Fifty Shades Darker (book 5) novel Chapter 39

Thank God.

Ana is standing where I left her.

“I’m glad you kept it long.” I take a strand of her hair and caress it between my fingers. “So soft,” I whisper. She watches me—anxious, I think. “Are you still mad at me?” I ask.

She nods.

Oh, Ana.

“What precisely are you mad at me about?”

She rolls her eyes at me…and I recall a moment in her bedroom in Vancouver when she made exactly the same mistake. But that was a lifetime ago in our short relationship, and I’m sure she wouldn’t let me spank her right now. Though I want to. Yes. I want to very much.

“You want the list?” she says.

“There’s a list?” I’m amused.

“A long one.”

“Can we discuss it in bed?” Thoughts of spanking Ana have gone to my groin.

“No.”

“Over lunch, then. I’m hungry, and not just for food.”

“I am not going to let you dazzle me with your sexpertise.”

Sexpertise!

Anastasia, you flatter me.

And I like it.

“What is bothering you specifically, Miss Steele? Spit it out.” I’ve lost track.

“What’s bothering me?” she scoffs. “Well, there’s your gross invasion of my privacy, the fact that you took me to some place where your ex-mistress works and you used to take all your lovers to have their bits waxed, you manhandled me in the street like I was six years old.” She’s on a roll with a litany of all my misbehavior. I feel like I’m in first grade again. “And to cap it all, you let your Mrs. Robinson touch you!”

She didn’t touch me! Christ. “That’s quite a list. But just to clarify once more, she’s not my Mrs. Robinson.”

“She can touch you,” she stresses, and her voice wavers, full of hurt.

“She knows where.”

“What does that mean?”

“You and I don’t have any rules. I have never had a relationship without rules, and I never know where you’re going to touch me. It makes me nervous.” She’s unpredictable and she has to understand that her touch disarms me. “Your touch completely—it just means more. So much more.”

You can’t touch me, Ana. Please just accept this.

She steps forward, raising her hand.

No. The darkness squeezes my ribs. I step back. “Hard limit,” I whisper.

She masks her disappointment. “How would you feel if you couldn’t touch me?”

“Devastated and deprived.”

Her shoulders fall and she shakes her head but gives me a resigned smile. “You’ll have to tell me exactly why this is a hard limit, one day, please.”

“One day,” I answer. And I push the vision of a burning cigarette out of my head.

“So, the rest of your list. Invading your privacy. Because I know your bank account number?”

“Yes, that’s outrageous.”

“I do background checks on all my submissives. I’ll show you.” I head into my study and she follows. Wondering if this is a good idea, I pull Ana’s file from the cabinet and hand it to her. She glances at her neatly typed name and gives me a withering look.

“You can keep it,” I tell her.

“Well, gee, thanks,” she sneers, and starts flipping through and scanning the contents.