“Would you still feel humiliated if it had been a stranger to give you this dress? To fuck you while you were welted up from it?”
“Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know.”
“You were wet, Morgan. The dress made you wet.”
“And that’s what you needed to prove? That I can be a switch after all?”
He sighs and lifts his head from mine.
“I was with you all night, Morgan. While you dressed, while you drove here, while you walked in. Because my touch was in that dress, because I was wrapping my desire and discipline around you before you even knew you’d see me. Yes, I wanted to prove that it could be fun and good—but only because you already wanted someone to prove that to you tonight as well.”
I don’t have an answer to that, because it’s undeniably true.
“You wanted to feel the weight of someone’s will on you,” he continues, “and I proved that I can do that with just a few nettle patches in your dress. For four years, I’ve been asking myself if there was anything I could have done, any argument I could have given you, any gesture I could have performed, to show you that you can play however the hell you like and still be the woman you need to be. I thought—”
He stops, and a muscle leaps along the carved line of his jaw. He looks down at his hands, still holding the tube of ointment, and I hate that I can’t read his gaze right now, I hate that I can’t see his whole face.
He doesn’t finish what he was saying, and I can’t think of what to say. I just came harder than I ever have; I came so good that my body is craving infinitely more. But I cannot be un-humiliated, and the sting of my pride is worse than the sting of the nettles.
And…yes. I’m afraid.
Still.
Lorne screws the cap back onto the tube of ointment and then places it in my hand, curling my fingers around it. “Hydrocortisone cream. If the welts aren’t gone in two or three days, let me know.”
“Thank you,” I say numbly.
He takes a step back, and I realize he’s about to leave. A fresh bubble of panic swells in my chest.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Do you want me here?”
Always. “Of course not,” I say instead, making my voice as frosty as possible.
I can’t let him see how much I want him, not after he embarrassed me, not after he lied. He’s plundered everything else of mine, and the fact that I enjoyed the plundering as much as him doesn’t soothe me in the least.
He nods, as if he expected this answer. “Then I’ll go. And I am sorry.”
“Sorry for which part?”
Those gorgeous eyes trace my face. “All of it. But especially that none of it was enough.”
And then he pushes through the gauzy veil separating our alcove from the ball and disappears into the lavish, glittering fray.
4
I cry all the way back to the city.
I have my Secret Service team drive me back, not Mark, because I’m not entirely sure I won’t kill him for his part in Lorne’s deception, but mostly because I need to be alone.
When I get to my hotel, I tear off the wings, the dress, the still-damp silk covering my pussy. I kick off my shoes and I throw the mask in the trash.
And it’s when I’m climbing into the shower for a nice long shower-cry that I catch a glimpse of my ass in the mirror. Those welts which feel so huge and which throb in aching time with my raw, unhappy heart—they’re so small in reality. They’re the size of peas.
Peas.
And here I was acting like my dress was the sartorial manifestation of a Geneva Convention violation. Acting like Lorne had paddled my bottom raw before he fucked me.
I nearly snort at myself through my tears. Some fierce Domme I am. A few pea-sized welts and I might as well have had a vibrator between my legs.
I hate the following week. I hate work, I hate not working. I hate being with people and I hate being alone.
I don’t go to the club, and whenever I masturbate, I think of Lorne fucking me against a wall, his stubbled jaw scratching my neck as the nettled-dress scratched my bottom. I think of the reverent aftercare—the kisses and the ointment.
I think of his jagged, male sigh as he used my cunt to come.
I never do put any more ointment on the welts. I find that the idea of not feeling them is worse than the irritated skin itself, and when they finally feel better after a day or two, I am strangely bereft.
There’s only so many times a horny vice president can use a vibrator, and there’s only so many nights Morgan Leffey can endure being this restless and inflamed.
On the eighth day, I break, and I find myself walking into the trendy but economical—and ostentatiously eco-friendly—offices of Lothian and Associates. It’s late, and Lorne is the only one still there.
I leave my Secret Service people outside.
Inside the glass and concrete space, I move to Lorne’s private office, where a light spills out into the dim co-working area. When I get to the door, I see him turned away, leaning over some papers while a hand lingers over his laptop keyboard, as if he’s about to take notes but can’t decide which ones yet.
“Would you give it up for me?” I ask, stepping into the room. “Being a Sir to me?”
His posture stiffens, and for a moment, I think he won’t turn to face me. But then he does.
No mask, no dress-up. Just thick, dark hair that threatens to curl at the tips, just those bold eyebrows and those whiskey eyes. Just a jaw that could calibrate protractors, and that greedy, sculpted mouth.
He lifts his gaze to me, and I see wariness there. But also love.
Fuck, he loves me. Still, somehow. After everything.
“In a heartbeat,” he answers. “I’d give it up in a heartbeat for you.”
I move around his desk so I can lean against it. Our knees touch.
My voice is thick when I ask, “Why?”
“You know why. I love you. I’d rather have you than anything else. But is that what you want?”
I’m starting to cry again, and I swipe at my cheek. “No. Isn’t that stupid? I left you, I shut you out, I thought if we weren’t together, I wouldn’t be the kind of woman who wants her husband to choke her during sex.”
“And what kind of woman are you now?”
I offer him a tremulous smile. “The kind of woman who wants her ex-husband to choke her during sex.”
I can tell he’s struggling to keep the space between us, that he’s fighting the urge to take control of me physically. I offer him my wrists, and without a second’s hesitation, he circles them both and yanks me into his lap.
He’s already hard underneath my ass, and when I curl into his chest, I don’t feel like two different women—one who has her own Secret Service agents outside and one who would like to be fucked over a desk.
I just feel like one woman. One Morgan.
“I had this idea,” I murmur into his chest, “of whom I wanted to be. And it wasn’t a switch. It wasn’t a woman who enjoyed kneeling, ever, ever. It was so clear in my head of whom I should be. Even when I would never tell another woman the same thing. Even if I would tell a switch or submissive that she was wrong for having the same idea I did.”