Being Me (37 page)

With nerves fluttering in my stomach, I try to call him. The rings radiate through me, one after another, until I hear his voice mail and hang up. I feel that same pinch in my chest that I did last week when he’d shut me out. He’s angry and hurt and I’m not anymore. I’m uncertain and confused.

I’m not sure how tonight landed where it did, and as I start
driving, I find myself searching for answers where it all seemed to start. I end up at my old apartment and go to Ella’s unit, the place where I first discovered Rebecca. I walk to the bedroom, drop my purse on the bed, and lie on the mattress to stare at the ceiling. Thanks to Ella and Rebecca, I dared to be me, not the shell of a person I had settled for. And because of them, I found Chris.

I roll to my side, exhausted beyond belief. I want to go home, I want to see Chris. I want to talk to him about all I am feeling, but we are broken. So very broken. I don’t know how to fix us. I don’t know if he wants to fix us. Maybe I shouldn’t want to fix us. But I do. And I don’t care if that makes me foolish. I dig my phone from my purse, shut my eyes, and will it to ring.

•   •   •

“Sara.” I blink awake to the sound of Chris’s voice and find him standing above me.

I sit up in a haze, afraid I’m still dreaming. “Chris?” I scoot to the end of the bed, relieved he is indeed here, hope filling me that we still have a chance.

He squats down in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me. “I thought you’d be here, when I didn’t find you at home.”

“I couldn’t go home when you weren’t there. I tried to call you.”

“They made me turn my phone off at the hospital, and you haven’t been answering yours since I turned it back on.” He cuts his gaze away and I sense the struggle in him, and dread fills me before he turns back to me. “Look. Sara.” Again he hesitates, and I hang on the moment until he continues. “I’m leaving for Paris at ten in the morning.”

My shoulders slump, pain spiraling through me. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes. I’m leaving.”

“No. Don’t.”

He studies me a long moment, searching for something I hope he finds. “Come with me. We’ll find Ella and we’ll try to find us again. I’ve thought about this for hours. I’ve held things back, and maybe tonight wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t. If you want to know exactly who and what I am, Paris is where you will find out. I’ve always known that but I wasn’t ready for what that means until now. And I’m not sure you ever will be. You need to think long and hard on that before morning.”

“My passport—”

He reaches into his pocket, then pulls out my passport and tosses it on the bed. “It came while I was out of town.” He pushes to his feet and he still hasn’t touched me. Why won’t he touch me?

This is too sudden. My head is spinning. “Chris, please. Let’s talk about this.”

“No. No talking. No in between. All or nothing, Sara. I’m offering that to you, and you have to decide if you really want it. There’s a reservation in your name with American Airlines. I’ll be on the plane. I hope you will be, too.” He walks away and the door opens and shuts behind him.

He’s gone, leaving me with confirmation of what I’ve already sensed in him. There is more to his pain than I know, more secrets to be revealed. He’s left me with another one of his tests, and I have only a few hours to answer. Not knowing what secrets he holds, am I willing to take this risk with him?

Thursday, August 2, 2012

I told him good-bye today, but he didn’t believe I meant it. His lips curved in that sensual way they do, and he murmured wicked promises of pleasure in my ear. But this time those promises weren’t enough. He looked shocked when I told him that pleasure was the façade he used to hide from love. I saw something deep in his eyes, a flash of torment. And I knew I was right, that there is more to him than he allows me to see. I’m not blind anymore, though. I know now that I’m not the woman who can reveal the man beneath the Master. I’m simply a part of his journey and he of mine
.

Ah, but there is a part of me that hopes he will miss me. That maybe we will find each other again someday. I didn’t dare see him again, or touch him again, for fear I’d be weak and change my mind. I left him a handwritten note on his desk, and said all there was left to say. “Good-bye—Love, Rebecca”

Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peek at Lisa Renee Jones’s spicy final installment to the Inside Out trilogy

Revealing Us

Available September 2013 from Gallery Books

The elevator opens and he waits for me to enter, and I do. With fast steps, I rush inside and whirl around to confront him. He stalks forward, and this time he doesn’t avoid looking at me, his expression etched with pure determination and some raw, dark emotion I cannot fully name. I don’t get the chance to try.

Before a word is out of my mouth, and I have many intended, the bags he’s holding hit the floor and he has pressed me back against the wall. My purse tumbles from my arm and his powerful thighs encase mine; his hips mold my hips. I gasp with the rough tangle of his fingers in my hair and the blaze of his eyes as they capture mine. I am angry with him. I am aroused. And when his mouth claims my mine, his tongue slicing past my lips with a delicious lick followed by another, demanding my response, I am at his mercy. My fingers curl around his T-shirt and I eliminate the tiny space between us, molding myself against him. He owns me and, considering how the past thirty minutes have gone, this terrifies me, but I’m all in with him. I decided that long ago. I am his to command, moaning with the taste of him, sultry and male, on my tongue.

His hand sweeps up my side, fingers flexing over my ribs, palm covering my breast. My nipple tightens in anticipation of the tug that follows and I moan, my need to touch him almost unbearable. I reach for his shirt, intending to push beneath, but he doesn’t let me.

His fingers close around my wrist and I know he is in that dark place, where he doesn’t let me touch him—but I am in a dark place, too, on edge, ripe with my anger and unwilling to be submissive to him. Challenging his silent message of control, I reach for his shirt with my free hand, and he shackles my other wrist as well and tears his mouth from mine. Our eyes lock, the sound of our heavy breathing filling the air, and the motion of the elevator I didn’t even know was moving sways our bodies. The floor vibrates slightly beneath our feet and I sense that the doors behind him slide open, but still we stand there, staring at each other.

