Savage Hearts (28 page)

Not real as in ‘that actually happened.’ That was obvious, and, frankly, magnificent.
Real as in meaningful.
Real as in ‘no longer this strange vacation from real life in which I can play sh I and, fraat being another version of myself.’
Real as in
real
.

She needed to get out. She needed to get some air. She needed to get some perspective.

So she snuck out.

Cate wasn’t proud of that. She hadn’t been able to leave Desi without saying goodbye, and then she’d walked right out on Soren, having called her car service and found some entirely too big sweatpants to wear home. The car service guy was a consummate professional—he didn’t say anything at all about the giant sweatpants, sweatshirt, and evening bag combination.

Cate, on the other hand, was about two minutes away from losing it. She hadn’t taken off Soren’s sweatshirt since she’d gotten home. For some reason she just couldn’t, not any more than she could shake the words he’d said to her the previous night. She had been so angry, so spooked, because he had been
right
—how stupid was that?

But she’d reacted to the danger of it, and her reaction…it hadn’t been wrong, necessarily. Well, she didn’t know. The truth was that everything felt different around Soren. He distorted everything, just by his presence, his influence. He intoxicated her, and that intoxication made her believe in things that couldn’t be.

She
had
to remember that it wasn’t real.

She just didn’t know what that meant anymore.

And then he’d started texting her. Cate had, for the first time in her professional life, hidden away both of her phones, professional and personal. That was how much she needed to be alone with her thoughts.

Except that of course she cracked and checked to see if Soren had called. And then, of course, she’d only lasted a little while longer after that, and when he’d told her to trust him…

So now she was waiting for Soren Andersson to show up at her house.

Which was making her lose her mind.

Her
house
. Her
home
.
The only place where she was entirely her goofy, sometimes silly, sometimes stupid self.
After she’d left Jason, she’d taken a weird pleasure in displaying some of the hobbies and pastimes that he used to mock or use against her. Usually Jason would be kind of subtle about it, because he was that good—he’d dismiss her objection to something he’d done or said by reminding her that life wasn’t like one of those romance novels she was so childishly obsessed with. After that she’d hidden the romance novels. Now that she had her own place, they were out and proud on her bookshelf.

And so it went with most of the things that brought her happiness.

Honestly, in retrospect, looking back at that relationship, she
did
feel like an idiot. Who else would stay with someone like that? Long after he’d ceased to be charming, long after he’d stopped bothering to try wear his own mask of decency? When it had become clear that he saw her prof s sato bessional success as some sort of mortal insult?

Regardless, most of those things were now on easy display in her home, because it was her
home
. It was private. It was very, very private. Nobody came to her house, not ever.

Except, apparently, Soren.

The bell rang.

Cate jumped. She was practically running for the door, as terrified as she was, not wanting him to wait. It made no sense, none at all, except that his sweatshirt still smelled like him, and so maybe she was already a little bit under his influence.

She opened the door to find him leaning against the doorframe, his hair falling over his sunglasses, his jeans riding low on his hips, hands in his pockets. Just a t-shirt and ripped jeans, and the man
was
chiseled sex. For a second her body took over and she forgot to be anxious.

For a second.

“I expected something bigger,” he said.

“I bought it with cash, quickly, when I left my ex,” she said. “I liked the privacy and the view. I don’t need much space.”

She was babbling.
Kind of.
There wasn’t much editing going on in her
brain, that
was for sure.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It makes me very…” She couldn’t say it. Scared? It sounded stupid, even to her. She was a grown woman with a house. This was beyond silly.

And yet she was twisting the ends of his sweatshirt in her hands, making it ride up her thighs.
Her bare thighs.

Soren looked down. He took a deep breath, and looked back up. Then he took his sunglasses off and pinned her with those ice-blue eyes.

“If you want me to, I will leave,” he said. “But you have to ask me.”

Cate couldn’t say anything.

Soren could.

He smiled.

“You’re uncomfortable with me here,” he said, crossing his arms. “Nah, more than that. It scares the crap out of you. But you can’t tell me to leave, can you?”

Cate couldn’t say anything.

“Can you?” he said again.

Cate couldn’t say anything.

n>
“You know why?” he asked.

Cate tried to swallow. “Goddammit,” she managed. “Just tell me.”

“Because,” Soren said, walking past her into her home, his hand sweeping over stomach through his own sweatshirt and making her falter, “you want me to see all this. You’re just too chicken to show me yourself.”

