“How do you know?” my ex-husband asks calmly.
I sputter. “Because I’m Morgan Leffey. I love power. I’ve built my entire life around power, around getting more of it, around holding onto it. And before you, I’ve always craved power in bed. Always. And then you showed up, and I—I got confused. You made me think that I could give all that up, that I could give up everything I am—”
He comes off the wall in an instant, taking my elbows in his hands like he wants to shake me senseless. “I never wanted you to give up a single thing,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “Do you understand? Never. I knew what you wanted—I know what you still want. You want the White House for yourself, just as you always have, and there was never a moment I wouldn’t have been proud to be the man at your shoulder. The partner in your shadow. I have never, ever, wanted to steal your glory, Morgan, I have never wanted to dull your shine. It never bothered me that everyone else might think me your prop or your plaything, I would have given you everything of mine—including my own career—to help further your ambitions.”
Conviction burns in his voice, and his eyes are hot and honest on my face.
“Do you understand? Do you understand now? What you imagined—what you are still imagining—was never what I wanted. I never asked you to give up a single thing then, and I never would now.”
“But when we were alone…”
“I still only wanted what you did,” Lorne says, his hands tightening on my elbows. I shiver a little, remembering them rough on my ass, possessive between my legs. “I only wanted what you still want.”
“I’m not a submissive,” I say thinly. “I know I can’t be. I would have known before now, I would have felt differently before now—”
“I’m not asking for you to choose between words, Morgan, and that was never what our marriage was about anyway. I couldn’t have cared less what you called yourself, as long as you called yourself mine—as long as you stopped hating yourself for what you wanted from me when we were alone.”
My pride flares. “I never hated myself.”
Lorne’s eyebrow arches above the line of his mask. “Oh, is that so?”
“Well, I never hated myself for that,” I amend.
I have ten thousand other reasons for self-loathing, and I’ve committed sins that will bar me from the gates of heaven, which he now knows. He didn’t during our marriage, but when my sins caught up with me two years ago, they caught up with everyone around me—splashed on every magazine cover and dissected on every cable news show for months. Lorne and I were well and thoroughly divorced by then, but he still learned my greatest pride and my greatest shame along with the rest of the world.
His eyes soften, and so do his hands. He pulls me closer into him, and I can smell the clean bite of mint and soap that always lingers on his skin. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” he murmurs. “I wanted to be there for you so badly. I would have, if only you would’ve let me.”
I close my eyes and nod. I know he’s right; I believe him.
When the news broke, he called and called and called. He texted, he offered to sue every magazine and news corporation on my behalf. He showed up at my door and I hid in the kitchen until he finally went away.
“Why didn’t you let me help?” he whispers, his lips in my hair. “Why do you never let me help?”
“You know why,” I say, resting my forehead against his shoulder.
“Because my help frightens you.”
“Yes.”
“Because accepting it feels like a concession of need.”
I shudder. “Yes.”
“And a concession of need is too close to...”
“Don’t make me say it, Lorne,” I beg. “I don’t want to say it.”
Frustration ripples through him. “You’ve broken both our hearts because you’re afraid of a word. A word that doesn’t even have to be yours.”
I pull back enough that I can look up at him. He doesn’t understand—how could he ever understand? He’s brilliant and handsome and driven, he’s got a face made for idealism and sin, he’s got stubble that people would pay money to feel scratching against their thighs. Of course he’s a Dominant, of course he can waltz into a club, into a bedroom, into a cold, political girl’s heart and make himself the king there. But when an otherwise powerful woman is a submissive, it’s a tacit confirmation of something. It’s acceding to the sinister notion that all women secretly crave submission somewhere, and I refuse to be a party to that.
“It can’t be me. I won’t be the woman who says she kneels for no one, and then abruptly decides to because the right man came along. And even if I could, that’s not how submission works. I can’t be submissive for just one person, that’s nonsense, that’s wishful thinking, that’s—”
Lorne yanks me into him, his mouth hovering a mere inch above mine. “You’re right,” he breathes. “You’re not submissive. You’re fucking stubborn.”
And then his mouth crashes down on mine.
3
His kiss is exactly how I remember, and at the same time, it’s so much more.
It’s more potent, more possessive, rougher and silkier all at once. His lips over mine are firm, warm, and the first flick of his tongue against my mouth is not a request. I part for him, and then I’m rewarded with plunder. Hot strokes that give no quarter, urgent kisses that have me sinking back into his arms—and his embrace brings renewed pain sizzling up my skin. His stubble hurts a little too—it’s just enough to scrape, just enough to scratch—as he moves his kisses to my neck and then ducks his head to nip at the exposed inner curves of my breasts.
I can’t think straight, I’m not Lorne-sober, I’m flushed and flying under his drugging kisses and his demanding mouth. All my carefully constructed defenses, all the reasons why I shouldn’t, why I left him—they’re so flimsy in the face of this.
In the face of him.
Somehow, we’ve moved back, back against the ballroom wall, and his hand is cupping my nape while the wall presses fire against my bottom and my wings flatten behind me. His erection is pressing hot and thick against my stomach, and my heart is crashing against my ribs, and I can barely drag in enough air, and I think if I could do this for the rest of my life, I’d be happy. This dance of pain, this symphony of hungry but deliberate force.
It’s why I had to leave.
Because with him, I can let go of all the things that have kept me safe and strong, and what happens if I let them go? Who would I even be then? How can anyone live with their mind, their heart, their everything just out there, in the open? Defenseless?
Beating raw and bloody in the open air?
Fear climbs up my throat, and I break away from the kiss. “Lorne, I can’t.”
He doesn’t chase my mouth, he doesn’t press any harder against me. But I still feel caught like a fly in a web—the hot need between my legs and the heat on my backside. The wall at my back and his beautiful eyes in front of me.
As always with him, I’m caught between what I want and what I should want. And it’s just as miserable now as it was years ago.