Is this his way of pushing me away?

“You make it sound like I’ve been using you,” I say,
climbing under the covers and slinking up next to him. Last night, I woke up from
a bad dream to find his arm wrapped around my side. I stayed paralyzed not
wanting to move or wake him just so I could enjoy it a bit longer.

“Isn’t that what we were doing?” he asks. “Using each other?”

“I’d like to think it was deeper than that,” I say.

“You just said
was
…”
He rolls to his back, slipping his hands behind his head and staring at the
ceiling.

“It wasn’t intentional,” I say. “I don’t want us to be a
‘was’ just yet. Unless you do…”

“I’m not quite ready to be done with you yet. If I’m being
honest.”

“I knew you were testing me.”

“Always.”

“Your honesty is noted and appreciated.” I want to lean
across the wide bed and kiss every part of him from his deliciously curved jaw
to the bow of his upper lip to his perfectly straight nose.

Instead, I refrain from ruining this moment by acting like
some cutesy girlfriend because the next thing I know, he’d be calling Mathilde
to pack my things and call me a cab.

“I’m still waiting on that notebook,” he says. “Your
deepest, darkest fantasy. I want to bring it to life for you. You’ve done that
for me already, but I’d like to return the favor.”

I bite my tongue, unsure of how to tell him this.

“I threw the notebook away.” My hands fly over my face.

“You did
what
?” The
low tone of his voice and the storm brewing in his eyes suggests he’s angry
enough to punish me, and that hasn’t happened in a good, long while. He rolls
to his side, facing me, and props himself up on his elbow.

I sit up in his bed, peering at him between my fingers. The
day after we returned from Nashville I tossed it out after having spent all
weekend asking myself what my ultimate fantasy might be and finally getting an
answer.

“Why would you do that?” His dark brows meet in the middle.

“Because what I want…what the deepest part of me wants…” I
draw in a long breath. “It’s not something you’re capable of giving me.”

“I’m capable of giving you anything you want.”

“Not this.”

“I find that extremely hard to believe.”

“Believe it.”

“Tell me what it is. As your
master
, I’m ordering you.” His expression darkens, and his hand
slides between my inner thighs until it reaches my sex where he rubs me through
my lace panties. “Tell me, Bellamy.”

Just thinking about telling him makes me cringe because I
know how he’ll react. It won’t be good. And I don’t want him to look at me like
some silly schoolgirl.

“Please don’t make me say this.” I clasp my hands together
and playfully beg though my face is winced and blushing.

His eyes drag from mine toward the pillow between us, his
hand motionless between my thighs now. “You don’t feel like you can open up to me?”

“Not with this.”

Lingering silence consumes the space between us, and Dane’s
expression falls somber.

“I was raised FLDS. I grew up at the Zion Ranch about fifty
miles north of Claxon, Utah.” He clears his throat, pulling his hand from me, his
eyes still glued to the pillow. “My father had eight wives and fifty-six
children. I was the twenty-first son. Beckham was the twenty-second. We were
born six months apart to two different mothers.”

I’m still as a statue, clinging to his every word.

“When I was sixteen, my father came for Beckham and me and
walked us out to one of the compound’s Suburban’s, which was already filled
with five other young men, like myself.” He swallows. “We were each given a
sack lunch and a twenty-dollar bill and dropped off in the middle of the
country. Most of us had never set foot outside the compound border.”

“Dane.” My hand flies to my mouth. I want to hold him,
comfort him.

“Some of the
lost boys
headed straight for Vegas. Drugs. Prostitution. They did whatever they had to do.”
He shakes his head, keeping the far-off look in his eyes. “My brother and I got
a job bussing tables and mopping floors at some rat’s nest diner we came across
on our walk into a nearby town.”

He smirks.

“The owner of the diner, Leo
Fickbaum
,
was a spirited old bastard. I suppose he took pity on us, so he put us up in
this old 1955 Airstream he had sitting in his backyard. That’s where we lived
for a couple years. Working at the diner, living in a camper.”

Dane’s layers upon layers are momentarily translucent, and
my aching heart is replaced with nothing but admiration.

