The Drake Restrained Compete Collection: Part 1 - 4 (The Drake Series Book 7) (18 page)

Kate seemed quite unhappy that she was being forced to perform and frowned as her father pulled her down the hallway.

"Go ahead, dear," Ethan said to Kate once we were all in the study. "Tell us about your trip. Start here, with this one."

Kate spoke about her trip to Africa, going through each photograph, talking about the relief camp. When she came to the one photo that she avoided with me, Ethan wouldn’t let her off the hook.

"Tell them about Alika and Chinua," Ethan said, turning to the rest of us who were gazing at the photos. "A couple and their baby that Kate and Nigel rescued from the desert."

Kate looked as if she wished a hole would open up in the floor and she could disappear, but I saw her steel herself, taking in a deep breath. The story was quite emotional – of she and Nigel finding a young couple with a newborn who were lost on the road to the relief camp, wandering in the middle of nowhere. Kate was overwhelmed at one point and had to stop. Nigel took over and told the rest of the story.

Then Kate picked back up again, her voice shaky, but she was trying.

"He crawled like a crab because his knees were bloody," she said, her voice barely audible. "Alika was carrying her baby. They hadn't named him yet because they weren't even sure if he would live. I thought he was a newborn because he was so small, but he was three months old and starving. Her breasts," she said, shaking her head, her voice almost inaudible. "She had no milk left. They were like deflated balloons."

Kate had to stop speaking, and covered her mouth with a hand, tears in her eyes. Nigel stepped up to the plate and finished the story of how they had saved the trio, but the husband died once they got back to the camp and he knew his wife and baby were safe.

I remembered Kate’s articles in the Columbia Journalism Review and how impressed I was with them, how well-written and objective they were. From speaking with Ethan, I knew that a few months after returning to Manhattan, Kate had a breakdown. She hadn’t properly mourned her mother’s death and then, the trauma of the camps proved too much. Sympathy for her filled me. She was brave to take on such a harrowing ordeal so soon after a personal loss.

I was impressed.

Ethan stood watching Kate, his eyes filled with emotion, tears visible in them as he listened to his daughter speak.

"Excuse me," Kate said left the rest of us behind, closing the study door quietly behind her.

Nigel turned to follow her, but Ethan took his arm and stopped him.

“Let her go. She gets very emotional when she talks about the camps. It was very hard on her. She was very brave.”

Nigel nodded and turned back to the wall of photos, talking to someone who asked him to describe one of the photos that showed Kate and Nigel together. I took that as my cue to leave and follow Kate, wanting to be with her when she was especially vulnerable.

I quietly opened the door to the study, hoping Nigel didn’t see me. He was occupied, but Ethan saw me and smiled as if he approved.

God, he was making this so easy…

I closed the door and went down the hallway, peering in each room to see if Kate was there. I found her in a small bedroom at the back of the apartment, which looked as if it had been hers for the furniture was feminine and a bit girly, French Provincial, white with gilded detailing and ornate. There was a cork-board on the wall over a small student desk with a half-dozen ribbons of blue and red – the kind you won in school for sports or for academic achievement. I wanted to check everything out, curious about this woman I was planning to seduce and dominate, but I held back. She needed my attention by the looks of her, sitting on the side of the bed, a tissue clutched in her hand, daubing her eyes.

When I entered the room completely, she glared at me and then turned away.

"I'd like to be
alone
."

I sat beside her and nudged her with my knee, bumping my shoulder against hers. "Being alone is the last thing you need right now." I purposely sat a bit too close to her, wanting our bodies to touch, make a connection. I rested my elbows on my knees and craned my head so I could look her in the eye. "I'm sorry. Your father doesn't seem to understand how upset Africa still makes you."

She frowned. "He always sees everything, every event, every word, for its strategic purpose. How it can aggrandize him and our family – or hurt us. He doesn’t really pay attention to people,” she said, her voice petulant, still emotional. “What he said about those photographs being key to what makes me tick? He thinks it means I'm some great humanitarian – some angel of mercy – but really, I was just a student looking for a topic for my honors thesis. I had
no
idea what I got myself into."

I was a bit taken aback at her confession. "You didn't like Africa?"

She said nothing for a moment, her arms wrapped around herself. She was very emotional, almost childlike in her response to her father. Part of me was surprised, for she was twenty-four but part of me completely and totally understood. How many times had I cried as a boy over my own father’s neglect? How often did I see fathers and sons together, deep in conversation as two adults, and ache to have my father still alive and treating me as a real son?

He never did. I never had that kind of relationship with him. Even now, it hurt.

Here Kate was, well-educated, well-bred, obviously self-sufficient to a fault with her scholarships and part-time jobs, trying so hard to impress her father and she never really felt he was impressed.

How could she be so wrong? Ethan clearly loved her very much and was completely impressed with her.

"I hated it – the corruption,” she said. “It was so hard. Painful. As soon as I could, I changed my topic. I couldn't
do
it. I'm not strong enough, but he can't see that because it would mean
his
daughter isn't up to snuff."

"You saw the worst of the worst." I turned to her, trying to catch her eye. "Where the people have resources, they're full of hope. I see it in the hospitals. The young doctors and nurses – they've been trained in America and they want to raise their countries out of poverty."

I leaned against her again, trying to nudge her into feeling better, thinking that she needed some affection at that moment. Of course, she didn’t respond, but I thought I felt something between us. Something cracked just a bit in her reserved and tightly controlled demeanor.

