Page 20 of Hard Ride
“But you should be here because you want to be, Katherine.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” The words come out sounding sharper than I intended, because I’m nervous. Just really fucking nervous.
Tate only stands there. “I need to hear you say it.”
Oh, for God’s sake. “Who knew there’d be so much talking involved?” I say, trying to be sarcastic, except the words come out thin and reedy-sounding. “Yes, I want to be here.”
He tilts his head, studying me, and another helpless shiver chases over my skin. “Why?” he asks.
I’m losing patience, my nervousness increasing. “What do you mean, why? And what’s with all the questions?”
“You should have said ‘red’ out in the hallway, but you didn’t. Which means I can’t do a scene with a sub who doesn’t say their safe word when they should.”
My mouth is dry. I don’t like where this conversation is heading. It feels as if he’s leading me into a trap, and I can sense the danger, I just don’t know which direction it’s coming from. “I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to,” I say levelly. “It’s not that deep.”
He doesn’t look away as he lifts a hand to the lock on the door and flicks it so it’s closed. “You want to know what I do to subs who lie to me?” He takes a step toward me.
My heartbeat thuds loudly in my ears. “Why do you keep saying that? I’m not lying.”
He ignores this, coming closer, stalking me like a panther. “I punish them, and usually in uncomfortable ways. Then again, perhaps you’ll like the kinds of punishments I deal out.”
“For the last time, I’m not lying.”
“You’re afraid, aren't you, sweet girl?” He stops not far from where I’m standing near the bookshelves, his gaze relentless, and I find myself almost trembling yet again. “You’re afraid of what you want.”
I swallow. “Tate.”
“You don’t have to be afraid in here,” he goes on, implacable. “I can give you what you want and what you need. I can give you everything.”
“I don’t?—”
“Your safe word is ‘red’. Say it for me now.”
The breath goes out of me in a rush.
“Say it, Katherine.”
His gaze is a pressure, a hand on the top of my head pushing me down, and my mouth opens before I can form a coherent thought. “‘Red,’” I say.
Sparks glitter in his eyes. “Like I said out in the hallway, when you say that word, everything stops. It’s for your safety and mine, but if you use it to manipulate me, I’ll be very,veryunhappy.”
Okay, so this is happening.
All my nerves are tight. I’m keyed up and aware and really fucking tense. I don’t know what the correct thing is to say, so I don’t say anything at all.
Not that it matters, because Tate goes on, “You will address me as ‘Sir’. You will not speak unless spoken to, and you will obey me as if you’d obey God himself. Is that clear?”
My heartbeat hammers away, my skin drawing tight and hot beneath my clothes. I’m aroused already, and my instinctive reaction is to fight it, to not let it get away on me, because who knows what will happen then?
I should speak, I should say something, but all I can manage is a hoarse “Okay.”
His expression remains neutral. If he’s satisfied by my surrender, he gives no sign of it. “No,” he corrects. “You say ‘yes, Sir’.
This should feel like a cliche, a parody of itself, a farce even, yet it doesn’t feel like any of those things. It feels dangerous, and he’s radiating the kind of authority that makes my knees weak,and a part of me wants nothing more than to give him what he wants without a fight.
Yet I hate the thought of giving him all the control, of being helpless, and of being turned on by it the way I was in the hallway. That’s not the part of me I want making decisions. That’s the part I’ve been trying to distance myself from for ten years.
So why are you here then?
