“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“A compliment?”
“That’s right,” he says. “It requires trust for someone who’s a total control freak to even consider something that places you in a submissive role even for a few minutes.”
My lips press together. “You think I’m a control freak?”
Laughter rumbles from that perfect chest of his. “Is that a real question?”
I smirk, but concede quickly. “Okay, I am.”
“You are, and a chance to hand it over, in a safe place, for just a small escape, is underrated. Think about it. Just talking about me spanking you has you hyper-focused right here in this conversation.”
He’s right, of course. It did. It does. It is. “What do you get from a spanking?”
“Once you give me the control, I have the control. We are then sharing it by choice, a ball we’ve volleyed. But getting to why I brought this up, which wasn’t about a spanking at all. I used the spanking earlier to shift your attention away from your fear. This is not something I have to have. It’s not something you have to turn into a fear between us. Fear is our enemy. It’s not about control. And control isn’t hiding. It’s not running from me or this world I live inside, Aria. It’s your world, too.”
As he does often it seems, he’s managed to slide right into my mind and home in on what matters. I shut the lid on my takeout container and shove it away. Kace does the same with his. “I’ve been thinking.”
“And?”
“Well, for one thing, I know that my mother meant well in every action she took. My father disappeared. She believed he was dead. She believed all eyes looking for the formula would turn on her, and endanger us.”
“You don’t think that’s true?”
“Maybe. Probably. But didn’t running send the message that she had something to run from?”
“I believe that might be true, but it doesn’t sound like she had the resources to face the threat and defeat it. You do. You have me.”
“We talked about this and I can’t rely on—”
He arches a brow and challenges. “Me?”
“You know this isn’t about you.”
“Isn’t it?” he challenges. “Trust isn’t a group activity. I’m not going anywhere.”
Easily, perhaps too easily, I’m reminded of how many people once were with me and now are gone. “Everyone says that until they do.”
“One day,” he promises, “you’ll know I’m not everyone else.” He presses his hands to his knees. “Now. How about I play some violin and you critique me?”
Just that easily, he snaps me out of the past, and settles me firmly right here in this room with him. “There’s nothing to critique.”
“There’s always something to critique. Your father told me that, by the way.”
And now I’m back in the past. “What else did he tell you?”
“That you would one day teach me a few lessons about the violin.”
I blink in surprise. “He said that?”
“He did. Obviously, you wanted to play.”
“I did,” I admit. “but that was then and this is now. I listen to you play and I don’t feel any urge to play at all. I feel the urge to relish in the beautiful man and the music the violin creates. In some ways, I feel like I’m discovering myself again, through you.”
His hand slides under my hair to rest warmly on my neck and he presses his forehead to mine. “I still think you can teach me a few things. You already have.”
“I doubt that.”
“Then you would be wrong, Aria Stradivari.” He stands up and offers me his hand. Oh how quickly times have changed because I don’t even hesitate. Any question he could ask me with that action is a sure “yes.”
A few minutes later at my request, he’s playing Tchaikovsky’s “Concerto No. 1” beautifully and I’m thinking about more than his music. I’d expected a man who is dominant, who wants to spank me, to tell me to trust him. Instead, he’s showed me the depth of his character that is not all about power, control, and success, certainly not about a world that revolves around himself. He’s stunned me by telling me to do what no one else has, and what I have never done in my life: trust myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hours later, Kace pulls me into his bed and his arms.
I settle into the hard lines of his body, and I don’t remember a time in my life before this when a day drifted into a sense of belonging and peace. I don’t even remember falling asleep. There is just a blink of twilight that wakes me up. Now, I’m on my side, with Kace wrapped around me from behind. A smile touches my lips and I close my eyes, but somehow the impending meeting with Walker Security pierces my mind. I will it away, and while slumber begins to seduce me, so does a memory. I’m suddenly back in time, back to the months before Gio disappeared, at least this time—