"I admire you for going. You didn't have to so that does say something about you, what makes you 'tick'."

"You'd be wrong to think that." Her voice was bitter. "My father has
no idea
what makes me 'tick'. He practically chose my thesis topic and arranged everything. I
wanted
to do something on the fine arts, but
no
. It had to be political."

I frowned. "Your father
chose
your honors thesis topic?" I was shocked that Ethan had intervened so deeply in her life that he would choose her thesis topic. That went a bit too far. My father barely heard me talk about my schooling, my courses, my career path. Her father was practically engineering it for her.

"You're surprised?" She turned away. "You obviously don't know my father."

I thought I knew Ethan pretty well as a man and by the way he talked about his children, as a father. He seemed totally smitten with his daughter, speaking of her to me whenever we met. He was clearly proud of her accomplishments.

Was he too controlling? If so, she seemed to resent it . I’d have to watch myself with her if that was the case. Many submissives loved to have their Dominant make all the decisions – in all aspects of their lives together. It gave them some relief. Kate must not be that submissive if it bothered her so much. I’d have to give her a lot of freedom if we were going to be a couple.

I corrected myself. If we were going to be play partners. And we
were
going to be play partners. I was more determined than ever.

"What did
you
want to do?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Finally, she sighed. "What did
I
want to do?
I
wanted to do a series on young artists in Manhattan, and how they're using social media and new technology in their art, but that was too 'airy-fairy' for him, as he put it. He only sees art for its value as an investment, not for its social or cultural value. I tried to explain but he just dismissed me. I was too much of a chicken to fight him and do what I really wanted."

That was the kicker. She saw herself as weak and afraid, not making her own decisions.

"I'm sorry. University should be a time when you explore who you are and what excites you. It shouldn't be a time to please your parents."

Of course, I had tried to please my father almost all my life, even finishing high school early through the accelerated program for gifted students. I had planned on going into Medical School, but when he went away for six months, leaving me with a housekeeper when I was only fourteen, I gave up on that and decided to do an undergrad degree in Psychology. Of course, I changed my mind when I realized that I was as interested in medicine as my father had been. That was one thing he instilled in me – a love of science and of medicine.

So we both had father issues. It was one more thing we had in common. A point of identification.

Then, our eyes met and she looked at me for perhaps the first time since we met. Really looked in my eyes. We connected in a way that we never had until then and I felt it right in my gut and in my dick.

I smiled at her, a little surprised that I felt such empathy for her all of a sudden. It felt a bit like standing at the edge of a precipice.

The door opened and Ethan popped his head just inside.

"Oh,
here
you are," he said and smiled. "I
thought
you two might have a lot in common. Sorry to interrupt, but my dear wife has announced that dinner is served."

CHAPTER THREE

Dinner was amusing.

Ethan sat me to his right and Kate beside me. I felt a stab of warmth for the man at giving me such a privileged position at his table. The rest of his group of supporters were seated around the large table in the formal dining room, with Elaine sitting at the other end, entertaining them all and Heath and his wife across from us.

I could almost feel Kate bristle beside me, angry that she had been assigned a seat beside me. I smiled at her barely concealed anger as I pulled out her chair. While she was upset, I was extremely happy with the arrangements. I enjoyed myself immensely, drinking the wonderful wine Ethan served, the food delicious, and Ethan’s conversation about politics engaging.

Kate ate in silence, and despite how Ethan tried to force her to make conversation, she politely refused, answering his questions in a monotone, with single word replies.

But at one point, she glanced sideways at me and when our eyes met, there was this expression in hers that I found hard to place. If I hadn’t been so aware of how unhappy she was with my presence and how it unnerved her that her father was so openly and delightedly trying to match us, I would have thought it was some kind of dark lust I saw in her eyes. I felt it again – this connection with her that made my heart jump.

I held her gaze, unable to look away, hoping I wasn’t mistaking that look which felt like pure desire.

Whatever that look meant, I felt it in my groin. For a moment, I had this insane desire to drag her to the washroom just off her bedroom and fuck her while facing the mirror, thrusting hard and fast until we both came, watching each other’s faces.

When she finally glanced away, her cheeks red, I did as well, a bit unnerved once more by this woman beside me. Something in my brain kept saying
Choose me…
Which was completely the opposite of how I found new submissives. It was usually the other way around with them wanting me to pick them.

I took a long drink of wine, needing it to quell the feeling in my gut that bordered on desperation.

I didn’t do desperation.

When the serving personnel came to remove our dessert plates and coffee cups, Ethan stood and cleared his throat, drawing the guests’ attention.

“Now, if everyone here to discuss politics could join me in my study, we’ll get down to the real business.”

At that, Kate almost sprang up as if she couldn’t wait to escape.  

I caught up with her at the door to the hall and took her arm. "Can we talk later?"

She glanced at my hand on her arm as if it offended her, but I wasn’t going to give in that easily.

"We have nothing to talk about."

"Please?” I said, my voice soft. “Just hear me out."

She hesitated. "I was going to leave after we 'ladies' have our tea."

"Okay. I'll come by your place,” I said, hoping she’d decide to wait and talk to me to avoid such an encounter. “Can we talk
inside
your apartment instead of through the door this time?"

She responded as I expected, her jaw tightening. No. She wanted to avoid me showing up at her place.