I scrub my hands over my face, sitting up in bed. After we had sex, I fell asleep with Brielle draped across me. As I rise from the bed, awareness burns inside me that I’ve never fallen asleep at a client’s house. Usually I can’t get out of there fast enough, wanting a hot shower and the comfort of my own bed.

Yet right now, I can still smell Brielle’s scent on my fingers, and I don’t even want to wash my damn hands. She’s marked me, and I know it isn’t something I can simply wash away. My hands, hanging limp at my sides, already miss the feel of her¸ and my mouth yearns for the taste of her. My pulse pounds in my ears as I try to figure out what this all means.

She sits up, tugging the sheet to cover her breasts. “Are you leaving?”

I nod, forcing some composure in my voice. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk soon.”

She reaches a hand toward me. “Not yet. Stay…just a little longer.”

For a moment I think she was going to ask me to stay the night, but we both know that can’t happen.

I remain still, just standing there in her darkened bedroom, trying to figure out what the fuck I’m doing. I should just leave. Grab my pants, my wallet, my keys, and go home. But I don’t. I release a heavy sigh, and when Brielle smiles and reaches out to me, I take her hand and let her pull me back into bed.

“What do you want?” I whisper.

“More.”

“You sure about that?”

“Very,” she says, her tone cheeky and her mouth tugged up in a smirk.

My hand slides between her legs, and her knees automatically fall open for me. She’s learned to embrace her sexuality, and the knowledge that I’ve been the one to lead her there…it’s very satisfying. But it’s the look in her eyes that nearly undoes me. Complete trust. Trust I don’t deserve, but she gives me—freely.

As my emotions roil inside me, I struggle to temper them. I can’t show her everything right now; I don’t want to. Instead I want to savor all of this, save some things that I can show her later so there will be new things to discover years from now. Where the fuck that thought came from, I don’t know, but it’s the honest-to-God truth.

We make love. Slowly. My mouth fuses to hers, capturing every breath, every moan while my body moves intimately above her.

When she whispers in the darkness and asks me what the lesson is, I quiet her with another kiss.

My silence is answer enough.

• • •

It’s the middle of the night, dark and cool outside. When I finally get up to leave, Brielle doesn’t even stir. I slide into my car and the engine roars to life.

The entire drive home, I can’t stop the images of Brielle from playing through my mind. The way she looked spread open before me, the way her hot cunt squeezed me when she came. Goddamn, she’s as close to perfect as you can get. Of course, she doesn’t see that, which is why she hired me. Christ, I was hired to do a job, and my brain keeps fucking forgetting that. Because tonight? There was no lesson. There was only my body joining with hers in a hungry rush of raw energy and emotion.

I tighten my grip on the wheel, completely beside myself. I never forget the lesson when I’m with a woman. Never. Everything I do—every touch, every caress, every command is meant to teach. But when I found Brielle in that club tonight, pressed up against some man who wasn’t me, I lost it. I dragged her home like a fucking caveman and claimed her. It was only about her pleasure. All the wicked things I could show her body to prove to her that she was mine.

The sex isn’t just good, it’s mind blowing, earth shattering—for both of us. And I don’t know how to handle that information. My world is quite literally rocked, thrown off its axis. A client has never gotten to me this way. I can barely maintain my composure and instruct her. She owns me.

And it’s not only because she has the tightest pussy I’ve ever had. She affects me in ways I can’t even explain. Her total submission to my every whim, her complete trust and faith in me, this process…it’s staggering. Tonight I watched her chest rise and fall, felt the nervous energy zapping through her as she waited to see what I’d do next, which way I’d take her, knowing she’d allow it all. My cock hardens again just thinking about it.

The truth is I’ve started to notice little things about Brielle that I’ve never paid attention to before. Things that make her a real person and not a client, things that blur the lines of our arrangement. The way she leisurely stretches in bed after we’re intimate, the way she tiptoes to the bathroom when she has to pee, the way her laughter lights up her entire face.

As a Dom, it’s my responsibility to understand what my submissive needs. Brielle says she wants Kirby, but I know what she really needs is to be loved. To serve a man, and in turn feel that blissful pleasure that comes from a deep shared connection. Something so powerful, it’s almost sacred. I can feel the underpinnings of that connection forming between us, and it scares the shit out of me. That wouldn’t end well for either of us. I can’t provide the things she desires. I’ve tried that route before and failed miserably.

Reece has warned me about getting emotionally attached to a submissive I’m training, and I’d always balked at him. It never seemed within the realm of possibility. Yet within a few short weeks, Brielle has brought me to the brink. My stomach churns when I realize what this means. I need to cancel the remainder of her sessions. The feeling is like a dumbbell sitting on my chest.