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"Asshole. Okay. I'll be in touch."
"I..." He shook his head, biting it back, but it came out anyway. "I've got to visit my dad, so I won't be around next week."
"Okay." She digested the unexpected turn of the conversation. "The college is on break next week, and I can shuffle some of my consulting projects. Want some company?"
The idea was so outlandish he choked on a harsh laugh before he could stifle it. And immediately panicked at the curious look in her eye, because it made him want to say yes. Hell, what better way to end this? Since he lacked the will to do it with words, he could drive her away--in a manner that wouldn't risk her life, but with something even she couldn't see coming.
She was right. He was a chickenshit.
"Yeah," he said. "Why the hell not?" Moving to the counter, he picked up a pen and wrote down the address on a pad there. She gave money to St. Jude's, because the pad had their logo on it, and a crayon drawing print of a girl, a dog and a bright sun, done by one of the sick kids, he supposed. "You'll have to meet me there, because it may take longer than you want to hang around."
She was giving him that scrutiny that said she sensed something wasn't as it seemed. It wouldn't matter. Not in a million years would she guess this. He felt sick. It was stupid.
In a day or so, when he had his head clear, he'd leave a note on her door, tell her not to come. Then he'd disappear. Maybe drive to the beach for a few days. It was warm enough to sleep in his car and hang out at the shore. It was quiet there. He might even pick up some work and stay awhile. Get hooked in to the Daytona Beach scene, though the BDSM community was close knit. Tyler would have already sent out word that he was bad news, nixing his reciprocal privileges that membership to The Zone had given him.
"Duncan." She must have said his other name a few times, because she spoke his given name emphatically, snapping him out of his head. Her hand had fallen on his arm. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Probably better if you don't come." He shook his head, stepped to the counter and ripped off the note, stuffing it in his pocket. "Definitely. We'll get together another time. Thanks for the food, Mistress. Thanks for everything. See you sometime."
Brave asshole that he was, he grabbed the care package she'd put together for him and fled.
Chapter Eleven
After she heard his car start up and pull out of the driveway, Regina dropped into her kitchen chair. The shakes she'd locked down broke loose, making her fingertips resting on the table surface tremble. What the hell was...all of that?
First, there'd been his transformation in the hallway. It had been so abrupt, the quiet sensuality in the kitchen suddenly replaced by a maelstrom. It was as if he'd viewed the door to her bedroom as the gateway to Hell.
A different kind of shudder gripped her as she closed her eyes and remembered how he'd pinned her to the floor. Pure alpha animal. He'd told her he would take her body without her express consent. Yet, belying that, in the very next second, he'd shielded her from the falling vase and obeyed her commands to take them both to an incredible climax. All while the glass ground into his flesh as if he couldn't feel it.
She'd navigated the dark maze in his mind, and brought them to a different place, but one neither of them had expected to be equally so intense. The man was exhausting, exhilarating...and a danger to himself.
She didn't kid herself. Being a correctional officer had taught her that overconfidence was a sure way to getting in trouble, but when she'd told him he needed a friend, his shields had dropped enough to show her that quick view into his soul once more. It was there, a light inside all those thorns. He wouldn't appreciate the analogy, but she really was starting to feel like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, hacking through the briar wall to reach the sleeping princess.
Her fingertips went to the bruises on her throat. At his core, he understood violence better than he understood tenderness, but he craved tenderness so much it was impossible to miss. Somewhere along the way, he'd learned to be charming and sexy, irresistible to women for his own purposes. But the reason it worked so well was, in his unguarded moments, he was that sexy and irresistible. How he'd touched her while she was shaving him, that questing caress, had conveyed that he wanted to give and receive pleasure, unselfishly. She could feel how much he enjoyed touching her, the feel of her skin, the press of her body. He desired her for himself, not just as a game or a competition.
The feeling was mutual. But fuck, what a mess the boy was. Last night when she'd left him on the playroom floor, she'd done a serious reality check. After brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed, she'd taken out that scary moment and given it a close, hard look. How she'd handled it, how he'd reacted on the front and back end.
She knew a lot of women would have ended it right there. Hell, if they'd understood half of what she had known last night, they wouldn't have risked bringing him home for a scene.
She didn't consider herself stupid or reckless. But she did have a different well of experience from which to draw. She'd done extreme interrogation scenes where the sub had completely lost it, been a risk to himself or her. At the prison, she'd routinely handled violent offenders. Both those things were why she'd taken the incident in stride and not freaked out. She'd slept well, even though she'd woken with her fingertips stroking the marks on her throat, a subconscious way to soothe the early morning uneasy feelings chasing her out of dreams.
Everyone, even someone who grew up in Sunshine Suburbs with Suzy Perfect Parents, could be goaded toward their animal nature, though it took extreme circumstances. Some people's triggers for uncivilized behavior were far closer to the surface. It didn't take a Domme with her intuition to know where Marius fell on that spectrum.
Yes, she had experience with violent males. But she didn't have experience with violent males with whom she was sexually and emotionally involved. Since she was a smart woman, she knew she needed perspective, and she needed it badly. Regina needed a Dominant who'd dealt with a soul as damaged as Marius.
Tyler? He'd react with typical male overprotectiveness. Much as she respected and admired the man, after the mine field she'd just navigated, she didn't feel like cutting a swathe through the testosterone. If he'd been dealing with what she had last night, he wouldn't have backed down or cut Marius loose, either. Alpha male thinking was to confront and overcome a problem, not retreat. But it was hard for an alpha male like Tyler to realize an alpha female saw a volatile problem the same way. A smile touched her lips. Though perhaps being married to Marguerite had adjusted his thinking on it.
Still, she realized she'd prefer to talk to a woman, one more like herself. Ah. The obvious light dawned. Regina knew exactly the right woman, one who'd dealt with a damaged male and successfully brought him out of the darkness. And she had a ruthlessness akin to Regina's own. She picked up her cell and sent a text.
Need the face-to-face opinion of a heartless bitch. Have some time?
For you? Always. I'm at work. Stop by anytime this morning.
The Growing Things Nursery was both residence and business. When Regina bumped up the gravel road, she paused at the fork between the company parking lot and the driveway to the house. Lyda's home was a 1920s clapboard farmhouse, her nursery contained on the acreage behind it and within several large greenhouses.
Since she'd said she was at work, that meant the greenhouses, so Regina turned toward the parking lot. It was populated by several company vehicles, including a flatbed loader, a couple pickup trucks, a bobcat and a small dump truck painted M&M green with yellow daisies under the Growing Things logo. Everything that belonged to Lyda was well-tended, from plants to equipment. And submissives.
Regina's attention went to the man currently loading bags of mulch into the back of a pickup truck. His long hair was tied in a tail that fell down his tattooed back. Stripped to nothing but a pair of faded jeans that hung low on his hips, he had a tanned muscularity and lean appeal sure to catch a woman's eye. Plus an ass that just screamed to be squeezed, strapped, marked...the list was endless.
