Read Online Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 3: His Submissive by Lisa Renée Jones - Free Book Online Page A

just settled into my seat when the air shifted around me, telling me he’d stepped into the shop even before I saw him. I always know when he’s around. There’s this subtle energy that seems to crackle in the air, and I know I’m not the only person who feels it. I can see how the gazes around me seek him out, how attention finds him.
    My nerves went haywire at the knowledge he was there. My stomach fluttered and my heart raced so quickly, I actually felt faint.
    I keep replaying the moment he came into view and stole my breath, as he always does. Tall and broad, he sauntered toward me with sleek, feline grace, and I had the sense he was stalking his prey and that prey was me. His eyes found mine, or maybe mine found his, and the hardness in their depths had actually made my chest hurt. He affects me that much, like no other man, or anyone, ever has. He was angry. I had no idea why, but he was angry. I knew then what his silence had already told me; I just didn’t want to admit it. I’d dared to open myself up to him and he was going to reject me.
    I had to cut my gaze away from his in an effort to recover my lost composure. I rarely feel out of sorts in such a way. My skin tingled and almost burned as he neared, closing in on me, and I cursed my inability to control my physical response to him. I can still feel the dread that filled me, paralyzed me, when he stopped by my table, towering above me.
    “Look at me,” he demanded softly, but there was no softness to the command.
    I forced my gaze back to his and those hard eyes were still hard. Still angry. Some part of me had hoped that I’d read him wrong moments before.
    I didn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. I simply had no idea what to say; I didn’t even fully understand what I felt.
    “You don’t sign the agreement or put on the ring until I say you’re ready,” he said in a low, commanding reprimand.
    I was stunned. This wasn’t a rejection. It was a . . . I didn’t know what. “But you tried to convince me to sign—”
    “To be open to signing,” he corrected. “And then, only when I say you’re ready—not a moment before.”
    “I am ready,” I declared.
    He leaned down, hands pressed to the table in front of me, his erotic scent teasing my nostrils. He leveled me in a stare, and that cruel, amazing mouth of his was so near I could feel his hot breath on my lips. “No,” he said tightly. “You are not ready and clearly you still don’t understand the rules. But you will. Take off the ring until I say otherwise.”
    My chest had tightened to the point of misery. I remember thinking, “Do I really want to be with someone who can make me feel pain so easily?” But as much as I knew what my answer should be, I heard myself ask him, “Are you serious?”
    “Do I ever say anything I don’t mean?”
    I stared at him for several seconds and decided that no, he did not. I took off the ring. When I tried to hand it to him he said, “Keep it, but you don’t wear it until I say you can.” His lips thinned. “Now. Let’s go to the bathroom and finish this conversation.”
    My mind immediately raced. Who was in the coffee shop? Who would see us go to the bathroom as a pair? “What if someone sees us?”
    He just stared at me, the look on his face as steely as any I’d ever seen. He fully intended for me to do as he wished. I knew that if I didn’t, this thing between us would end there and then.
    With my fingers curled around the ring, the sharp corners digging into my tender flesh, I stood up. He straightened with me and somehow I resisted the urge to scan for who might be watching us. He stepped backward, giving me just enough space to pass him, and I was thankful we were so close to the back of the shop and the bathroom that perhaps we wouldn’t be seen together. It was the facade I needed to be able to move forward.
    Once I managed to walk, I quickly cut to my left and down a small hall before rushing into the bathroom. My awareness of