Chapter 398

Instead, the slide of the one around my neck startles me and I gulp in air, jumping slightly, realising he might start with leashing me and tying me after he gets a makeshift collar on me. A lot of men like Alexi like to have you leashed and tied up for full control. I have endured it during some of the worst moments of my life, but I'm trying to separate those memories from this moment, for him.

I try to hold still, heart pounding with that tiny scare, anticipating the feel of his touch, trying to hold myself together, but still, nothing happens; I'm forced to flutter my eyes open to look and see what he's doing, he feels so still beneath me. Unnerving me with his silence so that I cannot bear it anymore.

I blink at him in the low light and realise Alexi is sitting looking at me, holding nothing in his hands, just appraising me calmly with such an odd expression on his face.

"What are you doing?" I mumble, seeing this whole thing disintegrating into a ruined surprise I completely ballsed up. Alexi doesn't look anything-just deadpan seriousness and no hint of a clue to what he is thinking.

"I don't want this." He lifts one hand and runs a gentle stroking caress down my cheek, igniting familiar tingles and reducing my fight-or-flight response dramatically. A familiar loving touch to remind me he will never make me feel threatened. It works like a heavy blanket being draped around me on a cold night and stills some of my manic trembling.

"Yes, you do. It's what you like. It's what you need, and I want to be what you need." A lump of emotion catches in my throat as I realise how badly I'm failing in this. Suddenly tearful because the one thing I'm good at is having no effect on him. I seduce, I use sex and supply satisfaction to men. It's what I'm good at. I spent my life being a seductress and master of sex, yet here I am unable to get my husband to partake in his own fantasies.

What the hell has happened to me?

"You're already what I need. I don't need this, and I know you don't want this either. You don't bind your queen; you worship her as an equal." Alexi picks up the belt from the bed where he laid it and tosses it across the floor away from us, picking up the second, does the same to make it clear he won't be using them and has no desire to do so. I watch them fly and land ceremoniously with a complete sense of failure.

"Stop it." I cry in alarm grasping for them and missing completely, too slow, panic setting in that if I fail to be all he desires and needs, then one day he will go looking for that kind of satisfaction with someone else. This was about proving to him I trust him and it's all falling apart. Sudden hysteria rising out of me, based in fear and inadequacy, and I move to get off him to go retrieve them.

"No. Listen to me. Stop it, Cam." He catches my wrists and pulls me to face him, dragging me back gently, holding me still, bringing me to a complete halt as that bossy tone takes over. He is so serious, looking at me like a schoolteacher chastising a wayward child. He pulls me closer, lets go of one of my wrists and cups my jaw instead, bringing me to lean into him so we are almost nose to nose and taking control of me and my hysteria. I'm breaking inside, body haywire with conflicting feelings and thoughts, and my breathing is hitched as he stills me.

"What? I don't understand." I blink back the despair swirling through every cell and stare at him fully. Locking a questioning look on that handsome face.

"Please don't be lying to make me feel better," I mumble against his throat as I squeeze him in desperation, but he just hugs me back, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into a tight little cocoon. He manoeuvres us to our side so we can both stretch out and lie down on the bed, and presses me flat against him, from toes to nose.

"I told you I would never lie to you again and I'm not going to. The thought of tying you up makes me sick to my stomach. I never want to see you look at me the way you did in the club that day-the cross. The night we came here. It killed me to see you break, and I hated myself for doing it. I won't do that to you ever again, for anything. I'm supposed to protect you, not put you in a place that hurts you, and this would, even if you say it won't."

And just like that for the second time in two days, he completely breaks me, in a good way though, and I crumble into a shocked sob, turning to a liquid mess while wrapped in his arms. I cry so dramatically he squeezes me tighter and buries his face in my hair, stroking my back and shoulder with his free hand.

"I wanted to prove to you I trust you." I sniff against him for what seems like forever as those strong arms surround me and gentle hands pull the strands of hair out of my now disintegrating hairstyle and twist them slowly to soothe me in the way he instinctively knows how. His touch a balm to my pain.

"I get that, and it means so much to me to know you would do this for me. Trust me, I see it. I just don't need it, not like this. We have something better, something stronger, and I don't want you to offer yourself to me this way again. You're my queen, I'll never want this with you for as long as I live. If you think I will look for it somewhere else, then don't. Nothing will ever compare to what we have, and I won't jeopardise it. I don't need it, I never did. It's the past and a part of me that no longer exists as long as you love me."

And I will love him forever.

I lift my chin and wipe my face, sniffing away the traces of my emotional breakdown. Tired, feeling weak and vulnerable but understanding him fully. Understanding more than most the need to have a different persona and masks and things that maybe we didn't like but were a necessity to the part we played.

"I totally ruined this didn't I?" I'm turning into an emotional wreck of late, and I don't know how the hell to get my shit together. He just seems to be able to bring out this side of me, to dig deep beneath my layers to find my most vulnerable spots. I'm not the girl I was the day he walked into my life to save me. He has completely destroyed the cold, hard side of that persona, and now I need him to be my vicious wall of security instead.

"Nah, London. We're only having ourselves a delayed start. How about you roll over and let me show you how it's done?" He nudges me with his knee between my thighs suggestively. I dry my messy face and manage to muster up a smile, heart filling and all doubts dissipating. He always knows how to make it better.

"That sounds like an offer I don't want to refuse." I perk up a wide grin, trace his face with my thumb and swoon when that sizzle of electric we so easily ignite, rolls through my body and tingles my nether regions. Instant horn on command. Only he holds that special button. With fear thrown aside my body reminds me I still need a climax.

"Close your eyes and you'll soon find out."