Exposed Exposed (Dom Nation #1) - E. Davies Page 0,62
to losing control over my impulses. Slate shouldn’t even see me upset, much less hear my every thought as it crossed my mind.
Get a grip! I ordered myself. I stood up sharply, pacing across the living room toward the full-length window. Thousands of people living their own little cubicle lives in the skyscrapers that stretched along the city.
I’d nearly been one of them. And now I was, all over again—but in this apartment, as much a trap as a safe haven.
“Hearing his voice again brought it all back,” I admitted.
And suddenly I felt even more protective of Slate being dragged back into whatever it was with Isaac. No wonder the fear in him had called to me. I wasn’t afraid of those assholes—I’d always been the one calling the shots—but my empathy for Slate only grew.
Slate was silent, hands folded between his knees as he leaned forward on the sofa, listening. Letting me control this moment, at least. Whether he knew it or not, that was what I needed.
God, Slate was perfect for me.
But the words were rushing out again. “I bought every lie. I thought our culture was all sparkles and rainbows, like we were a family,” I admitted, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. My voice was raw. “I just wish I could take back everything.”
I laid a hand on the glass in front of me, the cold shiver working its way through my sensitive skin and down my arm as I leaned into the triple-reinforced safety glass.
“Everything I gave them. All the passion and joy and effort and love I poured into that stupid company, before it got ripped away from me.”
“Is that…” Slate trailed off, his voice almost too soft to hear. Hesitant.
I turned, dropping my hand from the glass and wiping it on my leg. When I caught his eye, he looked frozen as if waiting for permission to say something he knew I wouldn’t like.
He’s taken enough liberties tonight. What’s one more? I raised a brow and nodded for him to continue.
Slate cleared his throat and rubbed his palms together, the nerves shining on his face as plain as day. “Is that why you don’t want a boy?”
Hearing it laid out that plainly stung, yet the truth in the words calmed the simmering boil my emotions had been running at for months.
Maybe it was time to stop running from the truth. Because Slate deserved a lot more than my bullshit, and hell, I deserved more.
I swallowed hard, but I couldn’t look away. The moment was tense between us, as fragile as fine china but as precious, too. The answer was written all over me, wasn’t it?
Slate didn’t speak. He hardly breathed, every muscle frozen just like mine. There was a deferential air in his expression, like he was about to look away and stare at the floor, ask my forgiveness.
The words wouldn’t come out. My brain wouldn’t let them. My throat held tight to them, like they were too big to fit in the space between my tongue and lips.
So that’s who I am. I drew a deep breath and let it out. An emotionally crippled freak who uses whips and chains to purge the shit I don’t want anyone to see inside me. Who can’t look in a man’s eyes afterward and be honest for once. He already knows how fucked-up I am, to take advantage of his needs.
He was the one for me—I’d never been more certain of anything—yet I couldn’t even tell him the truth.
Slate cleared his throat softly, and I realized I’d been staring straight through him. But all he said was “I heard a bit of the phone call.”
Fuck. Did he know what I was trying to protect him from?
“Which bit?” I asked. At least the subject change helped. The hardness of my muscles had eased, trickling through my body into the solid wood floor under my bare feet.
“The bit where you called him a cocksucker, and my refractory period disappeared.”
The relief that washed through me and the glint of humor in Slate’s smile shattered the stillness at last. I laughed, the soft and sharp noise squeezing past the ache in my chest.
But I made a note in the ever-expanding list of plans I had for my boy, if indeed I could ever be the Daddy this boy deserved: Slate wanted more of the same.
A lot more.
“Bedtime, I think,” Slate said, finally pushing himself to his feet with a groan. “My Daddy needs it.”