Laura

 

 

 

"Help me?" he asks, disbelief threading deeply through his voice. "You saw what happened, doll."

"You never hurt me. If you ask me, all that happened is that you extended our time together – without telling me."

"That's not all that happened," he insists. "And you know that. Don't sugarcoat this."

"I'm not sugarcoating it," I assert. "I'm just asking you to take a few steps back and really look at this. At us."

He shakes his head.

"Even if I let you downplay what I did to you," he says, "you still saw my office. You talked to Lemon."

"Yeah, who is that guy anyway?" I ask, adding an amused huff. "He sounded pissed! And worried, by the sound of it."

"He has every reason to be," he responds. "He's my assistant, and I guess you could say my only friend."

"Does he know about this?" I question, pointing back and forth between us. "I mean, about us, about what you do..."

"He does," he answers. "At least as much as he needs to know."

"Oh."

I lower my eyes, feeling the heat rising to my face as my cheeks blush. "So he knew who he was talking to? Your whore."

The thought embarrasses me.

"Not from me," Ryan says hurriedly. "He didn't know you're with me again. And he knows that you're not a whore. He was there the night I first saw you, and he knows how unraveled you left me last year when I made you leave."

His words cause me to smile.

"Unraveled, huh?" I say, winking at him.

"Don't get cocky with me, doll," he warns. "You know how that could end."

I let out a little laugh and place the mug on the coffee table before shifting closer to him, lifting his arm and forcing my body into an embrace. I'm wearing nothing but my panties and his soft sweater, and I notice his eyes traveling along my sprawled-out, naked legs. It doesn't surprise me to feel him hardening, his cock visibly bulging in his lap as I inch closer, coiling in his strong arms.

He inhales deeply when I place my hand on his crotch, gently petting his erection through the fabric of his pants, as if I was trying to calm him down.

"You really are insatiable, master," I tease. "Look at that."

"I told you," he breathes, moving his hips to meet my touch. "And if you don't stop doing that, I'll have to bend you over right here and now."

My fingers close around his cock, holding him in a tight grip that robs him of his breath.

"Okay, I better be careful then," I whisper.

"What's wrong with you, my doll?" he struggles out, visibly trying to regain his composure. "Why are you doing this?"

"This?" I ask him.

"Why are you still here?" he clarifies. "Why do you think you can help me? Why don't you see how fucked up I am?"

"Oh, I see that," I say without letting go of his cock. "I'm just not much of an alarmist. And like I said, I think you're focusing on the wrong things."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that your view of everything is very black and white. All you see is the trouble that comes with what you call your obsession. Yes, it got out of hand before, and maybe it did again with me. But from where I'm standing, you never really lost your mind with me. Yes, you locked me in my room with no intention of letting me go, and you wanted to keep me all to yourself – granted. Not an okay thing to do."

He interrupts my musings with a laugh, shaking his head as he trembles under my touch.

"And you neglected your duties," I continue. "You pissed off a lot of guys it seems, most of all your assistant... what was his name? Lemon."

"It's more than that, doll," he insists. "I didn't just piss them off. I endangered the biggest acquisition my company has ever been involved in. If I don't get my shit together soon, we'll lose millions of dollars and the trust of a lot of very important people."

"Oh, well," I say, brushing his words off.

"Oh, well?" he repeats. "Do you even know what an acquisition is?"

I shake my head. "Not exactly, and it doesn't matter to me right now."

He lets out an exasperated sigh.

"What matters to me is that all of this is still fixable. You haven't lost anything so far. You haven't done any damage that can't be dealt with."

He looks at me, his mind working as he processes my words.

"You're making this sound so easy," he says, sounding defeated. "But it never really is."

"I didn't say it was easy," I protest. "But I stick to my words: I think you should focus on the positive aspects of all of this, instead of highlighting only the bad things, and remembering the terrible things that have happened to you and that Sandria girl."

"The good aspects? What could you possibly mean by that?"

"Well," I say, gently rubbing across his persisting hardness. "What you call obsession, I call dedication, or commitment. I like that you want me this much. I like that you came all the way to California to see me, and I like that you brought me back here and claimed me all to yourself."

He looks at me incredulously. "My crazy little doll."

"I didn't like that you refused to speak to me," I continue. "And I didn't like that you were hiding things from me. And I didn't like that you wanted to keep me here against my will, or at least thought that's what you were doing."

He tenses up. "What do you mean by that?"

I tilt my head to look up at him and meet the curious depth of his blue eyes.

"As sad as it may be, master, I really have nowhere else to be," I say. "I don't want to be anywhere else but here with you. Maybe that's what's making it so easy for me to forgive you."

I pause, lowering my eyes back down to his lap.

"The only thing I'm afraid of is that you'll push me away again," I add in a low voice. "That you'll get scared because of what happened, and that you prefer to go back to your 'system', as you call it, instead of giving me a chance. Giving us a chance."

Awkward silence stretches between us when I pause to give him a chance to reply, but he takes his sweet time coming up with a good response to my honest words.

"You're living in California now," he says eventually. "You said you needed a fresh start. I don't want to keep you from going through with that."

Now I'm the one huffing in disdain.

"To be completely honest with you, I don't even know what I was doing in California," I say. "I wasn't doing anything, really. All that talk about a fresh start didn't really live up to anything. I slacked and moped around most of the time, trying to forget you and trying to come up with something to do."

I pause, swallowing my pride before I continue to speak.

"Looking back now, California feels more like an escape," I conclude. "I thought if I just moved far enough away, I'd come up with something to do with my life, find myself, change things. But really, I was just running away from making a decision. The geographic change didn't do anything to make my life any better."

I hesitate, unsure whether I should add the last few words that have been dancing through my head.

"Unlike that move, you did bring some change into my life, and for the better," I finally dare to say. "And I don't just mean your money. I mean you."

We look at each other, the air between us oscillating with significance. He moves a finger along the side of my face, tracing the outline of my jaw and regarding me with a placid expression.

"My doll," he says. "I can say the same about you."

I bite my lower lip, trying to find the right words for what I want to tell him.

"I may not have it all figured out yet," I say. "But I can finally see a place in life for me. Right next to you, Ryan."