Jack forced himself to rein in the I-told-you-so smile threatening to break across his face. Too early to smile. He had to make sure he’d really reached her. “Because you need your biggest sex organ, your brain, involved. Vanilla doesn’t really do that. Dominance and submission can be a game or a way or life, depending on how seriously you play. But it absolutely keeps your mind engaged with your body. The promise of pleasure can be every bit as arousing as the pleasure itself—maybe more, as you found out from doing without a mind fuck tonight.”
She hesitated, bit that lush, puffed lip that never failed to make the man in him notice. Then understanding brightened her sultry blue gaze. “Yeah. I kept missing the mental piece. Knowing what you were thinking, hearing your voice urging me on.”
Now she was getting it. Jack smiled. “What does your current fiancé do for a living?”
Morgan frowned at the out-of-nowhere question. Hesitated. “He’s an analyst for some organization in the government. I’m not supposed to know exactly who or what he studies.”
Interesting information Jack filed away for later. “And sex with him…?”
He had to grit his teeth to keep the snarl out of his voice. The thought of Brandon touching Morgan… Brandon might be taller than him, but in the army Jack had never failed once to kick his ass at anything. He was tempted to remind his former pal of that fact again.
Morgan shook her head, fiery tresses spreading out across her pale shoulders. Her auburn lashes fluttered, hiding her expression. “We’ve never…”
Never? Jack exhaled in a shocked rush. He’d fucked Morgan before her own fiancé had? Sweet revenge had just gotten sweeter, yes. But the thrill rushing through Jack had nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with the knowledge that Brandon had never touched the woman he felt was his and his alone.
And she would be his…but first, he had to get through the hard part of the conversation.
“I don’t think you really believed that vanilla would be better with me. You hoped. The question is, why? I know nothing about your college boyfriend, but your choice of a pro football player and a TV producer tells me you were, even unconsciously, seeking a man of some power and self-possession. Right?”
Her little gasp told Jack that he’d both guessed correctly and surprised her. “Yes.”
“So you ended your engagement with the TV producer…when?”
“Andrew and I split up because...”
Her voice trembled. She looked away with a grimace. Definitely something here. After he’d brought Morgan here and questioned her on her sexual past, she’d refused to answer questions about Andrew or why it had ended.
“Because?”
She looked at him with tormented blue eyes, and Jack felt that look like a punch in the gut. Yes, he was going to finally get some answers. But it was going to cost Morgan to say this. He grabbed her hand and squeezed, hoping she’d understand his silent support.
“A lot of reasons. But sex… That wasn’t going well between us. I couldn’t orgasm with him.” She faltered, shook her head. “I remember thinking that I enjoyed his sense of humor and his intelligence, but when he touched me, it was as if he thought I would break. It was always so soft and sweet. And silent. We didn’t…connect. I didn’t feel much of anything.”
Jack cradled a hand behind her head and stroked the tangled silk of her fiery hair. He wanted to reassure her now, make her understand that not responding to soft and sweet and silent didn’t make her wrong or a bad person. But he couldn’t interrupt her. She had more to get out.
“Go on.”
Morgan sighed. “He asked me what was wrong, how he could make it better. I trusted him. He seemed worldly and openminded. So I told him some of my fantasies I’d never told anyone, fantasies of…you know being manhandled and commanded. I told him I thought about—”
“Being bound and fucked and made to submit,” Jack finished for her, even as his fists clenched at his sides. He’d bet everything he owned that he knew what Morgan would say next. “What was his response?”
This time she swallowed. Hard. And squeezed her eyes shut. A shimmering teardrop squeezed out of one corner. Jack wanted to hit something. No, someone—Andrew.
“He told me I was depraved. That only a dirty whore would want such things. He said he wouldn’t stay in the relationship unless I got professional help and learned to drive those sorts of thoughts out of my head.”
Professional help? Where was Andrew right now? Never mind hurting the asshole, Jack wanted to kill the bastard who’d made Morgan doubt herself and cry.
“I hope you called him every kind of a prick and told him to get fucked,” he growled.
“Not in those words. I threw his ring back at him and told him to keep it.” She bit her lip, and a hint of mischief lit her blue eyes. “I think I may have indicated that he needed to grow a real penis.”
Jack’s laughter was filled with relief. He brought her closer, tumbling her across his lap. “Good girl. There’s nothing wrong with you, cher.” He looked right into her eyes, hoping like hell she believed him. “Andrew is the one with problems, stupid jerkoff. He didn’t like that you challenged his manhood, that you were stronger, that you wanted something he wasn’t man enough to provide. You’re not depraved. You need someone you can trust with your safety and pleasure, mind, body, and soul. I think that makes you wonderful and perfect.”
Morgan’s jaw tightened. She fought more tears. And he didn’t want her to fight them. Time to get them out, once and for all. He hoped like hell they’d be too busy fucking later to succumb to more of them.
“Tell me,” he coaxed. “It’s okay.”
“I just couldn’t get his voice out of my head.” She broke then, tears cresting from her eyes, down her cheeks, one crystal tear after another. She inhaled raggedly. “Over and over, I could hear his voice telling me how depraved I was. That I was abnormal and—and disturbed. That I was a whore.”
If the little prick was standing here now, even God couldn’t have saved him from Jack’s rage. Andrew had nearly destroyed this beautiful woman’s sexuality to preserve his own delusions about his adequacy. He’d be dealt with later. Jack would make sure of that. Morgan needed him now.
“You’re nothing of the kind.” He dried her tears with his thumbs, then kissed each damp cheek. “Did you like your pizza the same way he did?”