Soren pulled her away from the door and closed it behind her. He kept a firm grip on her wrist and a lingering glance on her legs.

“This psychobabble is starting to piss me off,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It pisses you off that I’m right.”

Damn him.

“It pisses me off that you pull this stuff and then distract me with sex so I can’t even think straight.”

Soren laughed out loud. “
I
distract
you?
”

“Right now. You’re touching me. You can’t
touch
me like that. It makes me crazy.” She looked up at him. “It’s not fair.”

Soren took a deep, deep breath, and Cate watched his chest expand with rapt attention. Even his abs
were
visible through that thin material. He brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist and then, with a frustrated exhalation, he let her go.

“You need to see that nothing bad happens,” he muttered. “You need to have one damn experience where you let someone in and they don’t hurt you with it.”

“Stop talking about what I need!”

“Quiet,” he said, eyes flashing. “Tell me I’m wrong, Cate. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll leave. Otherwise I am here as your Dom and you had better behave yourself. Am I clear?”

The voice.

Cate felt Soren’s voice reverberate through her body, chasing away some of her anxiety, her terror at being exposed in such an intimate way. She railed against it, knowing it was that influence again, that Soren intoxication effect, but to no avail.

Soren touched her cheek and she instinctively turned toward his touch. He said, “Am. I. Clear?”

Cate’s stomach fluttered and she felt herself close to something. Relief. Was it relief?

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You ran out on me this morning,” he said softly. “That’s not happening again. You redeemed yourself by giving me your address so promptly, so I haven’t decided if you’re going to get punished yet.”

Cate blinked.

“Punished?”

“You heard me.”

Cate’s mind whirled at the implications of that word. It meant something different coming from Soren, in this context. It wasn’t a threat; it was more of a promise of…honesty? Of commitment to these roles they played? She knew she had her safeword, and yet her whole body tensed at the idea of punishment for a grown woman.
For her.

She felt dampness between her legs. Wow.

Soren slid his hand over her hip to the back of her ass, pushing her toward the entrance to the living room. As he pushed her ahead, he said, “I like you wearing my clothes. Now get your ass in there and prepare to give me a tour.”

Then he gave her a slap that sent another shiver straight to her core.

Cate tried to think through the usual Soren buzz that dominated her thoughts and feelings. A tour? What did that even mean? She looked around her living room, a big, open space with arched doorways and a direct entrance to the massive deck, and tried to figure out what that could mean.

There were her books, her embarrassing books that she loved, and, when she thought about it, didn’t find embarrassing at all. Except, of course, that she did. There were truly a lot of self-help books in there, romance novels, whole shelves on hobbies and interests she never got to pursue. Really, she was a book hoarder. She had a problem.

Then there was the knitting. A whole little corner devoted to it, complete with a comfy chair and a truly awesome pile of yarn.
She didn’t want to explain knitting groups and yarn bombs to anyone who wasn’t…well
,
it was hard to explain
. Yes, she did enjoy temporarily adorning public items with fitted knitted covers made in concert with her
internet
friends who were also strangely obsessed with knitting. What, that was weird?

And then there were the board games.

Really, looking around, what filled her with dread was not that any of it was stupid or silly or whatever. It was that it was all so
boring
.
So uninteresting.
Out in public she was this famous badass lawyer who regularly destroyed the opposition like some latter-day Valkyrie, and in here she was just…Cate.

She was starting to panic.

“Cate,” Soren said. His voice brought her back, but just barely. She was pulling at the sweatshirt again.

He looked at the knitting pile. “You knit?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, high.

Soren walked over and started flipping through her scrapbook, the one where she kept photos of her group’s most impressive yarn bombs. She felt her stomach clench. Jason had mocked this to high heaven.

“This is invasive as hell, Soren,” she said.

“Yup,” he said.

When Soren looked up, he was chuckling.

“These are fucking great,” he said. “See? I’m laughing. The stone statue has been moved by your awesomeness. You did all these yourself?”

“I…” She didn’t know what to say. He looked delighted. “There’s a group of us.”

“How do you even do this?” he said. “These are the three dancing pigs on Canyon Drive, right? How did you get goddamn
onesies
on them?”

For the first time in what felt like ages, Cate smiled. “Trade secret.”

“And the books, you read them?”

“I try. I always say I will. Some of them.”

“Which ones?”

“Look, none of this is very interesting,” she said, shaking her head. She was standing in the middle of her own living room, feeling out of place. Soren looked at her.