hanging from one sun-browned shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Renee reached out for him. “What’s wrong, Stefan?”
He turned back on her, his eyes blazing. “This is wrong!” he snapped, thrusting out his hands. “You’re asking something of me that I cannot give you.”
Renee shook her head, it was like an angry lioness tossing her mane. “I don’t understand!”
Stefan sighed, but the anger stayed flashing in his eyes and distorting the hard rugged features of his face. “I love you, Renee,” he said, and suddenly his voice sounded weary and tired. “And I can’t bring myself to hurt you. We’ve been through so much. You have suffered so much. I don’t want you to ever feel hurt or pain again. When I came back to you, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to protect you from harm. Now… now you want me to treat you like my submissive again? Can’t you see that I care too much for you to ever treat you that way?”
His face was close to hers. Renee could not bear to see the expression in his eyes, for it was pitying and sympathetic. She lashed out at him with her open hand. Stefan pulled back, but her palm slapped wickedly across his cheek. He caught her wrist but she twisted against him, and there was a wild and wounded hiss in her voice.
“If you cared for us and our future, you would give me what I need,” she hissed. “But you care more for yourself, Stefan. You care more for your code of honor than you do for me.”
“That’s not true! You are everything to me, damn it. Everything!”
“Then prove it, Stefan!”
He lunged for her suddenly and for a split-second Renee felt a flash of real fear turn her bones to jelly and scald the back of her throat. She gasped as his hand snapped out and locked around her wrist. She was spun round, lifted from her feet. The next moment she was down on the coffee-table, her legs spread wide, the smooth wood cool against the burning skin.
Stefan went down on one knee and moved his mouth to the edge of her panties, licking around the elastic with firm rapid flicks of his tongue. Then he ripped at the material and it fell open so that the soft glistening lips of her sex pouted swollen before him. Renee gasped.
“I want to make a baby with you, Renee,” Stefan said. “I want to pleasure you and make you happy. We don’t need BDSM.”
He lowered his head between her parted thighs and Renee held her breath. The touch of his tongue was electric, and a million sensitive nerves suddenly screamed their release in a single moment. She gasped again and felt her hands clutch desperately at the edges of the coffee table to restrain herself. Stefan’s tongue licked higher across the opening folds of her, and as the force of his tongue became firmer, she felt her back begin to arch and her vision blur.
Renee could feel herself being swept away; the sensations were building, the pressure low in her abdomen began to writhe and uncoil, readying to explode. She knew the signs – she knew that at any moment she would explode.
Suddenly she sat up and eased herself away from Stefan’s mouth.
“You do know how to pleasure me, Stefan,” she said, her voice tightly strained and thick in her throat. “But it’s not enough anymore because you have forgotten how to excite me. I want you to make me feel like a woman, and I want you to make me feel like the woman you want … not just the woman you love. BDSM is the only way that can ever happen again.”
And then she stood – her legs shaky – and picked up her dress.
Five.
Renee made coffee and set Tink’s cup on the table. Then she dropped herself down into the kitchen chair and sighed. Tink glanced around the kitchen. She noticed the two candles, still in their silver holders, standing in one corner of the kitchen counter. She turned back to Renee, and there was a question in her expression.
“Want to talk about it?”
Renee sighed again. She stirred her coffee, staring