Page 22 of Bound By Dance and Desire

“My father always grilled the steaks.”

“Another gender-based custom among humans?”

I shrugged. “I suppose so. I neverquestioned most of them.”

There were always more important things to worry about, like mastering my en pointe or pirouette. Or vomiting through a bad period before I’d finally been diagnosed and put on meds.

He dipped his chin slightly, emerald dark hair falling onto his forehead as he lowered his lashes in time to the not quite smile curving his lips.

“And are you very obedient, my Anah?”

I'd have to be a complete moron not to understand the sexual purr in his voice.

I kept my tone light because stammering would make me look like prey. “I suppose it depends on the circumstances. And the man. So far I haven't been tempted towards obedience much.”

Andrei stilled, eyes snapping wide. I almost stepped back, uncertain what I’d said that was so provocative.

“Then I will have to be worthy of your obedience,” he said.

The tension now was thicker than that jar of heavy cream lounging with full fat complacency in the ice box.

I tried to use humor to break the tension again. “What could be worth that? Evidently you cook, but do you also clean up after yourself?”

“Are those your only standards?” His eyes brightened with anger once more. “A male who can prepare food and clean up his own messes? I wonder at the quality of human males.”

“You aren't the only one.”

I began to turn away and pick up a pepper, my fingers trembling a little because this conversation was going completely off the rails, when he stepped towards me. Not touching, but so close he might as well be.

Andrei lowered his head, the tip of his nose moving up and down my temple as if in slow caress as he inhaled deeply, then exhaled warm breath scented with desire. The beat of his forcibly restrained lust flit through my veins, and for a moment I saw myself clearly through his eyes.

Shimmering satin skin, head lowered, neck he wanted to sink his teeth into draped in shining hair. He wanted to shove her against the counter and sink to his knees, burying his mouth between her thighs and licking her into submission. He would teach herthe pleasures of obedience on his fingers and tongue and cock until she?—

I jerked, startled, pressing a hand to my hot cheek. What in the world?

“I'm somewhat impatient to be forced to say this because it's so basic,” he said in a deep, silky tone as I mentally reeled, “but with me you will never go hungry. Never want for the proper fuel to feed your discipline. And I can offer you more, Hasannah. So much more beyond the paltry basics.”

My heart stuttered in my chest as I relearned how to breathe. How to feel something other than this sudden, all-encompassing lust. A shocking need that went so much deeper than mere physical desire.

For the first time I didn’t feel alone in my own mind. Bereft of warmth.

I closed my eyes to defend myself against him, and attempted to dance the choreography for my audition in my head, though of course that was useless. About as useless as telling him he couldn't come into my place.

“Really, you don't need to do anything for me. I have everything I need.” What I didn't need was to be in any way in his debt, or otherwise more entangled.

He turned me in his arms. It took me a few moments to realize the silence had changed, that some of that anger was now focused.

On me.

I opened my eyes and flinched.

“What you mean,” he said with the softness of a man restraining his temper—a man who normally wasn't required to stoop to temper because everything and everyone in his vicinity, he ruled, “is that you don'twantanything from me. That you don't trust me.”

I looked away. No, I didn't want to anger him, but I also wasn't going to let him bully me into completely placating him. There was a difference between strategically avoiding unnecessary conflict and laying down to be his doormat.

“If you were in my position, would you trust you?” I asked.

His fingers caught my chin, turning my head so I was forced to meet his gaze again. “No, but that's only because I know you lack key information.”

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