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The thought was just another thrown on the pile of his WTF list. He couldn't think about anything long term with her. It was safer to keep thinking of the whole relationship as driven by The Zone membership thing. It had started that way.
He really didn't know what the hell it was now.
He thought of kissing his way up her spine, those delicate bones. She'd be lying face down, her fingers curling into the blue and green comforter on her bed.
Was it nuts that he found it incredibly hot, standing in a public place and watching her work? Her focus on her client, the capable way she spoke and tapped on the laptop, showed how comfortable she was with a job that sounded pretty impressive and demanding. Was it possible not to feel like a complete loser in comparison?
Was he his best self with her, in the words of the bullshit self-help books? Not even close.
He knew Lady Regina's rep. She took on hard cases and helped them become better subs. So he was her latest project. He'd been spiraling downward, and should be grateful for the interest. If she could help him figure out how not to go down that dark road with a Mistress, to twist one up because of fucked-up reasons of his own, then he'd get back into The Zone--on a couple levels--and be able to count her as something he'd rarely had in his life. A true friend.
A win-win. One that pissed him off. Don't, he advised himself. Don't screw up today. Even though so many of the things she'd opened in him were what twisted him up now, he knew those were his issues. Maybe for once, he wouldn't make them hers.
Her gaze slid to him, lingered. He knew what she was seeing. His body was easy on a woman's eyes. He had no false modesty about that. He was also good in bed. When he wasn't being an ass, he was more than capable of satisfying her sexually, exceeding her expectations. Was she thinking of his mouth between her legs, his cock inside of her? As her perusal of his shoulders slid down over his chest and abdomen, groin and thighs, and back again, he expected she was. It took his mind back to the last few days since they'd returned to Tampa, and particularly to how this morning had started...
After they came back to the city, he hadn't seen her for a couple days. She'd had to work on one of her consulting jobs. However, the day before the New Orleans trip, she'd told him to come stay at her house overnight. She'd warned him she'd be working part of the evening and, sure enough, when he arrived, she only had time to give him a quick tour of TV, kitchen and sleeping arrangements before she returned to her home office, telling him not to wait up for her.
He found out she'd cooked him an honest-to-God homemade pizza, and left it in the oven for him. It was better than any pizza he'd ever had, even if it did have broccoli on it. She'd left a sticky note on the oven. "No picking off the vegetables." Strict Mistress.
When he took some pizza and her preferred drink to her before he ate his own meal, he won a pleased if distracted smile. Returning to the living room, he wished she could take a break to join him. He indulged the unsettling vision, the two of them hanging out on the living room floor to eat pizza and watch movies. But their relationship wasn't about that, so he put it out of his head.
He ate the rest of the pizza, broccoli and all, while watching TV. Despite his best efforts to stay up for her, he fell asleep on the floor in front of it. He felt odd about stretching out on her furniture without her say-so.
When she woke him, it was nearly midnight. She clasped his hand, and led him down the hall, to her bedroom. Maybe because he was half-asleep, he was over the threshold before he could experience the volatile need to retreat he'd had last time she'd tried to take him there.
He'd been distracted from that by the sight of the pallet on the floor, next to her bed. It was made up with sheets, blankets and two pillows. He stared at it, bathed by the soft glow of the bedside lamp. He was being given a place to sleep. For the first time in a long time, it felt like it was in a place where he belonged. Where he was supposed to be.
That should have sent him in full fight-or-flight mode, but the sleepiness and excess of pizza were apparently dulling his survival skills. He was fully capable of undressing himself, but she brushed his hands aside and did it, taking all of it off.
"This is how my sub sleeps. No clothes but his Mistress's approval. And you don't put them on in the morning until I say so. If you get cold, you tell me."
She put firm pressure on his shoulder. "Down. Get in bed."
He complied, though being naked made him want her to get in with him. Tucking him in and brushing a kiss on his lips and forehead, she chuckled when he tried to tug her down.
"Sleep, bad boy," she murmured. He watched her move away. Cruel and blessed goddess that she was, she slipped out of her clothes where he could watch, but as if she was alone, unselfconscious, practical. Perversely, that made him harder. Her nightgown was an ivory thing with lace that showed the dark smudges of her nipples and cleft of her ass. She climbed into her bed, shut off the light...and went to sleep.
r /> It should have been sexually frustrating, and it was, but another part of him was content. He listened to her breathe evenly, to the sounds of the house settling as he slid in and out of a doze. Eventually he dropped off, in that extraordinarily deep way he did around her. When he'd woken up in his car at the prison and seen her sitting next to him, he couldn't believe she'd been able to get in without rousing him. She didn't believe him when he told her what a light sleeper he was, and why should she? Around her, he slept like a baby in his mother's arms.
What he'd read it was like, that is. Remembering her humming the lullaby to him in the hotel, he was uncomfortably aware that what he'd experienced with her might be the closest thing to it he'd ever had. He'd seen the Mommy/little boy scenes at the club, and that definitely was not his thing, the thumb sucking and diapering and all that shit. But Regina had mentioned there were a lot of layers to that kind of play, something about the need of the male spirit to find and cleave to a Goddess Mother through a lover's arms...
She'd said that during some of their random pillow talk, laughing at his dubious and blank look. Her laugh was sultry and raspy, making him feel the way he did when her fingers caressed the base of his spine.
She woke him in the early morning light with those tempting fingers stroking the strands of hair away from his forehead, teasing his temple with the scrape of her nails. "Good morning," she said when his eyes opened. Her voice was calm and throaty, not too loud.
She straightened from her squat by his pallet. She was already dressed and sipping a cup of coffee. The brisk energy around her suggested she'd been doing some prep work for the trip today. He wondered if she'd gotten enough sleep last night, and if he could have done something other than watch TV to help her get ready for her trip. He should have asked.
"Take a shower in the guest bathroom," she said. "We leave in an hour.
He wished he'd woken earlier so maybe she would have let them shower together. It irritated him.
As he propped himself up on his elbows, she touched his jaw, her eyes darkening when he gripped her wrist. "You like doing that," she said softly. "Holding me like you've captured me, even though your nature is to accept a Mistress's dominion. You need something to help you keep things straight in your head." She nodded to the bed. "I've left out clothes for you. This trip, you're under my command and direction, unless I tell you otherwise. Think you can handle that?"
"And if I can't?" He rubbed his eyes. Sometimes, it was kneejerk to be a smartass. He really had to work on that too.
"You can," she said evenly. "So not an option. There are two items on the bed you'll be wearing, but they're not for you to put on yourself. You bring them to me after you shower and get dressed in the rest of the things I left you. You'll know which ones I mean."
Hooking the corner of the blanket with the toe of her elegant heel, she stripped it off the bed, leaving him lying naked on the mattress. Her gaze slid over his body, his morning erection.
