Free Reluctant Surrender by Riley Murphy

“Nervous?”
    “Yeah.” The stiffness went out of her and her face contorted in a comical and wholly unattractive manner. An expression that any other woman, given the chance to spend time with him, wouldn’t be caught dead making just before words rushed out of her. “That obvious, huh?”
    He chuckled. “Yes.”
    “Sorry about that.”
    “Stop biting your nails.” He loved her beautiful fingernails. Not too long, but natural and elegant. He hated that his presence made her so on edge that she felt the need to chew on them. When she stopped and shoved her hands underneath her thighs, he sighed. “I’m going to be honest with you, Colin.”
    Her eyes shone the color of the Mediterranean Sea on a cloudless day. “Okay.”
    “We have a situation here and I want you to know that I would never take advantage of it.”
    “So you’re not going to ravish me?” she joked.
    “I didn’t say that.”
    She wasn’t smiling now. Clearly his answer had made her uncomfortable. Hunching her shoulders forward, she let out a pent-up breath. “We’re not very good at this are we? Last week in Mazer’s office you said if I wanted to know the real reason you’d orchestrated this intimate get together you’d tell me. I should have stayed to hear you out. I’m listening now.”
    Brave girl. He sat on the arm of the couch and dove right in. “I know you’re committed to exploring the concepts I’m going to show you about a BDSM environment for your readers’ benefit, but I want you to be fully aware that there’s something that may affect the experience for you personally. It’s that ‘something’ that has me intrigued and caused me to make this arrangement with you.”
    “Okay.”
    “Sweetheart, you’re a submissive.”
    She blinked.
    He waited.
    She blinked some more. “Submissive what?”
    It was his turn to blink. “A submissive. Period.”
    Pursing her lips, she appeared to contemplate the matter and replied, “Nope.”
    He didn’t hesitate to counter, “Yes.”
    Taking a moment, she adjusted her blouse before crossing her arms and leaning forward to rest them on her knees. “Ya think?”
    At the moment he was thinking he could get used to that nose scrunch of hers, but then she unwound her arms and sat up straight. “Lord love a duck! You think I’m one of you?”
    Ethan had been prepared to be patient with her. He would be patient. But there was patient and then there was patient. “One of us?”
    She waved a hand. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
    He sure did. “Again, one of us?”
    “Casper said you’d try to mesmerize me into turning kinky.”
    Ethan didn’t doubt that for a moment. Casper was probably from the old school. Where one held the belief that sexual preferences, even of the kinky variety, were a conscious choice. He assumed it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to automatically believe that one adhering to the BDSM lifestyle could recruit the vanilla population into kink against their will. But this wasn’t about Casper and his archaic thinking. This was about Colin’s truth.
    He leveled a direct stare on her. “What do you think?”
    “I think Casper’s heart was in the right place.”
    “I’m not interested in Casper at the moment. I’m interested in you. What you’re thinking. What you’re feeling. You.”
    “Me—really? This is why you insisted on us spending time together? Why it had to be you and not one of your partners staying with me. Really?”
    She was looking all over the place. Right. Left. Up at the ceiling. “Colin.”
    “What?”
    He loved the way she sounded upset and pissed off at the same time. He supposed that came with frustration. “How do you feel when you’re around me?”
    Scowling, she looked right at him. “Angry.”
    “I think it’s time for you to be honest.”
    “I am angry…sometimes.”
    Now they were getting somewhere. “Angry and what else?”
    “This is crazy.” She groaned and looked away. “I don’t know.”
    “Colin,