Free The Submissive's Secret (What's Her Secret?) by Natalie Dae Page B

imagine his expression. Frowning—yes, I thought he’d be frowning, wondering how he was going to break it to me that he didn’t love me, that he’d taught so many women and the only way forward was to cut ties. He didn’t do attachment. He didn’t do love. How could I have been so stupid as to think I’d be the woman to change that? Had I believed I’d be different? The One?
    “Look at me, Lori.”
    I opened my eyes and stared into his, which always took my breath away. They bordered on black, tiny gray flecks darting in from the outer rim only to fade near the center, the pupils lost in the surrounding darkness. I held back the sudden onset of tears. They could come later, when I was by myself. And as for my lip threatening to tremble… I could only be glad I’d secured it between my teeth.
    “We have the same dilemma, pet.” He smiled, barely, an almost upwards tilt at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t want to let you go any more than you want me to.”
    I shook my head a little in disbelief. I hadn’t heard him right. I’d heard what I’d wanted to, and in reality he’d probably said he had to let me go.
    That our contract was binding.
    “Are you all right?” he asked, tilting his head, eyes narrowed in a way I’d come to know as concern.
    I cleared my throat. “Please say that again, Sir.”
    “I don’t want to let you go. Didn’t you hear my slip earlier? What I’d said?”
    I thought back to the start of our conversation.
    “He saw you come in, had the urge to get up and meet you straight away, to greet you like a lover…”
    “I…it didn’t register,” I said. “I thought it was just part of the game. We always meet like this, talk like that. I just didn’t…”
    He smiled wider, still a soft curve, but the sight of it mellowed the butterflies’ flight from frantic to gentle. I felt less coiled, but it would take a while before I calmed completely. Our conversation had taken a turn I’d only dreamt about and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. I knew what I wanted to do—fling myself off the stool and into his arms—but doing so in here, with other people as witnesses, wasn’t something I thought I could do. It had to be private, didn’t it, a moment like that.
    “I’ve had the advantage,” he said, “of having taught other subs, of knowing that emotions born of trust may well have nothing to do with love. But with you… Ah, my beautiful sub, it’s been so very different.”
    His voice, had it really cracked? Had his accent become thicker?
    “I don’t know what to say,” I whispered, pulse fluctuating madly in my neck. “I can’t quite believe—”
    “Believe it,” he said. “If you’re willing, I want to collar you. I have the burning need to make you mine, to show that you’re mine. However…”
    He ran his thumb across my chin, a back-and-forth motion that set those wings to flapping faster inside me. Just a slight touch, a simple touch, and he had me wet, wanting to do anything— anything —he asked me to. No, I couldn’t be without him. Not now. We’d done so much, gone so far.
    He doesn’t want to let me go.
    I was flooded with that knowledge then and battled to remain in control. “However…?”
    “I needed to be sure you knew what you wanted. If you’d have told me you looked forward to being free in the lifestyle after our year had ended, so be it. I wouldn’t want to stand in your way. But collaring. It’s a big thing, as I’ve told you. It’s very real, very binding.”
    “I understand, Sir. I want what you want.”
    He nodded then dipped his head. The kiss he brushed onto my lips was so light I could be forgiven for thinking it hadn’t happened. But they burned, those lips of mine, the fire streaking from them straight down to my cunt. We had a connection, me and Jaska, one I couldn’t imagine sharing with any other man.
    “You must understand,” he said, “that a little kiss like that, with you, could send a man off