Page 33 of Emergence and Ascendance

I chose to just set an appointment and show up. Talking to him beforehand would make me too damn anxious and I might not follow through.

"Start there. Ask questions and establish your personal boundaries outside of what's in the contract, and again, you can meet prior to your next session."

My stomach twisted and knotted with the thought of sitting down with Christian to have coffee while discussing the ways he made me cum.

"Thank you, I'll think about it."

I stood and smoothed my hands down my sides.

"Scotlyn, are you sure you're okay? Nothing happened that you didn't consent to, right?"

"No, it was all consensual."

She frowned and studied my face. "You seem uneasy. First experiences are always emotionally intense. Try not to overthink or over evaluate how you feel right now."

"I'm not. I think more than anything I'm just processing."

She smiled smugly. "I'm sure. There's a lot to process."

"There is."

She laughed lightly. "If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and whatever you decide, just know the take away from tonight is completely yours. Embrace what you learned about yourself, whether you choose to walk away from this or not."

"Thank you."

I left her office and headed right to the elevators. The entire ride my mind was stuck in that room, on him, on how he made me feel. I used the private exit and walked to my loaner car. The minute I was seated behind the steering wheel I laughed, randomly loud and unfiltered.

"What you learned about yourself…"

I tensed at Giselle's words because what I'd learned was that I was a gotdamn freak who craved the touch of a man I had no business dealing with. I also knew for sure that it was Christianin that room with me, no matter how hard my brain was trying to lean into possibilities that it wasn't.

Being a Whitney was hard enough, but being a female in the Whitney dynasty was damn near exhausting. I had to fight to be taken seriously so much harder than my brother and was foolishly risking my reputation by being attached to something as taboo as entering into a thirty-day contract with a man I was choosing to be a submissive for.

I prided myself on maintaining control and confidence because I had to or would be overshadowed by the men who didn't think I was good enough or deserved to sit across from them during business negotiations. Yet tonight I had been perfectly content handing over complete control. It felt liberating and so fucking freeing, but there was no way this could work. I would decline the contract. I had to…

The next morning I was struggling to open my eyes when I heard my phone going wild on the nightstand next to me. When I failed to shake my sleep haze, because my body felt too heavy and weighted to cooperate, I threw my hand to the side and grabbed my phone, peeking at the screen for all of two seconds to find the spot where I needed to swipe in order to answer.

"Scotlyn…"

"Bitch, I know who you are, I called you." I grinned at Tezni's overly animated voice.

"It's early, Tez. What do you want?"

"Details. I've given you a full twelve hours to psychologically evaluate your pussy pounding."

I choked on a laugh and my eyes flew open but I immediately squinted, realizing I hadn't closed the blackout curtains before Ifell asleep last night. That was a combination of my exhaustion from the aftershocks of what Christian did to my body and the steaming hot shower I took as soon as I made it back to my room, with the intention of erasing the reminders of the way he'd handled me. Epic fail. The memories still lingered in my mind and through my body.

"Oh shit, you're too quiet. Was it terrible?"

"No, it wasn't terrible."

"Then it was good?"

Good, great, amazing…

I rolled over onto my side, placed the call on speaker, and dropped the device on the pillow my head sank into after I shoved my arm under it. Being on my side meant having my thighs pressed together, which was a terrible idea because I swore I still felt his fingers teasing to push into me but I had shut that down.

"I'm not serving you divorce papers if that's what you're asking."

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