AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She rose, padded across the floor. Opening the door to a welcome touch of air from the A/C, she looked down at him. He didn't stop the song, or his humming, though he tilted his head, gazing at her through the darkness. Sliding down the wall, she sat next to him, put her head on his bare shoulder. He brushed the crown of her head with his jaw, kept playing. His biceps flexed under her breast where it pressed against him.
"I'm not a Domme," she said at last.
"No," he agreed. "But you're great at working with one."
"You're like that too, aren't you?"
"Sometimes. I like feeling in control, under direction, if that makes sense."
It did. "Is it because it feels safer that way? Like you can't screw up or take responsibility for anything that goes wrong? Puts it all on her?"
His fingers stilled a moment, then resumed. A different tune now, but still pleasant to the ears. "No. Don't try to work it out in words. It doesn't work."
"I screwed up with her tonight, didn't I? At the end."
"You can't screw up something like that, Gen." He touched her knee, a brief caress. "She knows how crazy it gets after she scrambles your brain. It takes time to process it all, especially at first."
"But you knew. You tried to talk to her about it, and she told you to take me home, that we'd 'deal with the rest later'."
"Yeah. That's Lyda."
Now that her eyes were adjusted to the dim illumination in the hallway, she could see his hair was tousled enough to suggest he might have slept some. He wore jeans, but when her hand crept beneath his arm, slid across his rib cage and down, her questing fingers found the top button had been left open and he was bare beneath. She played with the metal disk, brushing the firm flesh beneath.
"I was dreaming about rock bands. A girl can't help thinking about guitars like phallic symbols, the way they play with them in front of a crowd."
He chuckled, and she imagined the light in his sleepy brown eyes. Then he sobered. "You were dreaming about other things too. I was about to say fuck it and come in, wake you up. But the music seemed to calm you down. At least, I hope it did."
"It did." She propped her chin on his shoulder and stared down the pleasing terrain of his body, to where he cradled the guitar in his lap. "What should I do, Noah?"
"Go see her tomorrow," he said simply. "The more you want to avoid her, the better it is when you go see her. Doesn't make sense, but that's the way she works."
"I dreamed about you too," she said. "You were being hurt, and I couldn't stop it. Neither could she. And she stood on this mountain, and she looked so alone. It frightened me, seeing her like that, and you... It was like I was the one who could fix it all, but I couldn't move."
He slid an arm around her, resting his other hand on the guitar's face. He didn't say anything. She gazed at his profile. "Noah, why do you have that tattoo? The one that says Yours Unconditionally?"
"It was a promise."
"Made to whom?"
"Someone." His expression reminded her of the wistful tune the bard played in her dreams. "I put it there when I didn't belong to anyone, thinking it was a call to the universe. You know, fishing."
He gave her that oddly distant look he sometimes had, as if he were an otherworldly being, tapped into currents she couldn't sense. "I'm still figuring out if it's been answered."
"Do you think you belong to someone now?"
"I belong to Lyda. And to you, because she says I do." He gave the strings a light strum. The music vibrated through her skin.
"What do you think you deserve, Noah?"
"Whatever my Master or Mistress tells me I deserve."
As if he detected the way his answer discomfited her, he lifted a shoulder. "I don't ask too many questions of the universe, Gen. I'm a speck of dust on the eye of an atom in all of it. Whatever happens, happens. Most of the time, what happens are good things." Sliding a knuckle along her cheek, he gave her a look that made her flesh tingle beneath his touch.
"I can't figure out how you do that." She shook her head. "You fluster me, just like Lyda, but in a different way. It's like she comes at me from above, you come from below, and between the two of you, I turn into goo."
"Good thing?"
"Most of the time," she allowed. She wanted to pursue the other topic, but she'd had enough of serious and intense tonight. She wanted to leave that first dream behind. Way behind. "Chloe said she's seen you in full Goth gear. Still have some of the clothes?"
