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"But that's not what you meant. I can't put my finger on it, but you're different, aren't you? You're more..."
She didn't say "fragile," because it didn't quite fit. He was strong, and more than capable. But he had a disease she was fairly sure he knew was getting the best of him. The day he'd told her she had a choice of whether to go forward with him or not, knowing his health would be a factor, he hadn't directly implied it, but she knew now it had been there.
Plenty of diabetics lived into old age. Des didn't expect to be one of them.
He didn't answer her question, but she hadn't expected he would. "Want to go back to my place tonight?" he asked, pressing a kiss to her head again.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Do you want one?"
She'd intended her question as a jest, but it came out a little serious, so that his response had an edge. When she lifted her head, his jaw was tense.
"I didn't mean it like that," she said softly. "I mean...I was looking for my Dom. What he would say if I asked him that."
His jaw relaxed slightly. "No, you don't have a choice. I don't want you out of my sight right now."
"Good." She wrapped her arms around his torso. "The feeling's mutual."
Chapter Fifteen
She drove his truck, since he wasn't up for driving yet. He told her he'd bring her back in the morning on his way to work, though she wondered if he'd be recovered enough to work by then. When they reached his place, he stripped his clothes and fell in the bed, but when she paused before joining him, not sure how to explain what she needed, he already knew. He gripped her wrist and drew her close enough to kiss her palm.
"Go take a shower, love. Scald it all away. But bring your ass back to this bed. I'd like to have your soft body curled against me sooner rather than later."
A shower was exactly what she wanted, but she sat on the bed, stroking his hair and the side of his face, until he fell asleep. It only took moments.
She did want a shower and she took a thorough one, scrubbing her attacker's touch away, but she wanted to be with him even more, so she didn't linger. When she came back to the bed and laid down with her head on his chest, her arm around him, he was resting so deeply he didn't stir.
She dropped off into a sleep, uneasy, but holding tightly to him, lulled into unconsciousness by his heartbeat.
When she woke, she was alone, but he had a small house. She found him quickly. The door to what she'd thought was a closet was ajar, and a dim light was coming from the opening. She left his bed, wrapping the throw blanket at the foot over the oversized gray and red Wilder Hardware T-shirt she'd donned for sleepwear over her black cotton panties.
The room was almost a third of the size of his other living quarters, perhaps initially intended to be a small carport for the guesthouse and later enclosed to form this room. She won
dered if he'd done the work, and thought maybe he had, because the room was custom fitted for his needs. The walls were cedar paneling, and strong parallel beams crossed the ceiling. The faint fragrance of oil pointed her to several bottles. She expected he used the oil to keep the many loose coils of ropes hanging on the wall in good condition.
She passed along the wall, trailing her fingers through a waterfall of multiple colors and materials. Jute, hemp and cotton. He had a couple of nylon coils, though those were rare, because they slipped too much for the type of rope bondage he preferred. She'd paid attention the night they went to the club with Madison and Logan, when Des had told her a lot about the different types of rope that were being used, and who cared for their rope properly and who didn't.
The various hooks hanging from the ceiling for suspension work amused her, because above several of the hooks he'd fastened clip-on animals: monkeys, bears, a pink kitten. She touched a panda and sent it swaying.
But those were quick impressions, because what she really wanted to see was him. He was oiling one of the ropes at a rectangular table. The utility light over the table was the source of the room's illumination, but it was enough to give her an agreeable view of him.
He was wearing a loose pair of black jeans and nothing else. Her gaze slid over the sunburst in the middle of his back and the tattoos wrapped over his arms. He'd tied his hair back so she was able to enjoy the sharp planes of his cheek bones, the sensual lips, the flicker of his thick lashes and those compelling, brown eyes as he looked her way.
No post-traumatic nonsense interfered with the little spurt of need and yearning she felt at his expression. He'd been right. Seeing her attacker helpless and frightened, carried away in a police car, had gone a long way to making her feel in control, not a victim. John had said he already had a record, so it was likely this could put him in prison for years.
She thought of how Des had held her right afterward, his thorough aftercare, despite the physical reaction she was sure he'd felt stealing over him even then. Now that she'd had time to think about it, she was quietly amazed at the courage it had taken to do what he'd done.
He'd handed her control over the man's life or death. Even though rationally she knew it was Des's strength and direction that had guided things, that key moment had totally belonged to her. She was also sure if she truly had wanted the man dead, Des would have done it. Which made him a little scary, but maybe in the right ways. Marcus had that quality to him in even more upfront ways. However, whereas this had been a first experience for Des with this kind of violence, she'd always suspected Marcus's background had made it a far more common occurrence for him.
She studied Des as he turned his attention back to the ropes, perhaps sensing her need to orbit him without a lot of conversation yet. Her throat was still sore, but that wasn't the reason. The silence was comfortable. She drew closer, looking at the four different coils of rope he had in front of him and an open notebook which had sketches and scribblings, clippings. She saw orchids, flowers and trees, cutouts of models from glitzy magazines in different positions, juxtaposed with his sketches of rope poses and notes about the possibilities. At the party she'd heard people use the term rope artist. That was what he was.
"How did you get started in this?" she asked. "Why didn't you end up being into fire play, or get a shoe fetish?"
He smiled faintly. "You make it sound like getting a cold. I like a woman's foot in a high heel as much as the next guy. But what I imagine when I see your foot in an extremely high heel is tying your feet in the same position without the shoes. I'd bind them over your back so I could tickle the soles with a feather and watch you squeal and squirm. Maybe put you in a vat of Jell-O to see you get all slippery."
"Your mind goes into some very odd places," she said, elbowing him. He put his arm around her. "Will you answer the question?"
