No Strings Attached

Chapter Eight

“What are you having?”

Chewing the clear polish from her manicured thumbnail, leaning back in her seat and shrugging her trim shoulders nonchalantly, she ran her eyes around the room slowly, watching the easy camaraderie of the young couple at the next table with envy coursing through her, “Chicken Caesar salad maybe?”

“Jesus,” he muttered, reclining in his seat to cross his arms over his brawny chest and survey her slowly from beneath lowered lids, “No wonder you’re skin and bone! That’s not a meal, it’s an appetiser!”

“Protein, vegetables,” she shrugged, chuckling, “Just ask them to throw on a few croutons and I’m good to go on my balanced meal! I’m not that hungry, really.”

“You’re at least seven pounds, maybe even a stone smaller than you were when we were together,” he started, nodding a brief acknowledgement at the waiter as he poured out their wine, “And you were three inches shorter then!”

Well ... Charmed!

“What did you do?” she took a grateful sip of the dry, crisp wine, swilling it around her pallet slowly, “Take a tape measure to me in my sleep?”

“I wouldn’t need to,” he said quietly, his eyes dark and intense and completely unwavering. Memories, lust, desire, arousal – all moulding together in a tumult of emotions behind his deep grey eyes.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her body flushed and hot beneath his penetrating gaze.

While he ordered their food – a rare fillet steak for him and the salad she’d ordered, with a side of fries – she tried to sort her head through all of the confusion in her mind after she’d made love with Nate. Despite it, she felt ... relaxed. Her body felt languid, and loose – as though each coiled muscle had sprung free.

Until he looked at her with the steel tornado of lust in his eyes and she was returned to a heightened state of perpetual arousal – his desire calling to her own in an instinct that surpassed time and took her back four years to a kind of innocence.

Blind submission.

“We need to talk about it,” he said gently, reaching for her hand.

She allowed herself the thrill of his skin – abrading against her own – as he held one of her hands between his.

“So I’m not going to get away with selective amnesia,” she quipped suddenly – after drowning a little out of her depth in his trenchant gaze – reaching for the chilled glass to calm her trembling nerves, “I had a lot of whiskey, after all. “

“Okay, okay,” he shook his head chuckling, leaning back in his chair as the waiter placed their order on the table, “How about the reason you came to Asylum in the first place?”

Why had she gone? Had it been fate, like she thought? Or was it simply because she’d been looking for him in some subconscious part of her inebriated mind?

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, softly, running the tip of her index finger around the rim of her glass, “I think it was something Tor said.”

He didn’t pound her with questions, like she would’ve expected him to. Instead he was silent, contemplative, and locked down with an iron restraint. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, even as he began eating his food, it was as though she would disappear if he took his eyes off her for a second – as though she existed only because his gaze was controlling every tiny movement of muscle in her body.

“She asked me why ... you know,” she picked up her fork to distract herself from the rising blush beneath her tanned skin, from the embarrassment of discussing the power he held over her, “I guess why I liked the stuff we used to do.”

She could see a faint tinge of colour run across his face, and he squirmed with embarrassment himself, obviously quite uncomfortable with the idea that his little sister knew what he enjoyed sexually.

With a whisper of sound, she cleared her throat uncomfortably, “I got to thinking about it – about the whole concept of ... being under that kind of spell I guess.”

His eyes were piercing as they studied her quietly, as he chewed on a mouthful of food, and took a long, slow sip of his wine and leaned back in his chair.

Clicking his tongue he looked up at the ceiling – a relentless muscle pounding in his jaw as he visibly struggled to restrain himself.

“You went to my club,” he gritted out, “Looking for somebody to fuck. So that you could throw it in my face that we meant nothing, and you just needed someone – anyone – to demand your complete submission. Am I right?”

She swallowed nervously under his hard, incisive stare, shifting in her seat before nodding uncomfortably, and resting her temple on one clenched fist, and tugging on the dark fall of hair around her face.

“And ...?”

“And nothing,” she murmured, pushing a piece of chicken around the untouched plate of food in front of her with one of the sharp prongs of her fork, “I couldn’t even look after myself downstairs, when some kid tries to get in there figuring he’s in a sex club, so of course every female will be good for a fuck. I wasn’t ready.”

“You were terrified,” he rasped out, “He’s lucky I didn’t kill him with his bare hands just for fucking looking.”

Her fingers picked at a single strand of black cotton that had escaped the hem of the tablecloth, averting her face from his.

She felt ashamed that she should need him this much – especially now, after everything.

She felt even more ashamed that he knew it.

“I want to make one thing clear,” he spoke authoritatively – ice and control lingering around every syllable, “The only way you’ll be going into that club again is as my submissive. If you want to submit so fucking badly that you’re going to put yourself in danger, then you can damn well do it, but only to me.”