Sweet Addiction (17 page)

It was clear that this house was Cole’s refuge. Built to exacting standards. Ultimate comfort and privacy in mind. Here nothing could encroach and that gave her an added measure of security and comfort.

He took another strawberry and held it to her mouth. She took a bite, the sweet fruit delectable on her tongue. Cole had arranged for an entire buffet in the sunroom and had fed her by hand whatever she wanted.

She felt pampered and ridiculously spoiled and now she was content to lie in his arms.

He’d kicked up his feet and stretched lengthwise on the couch so
his back was to the arm. She was draped over him and every once in a while he reached for something to feed her. His other hand stayed in her hair and he absently stroked through it and down her arm almost as if it was impossible for him to stop touching her.

“I think this would be perfect for your office,” he said. “Do you think you can work here or do you prefer something not so open?”

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would have arranged for her to have space to work. Lucas would have seen to it.

“It’s perfect.” And it was. Where better to create her own children’s tales than in a setting that looked straight out of one?

“I’ll have all your things brought here and arranged to your liking.”

She frowned. “I don’t have my stuff yet.”

“He had everything sent over this morning,” Cole said quietly.

“Oh.”

Silence descended and she tried so very hard not to read anything into the fact that Lucas had made no effort to see her. She wouldn’t allow it to hurt her because she had no idea the motive or lack of one and she refused to speculate.

“Do you remember when we used to do this on the weekends?”

Cole’s question brought her sharply out of her thoughts and sent her mind seeking in a completely different direction. Maybe it had been intentional. But it was effective because her mind wandered back to days spent just like this. She sprawled across Cole’s body, both of them content to just be.

Her smile was wistful and a little bittersweet. “Yes, I remember. We had such good times.”

He kissed her forehead. “Yes, we did.”

She angled her head so she could stare up at him. “How can we just fall back into this, Cole? We don’t even know each other anymore. It’s been ten years since we were together. This has all happened so fast that I’m having a hard time putting it all together. Is it a game? Are we
having a fling for old time’s sake? I feel like I need to know what the expectations are. I mean, Lucas gave me to you. I get that. The three of us are adhering to rules that most other people don’t have any knowledge of and yet they’re important to all of us. Or at least they are to me. I need to know where I stand with you. Take away the rules, the agreement, the fact for the next two weeks I am for all practical purposes your property and just tell me what this is.”

“You don’t ask much,” he said dryly.

He stroked his fingers through her hair, kissed her tenderly on the forehead again and then expelled his breath in a long sigh.

“I made a mistake, Ren. I’ve always known it. Walking away from you was the worst decision I’ve ever made. I hurt you and I hurt myself. We were so young and I was so worried that I was taking you over. I should have trusted in your strength. I should have had more faith in myself but I loved you so much, it killed me to think of hurting you, of what I did to you or
could
do to you in the future.”

She leaned away to rest against the back of the sofa so that she could see his face.

“But the need in me wouldn’t go away. It shamed me because I thought that anything that had brought someone I loved pain was an …abomination. It wasn’t until later that I realized that it wasn’t the practice of dominance and submission that was wrong. It was my handling of it and my ignorance. It was me who placed you in a position of danger. You were mine to protect and cherish and I failed you on every level.”

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.

He touched her face, stroked his fingers down her cheek as his gaze devoured her. Almost as if he couldn’t quite believe that she was here and would disappear at any moment.

“After you, I refused to participate in any practice that I didn’t extensively study and devote long hours to mastering. We wondered
when we began if it was curiosity or a deep-seeded need within us. For me it was a need and now I realize it was the same for you. How perfect we were for each other,” he said ruefully. “Even more so than we ever imagined. But the truth of the matter was, I needed time to mature and grow and time to gain the knowledge necessary to provide a safe environment for you.”

“Did you have other relationships? Like ours?” she asked, though she dreaded the answer. It was stupid and hypocritical. She’d certainly had relationships. She hadn’t been celibate but somehow it hurt her to think of Cole cherishing another woman as deeply as he’d cherished her.

