Page 60 of The Forbidden Trio

“I know! I was wrong. I should have talked to you instead of allowing my old fears to take over.”

He swallowed hard, fighting the desire to reach for her. To fight with her. Look at her and be reminded of how perfect everything had been until the party. Instead, he said, “I fired Ken.”

“That… That’s good. I mean it’s… God, I didn’t know how to handle that your manager was doing drugs, and thinking how easy it would have been for you to get back into that whole scene. He’s your manager. You see him all the time.”

“Fuck,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else to say. “I didn’t know about him, Janie. But you should have known me. Known menow, who I am today. I’ve come a long way since I fucked things up with you. I thought you could see it…”

“I know. I do. I don’t blame you for being mad. For feeling betrayed. I did it—I betrayed you, Cole, and, God…” A tear slipped down her cheek, and every cell in his being wanted to reach out and comfort her. But she shook her head and went on. “Celine told me. Well, Jaden told her and then she told me. About everything you did for Sonny. And maybe it shouldn’t matter, but it does. I was holding onto that… the idea that you hadn’t done enough for him. Maybe because there was always a part of me that was afraid I hadn’t done enough for you. That what happened to him… that it could have happened…”

“Janie…” He ran a hand over his head, scratching his scalp. This was a lot to take in. “You’re right. That shouldn’t have factored in, but I understand why it did. After what I did to you—”

“But don’t you see? The past is the past. We talked about that, and I hadn’t let it go. I was holding back, afraid to trust that we could be together. But I have to now.Reallyhave to, or it won’t work. I have to let the past go, finally, or we can’t have a future. And Cole, please, please tell me I’m not too late, that I’m not so stupid that I screwed this up. Tell me we can still be together.”

His mind, his gut, were churning with emotion. She was saying everything he’d needed to hear since he’d seen her again. Everything he’d imagined—dreamed of—in those dark moments in the middle of too many long nights—for years. But there was one issue they’d been ignoring

since she came through the door. “Janie? You know you’re naked?”

A small smile broke across her lovely face. “Yes. I was hoping you’d notice.”

“Do you think you can seduce me into accepting your apology?” He knew she could.

“I think I’m proving a point.” She stepped forward, held out her hands. Lying across them was one of her long scarves, this one a light cotton, white withomsymbols all over it in dark blue.

His heart hammered. He knew what she was offering—the bondage they’d both loved all those years ago, and which she’d denied him since they’d been back together because the trust hadn’t built yet—not enough for her to give up that much control. She wasn’t offering him her scarf or even her body—not in essence. She was offering so much more. She was offering him everything.

“Janie?”

She moved closer, laid the scarf in his hands. “It doesn’t need to happen now, unless you want it to. I just needed you to know. To understand you have my trust. My heart and soul.

Completely.”

He nodded, too touched to speak for a moment. Instead, he pulled her into his lap and kissed her hard.

Her hands went to his face, and his cock went hard—he couldn’t help it. The woman he loved was naked in his lap.

He broke away, pulled back to look into her gorgeous green eyes.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

Her eyes went glossy with new tears. “I love you, Cole. So much. And I trust you. I had a good, hard lesson in how awful leaving you was and I never want to do it again. If it means taking a chance on a sure bet, then that’s what I’m willing to do.Wantto do. I want to be with you. I want to beyours. Please tell me I am.”

His heart filled, overflowing. His arms tightened around her sweet body. “Oh, you’re mine, all right. No one else’s.”

“No. Never.”

“You’re my love, Janie girl. Always have been. Always will be.”

He stroked her hair, like honey and silk, let his hand smooth over her shoulder, down to cup her breast, to stroke the soft skin with his thumb. She arched into his touch, offering her mouth to be kissed.

He pressed his lips to hers, kissed her as he turned, sitting her on the piano bench. Then, taking one of her slender wrists in his hand, he held the scarf out, silently asking for that final consent. She nodded, smiled, held both hands out to him, palms turned upward as if in supplication. And he felt her turning herself over to him at that moment. Completely. He bound her wrists together, wrapping the scarf around several times and tying it off with a half-hitch knot. Desire and emotion shivered over his skin, through his system. He knew of only one way to make her truly his, to possess her in the way she was meant to belong to him. This dynamic was an important element between them. It always had been. Now it meant more than ever.

Standing, he tore off his pajama bottoms and his tank top. When he was as naked as she was, his cock hard, needing her, he pressed her back down onto the piano bench.

“So damn beautiful,” he murmured. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Cole…” She leaned up, pressed a kiss to his stomach. His gut clenched, pleasure flooding him as she did it again, and again.

He closed his eyes and sighed his pleasure as she took him in her soft, bound hands, stroking him from base to tip, the ends of the scarf tickling his flesh, until he was swollen and aching for her.

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