17. The Power

~ JESSE ~

Holy shit.

It was suddenly hard to breathe. The immensity of his power, of what that meant… of what kind of man it made him was stunning and utterly horrifying.

As my head spun with the implications of what that meant, instinctively I pulled the blanket up and over my chest.

“Don’t,” he said darkly, reaching out immediately to tug it back down to bare my breasts. I was about to slap his hand away when I remembered our agreement that I would submit, as long as he didn’t use that power on me.

That power that could literally make my heart stop?

What else was he capable of?

I swallowed back the fear—then quickly forgot it when his eyes zeroed in on my breast and he gave a small smile, reaching out to trace the nipple closest to him with a touch so soft I wouldn’t even have felt it if my nipples hadn’t still been hard.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Jesse,” he said, as if the fact surprised him, his tone quiet and suggestive, as if his prior anger had simply melted away. Then he fro