Page 96 of Beneath the Burn

Lips pinched in a line, Nathan leaned into his arm, bent on the door jamb, and scanned her face.

She gave him a reassuring smile. “Everything okay?”

He glanced over her head. She missed Jay’s expression, but the muscles in Nathan’s cheeks relaxed. He looked back at her. “They’re holding your dinner. You should eat.”

“Thank you. How long till we land?”

He glanced at his watch. “Three hours.” Straightening, he clasped the latch on the door, but didn’t move to leave.

“What’s wrong? You seem…worried.”

“Should I be?”

Her lips turned up. “Yes.”

He rubbed his eyelids, volleyed another glare at Jay, and closed the door.

She locked the door and turned. Their gazes caught instantly. The physical connection was severed, but the magnetism between them pulsed, beckoning. She swayed closer. Their little vacuum crackled and heated.

Stretching to wrap her arms around his neck, she froze mid-reach. “If I touch you again, will it be like starting over?”

He took her hands in his and lowered onto the bench, guiding her knees to straddle him. “Let’s find out.” He jutted his chin out, the cords stretching in his neck as he stared at her, waiting.

“You put a lot of faith in me.” Her fingers hovered over his throat.

“If you stay close to me, Charlee, my faith will stay close, too.”

Everything inside her melted as she molded her body around his and touched a fingertip to the hollow at the base of his neck. His eyes didn’t shift from hers, his muscles didn’t tense, and a smile lifted one side of his mouth.

Oh, thank God. Kissing his chin, the corners of his mouth, and lingering on his lips, she wedged her hand between their chests, smoothing her palm over his breastbone and absorbing his warmth. “Good?”

“Now I am.”

She went back to his mouth for a deeper kiss. He laughed against her lips and pulled back until his head bumped the wall behind him. “We need to talk.”

Ugh. “Okay.”

With an arm around her back, he laced their free hands together on the seat beside them. Moments passed as he watched his thumb bump over her knuckles, his eyes unfocused. Then he looked at her. “Please don’t be offended by anything I say or ask. I’m making no judgments. I just want the full picture so I can try to help, okay?”

She nodded, hoping he was ready to hear the answers.

49

Charlee choked on the foreboding atmosphere, waiting for Jay to begin his questioning.

“I’m surprised and relieved that you’re willing to be intimate with me after…what you survived.”

She tensed against him. Where anyone else might’ve feared to step, he went rushing in.

He watched her closely, caution gripping his voice. “Your sessions, your openness, whatever it is you’re doing, it works. I should take lessons from you.”

The sudden image of him dominating her in a dungeon sent bolts of excitement through her body. “You shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know whatyousurvived, but I recognized the pain eating at you the night we met. I suspect your abuser wasn’t so different from mine. Yet, here you are, willing to be intimate.”

Without so much as a nonverbal acknowledgement, he held her through a comfortable silence. Eventually, he stirred, kissing her bottom lip. “I know it’s unfair to ask you to answer my questions and not answer yours. For now, let’s stay focused on you, on what happened between us, okay?”

She nodded. “For now.”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around your sessions. It would make more sense if you were the one with the whip. A submissive position seems like the last thing you’d want.”

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