The Submission Sessions (4 page)

"You're
probably not going to want to hear this, but I'm going to say it anyway. In my
personal and professional opinion, the reason you don't climax when you have
sex with someone is because they let you set the boundaries. But you don't want
that, do you, Miss Robertson? You want to be controlled."

Her
eyes sparked with anger, and he braced himself, ready for the onslaught.

"And
in my purely personal opinion, Mr. March, you don’t know what the hell you're
talking about."

Chapter Three

"I'm
such an idiot!"

Kerri's
groan of frustration echoed through the darkness of her bedroom. She willed her
brain to stop working overtime and punched the pillow as she rolled over to
lie
on her other side.
 
Her dinner date with Thomas had been a disaster. And she knew just whom
to blame.

Ignoring
her better judgment, she'd agreed to go on a date earlier that day with Thomas,
the guy who owned the local coffee shop she visited every morning. His
persistence had worn her defenses down, so she'd caved, weakened by the
stifling loneliness of her life since her split with Ben, and her mounting
sexual frustration over Sebastian. Thomas was nice, hard working, and decent,
but he just wasn't her type, and if she hadn't been so desperate to blot out
the memory of what happened in Seb's office a month earlier, she would never
have agreed to date him.

In
the weeks since she'd last laid eyes on him, Sebastian March had filled her
thoughts and haunted her nights. She wasn't even angry at him anymore. That emotion
had long ago given way to one of pure frustration, and a niggling sensation
that she was much more of a wimp than she gave herself credit for.
 
But the idea of surrendering her mind, body,
and soul to him terrified her almost as much as it excited her.
 
So she'd agreed to go on a date with the
coffee guy. What a great idea
that
was.
Now, she had even more regrets to add to her ever growing list, and Thomas
would probably never speak to her again.

When
the conversation between them at dinner had dwindled to no more than a series
of long, awkward silences punctuated by the occasional mindless observation
about the surroundings, the food or the weather, she'd found refuge in her wine
glass. Still eager to please her, despite the fact he must have known he was
getting shot down in flames, Thomas ordered another bottle after they finished
the first.
 
Halfway through the second
one, Kerri had begun to laugh at anything and everything he said. The confusion
on his face was painful to see and it sobered her up a little, but it was too
late to stop him leaving the restaurant in disgust, without paying his share of
the bill. Kerri didn't blame him. First thing Monday morning, she was going to
go find him and apologize.

And
now she was back in her apartment, alone once more, and just as tormented by
thoughts of Sebastian as she was before. His business card lay on the dresser
across the room, taunting her with its understated yet elegant gold font, and
promising adventure if she was just brave enough to reach out and grab it.
Kerri kicked off the covers, stomped across the room, and threw it in the
bin.
 
The gesture was pointless anyway,
because she'd looked at it so many times, the number was permanently imprinted
in her brain.

She
stayed up, aware it was much too early to try to sleep anyway. Friday nights
weren't meant to be so boring. The start of the weekend usually brought with it
the promise of excitement, not the sure and certain knowledge that nothing
memorable was likely to happen before she went back to work on Monday.

Kerri
grabbed a bottle of white wine from the fridge and shuffled to the sofa. The TV
offered none of the distractions she'd been hoping for. Reruns of shows she'd
seen a million times before did little to lift her mood, and the half glass of
wine she drank while channel surfing made her a little lightheaded again. She
hadn't sobered up as much as she thought.

Call him
.

The
thought came to her unbidden, and she began to reject it as she had countless
times before … but then she got angry. How dare he turn her world upside down
and then leave her to make sense of it alone? Didn't he know enough about her
to understand why she would never be able to initiate contact with him? Was
this some kind of weird power play, or part of the control he claimed she
wanted him to have over her?

She
was dialing his number before she realized she hadn't consciously made the
decision to do it. Kerri pulled the phone from her ear after letting it ring a
couple of times and fumbled for the button to end the call, but then she heard
his greeting.

"Hello?"

Kerri
closed her eyes as panic set in. Maybe she should just hang up.
 
What had possessed her?
Wine.
That's what
.

"Hello?
Who's there?"

"Me."

She
heard him suck in a harsh breath. "Is that you, Kerri?"

"Uh-huh."

"Is
everything okay? You sound different."

"That's
because I am different.
Thanks to you."
She took
another sip of wine to stop
herself
telling him
exactly what she'd been going through the last few weeks. "And I don't
mean that in a good way."

"I
don't understand. Has something happened?"

"No,
Sebastian, nothing has happened … except that I humiliated a good man tonight
because I was trying to get you out of my head."

"What
do you mean?"

"I
mean I accepted a date with a guy who's been asking me out for the longest time,
but I shouldn't have gone. Needless to say it didn't go well."

"I'm
not asking about him. I meant, why were you trying to get me out of your
head?"

"Because you scare me."

A
Christian upbringing in the bosom of an Evangelical church made her naturally
wary of anything otherworldly or supernatural, and the way Sebastian seemed to
have read her mind that day in his office still freaked her out.
 

"There's
no reason to be scared. I don't want to hurt you, Kerri."

"Yeah,
but you might."

"And
you might hurt me." Seb's laugh didn't sound like it held much humor.
"For all you know, you're hurting me already."

Kerri
almost choked on her wine. "How is that even possible?"

