Free Love in the Land of Fire by Rebecca Brochu Page A

that had attracted him to begin with are still there.
    “Last night you showed me something I’d never seen before from a dominant in charge of my care. You showed me restraint. You could have taken what you wanted, could have tried at least, and there would have been little I would have been able to do to stop you. We both know that even though I’m skilled you’re far better. Noah…Frisch, he never stopped no matter what I said or did. That last day, when I finally broke out, he was going to do something new, something with needles and sedatives and I knew that if I didn’t stop him I would never wake up again. I didn’t want to die by his hands, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so I ran and when I didn’t see a way out I tried to make one. The guilt eats at me because I know that someone else will be given to him in my place, another made to suffer his sickness no matter how they felt about it.
    Mistress Jean is so adamant that our family owes him a debt that she gave me to him even though I never signed a contract. I know she would have given him whoever she could get her hands on.”
    Josiah flexes his hand against the back of Rafe’s head, the light action meant to soothe, to show Rafe that he’s here and listening, to ground him in the present and keep him from getting swept away in the past. He’s pleased when Rafe’s shoulders relax slightly, the tension that had begun to build within him lowering a bit as the lines around his eyes and mouth smooth out.
    “But you, Josiah, you stopped. You reacted at the first sign of real distress. You stopped and you soothed me, let me speak and have my own emotions, not just the ones you’d decided I had a right to feel. You controlled but you also cared, like I’d always dreamed a dom would.”
    Rafe breaks off then, his eyes darting down and away from Josiah’s, and Josiah has to control his displeased growl. He doesn’t like it when Rafe speaks to him without eye contact, doesn’t like the loss of a possible connection between them even though he knows that he doesn’t have the right to demand it. Rafe has made a silent offer but nothing has been settled, nothing has been agreed upon, and thus Josiah has no actual rights.
    Not yet.
    “Even when I hit you, even then you held tight and didn’t try to punish me, didn’t try to hurt me back.”
    “Don’t think for a second that I didn’t want to punish you, Rafe. Don’t think I’m some sort of saint who doesn’t have those urges because I do. I wanted to show you your place, wanted to do so much to you, but I didn’t.”
    “That’s my point, Josiah. I deserved it. You wanted to do it and I deserved it, but you didn’t and that’s something that I’ve never seen before. That type of restraint is something that I wasn’t even sure existed.”
    Josiah studies Rafe, eyes tracking the way his tongue flits out to lap nervously at his bottom lip, the way his lashes fan out against his cheeks every time he blinks. He damns himself for asking but he knows that he’ll always regret it if they enter into this under false pretenses.
    “Are you sure this is what you want? Once we’ve entered into a contract I’m not going to let you go easily. I fight to keep what’s mine, Rafe. You’ll never be a prisoner, but you will be chained to me. You do understand that, don’t you? I’ll own you in every way, and I’ll ask you for everything and will give you everything in return.”
    Rafe’s breathing goes shallow and there’s alight blush across the sun kissed skin of his cheeks when he makes eye contact with Josiah again. The sight of it has Josiah licking his lips, wanting to run his tongue across the line of red to see if that blush tastes as delicious as it looks. Unable to resist the urge Josiah leans down and brushes a sweet kiss across Rafe’s parted lips, lets his tongue dip inside briefly but withdraws to run his mouth across Rafe’s cheekbones when the submissive tries to draw him