Page 8 of Hard Ride
Anyway, it’s clear that the moment she headed towards the alcove where I was sitting, blindly running from Lucas, I knew she was here for me. Oh, she tried to protest, tried to tell me that she was only here with her friend, but she was looking at me the way she used to all those years ago, and I knew that fate had brought her here.
Lucas was standing behind her, blocking her exit, the two of us working in sync, the way we always do when we’re in the club. He was furious, of course, that she was here at all, still disturbing our peace in the same way she did a decade ago.
I was already friends with Lucas when I met her. He was a foster kid in a shitty foster situation, and I was an angry kid with a shitty parent, and naturally we bonded, especially being new kids at the same high school.
Then Katherine appeared. She dropped her tray in the school cafeteria, food spilling everywhere, and I helped her clean it all up. She smiled at me then, and said thank you, and it felt as if the sun had come inside and was shining on me. Her smile wasbright, and her blue eyes, like a summer sky, were clear. I didn’t see anything but her in that moment.
No one had ever thanked me for anything before, not one fucking person, yet she had. And that smile… Christ, I would have done anything for that smile.
She was mine the moment I saw her.
Then I had to watch as she had the same effect on my best friend.
I know what he feels for her, what he’s always felt for her, and while we’ve never talked about it, he’s aware that I know his feelings, too. But I saw her first, so I have first claim, and that’s just how it is. Lucas is not a man who takes another man’s property, but he’s not made of stone, either.
He was radiating anger when he stood behind her, so I told him to let Katherine and me have a few minutes so he could have some distance. I wanted to talk to her on my own anyway.
I’d really been going to open our conversation with something more standard, but when I told her to sit, and she sat like she was born to obey, I had to recalibrate. Refocus.
I recognized thenwhat I failed to see years ago, that she’s likely to be a submissive and doesn’t want to acknowledge it. She hasn’t accepted her own responses the way I have, and even now, even after ten years, she’s still afraid.
I can’t have that. I can’t have my bright, shining girl, who used to stand on the back of my motorcycle and pretend she was flying, be afraid.
“Tell me what scares you,” I say, holding her gaze with mine. “And don’t say you’re not scared. I know you are.”
She’s sitting there primly, one leg over the other, neat as a new pin in her little suit and bun. I looked her up a few years ago and saw she’d gotten her law degree the way she alwaysplanned, and I was glad for her. She had a sharp intelligence and a way with words, and a determination to match, so it was no surprise. She looks like she’s working in some firm somewhere, all buttoned up and prim, and I wonder if she enjoys it. I wonder if any other man has ever made her scream as loudly as I did.
Her hands are clasped in her lap, her full and pretty mouth tight as she rolls her eyes. “Seriously? You don’t know me, Tate. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago.”
“That’s why I’m asking you now,” I say. “If you were the same person, you wouldn’t be anywhere near this club, let alone sitting on the couch opposite me.” I lean forward and pick up my vodka, taking a leisurely sip. “Also, I’m not the same person, either.”
Her gaze flickers under the pressure of mine, and she looks down at her hands. It’s a submissive response, and it makes the Dom in me flex and stretch like a tiger waking from sleep. My cock is hardening again, and I’m conscious of the press of her breasts against her white shirt, and the neatness of her waist in her little suit skirt. She was the first pretty thing I ever had, the first pretty thing that was mine. Having her was like discovering a diamond in the wasteland, clear and glittering, untainted by all the shit that I had to deal with every day.
I wanted her to stay untainted and pure, to stay unafraid, and that’s why I let her go. I didn’t want to drag her down with me.
Except now, all I can think about is how pretty she’d look naked and in cuffs, kneeling at my feet.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Tate,” she says impatiently. “I’m not afraid. I’m simply uninterested.”
I almost laugh at that, because it’s such a terrible lie. If she were uninterested, she wouldn’t have obeyed my command and sat down. If she were uninterested, she wouldn’t be checking me out the way she did just before, as if she can’t drag her gaze away.
If she were uninterested, the pulse at the base of her throat wouldn’t be racing, she wouldn’t be flushed, and her pretty nipples wouldn’t be hard.
“You don’t have to be afraid of being submissive, Katherine,” I say, deciding to ignore her lie. “We celebrate it here.”
She scowls at me. “I’m not a submissive.”
“Then why did you sit down when I told you to?”
“Because I was going to sit down anyway.”
I just look at her, watching her blush deepen, her gaze flickering once again under the pressure of mine. “Now we both know you’re lying,” I murmur.
She rolls her eyes again. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being submissive,” I say, amused at how desperately she’s denying the truth. “I can’t be who I am without a submissive partner.
“Oh, right, you’re a Dom. Of course you are.”
