Page 114 of Always

I opened the door and allowed her to enter my apartment. “Your safe word is black.”

“Your name?”

“My last name, yeah.”

“What if I call out your name in passion?”

“Then you’ll call out my first name.”

“No. I want to call out Mr. Black.”

This was getting creepy now. “Do you have some kind of daddy fetish or something?”

“Don’t be silly. You’re way too young to be my daddy.”

“I am, but I’m not into that. You will not call me Mr. Black. Understand?”

She smiled again. “Of course. Whatever you want, sir.”

Sir. Hmm. I could live with that. “Good. Call me sir. And your safe word is black.”

…

“You never asked me to call you sir,” Skye says. “And you’ve never given me a safe word.”

“For God’s sake, Skye, would you just let me finish? You’ve been pestering me for weeks to tell you all this. I’m not the same man I was then. Are you the same as you were eleven years ago?”

“Well, eleven years ago I was thirteen, so I’m going to say no.”

My lips quirk. “I ought to bring you over my knee and give that cute ass of yours the spanking from hell.”

“Okay,” she says coyly.

“Sorry, babe. This is your one chance to hear this story. So choose. The spanking or this.”

She cocks her head at me.

Yes, there go the cogs in her brain. She’s thinking that if she chooses the spanking, she won’t get the story. If she chooses the story, I will probably spank her later anyway.

But I won’t.

No spanking later.

That’s her punishment for even thinking about this when I’m opening up to her.

“Continue,” she says. “I need to know, and I think maybe youneed to tell me.”

Do I need to tell her?

I’ve never thought about it in those terms.

I do know that I don’t want to tell her. I never wanted to tell anyone this story.

But Skye isn’t anyone.

Chapter Forty-Three

She nodded.

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