The Submission Sessions (8 page)

"I
know you probably believe that, Sebastian, and it means a lot to me that you
care enough to say it, but it doesn't change anything. I can't allow myself to
give in to those kinds of urges ever again."

"No
matter how good they feel?
 
Listen to
yourself, Kerri. What you're saying doesn't make sense."

"It
doesn't make sense to you because you aren't like me."

Sebastian
felt his patience wearing thin, but he kept his tone level. "I don't
remember you forcing me to do anything. I dominated you because I wanted
to."

Kerri's
panicked gaze darted up and down the street as she checked to see if anyone had
heard what he'd just said. Sebastian thought she needn't have worried. New York
was one of the few places in the world where you could have an intimate
discussion out in broad daylight without anyone being interested enough to
eavesdrop. Still, she took a step closer, and she lowered her voice. "No.
You did it because you knew I needed you to."

Sebastian
sat down on her stoop as the effort of sparring with her drained the little
energy he had left out of his already exhausted body. He could almost see every
brick in the invisible wall Kerri was trying to construct between them, and,
even with all of his experience as a trained psycho-therapist, he couldn't find
a way around it.
 
He had never felt so
helpless.

"I
can see I'm not going to be able to get through to you, at least not now, but I
want you ask yourself if you're being as truthful as you think."

"I'm
not in the mood for analysis.
 
Save it
for your clients."

Sebastian
ignored her barbed comment, as he saw it for what it was—a way to keep him at
arm's length because she was scared of letting him get too close. "I don't
think even you believe that what we did last night was perverted. This is about
something else, and I think I know what it is."

"Really?
Then please
enlighten me."
 

Her
smile was infuriating, but he had to admit a grudging respect for the way she
fought her corner. "You're scared half out of your mind because you know
that last night was about more than just sex, and that terrifies you, but if
you want to keep lying to yourself, then you go right on hiding behind
religious objections and demeaning labels. You might fool yourself, but you
don't fool me. You're terrified of falling for someone who knows who you really
are."

Kerri's
blank stare told him nothing at first, and when he saw the sheen of tears
misting her eyes, he felt a small glimmer of hope flare to life in his chest.
But then she glared down at her feet and jangled her keys in her hand as she
prepared to walk away from him, and he knew she'd rejected every single word he
said.

"You're
expecting too much of me, Sebastian. I just got out of a long term relationship
that ended really badly, and that was painful enough, but now I find out that Ben,
and all the men I've ever dated, were right all along. It's my fault that sex
has never been any good, at least not with anyone but you. I'm so fucked up
that the only way I can have an orgasm is if someone dominates me."

"It's
not the only way. It's just one of the ways."

She
shook her head. "You know that's not true better than I do. When you
looked inside my head to find out what I needed, that's what you saw."

"What
I saw was that you needed permission to let go of that rigid self-control and
allow yourself to enjoy having sex. The easiest way of doing that is to hand
control over to someone else. That way, whatever happens is their
responsibility, not yours."
 
Sebastian tried to reach out to her and get her to sit down beside him,
but she took a step away. "There are millions of people around the world
who enjoy submitting to a sexual partner. Would it really be so bad if you were
one of them?"

The
tears that had been threatening for a while spilled over onto her cheeks, and
she brushed them away as she grudgingly sat down beside him. "I just want
to be normal."

"Kerri, honey.
You could never
be just normal."

"Thanks."

"Don't
be sarcastic. I meant that as a compliment."
 
He dragged his hand through his hair, taking
a moment to gather his thoughts and figure out the best way to get her to see
what she was about to throw away. "Last night should have proved to you
beyond any doubt that you are an incredibly sexy woman, capable of having
orgasms through oral and manual stimulation as well as penetration. And that's
not because some mind reader figured out what makes you tick. You've always
been capable of enjoying sex, Kerri, but your mind got in the way."

"But
what if you're wrong? What if I can't ever have a normal sex life?"

"First,
there's no such thing as 'normal'. Second, you aren't the only one who learned
something about themselves last night. You were right when you accused me of
putting your needs before my own, at least in the beginning, but that didn't
last very long. The way you reacted to the things I did to you made me want to
do them all the more. At first, my pleasure came from seeing how much pleasure
I could give you, but then something changed. The reason last night was so
incredible for me was because it was the first time I can ever recall caring
about my own orgasm as much as I cared about someone else's."

Sebastian
reached for Kerri's hand again, and, this time, she didn't pull away even
though she still wouldn't meet his gaze.
 
When she didn't speak, he carried on
talking,
unsure if he would ever get a better chance to try to make her listen to what
he had to say.

"This
ability of mine has its downsides, Kerri. Do you have any idea what it's like
to be in bed with someone and know for sure they don't like what you're doing
to them, but have to carry on because they're in the middle of faking an orgasm
over it? Or to hear them thinking to themselves that they wish you'd just get
it over and leave so they could get some sleep, because they had to get up
early in the morning?
 
It only took one
or two experiences like that before I made it my business to give a woman
exactly what she wanted and leave her satisfied. Before long, sex was never
about what I wanted any more.
 
Not until
last night. Last night, I didn't do those things to you just because you needed
me to. I did them because I wanted to."

