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“Well,” Landon said when we reached the point where we’d both need to head separate ways. My Uber was waiting, and his car was parked farther back. The poor side of me had considered taking him up on his offer to give me a ride, but the practical part of me had been worried the pressure to go back to his place with him when our day was over would be too great.
“Well,” I said, bobbing up and down on my tiptoes a few times.
“Final verdict?” he asked.
I made a show of thinking hard. “I’ll look at the contract. No promises about signing it.”
Landon nodded, but once again, he seemed distracted.
“Is something wrong?”
He furrowed his brows. Just before he spoke, my Uber driver leaned out of the window.
“You almost ready?” the driver asked. “I’m going to miss out on peak hours in the city if we don’t get rolling.”
Landon waved me off. “Go ahead. Meet me at the club tomorrow night?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Sounds good.”
There was a moment of awkwardness. It almost felt like I should lean in and give him a kiss, but he turned to leave before I could make a decision.
I spent the ride back to the hotel thinking about everything, but by the time I arrived, I didn’t feel closer to understanding anything.Landon sat behind a large, highly polished desk in his office within The Golden Pecker. I squinted at him from across the desk, wondering how long he planned to sit and scribble something on a notepad.
If nothing else, it gave me time to think. Particularly, I was most interested in trying to puzzle out where he and I stood now. Usually, two dates, two mindblowing kisses, and an impromptu bondage session would’ve made me think we were a couple.
But we weren’t a couple. I knew it wasn’t that simple, partly because I’d made a solid effort to dispel that idea after our second kiss. Current me wasn’t sure I was exactly pleased with past me for that one, but maybe it was for the best. I enjoyed being around him, sometimes because he was so easy to irritate when he was trying to be all serious. But other times, I couldn’t help falling into the age-old trap of wanting to fix him.
For all his apparent success, Landon seemed broken. His rougher side was more like scar tissue—a protective layer of shielding that hadn’t had the chance to heal fully. Then again, I guess scars never really healed, which would mean my analogy only illustrated how much I was wasting my time.
“Where do you even find a sweater like that?” he finally asked.
Just because I’d wanted to rile him up, I’d worn my lazy reading outfit of sweatpants and an oversized unicorn sweater. Yes, it even had a plushy, glittery gold horn that jutted out of my chest. He’d had to walk me through the whole club while I was wearing it, and I hoped it had embarrassed him.
I actually had an entire stockpile of sweaters like this, but I had been a little to embarrassed to bring Landon in on my collection. Until now.
“The internet,” I said. “But I had to sew the horn on myself.” I gave it a little flick, which made it wobble suggestively.
Landon rolled his eyes, grinning.
“So, did you have me come here to admire your penmanship, or are you going to show me the contract?”
He loosened his tie and pulled it free, then unbuttoned his collar. I felt my traitorous eyes scanning his neckline for hints of the tanned, muscled flesh I knew lay beneath.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” I said. “If your pants are bothering you, why not toss those off too? And who needs underwear, right?”
“I can put my tie back on if you’re too distracted to focus.”
I sighed. “No. Go on.”
He nodded, running a hand through his hair before opening the first page of the contract for me.
“Some of the verbiage here—out of context,” he added carefully. “It may not be terminology you’re used to. The important thing to remember is this is more of a formality so we can establish your hard boundaries now, without intruding on the moment down the line.”
I watched him with a skeptically raised eyebrow. “This sounds ridiculous. You know that, right?”
“So long as this contract is in effect,” he continued, once again ignoring me. “You will be my… property.”
Now my eyebrows were threatening to slide up into my hairline. “Is this some of that ‘verbiage’ you warned me about?”
“Yes.”
“Why would somebody willingly agree to be the property of somebody else?”
“It’s intentionally worded in a way that is difficult to swallow. Ultimately, the idea is you’d agree to become my submissive. In this club, you would be like my property. Outside The Golden Pecker, none of this contract would apply, unless we wished.”