“Uncle Leo, as we came to call him, came into some money
after a few years from some inheritance,” Dane continues. “He was a humble man.
Didn’t want much. Didn’t need much. He was an old bachelor who never settled or
had kids. Leo decided to give the money to Beck and I, but only if we promised
to invest it.”

I nod my head side to side. “Makes sense.”

“Beck had all these grand ideas,” he says. “But I suggested
that we invest it in ourselves first. We got our G.E.D.s and attended a local
community college, studying alternative and renewable energy. Within three
years, we bought out a fledgling solar panel company based out of Salt Lake
City, expanded it, and renamed it Townsend Energy Holdings.”

“And now here you are.” A smile resides in my tone. I’m sure
there’s more to his story, but he’s never opened up to me like this before, so
I won’t dare go prying just yet.

“I don’t enjoy discussing my past,” he says. “It’s difficult
at times, and I tend to give the condensed version.”

“Understandable.”

“But now that I’ve opened up to you,” he says. “Common
courtesy would suggest you should return the favor.”

Wow. All that just so he
could get me to tell him my deep, dark secret.

“It’s not dark,” I say. I’m not sure how I can listen to him
pour his heart out about his younger years and then deliver some silly fantasy
of mine. It’s certainly not an equal exchange.

“Okay.” His fingers
slip between my thighs
again, massaging me with quick, steady
circles as he moves closer to me.
“Tell.”

“You’re going to laugh.”

“I promise I will
not
laugh.”

His hands slide around my hips, grabbing a handful of flesh
and rolling me over top of him where the girth of his hardness presses through
his satin pajama bottoms. He rocks my hips over his, teasing me the way he does
so well.

“What is it, Bellamy? What is the one thing you desire more
than anything in the world?”

My hips grind against him, and I gather my hair at the nap
of my neck, dragging it over my shoulder as our eyes lock.

“Sex with love.”

He stops, his hands locked on my outer thighs, and his jaw
firming.

“See, I knew this would happen. I knew you’d look at me like
that.” My face burns. I try to climb off of him, but he refuses to release me.
“It’s not something you can give me. I know that. I tried to tell you–”

“Look at me.”

I stop squirming and flick my gaze his way, bracing myself
for some speech about how he’s not capable of love and how this was never
supposed to be an emotional arrangement.

And he would be correct.

It wasn’t supposed to be an emotional arrangement.

“I told you it’s not something you could give me,” I say.
“Because that’s not something you can just do for someone. It has to happen
naturally. And you may have given me everything I could possibly ever dream of,
but that’s the one thing you can’t.”

We’re locked in a gaze, and I wish he’d say something.

“I’m okay with that,” I lie, wishing this conversation had
never happened.

“Are you? Or are you just saying that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he sits up, keeping me in his lap. “It does matter.”

I wait, straddling him and feeling his bulge between my
legs. He should be tying me up now, flipping me over, and plunging inside me
until we collapse. That’s what we do. That’s what he likes.

Dane says nothing as his fingers drag beneath the waistband
of my panties as he sits up and presses his mouth onto mine. My eyes close, and
I focus on the softness of his lips and the slow, gentle exchange. He slides my
robe off my shoulders and unfastens my bra, taking his time. With his hands
sliding down my bare back, he grabs my hips and slides me underneath him.

Our lips fuse even still. Soft, tender kisses I haven’t got
the courage to question.

He reaches to his nightstand and clicks off the lamp before
pulling the drawer. I assume he’s reaching for a toy or something, but instead,
I heard the rustling of a foil packet in the dark. He pulls his engorged cock
out in one fluid movement then sheaths himself before returning to cover me.

And that’s what he’s doing.

He’s covering me.

The cocoon between his arms feels safe, protective, and
warm. My legs spread, widening for him as he readies himself at my entrance. He
captures my bottom lip in his as he plunges inside me, releasing a soft groan
that reverberates through his chest and onto mine. My hands slide up his back.

This is the first time I’ve ever actually touched
him
during sex. My hands are free, and
he’s not scolding me. His skin is soft and smooth, and his muscles ripple
beneath my palms as his entire body moves in rhythm with mine. Dane’s hands
curl into fists, gripping the sheets behind my head as he pushes himself deeper
inside me.

