Page 31 of After Hours

“Sex clubs are fun,” Zachary told her. “For one thing, it’s always nice to meet people who share common interests.” He grinned when he said that. “Sometimes a public scene scratches an itch that nothing else can. Maybe some night when Frederick opens his place, we’ll go and play. But there’s no pressure.”

“You’re the expert,” she said. She returned her attention to the dinner he’d made. “Out of curiosity, and really only out of curiosity, how many women have you treated like this before?”

“How many have I trained?” he asked.

She remembered how deliberated he’d been with that word, back at the beginning. “Is that what this is?”

“Very few.” Zachary didn’t look away. “But what I think you’re really asking me is how many women I’ve had an exclusive relationship with for months at a time, to the point where she is already kind of living with me. And the answer is none. Just you.”

And that felt… gigantic. It felt like a sea change. Like those stormy nights on the boat when she couldn’t tell if the boat wasstill in its slip or if it had floated out to sea and she’d wondered if it would be better if it just sank.

This felt a whole lot like that. But not exactly as dark.

And he was watching her that intensity of his that made everything in herhum. It made her pussy ache. Because there was no intensity between them that wasn’t sexual.

But that wasn’t quite right, she knew. It was that everything about them was connected to their dynamic and their dynamic was inherently sexual. He had looked at her when they were grocery shopping the week before, done nothing butlookat her in a particular way, and she’d practically had an orgasm in the produce aisle.

This was who they were.

Just you,he had said.

But she couldn’t go there. She couldn’t take it on board.

She looked away, and she pulled her hand from his, too. Because she suddenly had a desperate need to cut her meat.

And hours later, when he locked her in chains and played a bit too much with his crop, by her reckoning—until she sobbed from the pain of it and then sobbed because he made her come repeatedly—she didn’t say a word.

That was her penance.

When he tucked up against him, cuffing her the way she liked and adding the blindfold she’d come to depend on, she nestled her head against his heart. Then she waited for him to go to sleep, breathed him in, and whisperedI’m sorry,directly into his skin.

Chapter Eight

She was a mystery and Zachary didn’t actually like a mystery. Not one he couldn’t solve, anyway.

Give him all the puzzles in the world and he’d figure them out. He was good at it. His talent for finding creative solutions was how he created the scenes and scenarios that drove them both wild. It was how he’d navigated the often rocky path following a stint in prison. It was all the same thing, to his mind. All it took was being observant, paying attention, and using context to connect things that didn’t seem to go together at first glance.

But this was different. He couldn’t solve a mystery if he didn’t have all the clues. And six months into this thing with Romily, she still wasn’t giving him all of her.

They both knew it.

He was who he was, so he kept pushing it.

But every time he did, she would take everything he gave her beautifully. She would show him all of that love and trust and honesty in her gaze, that shining gold that had changed his life.She would suffer for him and obey him perfectly and even as she did it, he knew that she was holding back.

Zachary could admit that there was some arrogance involved. Maybe he shouldn’t have simply assumed that becausehewanted literally everything, that limitless connection, she would too.

And he was still too arrogant, because when he thought about it, he believed shedidwant those things. If only he could figure out how to lead her where they both wanted—needed—to go.

Of course, he wouldn’t be who he was if he wasn’t arrogant as fuck. Some called it overbearing—though Romily simply melted into him and called himsir.

On the one hand, this was entirely his own fault for breaking all of his own rules. On the other hand, Zachary really didn’t like losing. He wasn’t built for it.

“What’s got you all worked up?” his friend Arlo asked in the middle of one particularly revolting session in the gym. They were in between sets, lying on the floor, possibly wishing for death.

“I don’t get worked up,” Zachary growled.

“Not usually,” Arlo said with a laugh. “So I’m guessing it’s a woman.”

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