Page 76 of Beyond the Rules

The words felt like a cool rag to the back oftheneck.

Thinking of you in very naughty ways.There was a little pause and then.Am I abadgirl?

My groin ignited. I could hear the tease in her tone, a welcome reprieve to the last few shitty days. I imagined her eyes, sparkling with mischief, and her lower lip, sticking out in aplayfulpout.

You’re good.I could almost feel my mouth on hers, my teeth raking gently over her delicious lips.Naughtybutgood.

She gave me a bunch of yellow emojis, one winking, one smiling, one wearing a little halo, one wearing a pair of tiny red horns.Do you want an us?She asked. Do youwantme?

I’d been holding back for so long, I wasn’t sure how to answer. We’d been circling around each other since she got to the house. I didn’t want to fuck this up for the guys. But I was exhausted from resisting Nina’s pull and, after our first kiss and our last conversation in the garage, I wasstoked.

You know Iwantyou.

Her reply came back in seconds.Submission?

I took in a lung-scalding breath. Here it came, the exchange I’d been putting off for too long. Better to do it this way, with thousands of miles between us, where she’d be free to think about whether I was the kind of man she’d be willing to take on and I couldn’t be wounded by the look of disappointment, revulsion and/or horror onherface.

I forced my thumbs to lay it all out on the line.Affirmative.

The pause in the message stream lengthened. The double check mark at the edge of my message bubble announced she’d seen my reply. I thought maybe the conversation was done. And then the three dots came on screen, announcing she was typing something. I held mybreath.

You want todominateme?

With every fiber of my Dombeing.Yes.

Kink?

No point in lying toher.Yes.

Readingaboutit.

Well, fuck me. That was news.Good?Bad?

What would kink mean between youandme?

She was asking a good question, an important question. She was formulating it as hypothetical. I was thousands of clicks away from her, but this could very well be my only chance to have this discussion.Careful,Zar.

If you were my sub,I typed painfully slow,you’d give me total control over our sexual life.The simple act of translating my thoughts to words made me hard. The hypothetical was killing me, because her answers were out of mycontrol.

Meaning?

You’d do everything I ask.I hesitated, then decided to tell it like it was. During our sessions, you’d be my sexualservant.

I hit send and then gave myself a mental kick in the ass. I’d just asked a perfectly self-reliant, independent, modern woman to travel with me back to the sexual Middle Ages. I’d done it over WhatsApp. In a text.Way to go, idiot. Her pause lasted a fullcentury.

What would it mean? she asked.To be your sexualservant.

Another good question. She wanted specifics.You’d surrender yourself, body and mind. You’d obey me. Your pleasure would be mine and your objective would be topleaseme.

This time, her reply came back quickly.I’ve never done thatbefore.

I hadn’t anticipated a differentscenario.

Would youteachme?

Jesus fucking Christ. My pulse raced in my ears. Was she actually asking? If she was, it’d be my dream come true, my fantasy realized. The truth was that I’d fallen for Nina three times: the day she took Tanner to her bed, the day she accepted Aiden into her life, and the day she faced Laura with the ferocity of a SEALstrike.

But it had been Ryan who’d shown me how much I cared for her, how much I appreciated the person she was, the whole package. And it had been on the night I watched my son asleep and cuddled next to her that I’d owned up to something I hadn’t felt in my thirty-seven years of life: the fickle but dominant emotion most refer toaslove.