“Not like ours,” he denied. “Nothing like ours. My …Well, you can’t even call them relationships. They were encounters. And they were all very clinical. There were women who intrigued me. Whom I was attracted to, but the ones I was perhaps the most attracted to belonged to other men. Maybe subconsciously I felt safe in letting myself feel something for them because I knew I never had a chance with them.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why wouldn’t you have wanted a chance?”

His gaze settled on her. Deep and serious. “Because they weren’t you.”

Her breath caught and she felt light-headed.

“Ren, I loved you. I know you didn’t think so. Especially when I walked out on you. But for me there’s never been another woman who made me feel like you did. There were a few who came close and maybe if they hadn’t belonged to other men I would have enjoyed being with them.”

He caught her hand and pulled it to his mouth to kiss her palm. “I’ve been very successful in life. I’ve achieved all the goals I’ve set out to achieve. It’s brought me a measure of happiness. But there’s always
been something missing and when I looked up in that restaurant and saw you for the first time in all these years, it all fell into place for me. It was like being hit by lightning. I can’t even begin to explain how it felt.”

She stared back at him in complete befuddlement. Her stomach knotted and she could barely squeeze air into her lungs.

“I looked at you and knew what was missing in my life. What I
wanted
in my life. I’ve never stopped loving you, Ren. I can’t make it any simpler than that.”

She swallowed but the knot didn’t go away. She had no idea what to say. How to feel. How could she make herself so very vulnerable when she was setting herself up for hurt no matter how this played out in the end?

Cole framed her face and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I’ve been brutally honest with you for one reason and one reason only. Because I want you to know from the start where I stand so that no matter what happens this week, no matter how hard I push you, no matter how far I take you out of your comfort zone, you know one thing if you know nothing else. You’ll know I love you and that I’d never do anything to hurt you again.”

He released her face but his gaze held her captive. “You can belong to any number of men. You can be possessed. You can be a possession. You can submit. You can be dominated. But none of that necessarily means you are loved and cherished above all else. You’ll know that with me, Ren. You’ll never doubt it for even a moment if I can help it.”

Tears gathered in her eyes. “Oh Cole.” She leaned forward until her forehead touched his and he swam in her vision as she tried to hold back the flood of emotion. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He tangled his fingers in her hair and held her close as their breaths mingled. “I’ve missed you too, darling.”

“It’s all so fast,” she murmured.

He nodded. “It is. We’ll
slow down. I never thought it would be easy. You can’t imagine what it felt like to see you and know you belonged to another man. Really belong. I knew what that collar signaled and I knew that I’d have to fight for you. But there was no way in hell I was going to walk away again.”

She snuggled into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder. He was so strong and comforting. Warm. She needed that strength.

“I won’t be easy,” he warned.

She shivered at the dark promise in his voice.

“This time we have together will give you the opportunity to see who I really am.”

She glanced up into his eyes. “And you’ll see that I’m not weak. That I need your strength and the rigidity of a dominant relationship. It’s not just what I want, Cole. It’s what I need. It’s what I have to have.”

He nodded. “I understand. I’ll give that to you, Ren. I’ll give you everything.”

Contentment slid over her, loosening some of the tension in her muscles. She went limp against him as he continued to stroke her body, his touch tender and soothing.

“Now tell me about this career of yours,” he said against her hair. “Rennie Michaels? Children’s author extraordinaire?”

