Page 41 of His for Christmas
I just need to make sure she sees it as clearly as I do.
I find her in the library after midnight, curled in one of the leather chairs with design sketches spread across her lap. Shehasn't come to my bedroom tonight—the first night since our relationship began that she's chosen to work late rather than join me. The deliberate avoidance feeds the cold certainty growing in my chest. She's pulling away more rapidly than I anticipated, creating distance that I cannot—will not—allow.
I close the library door behind me with a definitive click that makes her look up, startled. For a moment, something like pleasure crosses her face at the sight of me, before wariness replaces it. That brief flicker of genuine happiness gives me hope, fuels my determination to address this growing chasm between us before it becomes unbridgeable.
"It's late," I observe, moving toward her with measured steps. "I expected you upstairs hours ago."
Holly straightens in the chair, gathering her sketches defensively. "I needed to finalize these designs for tomorrow's installation. The children's event has to be perfect."
"Dedicated to your work as always," I acknowledge, stopping before her chair. "One of the qualities I admire about you. Though I find myself wondering if work is the only reason you've avoided my bed tonight."
Her eyes meet mine directly—another quality I admire, her refusal to cower despite my advantage in height, in power, in this moment. "Not entirely," she admits with that straightforward honesty that continues to disarm me. "I needed some time to think."
"About?" I prompt, though we both know the answer.
"About us. About how quickly everything has happened. About your reaction to my plans for Saturday." She sets the sketches aside, rising to create a more equal footing between us. Even standing, she barely reaches my shoulder, yet somehow doesn't seem diminished. "About whether your possessiveness is something I can live with long-term."
The directness of her assessment hits harder than any evasion could have. "My possessiveness," I repeat, keeping my voice neutral despite the surge of emotion her words provoke. "Is that how you characterize my desire to be with you? My prioritization of our time together?"
"Dominic," she says, a hint of exasperation entering her tone, "you tried to manipulate me into canceling plans with my closest friends. You implied you might spend the evening with another woman to make me jealous. That's not prioritization—it's control."
I take a step closer, unable to maintain distance when every instinct urges me to claim, to possess, to eliminate any space between us. "I want you with me," I state simply. "Is that so difficult to understand?"
"Wanting me with you isn't the problem," she counters, standing her ground despite my proximity. "The problem is how you react when you don't get what you want. The problem is that after less than two weeks together, you already expect me to reorganize my entire life around your preferences."
"Less than two weeks," I acknowledge, circling her slowly, a predator assessing his prey. "Yet in that time, you've slept in my bed every night. You've shared my meals, my home, my shower, my life. You've cried out my name in pleasure more times than I can count. You've accepted gifts, attention, affection that you've returned in equal measure." I stop directly behind her, close enough that she must feel my breath against her hair. "Do you deny any of this?"
Her shoulders tense, though she doesn't turn to face me. "No, I don't deny it. But relationships need balance, Dominic. They need space for individual identities alongside the connection."
"Space," I repeat, the word tasting bitter on my tongue. I move to face her again, needing to see her expression. "Is thatwhat Saturday really represents? Space? Or is it the beginning of your withdrawal? Your exit strategy?"
Surprise flashes across her features. "Exit strategy? I'm not planning to end things. I just need one evening with my friends, without your overwhelming presence dictating my every thought and feeling."
"My overwhelming presence," I echo, anger beginning to seep through my carefully maintained control. "An interesting characterization of what I believed was mutual desire."
"It is mutual," she insists, frustration evident in her voice. "That's not what I meant. I just?—"
"Need space. Need time. Need distance." I cut her off, the familiar phrases igniting memories I've spent years suppressing. "I've heard these justifications before, Holly. They invariably precede departure."
Something in my tone must reveal more than I intended, because her expression shifts from frustration to something closer to comprehension. "This isn't just about me, is it?" she asks softly. "Someone left you before. Someone made you believe that needing space meant not caring."
The insight stuns me momentarily, this evidence that she sees me more clearly than anyone has in years—perhaps ever. The momentary vulnerability infuriates me, pushes me to reassert control.
"This is entirely about you," I counter coldly. "About your apparent inability to commit fully to what exists between us. About your insistence on maintaining connections that compete with our relationship."
"My friends don't compete with you," she says, genuine anger entering her voice now. "They're part of who I am—who I was before I met you, and who I'll continue to be. If you can't understand that, then maybe we do have a problem more fundamental than one party."
The implied threat in her words—that our relationship might end over this conflict—sends a surge of something close to panic through me, though I mask it with ice.
"Perhaps we do," I agree, my voice dangerously soft. "Perhaps I've misjudged your capacity for the kind of relationship I require."
"The kind of relationship you require," she repeats, incredulous. "Do you hear yourself, Dominic? Relationships aren't acquisitions. They're partnerships. Equal partnerships."
I laugh, the sound harsh even to my own ears. "Equality is a convenient fiction, Holly. In every relationship, there's a dominant partner and a submissive one. A leader and a follower. Someone who sets the terms and someone who accepts them."
"That's not a relationship," she counters, her cheeks flushed with emotion. "That's ownership. And I won't be owned, not even by you."
"Won't you?" I step closer, eliminating the distance between us. My hand rises to cup her cheek, the gesture simultaneously tender and controlling. "Your body says otherwise. Your responses to my touch, my voice, my presence—they tell a different story than your words."
