Page 40 of Surrender
“Yes,” he replies with an exhale, his eyes blinking slowly as he changes his focus. “Hobo and I were both at practice, and Brandi was with her mum in London.”
I awkwardly cross my arms over my chest, wishing I could shrink down to the size of a pebble. “What happened?”
Gareth shrugs. “A couple of blokes got through his security gate and stole a bunch of stuff. Trashed the property. Could have been worse if they were home.”
“How awful.” My voice is small, and I can barely look Gareth in the eyes as I turn to gain some space from him. I’m such a freak for assuming the person who answered was someone he is intimate with. This is mortifying. “Please extend my apologies to Dorinda.”
Gareth looks at me, releasing a heavy sigh. “You actually met her before. I’m surprised you didn’t recognise her voice.”
I lean against the hood of my car, staring down at my feet in shame. “You want me to dominate you and you’re over there assuming logical things? None of this is logical.”
I steal a glance at his reaction, and the intensity in his gaze nearly takes my breath away. He moves over to me and places his hands on either side of me, caging me in like the wild animal I am right now. “I don’t want you to dominate me, Sloan. I just want to surrender to you.”
“Why?” I ask, wondering if I’ll ever feel secure about this crazy notion.
“Because, on some bizarre level I don’t fully understand, I need it. And I think you need it, too.” He inhales a shaky breath and brings his hands to my waist, squeezing his palms around me to hold me captive. “Asking you to leave last night was fucking brutal, but I had to create a degree of separation between us to ensure that our lines stay clear and never blur. This is truly just about sex after all, and things got incredibly intense last night. Similar to how they did our first time together. I just felt like if you could leave and still come back, then we could do this together properly. Am I right?”
“I’m here aren’t I?” I retort, trying hard to ignore how much I love the warmth of his hands on my sides. This is intense, but everything with Gareth is intense. He’s an intense sort of guy. I don’t like him doubting me, though.
Gareth’s eyes crinkle with a poorly concealed smirk. “Technically, you’re in the middle of the street with a broken bumper.”
I scoff and ignore the way his body vibrates with silent laughter. I ignore the way he watches me as I look away. But I can’t seem to ignore the question on the tip of my tongue. “Gareth, I have to ask again…Why me?”
His eyes close as if he’s weighing his answer in his head before giving it to me. When he opens them, the dark smoulder in the hazel depths is knee-trembling. “Treacle, I want to surrender to you because I sense that it’s been a long time since you’ve been with someone who put your needs first.” He brings his hands to my face and runs his thumbs along the hollows of my cheeks. “I’ve watched you come into my house for years, style me, fill my closet, do your job. But it wasn’t until that night we slept together that I felt like I saw the real you.”
“I was a mess that night.”
“You were a mess until you weren’t…Until you took control. Until you asked me to kneel. Then you were the most beautiful fucking woman I’ve ever seen in my life. That was a turn-on for me, like something I’d never felt before. So this isn’t an entirely selfless request I’m putting out there.”
My body quivers in response to his words. His voice is like a sexy caress over a quiet part of my soul that I’ve been hiding for years. I reach up and grab his face in my hands, taking in every one of his features. Suddenly, a strong, overpowering sense of ownership nearly chokes me. He is mine to use, to please, to care for. To give and take from. I want him this way. I want to embrace whatever this is we’re doing and dive in head first.
My voice is strong when I reply, “Okay, then. Let’s do this, Gareth Harris. I’m all in.”
He licks his lips, a pleased smirk teasing the corners of his mouth. He reaches down and lifts me up onto the hood of my car, tucking himself perfectly between my legs so we’re nose-to-nose. He dips his mouth close to mine, but I pull back with a sharp intake of breath. “Not the lips,” I remind him.
His jaw ticks once before he drops his mouth down to my neck and kisses me there, nibbling at my flesh with tantalising bites. He moves to the other side of my neck as his hands slide up my ribs and squeeze my breasts through the soft chiffon.
I hook my ankles behind his back and pull him in snugly so his dick presses into the heat of me. His large, firm body feels so good, I forget everything I was worried about. “Take me inside,” I command.
He pulls back and looks at me so seriously, I think he’s going to say something bad. “Okay. And just for your information, I’ll be giving you the code to my gate.” His deep voice vibrates against my skin as he leans in and peppers my jaw with feather-light kisses. “Because while you and I are doing whatever it is we’re doing, I promise you that I won’t even look at another woman.”
My heart thunders in my chest from the uneasy feeling I get over his promise. His devotion. The look in his eyes. The sincerity of his touch. I believe him. I believe him more than the day Cal said, “I do,” to me. It’s crazy how a sex-only relationship can still be so committed.
Needing to lighten the mood, I grasp his face in my hands and reply, “That’s good to know because I do not want to see that bird bath killer I just turned into a minute ago ever again.”
He doesn’t laugh like I thought he would. He stares down at my mouth and with a deathly serious tone, he replies, “That’s a bloody shame because I kind of liked her.”
I whack him on the chest, a gesture I’m actually growing quite fond of. He chuckles as he helps me down off the car and opens the driver’s side door for me. “I think it’s time to get your car out of the road, don’t you?”
His wink elicits a smile of my own. “Would you like a ride?”
“Yes, Sloan Montgomery. A real ride this time.”
I hurry into the kitchen to tell Dorinda and her son, Robert—who prepares my meals for the week—that they can head home for the day. I have about an hour before the security guard I hired will arrive, and I intend to make good use of that time. Dorinda gives me a curious sort of look as she collects her purse and makes her way out the kitchen side door where their car is parked.
Dorinda has been with me since I bought the house, so she knows I don’t bring women out here. In fact, I don’t bring anyone out here. Sloan sort of just slipped in on a technicality I guess.
When I first moved to Astbury, I had hopes that my family would visit a lot. I spent a load of money on an interior designer to make it a place where people would want to come and stay. Essentially, the exact opposite of what we grew up in.
