I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten my people-pleasing tendency. My mother and sister would sooner light their hair on fire than place someone’s wants over their needs. All I knew was it felt physically painful when someone was upset with me.
He cleared his throat. “Have you met anyone else?”
You want my cock? Fucking earn it.
I coughed up the sip of water I’d taken. “Um, no, not really.”
“Not really?” he probed.
“There was sort of something, but nothing happened.”
“Did he make you feel uncomfortable?”
There was a quiet authority to him that scrambled my thoughts. My brain was having a hard time computing the question.
“No,” I eventually said. “He did nothing wrong.”
His reaction was curious. The stalwart, innate confidence that hummed from him was replaced by something like uncertainty.
I folded my arms, sitting back in my seat. “Why are you asking this?”
“I need to know what he did wrong, so I don’t make the same mistake.” He sat back, matching my pose, eyes on me. “What did he do that you liked?”
I didn’t think it could get more vulnerable than the conversations I’d had with Void about my kinks. But Calder was digging into them.
My cheeks flushed. “I can’t tell you that. That’s personal. Ask something else.”
A slight smile hooked the right side of his lips, and his eyes glittered like he knew something I didn’t. As if I’d said something deeply amusing.
Or fallen into a trap.
“Okay,” he said. “You said you were into exhibitionism, but it’s a broad spectrum. Do you like being watched? The thrill of doing something wrong? Getting caught?”
“Um, yeah…” I dragged my thumb along my bottom lip. “So I think that falls under the umbrella of my submissive side. Like, I don’t get off on the idea of doing it in a room of people, but if someone wanted me so badly that I had to break the rules? And I was being so good for that person? I like the idea of pleasing someone, no matter where. And of that person keeping me safe from the consequences.”
My voice trailed off into silence. This was so deeply vulnerable. When the silence stretched into something uncomfortable, I glanced up.
Calder swallowed, the movement highlighting the jagged edge of his Adam’s apple.
But he only said, “Eat.”
chapter
nineteen
CALDER
Shay lifted her fork without complaint and went cross-eyed. A noise somewhere between a moan and sigh rose in her throat. Then she caught herself, shooting an embarrassed look in my direction.
I shifted.
Fuck.
It wasn’t lost on me how fucked up it was meeting Shay for a “first” date when I already knew what she looked like coming.
I couldn’t stop staring. The dress she’d worn on ouractualfirst date was burned into my retinas forever. But this dress? This did something different. Sinful. Black. Clinging to all the perfect, soft parts of her.
My phone vibrated, and as Shay adjusted her napkin, I stole a quick glance to see Butcher had sent me a slew of chaotic, nonsensical emojis: a cloud, a robot, the demon face, two emojis of the woman dancing, and the fucking Puerto Rican flag.