She frowned. “He didn’t even like pizza.”
“There was something definitely wrong with this guy.”
Morgan laughed through her tears, and Jack kissed her sweet, swollen mouth.
“My point is, cher, not everyone has the same taste. Pizza may be oversimplified, but you understand. Don’t let his voice play in your head for another moment.”
Another command, a stern one. He didn’t expect her to heed it completely right now. But if he could get his voice in her head to compete with asshole Andrew’s, his own voice would eventually replace it.
“A—and my mother. Shortly after my engagement ended, she came to visit me, to console me. She found some of my…books. Erotic ones with bondage and—”
“Cher, mamas don’t want to think about their daughters having sex, much less good sex.”
Morgan looked at him with tear-drenched eyes and nodded. “It was terrible. I grew up in a religious house. Sex was dirty to her. Evil. To say she was shocked by my private library would be an understatement.” She bit her lip as fresh tears threatened. “She shouted the same things as Andrew. Abnormal, d—depraved.”
And hearing that from her own mother had hurt. Jack saw the pale torment all over her face.
“They’re ignorant and misguided,” he vowed. “Neither understands the deep bond of trust and understanding a dominant and his submissive forms. You do. You’ve been looking for it subconsciously for years. Now that you have it, you’re too smart to let it get away, aren’t you?”
A bare hesitation. A tiny one. She’d feel a not-so-gentle hand on the back of her ass for it later, not because he didn’t understand her feeling or her need to think things through, but because she had to start associating her guilt with unpleasant consequences.
But she finally nodded in agreement.
“Are you ready to show yourself that you accept who and what you are?”
Morgan hesitated again. Swallowed. But she nodded once more. “Yes.”
Jack eased off the bed and stood beside it, drilling her with a hot stare that demanded understanding and obedience before he bent to retrieve the lingerie they’d discarded earlier with the intriguing cutouts he was dying to explore. He thrust the garments into her hands.
Her wide, wet eyes were a blue beacon, drawing him to the vulnerability shining there. She looked so fucking young with bare, tear-stained cheeks. Damn, he’d done his best to bring her out gently, break her just a bit. Now it was time to remake her, if she could just trust him.
Morgan reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing as she tangled her fingers with his. As he reached out to stroke her cheek, Jack saw something new on her face. He saw resolve.
Now, he permitted himself the smile he’d held in earlier.
“Put these back on, along with the black stockings. Knock on the door of my playroom. Ten minutes. I’ll be waiting.” #
Squaring her shoulders, Morgan lifted her hand to the closed black door and knocked. As the sound echoed down the shadowed hall. She pushed what she was, or rather wasn’t, wearing out of her mind. No more thoughts of Andrew or her mother. Their opinions couldn’t matter. She wouldn’t let them.
Jack had opened her eyes.
Her mother had been a shriveled woman, bitter toward all men, thanks to Senator John Morgan Ross breaking her young heart. And her former fiancé, she realized, focused his energy on frustration. Andrew had elevated angst to an art form. He didn’t want to be happy or fulfilled. Their relationship had always been an emotional roller-coaster ride, towering highs and crashing lows all in one day—one hour, if Andrew could swing it. People on the Turn Me On set had called him a drama king. He’d been threatened by any show of strength on her part, any strong opinion she expressed. Rejecting her sexuality had been his way of creating the next calamity and making her every bit as frustrated as he’d been.
Yes, she could still hear their voices, their slurs, in her head. She just wasn’t going to give either of them the power to make her miserable anymore. If she was still not completely comfortable with her sexuality, Morgan suspected time and another man like Jack—he wasn’t hers to keep—would turn around her reluctance.
She pushed aside a sharp pang at the thought of no longer having Jack.
Instead, she concentrated on her body, the cool air on her exposed nipples, the bra lifting up her breasts like a proud offering. She focused on the crotchless panties that didn’t quite cover her ass or stop the gush of moisture rushing from her vagina to coat her inner thighs. She felt the thigh-high stockings hugging her in every way, emphasizing the small square of cloth covering her damp curls.
Nervous, yes. But far more aroused. And determined not to examine what she and Jack did or judge their actions. If it aroused her and felt good, she’d just do it.
That all sounded good, but without any idea what Jack might want—demand—from her, Morgan waited, aware of the ache of erotic fear and need building, building inside her.
Jack opened the door wearing black leather pants—and nothing else.
His gaze walked all over her, starting at the swollen mouth she’d been chewing on for the past ten minutes, down the pale slope of her breasts, gliding over the flat of her bared tummy, then zooming in right between her thighs, framed by lace, silk, and fishnet.
She watched his face. The heat raced to his eyes. The firm lines of his jaw grew tight. Her gaze skipped down past the bunched golden muscles of his wide chest and shoulders, down farther to the thick erection that grew at record speed.
Despite her nerves, Morgan smiled.
“I wouldn’t be too happy yet. I’m going to make your earn my cock and your orgasms tonight.”
Her smile faltered. If he noticed it, Jack said nothing.
“Come in and sit on the table.”
“But—”
“No speaking unless I give you permission. Is that clear? Either nod or shake your head.”
Stern, intense, beautiful. Morgan supposed she should have been furious with his high-handed attitude. Instead, she was curious and wet and wanting. And filled with an electric thrill.
She nodded and made her way into the room.
Jack swung the door wider to accommodate her, and it felt symbolic. A door opening. She would just embrace this part of her without judging it, without dwelling on what others would say.
“Sit,” he barked. “I won’t repeat myself again.”