She snorted a little. He really shouldn’t find the sound so charming. “You planning my funeral?”
He had to work on her pessimism. “No. I wasn’t talking about your eventual death. I have no intention of allowing that to happen. I’m talking about the likelihood that Ian discovers what’s been happening and takes over.”
“That can’t happen. I might rather die than have that happen. Maybe I should just run.”
“He would find you.” Only if Simon didn’t find her first, but he didn’t say that out loud.
“How does the fact that I let you smack my ass protect me from Satan?”
He also needed to work on politeness. “He cares about you, you know. Anything he would do would be to protect you.”
“I am willing to admit that he loves Charlotte. If he would do anything for me it would be out of duty.” She groaned a little and let her head fall back. “I love my sister. That’s why I don’t want her involved in any of this. She’s gone all baby crazy. She deserves to focus on having Satan’s child and being the happy goddess of the underworld. She doesn’t need the stress of watching after me.”
A very good sign. Since she’d walked into his life—technically since he’d dragged her kicking and screaming into his life—she’d clung to Charlotte like a co-dependent life raft. He simply needed to let her know that she could depend on more than Charlotte. If she needed to cling, it was damn well going to be to him. “That’s what this contract is going to ensure.”
“How?”
He sighed. She was going to question him every inch of the way. “Think about it for two seconds. Ian Taggart doesn’t live in the modern world. Much like my cousin, he believes himself to be the king of the castle and the protector of those considered to be his family. If you’re in trouble, he will take the responsibility for protecting you and that includes making all the decisions for you until such time he decides you’re safe.”
“That sounds horrible.” She shivered a little.
“You know it’s the truth.” He glanced back down at the checklist. “Let’s talk about impact play.”
“How is a flogging going to save me, Simon?”
Had she not heard a word he said? “There is one thing in the world Ian Taggart respects fully.”
Her eyes widened. “BDSM. You think if I sign a contract and become your sub then Satan will leave me alone.”
“First of all, you will cease calling the man Satan. It’s rude.”
“He calls me the bitch from hell.”
“Yes, I intend to talk to him about that.” He didn’t like it. Ian might say things like that in jest, but Chelsea needed affection. She didn’t need more reasons to put walls up. Once she signed the contract, he would protect her from everything, including her brother-in-law’s smart mouth.
“You realize how dumb this is, right? It’s just a contract. I can walk away. You can’t hold me to it. Despite what Ian thinks, this is still the twenty-first century and you can’t own a woman.”
“I’m not trying to own you. I’m trying to start a relationship with you that comes with well-defined boundaries intended to make both parties feel secure in their duties and responsibilities to each other.”
She frowned. “I never thought about it like that. Huh. Put like that it sounds better than dating.”
Now that he’d been in the lifestyle for a while, the idea of dating made him shudder. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to dinner with Chelsea. He wanted to spend time with her, but in the vanilla world he couldn’t just come out and say what he needed. When he’d played it vanilla, he’d spent most of his time trying to read his partner’s mind. “I understand that you can walk away at any moment. I’m not naïve, Chelsea. I can only promise you that I will honor the terms of this contract. I won’t walk away.”
Her arms fell away and she finally sat forward. “I don’t love being tied down.”
“You let me do it in London.” He could still feel her skin under his hands as he worked the rope over her. Silky smooth. She was so soft under that rough exterior.
“It scares me.”
He gave her a moment, trying to leave an opening for her to talk. Silence fell between them. He nodded shortly and marked bondage as a hard limit.
She shook her head, her voice going low. “No. Don’t make it hard. Soft. It’s a soft limit with you.”
Ah, the second time of the night she’d taken him out of the cesspool she seemed to place all men in. When she’d turned to him and claimed that she wasn’t afraid of his cousins because he’d been there, he’d known this could work. By making rope bondage a soft limit, it gave them room to experiment. A hard limit would have meant absolutely none. “All right. It’s a soft limit. We’ll play a bit with it.”
She trusted him. Under all that swagger, there was a spark between them and he intended to fan that flame.
“When we’re not defusing bombs, you mean.” She groaned a little and stood up. “I don’t know when we’re going to find time to play, Weston. If you would let me get to work, I could probably figure this thing out and then we wouldn’t need a contract.”
“Have you thought about the fact that this contract can simply be in place? It doesn’t have to end when we figure out who’s trying to kill you. You need a play partner.”
“You don’t. You play with everyone.”
So the little brat was jealous? “I wouldn’t need to if I could play with you.”
That was about as bold as he was going to put it.
“What about sex?” She said the word like it was distasteful.
He tapped the contract to get her attention back where it needed to be. “We haven’t gotten to that part of the contract. We’ll cover it.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, Weston. I meant you will probably want sex from your play partner.”
“I don’t always get what I want.” God knew that was true. This whole thing was a big gamble with her. He could end up signing a contract with a woman who would never have sex with him. He didn’t think so. It was a bet he was willing to make.
“I have a hard time believing that.”
“Chelsea, you seem to think I’m someone I’m not. I appreciate your earlier defense of me, but the truth is I did leave MI6 before Damon could fire me. I made a mistake.” He’d made several. He’d followed some information he’d received down a rabbit hole that had almost led to the deaths of Liam O’Donnell and his now wife, Avery.