Free His Contract: Legally Bound, Book 1 by Rebecca Grace Allen

shrugged. “Age was never an issue for me.”
    Good to know, but this wasn’t the time for that. “Go on,” he coaxed softly.
    She inhaled again, deeply. “I went to every one of his lectures. We’d chat afterward—and flirt—but it was never more than that until I got a summer associate position at his firm. My first night, we went out for drinks, and the way he looked at me…” Her speech slowed, her words drawn out like taffy on a pull. “It was like he could eat me alive and I’d love every second of it.”
    Her words conjured up images of Jack doing exactly that, of his head between her luscious thighs, tongue licking a stripe up her drenched pussy lips while her legs and arms were spread-eagled, chained up on his bed.
    Jack clenched his jaw and forced himself to concentrate.
    “What happened then?” he asked.
    Lilly dragged her gaze upward. Her eyes were unfocused, drowsy. “I went home with him, and he did things to me no one had done before.”
    “What did he do?”
    She paused, her lips pursed in her hesitance. “He pulled my hair, held me down and spanked me.”
    Fuck. “And did that frighten you?”
    Lilly shook her head, slowly, that damn blush painting her cheeks. “No. I loved it.”
    Jack’s mouth went dry. There it was. The proof he’d been waiting for.
    “It was like he’d lit a match inside me that no one ever struck before. The pleasure and the pain, the way he could play my body. The feeling that I was his, and he was mine too.” Her gaze dropped back down to the table. “That part was all in my head, though.”
    Jack frowned. “Why do you say that?”
    She curled her arms around her middle, as if she were trying to physically protect herself from what she was about to say.
    “We kept meeting up after the job ended. He was teaching my third-year clinic at school, and asked me to keep things quiet. I was of course completely in love with him by then, so I said yes, thinking things would change after I finished school. But at my graduation, we got into an argument. I asked if we could go public now, but—” Lilly winced, then regained her composure, taking a breath. “He laughed at me. Told me I was a fool for thinking he belonged to me. That he wasn’t mine and never would be.”
    She stared hard at the table, her jaw tight with the effort of holding back tears. Jack leaned toward her, an instinctual response that spiraled out of his gut.
    “I hope you punched him in the jaw.”
    Her sudden laughter was a welcome relief. She smiled and shook her head.
    “Sadly, no. I went home, tried to put him out of my mind and study for the bar. But the night before the exam, he called to tell me he was engaged. Someone he’d met over the summer.”
    Oh, Lilly.
    She lifted her chin, a show of strength Jack respected the hell out of. “So then I did what I should’ve done on day one—I researched BDSM and discovered a whole slew of things he never told me. That I was entitled to a checklist. And limits. And a safeword.”
    “You played without one?”
    She glanced at him. There was so much pain in her eyes. “I never knew I could have one.”
    Jack’s stomach lurched, his jaw going tight with anger. “He sounds like an irresponsible, selfish prick.”
    That earned him a faint smile. “Yeah, but I was the one who was stupid enough to believe him.”
    “You weren’t stupid. You trusted him.”
    She laughed again, but there was no mirth in it. “Well that was pretty stupid, wasn’t it?”
    Lilly uncurled her arms to wipe her tears away. Unable to hold back the urge to comfort her, Jack reached out, took her free hand in his and stroked her palm with his thumb.
    “It wasn’t your fault. It sounds to me like this guy knew what he was doing. Most girls are easily swayed by a man like that.”
    “I wasn’t a little girl. It was only last year.”
    Jack cringed. Yeah, that sounded patronizing as hell.
    “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant with your age difference and the