Free Losing My Balance (Fenbrook Academy #1.5) by Helena Newbury

real. The shock of it hit me right in my soul—up until that point, I think I’d been kidding myself that I was just imagining the whole submissive thing.
    “Both.” I told him.
    “Bullshit.” He didn’t say it cruelly or even harshly. He just said it as a simple statement, and I found I was looking at my feet. “Do you know why I brought you here? Because there’s no one else for miles. No one to hear you.”
    “No one to hear me scream?” I asked, trying to make a joke out of it.
    “No one to hear you be honest with yourself,” he said.
    “You think I’m lying to myself? You really think you know me well enough to say I’m… submissive , after three days?”
    “I knew you well enough to say that after three minutes.”
    I flushed, right down to my toes. Could that be true? Was I sending out something—some signal I hadn’t been aware of, that guys could pick up on? Just him, or all guys?
    I went on the attack. “You say I’m lying to myself, but you’re not exactly Mr. Open and Honest, are you? What’s an MIT post-doc doing hiding out in a biker club anyway?”
    “Who says I’m hidin’?”
    I looked him right in the eye. “Me.”
    I saw the flicker of surprise cross his face again—and with it, just a hint of approval.
    “It’s nothin’ I want to explain,” he said eventually.
    “I don’t like secrets.”
    He put his hands out, palms facing me. “That’s why I only ever wanted this to be casual. That’s what I’m offerin’. That’s all it’s ever goin’ to be. You don’t want that? Go find yourself a guy in a suit.”
    He was laying down the rules and daring me to accept them…or walk away. That was the real reason he’d brought me out here—this was our one big chance to talk and, after this, it would go back to monosyllabic responses, whispers in ears and more of those orders.
    I wasn’t sure I could live with that, with a relationship purely based on sex. But I wasn’t sure I could live without it, either.
    The real question was: why? Why did it have to be this way—sex, and nothing deeper? Why didn’t he want anything more from me? I’d come here looking for answers, and he was just as mysterious as before.
    “Is it me?” I asked.
    “You’re beautiful.”
    I gave him a hard stare. “I didn’t say I wasn’t. But is that why you don’t want anything more? Do you like my….” I could barely bring myself to say it. “My body but not me? ”
    He sighed. “Clarissa Forsberg-West, not everythin’ in this whole damn world is about you.” And it didn’t feel like he was trying to spare my feelings. So what, then, was the problem? If I kept pushing, I knew I’d lose him completely.
    “Fine,” I said quietly. Then again, maybe more for my own benefit, “Fine. It’ll be just sex.”
    He shook his head softly. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not just sex.”
    I didn’t understand what he meant, then. But I would come to.
     
    ***
     
    He dropped me back at the biker club and I picked up Bartholomew. I sat there in the driver’s seat, saying goodbye to him through the window and feeling utterly confused. Was I now in a relationship? Because if I was, it was so radically different to any relationship I’d had before that it didn’t seem to deserve the same name.
    And then, just as I was at my most lost, he leaned through the open window and kissed me. Not one of the urgent, hungry kisses he’d given me before—this was slow and tender, much gentler than I’d have thought him capable of. And right at the end of it, something fluttered through my body, butterflies made of hot, crackling silver. It wasn’t sexual; it was something much deeper.
    When he broke the kiss, I sat there stunned, my eyes closed. It felt as if I’d break the spell if I opened them and I wanted to memorize the feeling, to chase those butterflies down into the dark caverns so I could catch one last glimpse of them.
    I’d thought I was confused before. Now I was completely