Read Online Driven By The Hero (Hero Romance 1) by Kalena Lyons - Free Book Online Page A

felt passive. As if she were the board, and not the pieces. And the more passive she felt, the more excited she became with the novelty of it all. And the more excited she became, the more secure she felt.
    “I’ll ask again… What possessed you to strip for me of your own free will?”
    “I… because… I,” Laura hesitated to try to put into words what was going through her brain. Finally, she had no choice but to admit it. She felt it last night, when Jack was acting the perfect gentleman while she was drunk out of her gourd. She felt it as soon as she even laid eyes on Jack for the very first time. And she felt it now, naked in this man’s penthouse suite. “It’s… Because I wanted to!” she yelled, with a force that surprised even her.
    For the first time in her life, Laura Kimball felt entirely in control of herself - in control of her life, in control of her body. Seized as she was in Jack’s snare, she knew she had made a conscious choice in her life. She knew that submitting to him wasn’t duty, or an act of loneliness. She knew that submitting to him wasn’t a question of how much she was willing to give, but how much she was willing to let go.
    Jack bade her to sit down in front of him. She felt confused at first until he sternly made her kneel in front of him, while he firmly bunched a fistful of her hair in his hands. Clammy, hung-over and red-eyed, she was still the most beautiful woman he had seen in several years. As he tugged gently on her hair, the shock made her wince until he touched the dimples of her cheek with his finger.
    “Laura, I need you to understand something. You are not what you think you are. You are not your self-doubt or your self-pity. You are not some office drone. You are neither weak nor are you a coward. But you are mine. Do you understand?”
    Laura nodded.
    “Are you mine of your own free will?”
    Laura paused before eventually stammering, “I… I guess… so.”
    “Do you even have a will?”
    Laura paused, uncertain what Jack meant. He saw the consternation in her face, and seized her by the hair roughly. “Do… You… Even… Have… a will?” He emphasized each syllable sternly until she had no choice but to answer.
    “Yes.”
    “What is your will?”
    “My will is to serve you.” She was surprised at how rapidly and assuredly the words slipped out of her mouth.
    He smiled as he stroked the curve of her upper lip, before leading her on to her feet. “Lay down on the bed,” he said very matter of factly.
    She did so, and wondered if all the elaborate rigmarole she had heard about in D & S was simply an elaborate psychological game leading up to what would have been a fairly standard lay. As it turned out, it wasn’t.
    He retrieved his iPhone from the bureau and turned it on her. “Now tell me… about the very first time… you ever had a thought about another man.”
    She was bewildered. She knew that she had given her word to Jack, but had no idea he was going to record her. She didn’t know if she should tell him the truth or make up a lie. She was in no mood to exaggerate, and given that Jack could have very likely could have seen through her lie, she opted for the former.
    “I guess… I guess…”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    “I guess all girls,” Laura continued very frankly, suddenly growing unusually comfortable with the green light of Jack’s phone recording her. “When they start to hit puberty… sort of carry over their old childhood fantasies about Prince Charming or what have you. But that never really appealed to me; I saw it as being sort of old fashioned, I guess you could say. I always… this is going to sound crazy, but I always identified more with the villains.”
    “Were you an underdog, Laura?”
    “In a lot of ways. I was an only child, and I had a pretty active imagination. I developed early, and wasn’t comfortable with all the leers, so I decided to take up running to see if I could tone my body down a