By
the time he finished speaking, Kerri was staring in to his eyes, and he could
see his confession had caught her off guard. "It never occurred to me to
consider what it might be like for you. Your ability always seemed like such a
gift, at least to me."

He
grinned. "It's not all bad. Those experiences were the reason I decided to
become a psychosexual therapist. I thought I just wanted to help people, but
now I wonder if I was just looking for the kind of honesty I finally found with
you."

"I'm
not always that honest, Sebastian, and I'm not sure I can handle knowing that
you can hear every thought that goes through my head."

"As
long as you're always honest with me about what you want, that's not going to
be a problem, is it? Besides, I can't hear everything, and I've learned how to
tune out most of the time. Do you have any idea how boring it is to listen to a
chaotic jumble of random thoughts and emotions?
 
The average person on the bus might typically be trying to remember
whether they turned the gas off, deciding what they might have for dinner that
night, or wondering if spiders have eyelashes, and all of it in the space of
two seconds."

Kerri
clutched at her stomach as laughter took her breath away, and as her beautiful
face lit up with
joy,
Sebastian knew he had to tell
her how he felt.
 
He ran a finger down
her cheek and waited until the humor in her eyes had dimmed.

"Have
I told you yet how much I love you?"
 
She shook her head, and he saw that his words had frightened her a
little. "Well, I do.
 
Kerri, I'm in
love with you."

I'm in love with
you, too.

He
heard her answer, even though she didn't say the words out loud. Sebastian knew
he'd have to be patient and let her tell him when she was ready. He hoped that
she would be, one day soon.
 

But,
apparently, it wasn't going to be today.

"I'm
sorry, but I can't deal with this right now. Like I said, I've only just—”

He
raised a hand to stop her talking before fear made her say something he might
never be strong enough to get over. Walking away now would be a huge risk, but
it was one he had to take, for her sake as well as his. Until Kerri decided for
herself that she wanted to be with him, there was nothing he could do.

"Look,
I've gotta go, okay?"
 
He got to his
feet without looking at her again, sure that the expression in her eyes would
make him want to stay. "You know, there are millions of people in this
world who would kill for the kind of physical and emotional connection we have
between us, but I'm getting tired of trying to convince you of that. When
you're ready to stop hiding behind your fear and reach out and grab what I'm
offering you, you know where to find me."

He
took one last look at her despite the fact he'd promised himself he wouldn't,
and even though it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life,
Sebastian found the strength to walk away.
   

Chapter Six

 
The sound of Sebastian entering her apartment
filtered through to her in the bedroom, and her heart almost leapt out of her
chest. The message she'd sent him via email a few days earlier had told him
what time to arrive at her place, and where to find the key she planned to hide
under the mat so he could let himself in. She hadn't even been certain he would
show up until the second when she heard him slide the key into the lock.

Her
email to him had requested that he didn't reply and let her know if he planned
to turn up.
 
Kerri had learned enough
about herself, thanks to him, to know that she was better off not knowing. If
he'd said yes, she'd have spent the days since talking herself out of it and
thinking of all the reasons that opening her mind, heart, and soul to Sebastian
was a bad idea. But the alternative didn't bear thinking about. He might have
said no, and she simply wasn't brave enough to deal with that kind of
rejection. Not when she would have nobody to blame but herself.

"Kerri?
Where are you?"

He
was probably standing by the table in front of her window. She'd dressed it
earlier, placing a bunch of flowers in the center and laying out the cutlery
and dinnerware, ready for the meal she hoped to cook for him later.

"In
here." She failed to keep the tremble out of her voice.
 
"I'm in the bedroom."

If
she allowed her nerves to get the better of her, her plans would be ruined, and
she couldn't allow that to happen. Kerri took a deep breath as she reminded
herself that Sebastian had accepted her invitation, which meant half the battle
was already won.

When
he appeared in her bedroom doorway, and she saw the way his gaze got dark when
he took in the tableau laid out before him, the last thing Kerri felt was
nervous.

"How
do you do that?" she said, her voice cutting through the loaded silence
crackling between them.

"Do
what?" he asked, his stare fixed on her as he undid the top button of his
shirt and yanked off his tie.

"Make
me wet just by looking at me."

His
gaze narrowed, and she heard him such in a ragged breath, but then he smiled as
he slipped off his jacket. "The same way you make me hard every time you
turn those dark eyes on me, I guess."

Kerri
sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and tried to see if he was telling the
truth, but the velvet ropes binding her wrists and feet, and the soft lighting
in the bedroom hindered her ability to take a proper look.
 
"Are you hard now?"

"And
then some."
 
He walked across the
room to stand at the side of the bed and allowed his gaze to crawl over her
naked body. "How did you manage to tie yourself up like this?"

"It's
easy if you use a slipknot."

"Kerri
… I hope you know you didn't have to do this for me. I'll take you any way I
can get you."

"Sebastian,
I didn't do this for you. I did it for both of us, partly because the thought
of submitting to you totally turns me on so much I can't think straight, and
partly because I want you to understand how much I trust you."

He
leaned forward to run the back of his knuckles over her cheek. "This might
sound like a weird thing for me to say, but I trust you, too.
 
That's something I've never had to do before
because you're the only woman I've ever truly been myself with. You brought
that out of me."