Pleasure's Edge Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t some faceless partner doing these things to her. Alec had been in every single scenario with her, his hands on her, commanding her.
    She sighed, picked up her tea and sipped. She’d sweetened it again. The hot, fragrant liquid soothed her throat, but the rest of her body was as taut as a wire.
    It had been three days since she’d spoken with him, and she hadn’t heard from him yet. She had to wonder if this was part of him showing her that he was in control, or if he was simply busy.
    Either way, she didn’t like it. Didn’t like that she was feeding into the dominant behavior.
    She knew she was spending too much time dissecting it. But she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t some passive submissive girl who was going to melt at his feet and do anything he asked of her. Who would sit by the phone like a good little puppy, waiting for his cal .
    Then why was she doing exactly that?
    She’d dated plenty, and she’d never been one of those girls.
    She didn’t have to wait around for anyone. Sex was plentiful for a woman who was open-minded about it, and she always had been.
    She let a man know that about her as soon as she was interested.
    They didn’t seem to feel any need to play those games with her they played with other women. She kept herself at enough of a distance that they never felt they real y had her. And in fact, none of them ever did. She didn’t play that game, either.
    But Alec had a strange grasp on her she didn’t understand . . .

    Setting her tea mug down, she picked up one of the books and paged through, trying to refocus on her task. She was looking for a deeper explanation of the psychology and chemistry of subspace: that trancelike state many submissives reached during BDSM
    play. She understood the chemical process, how endorphins were released in the body in response to pain or sexual stimulation, but she wasn’t as clear on the mental and emotional part of the process.
    Why did people respond to certain things and not others? She’d read a number of times that some submissives could begin their descent into subspace simply by being bound, by being commanded. Even by nothing more than hearing a dominant voice.
    The soft, rich tone of Alec’s voice drifted through her mind, humming over her skin like a faint electric current. As though she could feel the subtle vibration from the sound. She squeezed her thighs together at the sudden ache there.
    Okay. Maybe she could get that part.
    She flipped through the book again, her gaze landing on a photograph of a woman bound in ropes, a complicated harness.
    But it wasn’t the ropes that caught her attention, or the woman’s smooth flesh as she knelt, naked but for the rope. It was the hand of a man standing somewhere off camera, the way it—he—
    caressed her face. The gesture seemed tender, somehow. She loved the contrast, the implication that this man’s hand belonged to whoever had bound her, and now had complete control over her.
    Her body surged with desire.
    Some smal part of her wanted to be that woman. If the man were Alec Walker.
    She slammed the book shut and jumped up from the sofa.
    Ridiculous! She was a strong woman. Independent. Even if she did have some desire to bottom for Alec, it was only about being at the receiving end of stimulation. Being made to just sit there and let him do things to her.
    She moaned. That train of thought wasn’t helping.
    The telephone rang and she grabbed it, relieved to have some reason to redirect her thoughts.
    “Hel o?”
    “Hey, it’s Mischa.”
    “Mischa, hi.”
    Mischa Kennon, a tattoo artist who also wrote short erotic fiction, was one of her best friends. They’d met several years earlier when Dylan had gone to San Francisco for a writers’
    conference. When Dylan returned to San Francisco several months later to have Mischa tattoo her, they’d spent some time together and had become fast friends. Now, despite the miles between them, they talked every week and saw each other