Colters' Daughter

Chapter Fourteen

Max never took his eyes off Callie as she digested his blunt declaration. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t shy away. Nor did she appear to have an extreme reaction.

Her expression didn’t change but she cocked her head to the side and stared at him like she was sliding into his thoughts and giving them serious consideration.

“Define everything, Max. Are you being dramatic to make a point? I need you to be exacting here. This isn’t the sort of thing we can afford to misunderstand.”

He almost smiled. So typically Callie. Blunt. To the point. She wasn’t a shy woman. He’d been afraid that he’d ruined some of that spirit, but it was there. Maybe beaten down, but it stirred beneath the shadows and slowly flickered to life.

“What do I mean by everything? It’s simple and yet complicated. You asked before if you were to submit to me only in the bedroom, so in essence you were asking if it was narrowed to sex. My answer is no.”

He thumbed over her nipple, unable to keep from touching her. He’d never grow tired of feeling her against him. After so many months, it was like coming home to have her in his arms. He could sit here all night and simply touch her and smell her.

“I want you to be mine. You’ll be mine to protect. To cherish. To love. To take care of. To provide for. I want to dress you, spoil you, lavish you with fine food. Trips to Europe, the world. I want you to trust me enough to allow me to make the decisions in our relationship. To cede absolute control to me in the bedroom. To give your body to me and only me. But it’s not about you giving and me taking. It’s not about pleasing me to the exclusion of all else. Maybe it was like that in my other relationships. I want ours to be about me pleasing you every bit as much as you please me. I want to do things for you. Everything for you. I want to give you things. I want this kind of relationship for what it can do for you as well as me. For the things I can give to you.

“So, no, I don’t want it confined to the bedroom, but I want our relationship to be where you can push back when I go too far. But only then. Once we establish complete trust, it will be easier. You’ll know that I won’t want to do anything that isn’t in your best interests.”

Her brows bunched and she stared intently at him. Her expression was pensive, and he knew she’d absorbed every single one of his words and even now was turning them over and over in her mind. He could see the questions in her eyes.

He smiled. She wanted to argue. To protest. But she tempered the bubbling protest as she continued to study him.

“It takes a very strong woman to submit to a man,” he said as he fingered a strand of her hair. “What attracted me to you was your beauty and your laughter. I’ll never forget the first time I saw you in Italy. You took my breath away. But later, it was your fiercely independent spirit that kept me with you. Even as you submitted, your will remained. Your true self was unaltered. You retained all the qualities I most admired, and yet you offered your submission to me so sweetly it made me ache.”

“You seem so sure the two can coexist long-term,” she said. “Is that what happened with your other women? Did they lose themselves in the process?”

Her intuitive question caught him off guard. “Partly, yes. It happened in two of my relationships. They were so caught up in pleasing me that they became shells of the women I was first attracted to. They became…what they thought I wanted. What I thought I wanted for that matter. It sounds so contradictory, but what I want is a woman who can please me and be pleased by me, but not lose herself in the process. Someone strong. Someone like you.”

“I may have misjudged you, Max,” she offered quietly. “All this while I’ve been hurting and aching, and I assumed you weren’t thinking about me at all, that you left me without thought and never looked back. But that’s not true, is it? You’ve been thinking about me—us—quite a lot.”

“Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about us.”

Her eyes softened and became damp pools of blue. She reached up and cupped his cheek and stroked gently. “You have my submission, Max. Without reservation. I want to try. I don’t know if you’re right and I’m the woman you need or that I’ll end up being the woman you want, but I want to be her. I’m willing to try. I’m willing to give us a chance. I’ll make mistakes. I’ve never allowed anyone the kind of control you’re asking for.”

He smiled and leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. “I’ve no doubt no one has ever been able to control you. And that’s not what I want to do. I love your free spirit too much. I am the only person I ever want you to submit to and it’s my job to cherish your gift and not crush your spirit but nurture it instead.”

She smiled back. “I think I can handle that.”

“Good. Now that we’ve settled that matter, I want to establish a few ground rules.”

She started to frown but recovered quickly and instead looked inquisitively at him.

“When we are alone, whether in this apartment or elsewhere, you aren’t to wear clothing unless I’ve said otherwise.”

Her lips parted and he could see her battling over whether to question him.

“I want you accessible to me at all times. If I want to fuck you in the kitchen, I want to be able to just lean you over the table and slide inside your sweet body.”

Her breathing hiccupped and her eyes went a little hazy.

“I might want you to suck my cock while I eat after I’ve fed you. I prefer for you to be nude when that occurs.”

Her lips quivered and she twitched in his lap. He almost grinned. She was getting turned on by the images he painted.

“When we’re in the living room, I want to be able to bend you over the arm of the couch and fuck you from behind. Or I might want to sit on the sofa and have you sit on my cock. The point is I want you accessible at all times. I want to be able to look at you whenever I want and touch you.”

