We love each other, after all.

It breaks my heart. What is so wrong with two people falling in love? Making love? Literally the only thing holding us back is…

“I missed you too.” Reason is losing out to my wants. Now that I feel him against me again, all I can think about is bringing his lips to mine and getting lost in the back of his throat. I haven’t kissed him in over a month. I want his hands on me. I want his lips to kiss every speck of skin on my body. I want… I want…

Damnit, all I want is him!

“Come on.” I step back, taking his hand long enough to give him an idea. “Ten minutes.”

A man like him needs longer than that. A woman like me knows how to have a quickie.

Chapter 18

KATHRYN

There aren’t many places to hide during a ball boasting hundreds of guests, but this is a large hotel. A large hotel with a lot of clean closets and empty conference rooms, like the one we barge into, locking the door behind us.

I barely have time to find the conference table before Ian has me on top of it, his kiss so powerful that I’m melting beneath the weight of his body.

We’re a couple of famished bastards as zippers fall, skirts raise, and more than one hand searches for a forbidden place untouched in over a month. A month probably doesn’t sound like a lot to you. Before, it didn’t sound like a long time to me either. A woman in need of a man’s touch knows how to get by until she can secure it again, but that’s a woman who isn’t in love.

Because I need this man’s specific touch. I need the way Ian knows my body, what I like, what I desire. Only he knows how to touch me in ways I never thought possible before. Only he knows my precarious line between being dominated and taking control.

Like right now, when he thrusts into me, his satisfied grunt telling me how much he wants me, and how much he loves me.

“Katie…” No matter how many times I hear it, or how many times he says it, I still feel renewed every time that name enters my ear. It’s like being welcomed home by the lover you’ve had for decades. With him inside of me at the same time, thrusting enough to get me wetter and then completely take me? Oh my God, I am going to die.

I say his name, desperately, letting him know how much I’ve loved and missed him as well. This is so stupid. This is so dangerous. This is the last thing we should be doing, but I can’t help myself. I need this man in me, on me, whispering his sweet nothings as he fucks me like I need air to breathe. Because what’s the point of breathing if I’m not sharing those breaths with him?

Being away for a month affirmed how much I love him. But I… I…

Tears pool at the corner of my eyes as we fall into a steady rhythm. I love this man. I love him so much that I had to drag him back here after one embrace. The idea of being without him like this again shatters my heart until I don’t even recognize it anymore.

The tears come, however, because no matter how good this feels, I know it won’t last.

“I love you.” The words sound so pathetic coming from me. I’m hiccupping with every moan, Ian’s ability to pin me to this table otherworldly. And yet I’m afraid saying these words. “Don’t leave me, Ian.”

His movements still, hands on my cheeks as he brings my face forward for a kiss. Even though his tongue slips along mine, he still manages to say, “You’re the one who left me, darling.”

I touch him back, clinging to his jacket and holding him fast inside me. I don’t want to let him go. “Come in me.”

Here I am, Kathryn Alison, a big, strong Domme who is sloppily in love with a Dom and pleading to know what it’s like to have him come inside me again. The Kathryn I am now and the Kathryn who went to him that first night seem like completely different people.

When he moves within me again, I forget everything.

I forget everything about him that annoys me. His arrogance, the way he nonchalantly takes control of everything and assumes he can take what he wants, how he wants to submit to me but won’t…

I forget. I force myself to forget, and I naturally forget. My life is nothing but Ian Mathers making love to me and how good it feels.

I want this.

God, do I want this!

“Katie!’ He pushes me down onto the table, spreading my legs open, driving inside me, pinning me, pounding me, pressuring me to meet his great and mighty need for what we’re doing. It’s hard for us to kiss at this angle, but I don’t care. I can look into his eyes in this darkness, at the wild mien bearing down upon me and begging me… begging me… to feel the same way about him that he does me.

I do, Ian. I do feel that way.

For one split second as we climax, I am convinced that nothing else in this world matters.

His hand takes mine on the table. Our breaths are one. My hips surge against him, bringing him into me, body and soul. His groan is strong, yet vulnerable. Like him. Ian doesn’t know it and probably wouldn’t believe it, but he’s a vulnerable man.

A man I love.

Do you know how relieved I feel when he comes inside me? It’s not fear. It’s not even immense pleasure. It’s relief. He’s here. He’s with me. He’s not going anywhere, and he wants me so badly that a moment like this occurs. I can’t believe it. Ian Mathers! In love with me!

Me, in love with him!

I cry.

“No, no, sweetie…” He pulls out almost right away, taking what he gave me with him. I’m a mess. I have other things to worry about. “Don’t cry. What’s wrong?”

Ian’s forehead touches mine. My legs slip off the table and away from his hips. His warmth is all over me, coddling me, but my crying drives a wedge between us.

“I love you.”

“And I love you too…” The tone of his voice says that he doesn’t understand the problem here. “Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it once and for all.”

He almost sounds hopeful. Like the power of love alone is enough to keep us together beyond this next week, month, however long it takes for me to break again because I’m being kept from who I really am.

“You can’t fix who we are, Ian. You can’t rearrange the cosmos so we’re magically happy with this arrangement for the rest of our lives.”

There I go, talking about forever. As if we’ll get married. As if we’ll be anything more than a Dom and a Domme skirting around the big elephant in the room so we can make it one more month without breaking up. Meanwhile, yours truly won’t know who she is anymore.

The things people – including my acquaintances – will say to me. You may say that they’re not real friends if they don’t support my relationship, but they are important to me. I can’t lose myself like that and lose my friends. Eva would stay by my side, but who else?

“I may not have the power or the money to change the universe, my love, but I do have the power to change what’s happening here.” He presses his forehead against my shoulder. “Yet I can’t change a damn thing if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

My ass slides off the table. I pull down my skirt, although I do not push him away. In fact, I welcome him embracing me and telling me some more about how much he loves me. What woman doesn’t want to hear that after lovemaking?

This woman, I guess.

“You know I love you.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re not sharing what’s on your mind and instead running off to Europe, Katie.”

He’s caressing my head, letting his fingers run through my hair that has fallen from my immaculate twist. Not so immaculate anymore. Eventually Ian plucks my jewels from my hair and gingerly arranges them on the table. I try not to think about what’s going on between my thighs. It’ll send me back into a spiral of eroticism I can’t afford to deal with.