Free My Control by Lisa Renée Jones Page B

the room to claim the seat beside me without my realizing it. It rattles me that I’m this disoriented and unaware. So does the damn floral scent that she’s wearing.
    Inhaling, I force myself to concentrate on her question. Any news? No, there is not any fucking news. “I’ve been told to expect arrests by Monday.” A detail that I both dread and wish for. I need this to be over. No. I need it to be over with Rebecca alive—and I know that’s not going to happen.
    “Oh,” she says softly, sounding a bit awkward as she adds, “Then they’ve found something for sure.”
    “Yes,” I agree, finishing off the scotch in my glass. “They’ve found something.”
    I don’t look at her. I didn’t want to bring her here tonight. Not when I’m so unlike my normal self—-and yet, somehow, I needed her here.
    “I’m glad you took me up on my offer to run the gallery so you can be with your family,” she says as I reach for the bottle of scotch. “Your mother is going to be happy.”
    I pause mid-pour and set down the bottle to look at her. “She’s dying. She’s not happy.”
    Her hand comes down on my arm, and I feel the kick in my blood, the burn under my skin. “She’s not going to die,” she vows vehemently, her fingers digging into my arm. She adds in a hissed whisper, “Don’t say she’s going to die.”
    I don’t remove her hand, even though I let no one touch me without permission. “You really care about my mother.”
    “Yes,” she whispers, her hand loosening and falling away. “Sorry. I just—I don’t—she can’t and . . . I can’t think any other way.”
    I feel the absence like a cold blast in the warm spot it had once been, and I want it back. I hand her my glass. “Have a drink.”
    She ignores the glass and glances at the bottle I’ve managed to do substantial damage to in the hour that I’ve been waiting for her. “Was that bottle full when you started?”
    My cock throbs with the soft rasp of her voice and how much that I want her when I have a long list of reasons not to touch her, most important among them her attachment to my mother. I consume my scotch before I answer with, “Yes. It was full. I don’t make a habit of drinking, but tonight’s an exception.” I refill my glass and offer it to her again. “Your turn.”
    She crosses her arms in front of what I know to be gorgeous, high, full breasts with perky little pink nipples that I shouldn’t be thinking about having in my mouth, but I am. “I don’t think drinking with you is a good idea, Mark.”
    My lips quirk. “You’re thinking too much. Scotch will set you free.”
    “So the answer’s losing control?”
    I set the drink on her knee, my gaze sweeping the exposed area where her skirt has risen a few inches up her thigh. “Isn’t that what you told me at the club?” I ask, my eyes lifting to hers.
    “Yes, but that was me—not something I expect uttered from your lips. Who are you? That doesn’t sound like the Mark Compton I know.”
    She’s right, which drives home how wrong everything in my life is tonight. “I don’t have a fucking clue right now.” And it’s as terrifying as her visibly blanching and looking as stunned as I feel by the admission that I didn’t mean to make.
    Two beats, maybe three pass, and I hear them in the speeding up of my heart before she reaches down and closes her hand over my hand and the glass. Touching me in a way that I let no one touch me; no one but her. What is it about this woman? It has to be the timing—the things I’m involved with and her intimate knowledge that no one else has of those matters.
    She downs the drink and sets the glass on the table, and somehow I know that she’s made the choice to level the playing field. Ironic, since everything I do as a Master is to always have an upper hand. But not her. She’s volunteered to be vulnerable, when she’s refused to be submissive.
    She turns back to me, her fingers curling on my cheek, evoking