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Chapter Three
James woke early, as was his habit, and slipped quietly out of bed. At just shy of five a.m. the sky outside was still dark, and at this time of year would be for a couple more hours. Normally he’d open the blackout curtains so that when dawn broke, the east-facing room would flood with light. Amanda claimed that it was easier to wake up when the sun was shining, but this morning he left them closed. She didn’t have to work, and he wanted to let her sleep.
She’d had a rough night.
He glanced back at the bed where she lay sleeping, curled up on her side with the blankets covering most of her face, so the wild tangle of her hair was all that was visible. She’d slept heavily, only shifting position a couple of times in the night, a sure sign of exhaustion. The long car ride, plus what had turned into a pretty hard scene, had taken a toll, and she’d nodded off during the movie they’d put on after dinner.
He looked at her for a moment longer, before stepping into the bathroom. He took care of business quickly, then slipped back into the bedroom to gather a T-shirt and a pair of sweats, opening and closing the dresser drawers as quietly as he could, and carried the clothes with him into the hall.
With the bedroom door shut securely behind him, he dressed before taking the stairs to the main floor and heading for the kitchen.
The wood floors were cold on his feet, though he barely noticed. He went through the familiar task of pulling the gourmet coffee beans out of their canister and grinding them up. Amanda would want some when she woke, even without work on the agenda, and though he didn’t drink coffee himself, he enjoyed the ritual of making it. He especially enjoyed doing it the morning after a scene, when he knew his beloved would be off kilter, and he could provide a small thing to help right her world again.
He measured the beans into the grinder and set it whirling, his thoughts doing the same. He hadn’t intended for the scene to go where it had last night. They almost never played with erotic humiliation, though not because of any conscious decision to restrict it. It just wasn’t part of their dynamic, which leaned toward the fun and performative. They liked role playing and costumes, and their scenes tended to be low stakes, at least emotionally.
That had changed last night.
He’d intended to have her masturbate for a few moments to finish off her punishment—which wasn’t really a punishment at all, even though shehadbroken one of their few hard-and-fast rules. They’d been together long enough that a lot of their pre-scene negotiation happened in a kind of shorthand. If Amanda started acting the brat, the way she had last night, he could either shut it down or let it roll. If he let it roll, it was understood that what followed was all in good fun, and that no actual punishment would be forthcoming.
He hadn’t shut her down, so she’d rolled with the bratty submissive character, and he’d rolled with her. At first.
He frowned and went over the scene in his mind, his stomach tight with unease. It had started out typical, the spanking and the teasing in line with how they usually played, but when he’d positioned himself at the foot of the bed and ordered her to masturbate, something had changed.
She’d looked embarrassed, and he’d known immediately it wasn’t part of the role. Amanda was a good actress, but even an Oscar-caliber performer would have a hard time replicating the physical signs of humiliation. The flushed face and neck, the hammering pulse. The playful glint in her eyes had been replaced by nerves, even a little bit of fear, and that wasn’t something he saw often.
It was so rare that he’d nearly called it off, but then he realized something else—it had turned her on. Her pupils had dilated, and her breathing had hitched the way it did when she was caught up. And then she’d obeyed.
It had taken all his discipline to keep from falling on her like a starving wolf.
He poured the freshly ground beans into the coffee maker, then crossed to the sink to fill the pot with water. He knew they’d need to discuss what had happened, how it had made her feel, but he’d held his tongue last night. Unless she safeworded out of a scene, or it had otherwise ended badly, Amanda liked to take her time processing. The things he was ready to talk about immediately—what worked, what didn’t, how she felt, how he felt, and so on—she would need time to mull over. When it was clear that she’d been in a good place last night, he’d concentrated on aftercare, knowing that either this morning or later today she’d be ready to talk about it in depth.
He poured the water into the coffeemaker and turned it on, then crossed the open space to the living room. A flick of a switch had the gas fireplace roaring to life, filling the room with light and warmth. He chose a seat on the sofa, and while the coffeemaker burbled and bubbled across the room, picked up the book his wife had given him for Christmas and settled down to wait for her.
Amanda followed the glorious scent of coffee into the kitchen. She’d slept later than she’d intended—with the curtains closed, the bedroom was like a cave—but she didn’t have to go to work until next week and neither did James, so she didn’t care that she’d slept half the day away.
She shuffled into the kitchen, wrapped in one of James’ robes, with a thick pair of socks on her feet to keep the icy hardwoods from assaulting her bare toes, and headed straight for the coffee pot.
The little clock on the machine was a glowing red blur, reminding her that she’d forgotten her glasses again. Annoyed that turning forty-six this year had apparently triggered what her younger sister liked to call Middle Age Vision, she grabbed a blurry mug from the blurry cabinet and filled it with blurry coffee.
A soft laugh from the living room made her turn to find her husband lounging on the sofa, an open book in his lap and a smile on his face.
“Forgot your glasses again, didn’t you?” he asked, clearly amused.
She wrinkled her nose at him, sipping her coffee as she crossed the room. “I’m not used to them yet.”
He raised an eyebrow and shifted his legs to make room for her. “You might get used to them if you actually wore them.”
She leaned down to kiss him, then eased down beside him. “I don’t want to get used to them,” she grumbled into her coffee. “I don’t think I really need them, anyway.”
“You couldn’t see me clearly last night.”
She frowned, twisting her head to look up at him. And he was blurry, dammit. “Yes, I could.”
“When I was sitting on the bench, sure. But you didn’t see me get the condom and the lube from the bedside table, did you?”
She sniffed. “That’s because I was dizzy from three orgasms, and you were being sneaky.”
“I’m not that sneaky,” he pointed out. “Admit it, I was blurry.”