She laughed lightly. “It started as an escape. A way to deal with my unhappiness. My unfulfillment I suppose you could say. I would drift away, telling stories in my head and one day I decided to write them down. And then I began to draw the scenes, adding words to the pictures that danced around my mind. The second day I was with Lucas, after he moved me in with him, he came across my drawings and one of the books I’d put together myself. He insisted I submit it and so I did. To be honest I think he helped. He had connections. Before I knew it I had an agent and then an offer. They fast tracked that first book
because it was already completed and little to no revisions were necessary. It released a few months ago and I’m working on the third in the series right now. The second will be released in four more months.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Her cheeks bloomed with heat and she smiled. “I love it. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in it, but I enjoy it. I have a purpose now. Job wise, I mean. Before I worked in marketing. I got my degree after you and I split up. But it’s so stressful and against my true personality. It was exhausting to make myself be this person I wasn’t and I finally quit trying. I owe a lot of that to Lucas. He was content to just let me …be.”

She glanced anxiously at Cole, already regretting that she’d brought up Lucas twice. It wasn’t that she was intentionally throwing Lucas in Cole’s face nor was she trying to make Cole jealous or make him feel threatened. The simple truth was Lucas had everything to do with the woman she was now. The woman she’d become over the last year.

She would have gotten there on her own eventually but Lucas had been a rock-solid source of support. She’d always owe him that.

“It sounds like Lucas recognized what a very special woman you were from the moment he saw you,” Cole said in a low voice.

Ren nodded, relieved that he didn’t take offense.

“What about your last relationship? Lucas said the man you were with hurt you.”

Ren could feel how stiff Cole went the moment he brought up the subject. There was a darkness to his eyes that told her how very dangerous he could be when provoked.

She swallowed and sighed. “A lot of it was my own fault.”

Cole scowled.

“No, really it was. I mean, it wasn’t my fault he was a dickhead, but it was my fault that I stayed as long as I did and that I settled for something I knew would never make me happy or fulfill me. That’s on me.”

“What did he do?” Cole gritted out.

“
He wanted to change me. He had very set ideas—stereotypical ideas—of how a dominant submissive relationship should work. To be honest he’d watched too many porn flicks or read too many bad novels on the subject. Quite frankly he was a joke. He wanted to be king of the castle and for me to kiss his feet. His idea of dominance was abuse and disrespect. He felt powerful when he was humiliating me.”

Cole’s nostrils flared and rage built like a storm in his eyes. His grip tightened on her and just as quickly he began to rub his hand up and down her arm in a comforting motion that she was unsure that he was even cognizant of.

“That son of a bitch,” Cole hissed. “The little bastard. So he got his rocks off acting like an abusive asshole.”

Ren shrugged. “Basically, yeah. My fault. I mean, that I took it so long. I was at a crossroads and my problem wasn’t so much that I thought I wanted him. I knew I didn’t. My problem was that I didn’t know
what
I wanted and so I was afraid.”

He gathered her tightly in his arms and pressed his lips to her temple. “I’m so sorry you had to endure that. I’m glad you found Lucas. It sounds like he was a much better man.”

“He was—is,” she returned quietly. “In a lot of ways he saved me. From myself. He refused to let me settle.”

“It hurts me that someone hurt you. I’d like to kill the little son of a bitch. When a woman submits to a man, it’s the most precious gift she can give. Herself. Unreservedly. The man has to respect and honor that gift above all else. Even if he respects nothing else in the world, he must respect the woman in his care. It’s his sworn duty to protect, honor and cherish his submissive. To take care of her and provide a safe haven. Someone who would put his own needs above his woman’s is no man.”

She pushed herself up and rearranged herself so that she sat astride
him on the couch, her knees resting on either side of him. She stared down into his eyes, touched beyond words at his vehement declaration.

“Do you know, when you say those things, I don’t believe they are just words,” she said. “You mean them.”

“Damn right I do,” he said with a frown.

For the first time, she looked to the next two weeks without a twinge of sadness and uncertainty. Anticipation licked through her veins, and more powerful than the anticipation, was yearning.

She didn’t just need what Cole would give her. She wanted it and him. She’d never stopped loving or wanting him. At times she’d thought that she was still caught up in a youthful fantasy and that the memories would never translate to reality.

But here he was in front of her. Strong. Demanding. Unyielding. Dominant, so very dominant. Hard and yet unbelievably tender.