“They don’t get to tell you who I am,” he says. His voice is a rough growl, low and tight. “I do. I tell you and I show you, so you get the truth—not their fabrication of it.” A muscle in his jaw flexes. “Understand?”

My anger and fear dissolve instantly. He’s not pulling away from me. He’s angry that Amber and Tristan might taint my view of him, when he’s already convinced I’ll hate him before this discovery process is over.

“Do you understand?” he demands again when I apparently don’t answer fast enough.

This time I don’t fight the bark of his order, understanding the desperation beneath its surface. “Yes. Yes. I—”

His fingers tangle in my hair again, tugging my head back in that deliciously rough way he does. His dark side calls to me and I no longer fight answering.

“Do not go there without me again.” His voice is gravelly; raw like the emotion I’ve seen in his face and tasted on his lips.

“My going there wasn’t what you think it was.”

His eyes flash with disapproval. He is not pleased, or accepting of what I’ve said, and his mouth closes down on mine, punishing, controlling. His tongue thrusts and tastes before he repeats his words, his fingers stroking my breasts, teasing my nipple. “Do not go there again without me, Sara.”

“I won’t.” The words come out a hoarse groan as his hand strokes a path up and down my side, and back over my breast. His touch is heavy, the air thick, and I’m certain he isn’t convinced. “I won’t go back without you.”

His fingers curl around my neck and he stares down at me, searching my face with such intensity, it feels as if he’s seeing straight to my soul. And I welcome it. I welcome him. Seconds tick by, and I have no idea what he sees or doesn’t see in me, but he drags my mouth to his and kisses me.

The silky hot stroke of his tongue is a shot of adrenaline and desire that spikes through my body and creates a tingling sensation from head to toe. I shudder with pleasure and drink him in, tasting the bittersweet hunger in him, the anger and torment. I burn to touch him beyond where my fingers rest on his chest, to feel hard muscle flex beneath my fingers.

But control is his outlet of choice when there is no whip, no pain. And I am no longer angry, no longer rebelling against his demands. No longer fighting his need for an outlet I have long ached for him to know he has with me, in me.

I tremble with the caress of his hand over my waist, traveling to my hip, and curving around my backside to firmly pull me hard against his thick erection. His palm skims upward to the small of my back and flattens, molding me even closer. I moan into his mouth and he groans in response, his tongue delving
deeply, hot with growing demand, with a palpable urgency. And his hands are everywhere, touching me, stroking me, caressing me, driving me wild. Before I know what’s happening, he’s shoving my jeans down my legs. I blink and my boots are gone, and I’m half-naked in an elevator with the doors locked open.

He turns me to the wall and his hands slide, slow and firm, possessively down my waist and over my hips. Feeling his gaze rake over my body, I am wet and weak in the knees. He cups my cheeks from behind and steps forward, pressing his lips to my ear. “Tonight I want to spank you, but I won’t. Not when it would be punishment. I won’t ever do that to you. But don’t think that means I won’t want to.”

I understand him. I don’t know how or why, but deep in our souls, we connect, and I know what he is doing. He’s showing me a hard exterior, but all I see is vulnerability, a need that tonight has sparked: to show me a darker, more dangerous side of himself and have me not run for cover.

“You can’t scare me away,” I tell him, “so throw all the words you want at me. I’m still here. I’m still not going anywhere. And in case you forgot, I liked it when you spanked me.”

His hand finds my stomach and then presses deeper between my legs, until his fingers tease my clit. “Maybe this time I’ll tie you up and flog you.”

“Do it.” His fingers stroke into the silky wet V of my body, and I am panting, barely able to speak, but I somehow finish my challenge. “The more you push me, the more I push back.”

He nips my earlobe and I can feel him unzipping his pants. “So you say,” he murmurs.

“So I
know
.” Throwing caution to the wind, I press on, trying
to unleash the pent-up energy that he always bottles until it explodes. “Only one of us is running. Only one of us is afraid of what I have yet to discover.”

The air crackles and his hand goes to my waist, fingers flexing into my flesh, and I revel in knowing I’ve succeeded in taking him to the edge.

“You think I’m running?” he demands.

“No. I think you’re trying to make
me
run so you can blame me if we fail.”

His cock presses between my legs. “Does that feel like I want you to run?” He drives hard inside me without any prelude. “Does
that
?” And then he is thrusting, reaching around me to meld his hand to my breast, holding onto me. He thrusts again, burying himself with a fieriness that outreaches pure physical need.

Oh yes, I have made him angry, and I am glad. I want this side of him—I want all of him. And damn it, he just keeps trying to deny me. He keeps trying to hold back, and keeps trying to make me run.

I press my hand to his on my breast, holding him there and wanting to never let go. Pleasure splinters through me with each thrust of his cock, each moment he’s buried deep inside me. Sensation after sensation begins in my sex and rushes through all my nerve endings. I am lost in how he feels, how I feel, and I arch into him. My muscles clench around him, and then I can’t breathe—my orgasm takes me by surprise, enveloping me, consuming me. I rise to the top of it far too quickly and come down far too hard and fast, but just in time to feel him shudder, his body tensing with his release. He stills, burying his face in my
neck, and his body slowly relaxes. For several moments he holds me there, and I’m not sure either of us breathes. I’m not sure what to say or what to do next.

Abruptly, he pulls out of me, and an unusual sense of utter emptiness washes over me. As I start to turn, he’s already headed out of the elevator. I stare after him, knots tightening in my stomach.

Maybe I pushed the wrong buttons.

Maybe I pushed him too far or too hard.

Maybe I made a mistake.