X: Command Me through Alexander's Eyes - Geneva Lee Page 0,9

tell her it was Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to tell her why I went. I want to share the blood and pain and hatred I’d felt. But I don’t do any of those things.

“Back to our game? I suppose I advised you to save a few.” There’s a sparkle in her eyes. I don’t understand, but I like it. I like it too much.

“Yes,” I answer her. It’s simpler than the truth. “Yes, it was.”

“I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. It’s only…”

“Only?” I press.

“I wish you hadn’t gone,” she murmurs, and a chain that weighs my heart loosens at her words.

I can’t look at her. I don’t know what to say. This woman who doesn’t know me—this woman I don’t know—makes me wish I’d never left, too. There’s a lost life in her words. One I might have had if I hadn’t been sent away. I’d have gone off to university. Oxford, perhaps? I’d meet her in a class. I’d take her to a proper bed and fuck her senseless, and then maybe breakfast. Maybe more.

It’s the life I didn’t have. The life I will never have.

“I can handle it. It’s very kind of you to be concerned,” she says when I don’t speak. Turning, she puts her glass down like she’s decided to go.

“Clara,” I say her name automatically before she can walk from this room and out of my life.

“Yes.” She swallows, and there’s that sparkle in her eyes from before. It glints like a beacon to me.

“As much as it pains me to say this—and believe me, it pains me—for once, those leeches did me a favor. I tried to find you at the party, but no one knew who you were.” I need her to know that she’s different, even if I don’t understand why or how. “I’ve thought about you a lot.”

She stares at me, her breath catching, and it’s all I can do not to kiss her.

“Since last weekend?” She’s surprised, but I don’t understand why. Can’t she feel how much I want her? Hadn’t she felt the electricity in that kiss? It had lingered long after the party ended like a beacon calling me back to her.

“Is that so hard to believe?” I move closer until I feel the heat of her skin. She smells like rose petals and promises I won’t keep.

I circle her trying to decide how far I can take this—how long I can get away with making her mine. Maybe we can see each other again if we’re careful. Maybe this relationship isn’t doomed to me talking her out of her knickers here and fucking her against the wall. I smile as I imagine how she’ll moan. Pausing behind her, I lean in so that my lips brush her earlobe. “If you knew what was good for you, you would run.”

“Am I in danger?” I hear the effort it takes her to ask the question.

“People around me tend to get hurt,” I whisper. I can see the freckles that dust her shoulders and start up the back of her neck.

“Will you hurt me?”

I get the strangest feeling she wants me to say yes. The darker fantasies I’ve allowed myself to imagine flash like a slideshow. Riding crops and ropes. Metal and creamy skin. Slender wrists bound.

“You’ve been reading the tabloids,” I force myself to say, knowing that whatever this attraction is between us, I’m alone in those dark desires. “Don’t believe everything you read, Clara. I have never done anything to a woman that she hasn’t asked for…begged for.”

She spins around, words on her lip, but they fall away. I’ve dazzled her, but what she doesn’t know is that she has the same effect on me. All I can think of is her lips. I want to brush my hand down her cheek. I want to slip my hand around her waist.

She takes a deep breath. “Do you like that? Do you like women to beg?”

I laugh to disguise the growl threatening to rumble from me as she says beg. Fuck, I want her to beg. “I enjoy making women ask for more. I enjoy making them whimper and cry out and call my name, and I’d very much enjoy making you beg.”

“I’m not really the begging type,” she says weakly.

“You could be,” I say. “I can see it in your eyes: the desire to be commanded and taken. You’ll enjoy it when I fuck you.”

“Yes, please.” Her voice is so quiet I wonder if I’ve imagined