Page 44 of Taming Scarlet

They weren’t the same as the ones in the living room.

These were softer and stretchier, allowing for movement. This was evidenced by how he pulled them toward me, and slid one onto my wrist before removing the old cuff.

“Get on the bed,” he demanded.

And I did, the restraint making my arm go up.

He secured my other wrist before moving toward my feet, and I tested them, glad to find I could pull my arms down near my shoulders without too much discomfort.

But with my ankles bound, I couldn’t do more than turn halfway onto my side, and even that made the material rub against my skin.

So I stayed on my back as Julian moved to the foot of the bed.

Then he gave me what some part of me had been craving back in the living room.

His attention.

His dark gaze roamed over my bare body, and I had to press my thighs more tightly together to ease the ache at the intensity I saw in his eyes as they moved back to my face.

“You’re beautiful, pet,” he said, and the words made that shiver move through me again. “And you are going to learn to only need to hear that from me,” he said. “Instead of countless strangers.”

With that, he turned to walk toward the door, flicking off the light, before coming back to bed, climbing in, and seeming to fall right to sleep.

I, however, was awake for a long time.

Looking at him.

Thinking.

Grumbling at my restraints.

Before, finally, when Julian’s hand moved out and landed on my thigh, I drifted off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Julian

Even I’d been surprised by how well she submitted.

For a girl who’d gotten everything her way for what seemed like her entire life, stripping away her control had been easier than I’d anticipated.

That said, it was because of something I’d suspected almost from the beginning.

Because she needed it.

Because she’d been running and hiding from everything real. Because she’d been stuffing herself full of experiences and alcohol, and external validation, so that she never truly had to sit with her feelings and realize how empty she felt.

I had to show that to her.

I knew when I’d stripped her then left her, that something had cracked in her world, in her psyche.

This was a woman who based her entire worth around the opinions of people who were inconsequential in her life.

She performed for them.

Their words in response to that show became the sustenance she lived off of.

It was toxic.

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