Colleen had broken eye contact because she couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in Tristan’s eyes. He ducked his head, obviously trying to meet her gaze while she stared at her rickety secondhand bookcase and posters scavenged from the trash of sci-fi conferences that she’d tacked directly on the walls.
He said, “Colleen, princess, I said stop.”
Her hands fluttered near her face. “I’m so sorry—”
“Stop.”
“I’ll make it better.”
His hand moved upward, cradling the back of her head and running his thumb over her cheekbone. “Princess, listen to me. No more. You will stop apologizing this instant. If you can’t do that, then don’t speak. Don’t say anything except yes, sir or yes, please. Do you understand?”
Dreadful humiliation at how little she’d accomplished in her life—how every time she tried to do something, she failed again—bore down on her. “I’m so sorry.”
His thumb brushed her lips, a suggestion of a kiss. “No, princess. Don’t put yourself down. Don’t degrade yourself. If I have to emotionally Dom you until you see your worth as a human being and your beauty and kindness as I do, I’ll stay and do it. Don’t say anything else. Just listen to me tell you that you’re my good girl.”
His steadiness slowly spread into her, and Colleen stopped talking but still trembled.
He enclosed her in his arms. “Better.”
With her nose pressed against his chest and the overly warm air pressing in on her, she muttered, “I could turn up the AC.”
Tristan’s chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. “I’ll allow that. Come.”
He led her over to the thermostat, where she tapped the buttons until the AC blew chilly air through the small apartment. “I am sorry it’s so small. I wish I had a better place to stay to offer you.”
Tristan tilted his head as he continued to stroke her face and shoulders, calming her. “I grew up in a late-1800s farmhouse that was not restored in any way. We barely had running water. In the winter, ice formed on the inside of the windows, and I used to shred worn-out clothes to stuff gaps around the doors. As a teenager, I shared a dorm room a quarter of the size of this apartment with another guy, and there was a communal bathroom for twenty male teenagers to shower, shave, and shit. Your apartment is a five-star accommodation to me, princess.”
Colleen mumbled, “I thought you lived in a high-class place in Monaco or something.”
“Now I live in Monaco on a ninety-foot Azimut yacht with three bedrooms and a live-aboard crew of four, but I didn’t always. I’m a poor Iowa farm boy who can identify the six major types of corn and tell you the type and strain at a glance. My mother ran the household with nine kids on less than twenty thousand dollars a year, sometimes a lot less, depending on the price we got for the corn. I can milk a cow, a sheep, or a goat, grow a garden, and bake a rhubarb pie that came in second in the town fair. My crust was exceptional, but I didn’t put enough spice in the filling for the judges. I just used generic Walmart spices. I think Faith Yoder went to Chicago and bought fancy cinnamon, which is practically cheating.”
She was glad for him, but regret trickled back. “Wow, you’ve done well for yourself.”
“I made good choices because I had good choices. I had a middle school counselor who considered herself a crusader for lifting Iowan farm kids out of poverty. A friend of mine’s grandfather decided to roll the dice on four twentysomethings who otherwise wouldn’t have had the money to start businesses. A lot of people aren’t afforded good choices that they can make.” He looked carefully at her again. “And they shouldn’t feel bad about that. Just surviving can be a victory.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“Your responses are yes, sir or yes, please. Nothing else.”
Colleen sucked in a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
A small smile softened his masculine features. “Better. Ah, that air conditioning feels nice. But look, it’s after midnight. Let’s not rehash our life choices in the middle of the night after a day of being ersatz kidnapped, threatened, shot at, and hunted by corrupt police. ‘Kay?”
Colleen glanced down at the brown shag carpet under her shoes that always smelled like onions no matter how many times she shampooed or sprinkled deodorizer on it. “Yes, please.”
“Good girl. Do you want me to shower you first, or do you just want to lie down and sleep?”
“Um, yes, sir?”
He laughed. “I almost got you. You may tell me, shower or straight to bed?”
Her body stank of fear-sweat even though she’d traded the ruined silk ball gown for her workout clothes on the plane. And even though her bathroom only had a tiny shower stall in the corner, she’d scrubbed it the day before she left. At least it was clean. “I’d like a shower. I’ll just—”
“No, no, princess. I like to wash my toys after I play with them, or while I play with them. Get your pajamas and meet me in the bathroom.”
15
Toy
Colleen
Colleen shoved her summer jammies on a plastic shelf above the toilet in her bathroom and turned back.
Tristan was right there, blocking the doorway and looming over her. “Where do you think you’re going, princess?”
The answer to that question was not one of her approved words, so Colleen remained silent.
“Tell me your safe words.”
“Red and yellow.” Safe words were always approved things to say.
“I want you to begin to think of some private safe words for just the two of us, but those will do for now. And now, my princess, this is where I have to warn you that I wash my toys, but only after I’m done playing with them.”
A subtle thrill ran through Colleen, and she bit her lip to hide her smile. The day had droned on and on, each new horror worse than the last, and a part of her was still cringing in mortification at bringing the sophisticated and successful Tristan King back to her apartment hovel.
But as his fingers touched the hem of her tee-shirt and lifted the soft cotton, all that began to fall away.
His fingertips brushed the soft skin of her tummy as he dragged the tee-shirt over her head and unhooked her bra to let it fall to the floor. Colleen sucked in the deepest breath she’d breathed all day and sighed out the terror and anger from the last few hours.
Tristan retrieved one of her hairbrushes sitting on the top shelf and combed the brush through her hair, starting with the ends. The bristles slid over her scalp, and he let up the pressure when the hairbrush encountered tangles to tease them apart.
“You’re weirdly good at that,” Colleen muttered.
“Oldest of nine. I had three little sisters to get ready for school every morning. I can braid hair, too.”
He tugged the rest of her clothes off her body, started the shower, and then undressed as she rinsed off.
Warm water sluiced down her back and legs, and it was just a moment before Tristan joined her, taking up most of the room in the tiny shower stall. He found her bar of soap and washed her body, spreading the foam over her skin in long sweeps over her arms and legs, and then he stroked down her back, caressing her until he rinsed her off. The fear-stinking sweat and residue from the restaurant’s fire sprinklers washed off her skin. Grabbing the shampoo, he washed her hair and massaged her scalp, kneading the stress of the day away.