I gasp, digging my fingers into his back.

His lips leave my swollen mouth and travel to my neck, and I
brace myself for bites that never come. Instead, he peppers soft kisses over
every square inch until I’m covered in goose bumps. When he returns to my open,
waiting mouth, his hands slide down my arms until he finds my fingers and
interlaces his with mine, lifting them above my head.

I’m still safe in this cocoon, but he has my hands, pinning
them as he kisses and makes love to me.

That’s what he’s doing.

He’s making love to me.

This feels like love-sex.

I could stay here forever like this, soaking in the heat of
his body as it weighs me down. I’m not even concerned with coming right now. My
body craves his closeness, that elusive connection with Dane that always felt
as if it were within arm’s reach seconds before he’d yank it away.

For an entire hour, Dane makes love to me, and for an entire
hour, nothing else matters.

We finish just as emotionally spent as we are physically,
and he lingers inside me for a moment longer than usual before rolling off. He
heads to the bathroom, and I turn over, covering with sheets and sinking into a
pile of pillows as my body shakily recovers.

Dane returns a few minutes later and climbs under the
blankets. I fully expect him to keep to the opposite side and be out like a
light within seconds, but the warmth of his hand on my stomach sends me
reeling. He pulls me into him, into his arms.

He doesn’t say a word.

I stir the next morning with my face flush against his
chest, waking to the sound of his beating heart against my ear.

DANE

Bronson drives us to work Tuesday morning. I typically use
this time to reflect, maybe answer a few emails, gather my thoughts, or admire
the country landscape before it morphs into a sea of buildings.

But today I’m taking in a different view.

Bellamy glides her hand along her skirt, picking off a stray
piece of fuzz. Her long legs are crossed, and she’s staring straight ahead. We
haven’t spoken much this morning besides a few pleasantries at breakfast while
I read the news on my iPad, and she chatted with her sister about which courses
she would be taking come fall.

“I loved a woman once.”

Bellamy’s attention snaps in my direction.

“Only once.”

She angles herself toward me.

“She was my sub,” I say, squinting out the dark window at
the cars we pass. “But then she became much more than that.”

Her hands fidget in her lap.

“The woman destroyed me. I played with fire, and I got burned.
I promised myself I’d never do that again.” My hand slides into my pocket,
covering the red Cartier box I tucked away that morning.

“If this is about last night…you don’t have to say
anything…I know you just did that because–”

“Please. Let me continue.”

She buttons her full lips and nods.

“I’m a powerful man, and love is a powerful emotion. I don’t
know that I’m quite ready yet to put myself out there or to throw around a word
that makes people do crazy stupid things.” I slide the box out and set it
across my lap. “The only thing I do know, is you do something to me, Bellamy.
Even when I’m dominating you on the outside, I’m submitting to you on the
inside. While I’m not quite sure what to make of that, I do know one thing.”

I place the box in her lap.

“I’m not ready to let you go yet. I’m not done with you
yet.”

Bellamy cracks the box open and pulls out the golden Cartier
bangle. I lift the matching golden screwdriver.

“This bracelet,” I say. “Symbolizes commitment. It
sanctifies our inseparability.”

“Is it an item of ownership?” She examines the sparkling,
bezel-set diamonds.

“This is different.” I twist the screwdriver in my fingers,
the only device that can unlock that bracelet from her wrist as soon as it’s
fastened. “This is separate from
that
.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’m not done with you yet either.”

She slips the bangle over her wrist and holds it out for me
to secure. I twist the flat screw and tighten it, leaning over to steal a kiss
the second I’m done.

We soar down the interstate in the back of my limo, and I
take her hand in mine, eyeing the gold bracelet as the diamonds glint in the
early morning light.

“I’ve never been in love before,” she says, breaking our
peaceful silence. “And I’m not saying that I love you, Dane. But I think I very
easily could fall in love with you...that is, if you let me.”

I squeeze her hand.

“So all I’m asking,” she continues, “is that you’re gentle
with me.”

I press the top of her hand against my lips, the corners of
my mouth lifting. “You have my word.”