Free Unbound Surrender by Sierra Cartwright Page A

maybe I should take you against the wall?”
    It was so damn hard to think straight with him this close. A quick fuck would do her. She’d sate the hunger, at least temporarily. But it wouldn’t get her what she came here for.
    “Or maybe you’d like a long screw in my bed?”
    “Stephen…”
    “Perhaps you’d prefer that I tie you to the St. Andrews Cross or the spanking bench and flog your arse until you beg me to let you come.”
    Her knees weakened and she had to force herself to remain upright. There’d been a time he would have done exactly that, a time she would have begged him to do that.
    “Your eyes narrowed, Jess. You liked that suggestion the most.”
    An instinctive denial flooded her, but she kept her mouth shut. He was right. And she wasn’t going to start lying to him, or herself.
    He unfastened the second button, revealing her red bra. She moistened her lower lip. Stephen Duvall had never had trouble reading her sexually. It was the rest of it that had been missing.
    “Why did you get dumped for the third time?”
            Exposing her failings was going to be the hardest part. “For the same reason we got divorced.”
    His brows drew together.
    “Lance stopped short of calling me frigid—”
    “You’re not frigid.”
    “I wasn’t the same way with him that I was with you. He felt as if I was holding something back. Mentally. Emotionally.”
    His fingers paused on her bare skin, and he didn’t open the third button. “Were you?”
    She searched for courage. “Yes.”
    “Like you did with me.”
    There it was. The truth was laid bare between them with all the hurt, the anger, the frustration that had caused their final row. He’d wanted to push her, and rather than negotiate or discuss it rationally, she’d started arguing. She’d been defiant and disobedient and she’d committed the ultimate sin. She’d ripped off her collar and thrown it on the floor. “Yes. I was holding back, like I did with you. And yes, I fought with him and ended the relationship instead of talking about it.” This was the first time she’d admitted the truth to him, to herself.
    “Was BDSM a part of that relationship?”
    “It hasn’t been part of my life since…”
    “Say it.”
    He wanted to hear it, and she didn’t want to say it. “Since I left.”
    “Since you discarded your collar and your ring without ever looking back,” he corrected, shards of ice in his words.
    “Yes.”
    “And never gave me the courtesy of a real explanation.”
                Goaded, her anger flared. “Could you make this any more difficult?”
                  “You want it easy? You want it easy? Baby, you must have me confused with someone else.”
                Just then, temper spiked in his eyes. She saw how deep his own anger ran and how tightly he reined it in. “I think coming here was a mistake.”
                “Probably was,” he agreed. “Feel free to run away. You always have.”
                How the heck had this gotten so out of control, so quickly?
    “You’ve got twenty seconds before I show you the door.”
    “I’m tired of running.”
    He raised a brow in that oh-so sceptical way of his.
    “I’m tired of holding back,” she confessed. “I’m tired of being so afraid of being hurt that I do the hurting first.”
    “You’re here to apologise?” he asked incredulously.
    “No.” She wished he’d step back or at least drop his hand, but she couldn’t ask for either, not since she was resolved not to run.
    “Forgive me for not being able to keep up.”
    She took a breath. It was supposed to be a deep, steadying breath that she practiced in her yoga classes. Instead it ended up as a desperate, shallow-sounding pant. “I have no right to ask this. I fully expect you to kick me out. I’m grateful for the five minutes you’ve given me.”
    “Go on.”
    “I want to learn to let go.” At one time, she might have