Mystery shuffled forward. She wasn’t afraid of him physically, but he definitely had the power to hurt her with his words.
“You really think it’s all right to deceive someone in order to have sex with them? If our roles had been reversed, and I’d pretended to be someone I wasn’t so that I could wheedle my way into your bed, how would you feel?”
Confused. Used. Wretched.
Mystery winced. “You’re right I guess . . . I figured if you were saying yes to a stranger, did it really matter if I was a woman you’d never met or one you’d known a long time ago? The point was to exchange pleasure, which we did.”
“But what if that wasn’t the only point for me?”
He’d wanted something besides sex? “What else . . . ?”
“What if I’d let you pick me up in the bar because I thought you were interesting, witty, and beautiful, and I’d hoped to use the evening to get to know you more, maybe see if we could start a relationship?”
“That never crossed my mind. I’m sorry.” Guilt lashed her. “I thought I’d spend a few hours with you and get you out of my system so I could move on because I’d never forgotten you. I’ve never, ever wanted anyone else so badly.” When he raised a sharp brow, she looked down, feeling chastened. “I didn’t think you wanted me so I tried to be someone else, thinking we’d both get what we wanted and . . . then we’d be done.”
“You made a whole lot of assumptions, little girl. I never wanted you?”
“You turned me down,” she pointed out, her voice rising as her guilt did. “What else was I supposed to think?”
“That I was trying to be responsible and respectful of you after what you’d been through. Did you think I wanted you this afternoon?”
“Yes.” Together, they’d been incendiary, insatiable, unstoppable. She’d never imagined sex being that intense, ever feeling so much pleasure.
“Damn straight,” he reiterated. “I wanted you that much in the desert years ago. It took every ounce of my restraint to walk away from you that night in the ghost town. I’m sorry if my rebuff was harsher than it needed to be. But I knew if I didn’t eliminate the tequila and ensure you didn’t tempt me again, you wouldn’t stop until I was balls deep inside you, right?”
Mystery wished she could refute him, but no. She’d been so happy to be alive another day. She’d been so grateful to him for making that happen. Her hero worship, the booze, his incredible body and spirit . . . She’d been so drawn to him. He’d done about the only thing possible in that scenario to stop the inevitable.
“Maybe if you had kissed me and said that, later—”
“When I kissed you after the chopper crash, I barely managed to stop myself from laying you down in the sand and fucking you. I knew if I kissed you again at that old hotel, I wouldn’t be able to stop. You needed comfort, not sex, and I didn’t have a single condom with me.”
Birth control hadn’t even crossed her mind that night. How stupid and irresponsible did that realization make her feel?
“And I didn’t look you up later because I knew you’d be going through some PTSD,” he continued. “You needed time to recover and readjust, to finish growing up.” He looked between his feet. “Being totally honest, I worried that your attraction to me wouldn’t hold up in the real world. Even if your father had let you date me—which I highly doubt—once you returned home, you had a glitzy world at your fingertips, and I didn’t fit in. What the fuck do I know about designer labels or country clubs?”
“I don’t care about that crap.” Why did he imagine that mattered at all?
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but I didn’t see us working, so I backed away. I never forgot you, but I was doing all right. Until you seduced me and took my sanity from me.”
God, she’d had no idea he’d given them even half that much thought. Mystery slumped her shoulders, looking around for a chair. There really wasn’t one close to Axel. She needed to curl up, think this through, maybe have a righteous little cry about how badly she’d screwed this up.
“Wherever you think you’re going, no. Come closer.” He waved her near.
She owed it to him to comply. After all, she’d royally muffed everything.
As she closed the distance between them, Axel wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “For the record, if you’d approached me as yourself today, I would have jumped all over you. See, what you felt back then—the breathless attraction, the inexplicable pull, the undeniable attachment—I felt them, too. If you’d come to me today and asked me to be your friend, your lover, your whatever, I would have said yes. Even with the disguise, I was already fascinated by you. I was already thinking beyond the sex. The man in me didn’t like that you’d deceived me or run out.”
“I know.” God, she felt stupid and small. “I’m sorry.”
He put a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze back to him. “You understand what I’ve said?”
“Yes. I never meant to hurt you.”
He nodded. “Now that you understand how the man in me reacted, let’s talk about what you don’t understand. Let’s discuss how the Dom in me reacted.” He pointed to his thighs. “Put yourself over my lap. Now.”
Chapter Ten
SOON he’d take this choking chain off its leash. Now he’d find out if all the submissive signals Mystery had been putting out were real. Nearly everything else about her fit him perfectly. Damn it if he didn’t want their kinks to match, too.
“What?” She blinked at him, her stare bouncing from his face to his thighs and back.
“Did you not hear me?”
“I think I did, but—”
“Is there any part of the instruction you don’t understand?”
Her stare fell to his lap again, and she couldn’t possibly miss the eyeful of hard cock there under his jeans. He adjusted himself, trying to find a position that didn’t strangle his erection, then patted his thigh.
She frowned. “Like lie across . . .”
“Face down, ass in the air. Yes.”
“Oh.” Still, she hesitated, as if she tried to make sense of his command in her head.
“Questions? Problems?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted nervously. “I’ve never done this.”
But Axel suspected the idea turned her on. She sounded breathless. She fidgeted. Her nipples looked hard again. She stared, lips parted, sucking in a raspy draught of air.
His cock stiffened even more.
“There’s a first time for everything, Mystery. Somehow, I doubt it will be our last. You’ve got three seconds, or I’m adding a count of ten.”
Which wouldn’t hurt his feelings in the least. He knew exactly how beautiful her ass was. Having the opportunity to touch it again, this time to spank and discipline it? Fuck, yeah.
Mystery scrambled toward him, casting another uncertain gaze his way, before she lowered herself awkwardly over his thighs. She towered over an average girl by six inches or so, but he still dwarfed her. Axel appreciated that folding long legs in an unfamiliar position wasn’t easy, but he was beyond impatient to get this punishment rolling so they could get back to pleasure.
She wriggled and scooted, bracing herself to slide this way or that over his lap. Again and again, she brushed his sensitive cock. His body tightened, and he’d love to just fuck her every which way. But if he wanted any future with her, he had to set the expectation now.
Finally, he palmed her hips and stilled her, dragging in a long breath before he moved her body up a fraction, sending her long braid spilling, ends brushing the floor. “Don’t move.”
“A-all right.”
“Nope. I expect a polite ‘Yes, Axel’ or ‘Yes, Sir.’ Either is acceptable.” Later, he’d be more exacting, because if this relationship went where he wanted it to, she’d be calling him Master. For now, he simply waited, reaching down to give a gentle tug on her braid.