Free Innocence Defied (New York) by Lainey Reese Page A

family-famous spaghetti. Gage slowly lost his anxiety about Brice catching on. Zoe had been right—the man was so taken with his new wife that the house could’ve fallen down around them and he wasn’t sure Brice would even notice.
    Something else occurred to him as well. Zoe wasn’t acting any different than she always had toward him. She looked at him with stars in her eyes. She practically hung on his every word, and she found a million reasons to touch him. She’d been this way with him her whole life—only he now understood the emotion behind it all had grown from childhood hero worship to a woman’s desire. It was disconcerting that she’d harbored this depth of feeling for him since her teens. He was pulled in opposite directions about it. On one hand, he felt like she was too young, and she needed to separate herself from him and give herself the chance to make sure what she was truly feeling.
    On the other hand… He looked at her across from him in her pretty blue tank top, with her hair piled on her head, as she laughed with Terryn. On the other hand, he felt like he’d rip the head off of any man who dared to lay a hand on her, so there was that. There was also the fact that he hadn’t seen her in three years. Three years was a long time to go without seeing someone. If she was only infatuated with him and this was just a passing crush, he reasoned, wouldn’t some young kid from her school have caught her eye? Wouldn’t she have grown out of it?
    He felt her toes stroking along his calf below the table, and when he looked up at her, she sent him a playful wink. Yup, there was no downplaying or ignoring that what she felt for him was real, and as he allowed himself to accept that, the tension and guilt that had been simmering in his gut melted away.
    He reached a hand down and brought that foot into his lap so he could stroke and tickle along it with one hand while he finished off the rest of his lunch. When she tried to remove it he held tight. He was committed to seeing where this would lead, and she was going to learn, starting right now, what it meant to be in a relationship with a Dom.
    He was too much the realist to believe that an innocent like Oops could really love him. He wasn’t looking for love anyway—he was looking for a slave. But he loved her in his own way, enough to guide her and watch over her so that when it ended, God willing, he would be able to guide her through the heartache of a breakup as well.

Chapter Fourteen
    Later at the theater, Zoe was so engrossed in the movie she startled and almost dropped the popcorn when Gage touched the inside of her knee. She took a gulp of her soda and tried to refocus on the movie. So what if he was touching her for the first time without her initiating it? He was just touching her knee. Big deal.
    Just when her muscles relaxed and again forgot everything but the movie, that hand on her knee pulled. He pulled until her leg was pressed up against him. She flicked him a sidelong glance, but he was watching the movie and seemed oblivious to the fact he even had a hold of her leg. She was all for smashing herself against him, but when she tried to scooch the rest of her body closer, he stopped her by pushing her other knee. He kept pushing until she was completely wide open. She took another gulp of soda.
    Gage’s large calloused hand was back where it started, but Zoe lost all hope of keeping track of the movie. She was wearing a cute outfit today. It was one he’d picked out after their shower. She had on a navy-blue tank top over her best push-up bra and her denim miniskirt with her favorite pair of black flats. And that was it. No panties, and he’d just spread her legs wide open.
    Her brother was two rows away. Brice had given them an exaggerated wink when Gage had picked their seats then made a joke about wanting a little privacy to neck with his wife before leading her to seat a couple rows ahead.   All he had to do was turn around and