She nodded jerkily but kept silent.

“Tomorrow when we go shopping, I’m going to choose jewelry for you to wear. It will be a sign of my ownership. At no time will you take it off. You will only do so if we’re no longer together.”

Her eyes widened again. “You mean like a…collar?”

His heart softened at the horror in her voice. “No, dolcezza. A collar would never do for you. It would be demeaning. You would hate it. And me for making you do such a thing. What I have in mind are wrist cuffs. I want them specially designed for you and engraved with my name.”

“Oh,” she said with a quiet sigh. “I don’t think that would be bad at all.”

He nudged her chin up with his fingers. “Callie, we need to make something clear. Yes, I expect your submission, however, this isn’t a dictatorship. You have to tell me if at any time you’re uncomfortable with something. The last thing I want is for you to be unhappy. We’ll talk about it and work something out.”

She smiled and it lit up her entire face.

“When we’re in public, I don’t expect you to assume the role of my submissive. The only thing you will be to others is the woman I adore and cherish above all others. Our private life is exactly that. Private. I don’t need the world to see you submit. I’m the only person who ever needs to see it.”

He circled her wrist with his fingers and her pulse sped up, racing against his hand.

“You’re seducing me with mere words,” she whispered. “You always do.”

He picked up her hand and pressed his lips to her wrist and then her palm, and then he kissed each fingertip until he curled her hand and brushed his mouth across her knuckles.

“You’ll sleep in my bed every night. The last thing you’ll feel before you go to sleep is me inside you. The first thing you’ll feel when you wake up is me inside you.”

She jerked and shuddered against him, and her breaths came out in short little huffs like she couldn’t quite keep up.

“I’ll push your limits,” he said in a serious tone. “There’s a lot we haven’t done that we’ll do. Your body will be mine and that means that I’ll do with you as I like. I’m not a masochist. I have no interest in taking things so far that you’ll fear me or not enjoy what I do to you. But some of what I do will be for my pleasure and my pleasure alone just as there will be times when I’ll want to give you pleasure while taking none in return.”

“Is that all?” she asked as she licked her dry lips.

He kissed those lips and ran his tongue over top and bottom until they glistened.

“No. There is something I’d like to mention and get out in the open. You’ve told me about your fathers. And now your brothers. I don’t pretend to understand the arrangement. You haven’t said a lot other than they were in a committed polyamorous relationship. I’m not even sure what that means in the real world. So I’ll just get this out. I’m not comfortable with sharing you. Ever.” He snorted. “Comfortable is too soft a word to use here. You never hinted that you wanted a similar relationship to the one your mother and sister-in-law have, but it isn’t happening. Over my dead body. I’ll take apart any son of a bitch I ever find in your bed and then I’ll kick your pretty ass all over the country.”

Callie shook with silent laughter. It was obvious she tried really hard to keep it in. Then she cracked and started laughing out loud. He glared at her the whole time as she wiped tears from her cheeks.

“Oh God, Max,” she gasped out. “You crack me up. That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“What’s so damn funny? Your whole family is involved in some weird relationship where the women sleep with multiple men. I’m just trying to save us all some grief by telling you now it isn’t going to happen, and if it does, someone’s going to die.”

She snickered again and wiped frantically at her eyes. Then she clutched his face in both hands and kissed him hot, hard and breathless.

“I have no desire to sleep with more than one man,” she said. “I realize my parents’ situation is…unusual.”

Max lifted one eyebrow. “Unusual?”

She scowled. “Okay maybe it’s strange but not to me or them. It’s what I grew up with. And the thing is my dads love my mom more than anything. That woman is pampered, spoiled and adored more than any woman I know other than my sister-in-law. And they all love me.”

Max softened and pulled her closer to him until she was cuddled tight against his chest and her nipples poked through his chest hair. “I don’t doubt they love you with all their heart and soul, dolcezza. How could they do anything else? I don’t mean to demean them. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of sharing you with two other men. I want you all to myself twenty-four/seven.”

“Lucky for you I’m not looking to hook up with two other men,” she said cheekily. “Guess you’ll have to do.”

He smacked her on the hip. “Watch it.”

She glanced mischievously at him. “Or what? What happens when I’m a bad girl and don’t do as you tell me?”

“Depends on how badly you’re wanting to be punished,” he said dryly. “If you’re yanking my chain because you want to be spanked, I’ll just ignore you.”

She stuck out her lip in an exaggerated pout. “You’re no fun.”

“Not to worry,” he said lazily. “I’ll find plenty of reasons to spank that pretty ass, none of which have a damn thing to do with punishment. Remember I talked about the things I do solely for my pleasure and not yours? Seeing my mark on your sweet little behind is an example. Right before I fuck it.”

She trembled again and her nipples hardened against his chest. He smiled. Somehow he imagined that he wouldn’t be the only one who got pleasure from spanking her.