Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 81208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
I shouldn’t be uncomfortable talking about this, but I am. It’s been a part of who I am that has felt wrong for so long. “But you still think I’m a freak.” I shake my head, but I don’t look away. The frisson of electricity between us is like a bolt of lightning.
“NO.” The word spills from her with anger. “No, I don’t. Not at all.”
“You’re just saying that. Being polite.”
Goldie’s attention drifts to the corner of the store as though she’s chewing over what to say next.
If she’s truly our destiny, then what’s behind the locked door shouldn’t be off-putting to her. We should be made for each other in all ways. That’s what being fated means. But believing a woman like Goldie, so sweet and innocent looking, could ever want the fantasies that haunt me and my brothers seems too much to hope for. She closes her eyes momentarily. When she opens them, she focuses on me, tensing her jaw. “When you called me to change your locks… I was fantasizing.”
I suck in a noisy breath at just the thought.
“In my fantasy, I was blindfolded and handcuffed to a bed just like the one in your room while a stranger did the kind of things you like to do.” She doesn’t move, but it seems as though we’re closer, the words she’s spoken drawing us together with a magnetizing force. “I’ve never told anyone about my fantasies before.”
“You shouldn’t be talking like this,” I say gruffly. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my brothers.”
If she knew what we were and what we wanted with her, she’d run for the hills. She’d use all the locks in this shop to barricade herself in. She’d find any means not to succumb to our desires. But she doesn’t know, and until I can make Hunter understand that we need to approach Goldie with care, I’m at a loss for how to proceed.
“Everyone’s a stranger until they’re not,” she says. “I don’t have an ulterior motive. I just want you to understand that you’re not alone in feeling the way you do.”
Feeling like I want to tear her clothes from her body with my hands and my teeth? Feeling like I want to ravage her so she can’t walk for a week? Feeling like I want to mark her skin with pink welts, will her with my cum, and mark her with my scent? Yeah, I can’t imagine she feels any of that.
“Thinking things in your mind is one thing. Doing them is something different. Believe me.” I turn because continuing to look at her while we have this conversation is just too hard. My hand wanders to a sliding lock and I finger it gently, the metal cool against my fingertips. This is what I love. The unyielding feeling of metal, the slide of a lock, the power of wielding control and the submission it enforces.
It’s a twisted kind of messed up that a woman’s total submission is the only way I’m able to keep the animal in me caged. While I’m in control of her, I’m in control of all of my baser urges. I’d never unleash the worst of myself while a woman is powerless.
Goldie rests her coffee cup on the counter gently and moves to stand closer.
“Do you… have you…?” My voice catches, and I can’t bring myself to finish the question. If this part of her is content with fantasy rather than reality, I’ll be crushed. Shutting and locking that door was okay when the woman who was meant for us was still abstract. Finding her and discovering she doesn’t need what I need… what we need… the disappointment would be vast and all-consuming.
“Not because I don’t want to. Because I’ve never found anyone else—”
“And if you did?” I turn to face her, my eyes burning with an intensity that makes Goldie shiver. Everything about me feels dark and coiled, straining to unleash.
This close, Goldie seems tiny even though she’s taller than average and curvy rather than petite. I just feel so loomingly large, so powerful. It’s intoxicating.
“If I did—” She pauses on what feels like the precipice of something momentous. This is more than just a casual what-if conversation. There’s something eager in her expression. “I’d want to try.”
My chest rises and falls, my body needing more oxygen to process what she said.
The blush that spreads across her cheeks is adorable. My hands flex into fists as I try to maintain control. I’m a famished man, presented with a lifetime’s worth of the most appetizing food.
She takes one step back, responding to the frenzied look I’m unable to suppress.
I stare down at my hands and force them to open. I try to compose myself, pushing calm through my rigid body. I’m too close to letting the animal inside me out of his cage.