worse than the irritated skin itself, and when they finally feel better after a day or two, I am strangely bereft.
There’s only so many times a horny vice president can use a vibrator, and there’s only so many nights Morgan Leffey can endure being this restless and inflamed.
On the eighth day, I break, and I find myself walking into the trendy but economical—and ostentatiously eco-friendly—offices of Lothian and Associates. It’s late, and Lorne is the only one still there.
I leave my Secret Service people outside.
Inside the glass and concrete space, I move to Lorne’s private office, where a light spills out into the dim co-working area. When I get to the door, I see him turned away, leaning over some papers while a hand lingers over his laptop keyboard, as if he’s about to take notes but can’t decide which ones yet.
“Would you give it up for me?” I ask, stepping into the room. “Being a Sir to me?”
His posture stiffens, and for a moment, I think he won’t turn to face me. But then he does.
No mask, no dress-up. Just thick, dark hair that threatens to curl at the tips, just those bold eyebrows and those whiskey eyes. Just a jaw that could calibrate protractors, and that greedy, sculpted mouth.
He lifts his gaze to me, and I see wariness there. But also love.
Fuck, he loves me. Still, somehow. After everything.
“In a heartbeat,” he answers. “I’d give it up in a heartbeat for you.”
I move around his desk so I can lean against it. Our knees touch.
My voice is thick when I ask, “Why?”
“You know why. I love you. I’d rather have you than anything else. But is that what you want?”
I’m starting to cry again, and I swipe at my cheek. “No. Isn’t that stupid? I left you, I shut you out, I thought if we weren’t together, I wouldn’t be the kind of woman who wants her husband to choke her during sex.”
“And what kind of woman are you now?”
I offer him a tremulous smile. “The kind of woman who wants her ex-husband to choke her during sex.”
I can tell he’s struggling to keep the space between us, that he’s fighting the urge to take control of me physically. I offer him my wrists, and without a second’s hesitation, he circles them both and yanks me into his lap.
He’s already hard underneath my ass, and when I curl into his chest, I don’t feel like two different women—one who has her own Secret Service agents outside and one who would like to be fucked over a desk.
I just feel like one woman. One Morgan.
“I had this idea,” I murmur into his chest, “of whom I wanted to be. And it wasn’t a switch. It wasn’t a woman who enjoyed kneeling, ever, ever. It was so clear in my head of whom I should be. Even when I would never tell another woman the same thing. Even if I would tell a switch or submissive that she was wrong for having the same idea I did.”
Lorne kisses my hair. “Ideas are meant to guide us, to help us—not the other way around. We can’t suffer and sacrifice just to keep the idea in place if it doesn’t serve us anymore.”
“My whole life is ideas, Lorne. My entire career, my present, my future—it’s all spoken about as ideas. As beliefs.”
“But is it not,” he counters gently, “also your job to marry ideas to reality? And to marry reality to new and adapted ideas?”
“Shut up,” I tell him, which is my way of saying fine, you’re right.
He hums in what sounds like amused indulgence and draws circles on my thigh with his finger. Even though his body is unmistakably aroused underneath mine, he is in complete control, content just to hold me. Just to cradle his prideful little ex-wife in his arms.
“What made you come here tonight?” he asks, after a minute of us cuddling like this. “What made you change your mind?”
“I wish,” I say slowly, “I could say I had a big revelation about kink and choice, and about how choice means we can stop doing something when it no longer works or when we change and no longer want it. About how choice means I can choose who I am in different places—when I am Morgan Leffey and when I’m your little witch. I wish I could say that I made peace with the word switch, and that I finally accepted you were telling the truth about standing