“Last chance, Seychelle, start talking.”
“It was a nightmare, Savage. People have them.”
“Two fuckin’ nights in a row. The same nightmare. Bad enough that you puke in the toilet and you don’t want to tell me about it.”
That was a straight-up accusation. Worse, he was right. She didn’t want to tell him. That stance. Arms across his chest. Those eyes that wouldn’t let her look away no matter how much she wanted to. He’d given her space the day before because she’d asked him to. She’d been upset. Joseph Arnold, a stalker, had been sitting in her cottage waiting for her with a gun, and Savage thought she was upset about that. She had been, of course, but that wasn’t the only reason. There was a multitude of reasons she was questioning her sanity. Mostly, it had to do with herself, the things she was discovering she needed in her own sexual relationship, and that truly frightened her. She needed to come to terms with it.
There were just so many things coming at her so fast. She wasn’t a person who took things in fast. She just wanted everything to slow down so she could take a breath and assimilate everything at a much different pace than they were going.
“It isn’t me that is going to have the sore ass. I’m not asking again.”
She detested the little flare of dark excitement that sent heat to her sex. It didn’t matter how annoying she found it that he just stood there so casually. He was unmoving, those eyes of his holding her in place, probably seeing that flicker of reaction she couldn’t control, knowing blood pounded in her clit and her sex fluttered just at the thought of what he intended in spite of her absolute abhorrence of his intentions.
“I shouldn’t be punished because I choose not to talk to you about a nightmare I have, Savage. If I ask you about nightmares, you wouldn’t tell me if you didn’t want to.”
“I have them all the time, angel, or I used to until you came into my life. You want to know about them, you ask me. I’ll lay that shit out for you.”
Of course he’d say that now. Her fingers formed two tight fists in frustrations. Why couldn’t she just lie to him? Make something up? People did that all the time. She wasn’t a liar. She’d never been, but maybe this one time it would be okay.
She shrugged. Tried to look away. She couldn’t lie looking at him, for heaven’s sake.
“Damn good thing you’re just wearing that little robe, angel, and nothing else. Take it off, hang it on the hook inside the bathroom right by the shower and come on out here. I’ll be waiting for you, and the longer you make me wait, the more punishment I’m going to add on.”
He turned and walked away. Out of sight. He didn’t go sit on the end of their bed, where she might see him. He walked out of sight, which meant he might have gone over to the chair close to the spanking bench. She nearly groaned aloud. She could close and lock the bathroom door—except there were no locks on the bathroom door. Why? Because her man had a thing about privacy.
She didn’t have to go out there. She didn’t have to do what he said. She was a grown woman. She made her own choices. That was the bottom line, and Savage always made that very, very clear. Everything they did together was ultimately her choice. She walked over to the mirror and stared at herself. Her eyes were dilated. Her face flushed. Already she was breathing too fast.
Why was she like this? Why did she respond sexually to something painful? Her body craved whatever Savage did to her, even when her brain refused to want it. She knew he would never stop until she told him what he wanted to know. She didn’t want to tell him because what if she was right? What if the man in her nightmares was really Savage, and it was one more thing she was going to have to sort out? She was already at a breaking point.
Seychelle rinsed her face again with cold water, hoping to clear her mind. Savage was her choice. She had to sort through her problems fast. She was committed to him—to their life together. She wasn’t so committed to his club. To that life. She didn’t really understand it, and that was part of who he was. She needed that piece of him. He pulled her into it, then pushed her back out, and she resented it.
She took a deep breath, her lashes lifting so she found herself staring at herself in the mirror, realizing she’d just had a revelation. She didn’t resent the fact that Savage had a psychic gift that allowed him to take on the anger, the very real rage his brothers and sisters of Torpedo Ink felt which made him the way he was. She was actually proud of him for that. She resented that all of them shared deep secrets and he shut her out. At the same time, he expected her to use her gifts to aid them and him when the club needed those gifts. Where was the fairness in that?