"Being
forced to stay away from you and give you the space to decide whether you want
to explore this thing between us hasn't exactly been a pleasant
experience."

"I
didn't force you to stay away. You chose to."

"I
asked you to call me. When you didn't, I figured you weren't interested."

"Right."
Kerri couldn't
think of anything else she could say that wouldn't be too revealing. Then
again, she might have already revealed too much. "Hey. You can't do that
Jedi mind trick stuff over the telephone, can you?"

Sebastian's
rich laughter slid along the phone line and curled through her ear drum.
"Jedi mind trick? I've never heard it described like that before. But in
answer to your question, no I can't."

"Good."

"Why
is that a good thing? Is there something you don't want me to know?"
 
Seb's voice softened a little, and Kerri
imagined him staring right at her, the phone pressed close to his lips.
"Are you afraid I'll discover something you don't want to admit?"

"Like
what?" Kerri struggled to get the words out as the breath stilled in her
lungs and a pulse started to throb between her thighs.

 
"I might discover I was right and that
you want me to push you to your limit and possibly beyond."

The
words hung between them as Kerri smothered a moan at the spike of hot lust that
trembled along the walls of her pussy when her imagination went into overdrive,
leaving her almost breathless.
"N…no.
That's not
true."

"Really?
Then why not
meet me for dinner tomorrow night and prove me wrong?"

"You
can't prove a negative."

Seb
laughed again. "Nice try, Miss Robertson."

"Thanks."
 

"It's
probably just as well to warn you that I'm impervious to sarcasm. It doesn't
work on a Jedi."

Kerri
couldn't help but laugh. "Damn. I'll have to try something else."

"There's
only one way to defeat a Jedi Master, and that's by finding his weakness."

"You
have a weakness?" Kerri couldn't imagine anything or anyone getting the
better of Sebastian. The man oozed confidence.

"Only one."

"What
is it?"

"You."

"Me?"
Kerri wondered if Sebastian might actually be drunker than she was.
"That's funny."

"I
don't see what's so funny. You have no idea how incredibly sexy you are,
Kerri."

"You
think I'm sexy?"

"I
thought I'd made that obvious when I told you why I couldn't treat you
anymore."

"But what about my problems?"
Revealing the reason why she'd been scared to call him terrified Kerri, but
another sip of wine stemmed the threat of tears. She pushed the glass away, out
of easy reach, aware that she'd already had too much to drink and she needed to
keep her wits about her when dealing with Sebastian.

 
"The only problem you have right now is
me. I'm not going to make it easy for you to push me away this time. Since the
day you walked in to my office, I've done nothing but fantasize about ways to
get you in my bed.
 
Staying away from you
has driven me half crazy, and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on work. My
receptionist Isabel even threatened to quit if I didn't stop being such a
grouch."

He'd
spoken the words in a heated rush, as if trying to get them out before changing
his mind. It made Kerri feel a little better to know how much this mattered to
him, and she didn't want to carry on pretending that it didn't matter to
her.
 
"Then why didn't you call me?
You must have known how hard it would be for me to make the first move."

"I
didn't want to pressure you. For all I knew, hearing about my psychic abilities
might have put you off. There's not many who can handle the idea."

Kerri
had thought she was one of them, at least at first. But hours of research on
the internet in the weeks since had calmed her nerves a little. Many people claimed
to have the same kinds of abilities as he did, and most of them did good work,
using their gifts to find lost children, convict serial murders, and help
people suffering in anguish. There were probably a few who took advantage of
others, Kerri had no doubt, but that was no different in any walk of life.
Sebastian had been a practicing therapist in the same location for the last fifteen
years, so if he was some kind of perverted freak, he would have been exposed by
now.

"I
guess that makes sense."

"I
want you to come to me willingly. I need to know you want me as much as I want
you."

Kerri
searched for the courage to utter the words Sebastian needed to hear, but they
just didn't come. "Some of us find it hard to talk about our
feelings."

"Then
stop trying. I'm going to book a table at my favorite restaurant for tomorrow
night. If you turn up, that will tell me all I need to know."
 
He gave her the details and checked if she
knew where it was. Of course she knew. Kerri had dreamed about dining there,
but the prices, and the snooty looking clientele, had put her off.
 

"I'm
not sure I have anything to wear."

"Don't
worry. You'll be the most beautiful woman in the room. Wear what you want, as
long as it doesn't include underwear."

The
sultry timbre of his voice made Kerri so hot, she thought her nightgown was
gonna burst into flames. Just talking to him on the phone did dangerous things
to her libido. God only knew how she'd handle him in the flesh.

"Sebastian!"

"See
you tomorrow. Eight o'clock."

The
call ended with an abrupt click. Kerri pulled the phone from her ear and stared
at it as if it might explain how she'd gone from facing a weekend of boring
nothingness to one filled with promise of a wild sexual adventure in the space
of five minutes. Her stomach clenched in nervousness at the thought of what
might be about to happen, but she wasn't going to let herself wimp out, not
this time.

She
went back to
bed,
sure she wouldn't get even a wink of
sleep. But the combination of copious amounts of wine, a long week at work, and
the mental exhaustion brought on my trying to spar with Sebastian when she was
ill equipped for the task, even when sober, had her sound asleep only moments
after her head hit the pillow.