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“Cadence is exactly the same. She pushes herself and then has to rest but she never listens to my advice unless she’s face down over my lap!” He gave a deeper chuckle. Josie ground her teeth.
“Can I say hello to your patient?”
“Sure, come on through.”
She stiffened.Uh-oh! Quickly she drew the throw around herself.
“Hi there! I hear you’ve been in the wars with your ankle. Max tells me you were lucky and it’s only sprained.”
She threw Max a glare; he grinned back and went back into the kitchen. She stared at Marcus Devon. He smiled at her in a suspiciously friendly way. “Yes, a jogging injury,” she told him curtly.
He frowned. “I hear you went off-road. I’d advise you to stay on the path; there are bears and mountain cats roaming these mountains.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Geez, the man was pompous.
Max appeared with her sandwich and handed her the plate. “Yeah, I told her that already. I reckon she’ll be fine with a couple of days’ rest. When did you want her to start work?”
“Oh, a week from today would be fine.”
She stared at Marcus Devon. “You haven’t offered me the job yet!” She sounded childishly belligerent, even to her own ears.
He grinned, ignoring her tone but she noticed Max’s scowl and her bottom clenched.
“That’s really why I’m here, to finalize things with you. Your first day will be mainly paperwork and orientation; you’ll soon find your feet. Oh, Max, I have a backlist of patients all ready for you, mainly small operations requiring local anesthesia. The backlist should keep you busy for quite a while. Admittedly we don’t have the level of excitement a military hospital has to offer but nonetheless the people waiting desperately require your expertise.”
“Hey, sounds good to me, Marcus. I’ve had my fill of shattered bodies. Give me some simple cases requiring local and sedation and I’ll be one happy guy.”
The men moved slowly toward the kitchen, chatting about the various patient complaints requiring surgery.
Josie bit into her sandwich. She was annoyed by the way Marcus Devon ignored her, treated her like a child, referred all his questions about her health to Max. Yes, she occasionally called Max ‘Daddy’ but she was no ‘Little’. It was a kind of game between them. She also called him ‘Master’ from time to time, but she was no slave. As far as she was concerned their relationship was defined beyond submissive and dominant, she liked the affinity that they had, the yin and the yang.
She considered herself a modern woman, one who was good at her job, in control of her destiny. So what if she’d decided she preferred the idea of being submissive in the bedroom? She didn’t want a relationship like her grandparents. She thought Max understood her, that hegother, but perhaps moving in together so quickly had been a mistake?
Chapter 8
Josie’s ankle healed without residual problems. When Cadence Devon phoned and invited her over for a coffee, she was able to walk the distance to their house. Josie was curious about Marcus Devon’s home life. She thoroughly enjoyed hearing how Cadence had applied for the position as the children’s nanny despite suffering from a severe leg injury. Cadence told the tale of Marcus’s frustration over her determination to do everything that every nanny would normally do with the children, even though it tired her and hurt her injured legs. She made the story sound sweet and humorous but Josie realized that Marcus Devon must have fallen deeply in love with Cadence when she showed such resilience and courage after the horrendous accident that damaged her limbs. Josie cringed as Cadence told her about the night her drunken ex had driven his car into her, crushing her between the car and a wall. Her respect for her friend doubled after hearing how she had rallied with a strong determination to walk again. Josie knew that she had made a good friend, one she was proud to know.
The following day, Charmagne asked her out to lunch. They had great fun together, the lively young woman filled her in on so many things about living in Corbin’s Bend that Josie became quite muddled about who was partnered with whom and they both ended up doubled up with laughter when she tried to learn each of the couples’ names and ended up pairing the wrong names to the wrong partners, which caused Charmagne to giggle helplessly. Josie enjoyed her mentor’s company and found that chat flowed easily between them. However, because she and Brent were in a different kind of relationship from Josie and Max, she felt her new friend could not understand the complexities of her BDSM relationship with Max as her dominant.
Sandy turned up on her doorstep a couple of days later; she seemed genuinely surprised to hear about Josie’s fall during their run and exclaimed in surprise when told about Josie spraining her ankle. She explained that she’d put her ear buds in to listen to her music as she ran, then later when she’d turned around to look for Josie she seemed to have vanished. She said that she’d assumed Josie had gone home and had thought no more about it.
While they chatted, Sandy noticed Josie’s new nail polish, a dull silver. Josie had fetched the varnish and offered to paint her friend’s nails for her. They watched TV while waiting for the varnish to dry, giggling together over an old episode of ‘I Love Lucy.’ When the episode finished and her nails were dry, Sandy left with a breezy promise to call again soon. It was only after she’d gone that Josie realized she still hadn’t got her new friend’s contact number. She cursed; this was a bummer because out of the three young women she’d met, Sandy was the only one in a submissive relationship. She, out of her new friends, was the one most likely to understand Josie’s dilemma over being a full-time sub.
On the Friday night, Max took Josie out for dinner. They saw Jonathon and another man sitting in the window seat of the restaurant. He introduced them to his partner, Ben, and it was obvious to them both that he was the top in their relationship. They shared a drink with the two men, chatting amiably until their meal arrived. Then they departed back to their own table. Josie felt a sense of belonging; it was nice to know people.
Max told her that his mentor was an Irish guy called Jim O’Brien. Apparently he was a Dom too and married to a sub called Ange. They were married with children. Josie wondered how the dynamic worked around a family situation and was pleased to hear that they had been invited over to their house for a barbeque on the following day, Saturday. She would be able to indulge her curiosity about them and witness another D/s relationship first hand.
They were due at her grandparents’ for lunch on Sunday. Her grandmother was preparing a traditional English roast, Sunday roast beef, in order to welcome them to Corbin’s Bend. This, they decided, was when they would announce their big news. Max had asked Josie to marry him and she’d accepted his proposal. They had no ring as yet but that didn’t worry Josie, especially since she was not exactly having second thoughts about marriage, only about rushing a date to be married. She wondered if she was simply overwhelmed by everything that had happened recently. Moving so far away and living together, changing her job, all these things were big deals on their own but taken as a whole; well, she was bound to feel bamboozled.
* * *
Saturday dawnedbright but as Max pointed out to her Colorado was famed for its sunlight, being one of the sunniest inland states of America. Josie wanted a bath and since Max knew that to be code for all the little beauty treatments she wanted to use before they went out, he left her in peace and headed into town and the Dome. Ben had told him there was a gym as part of the complex and he wanted a workout, most especially using some resistance.
He was worried about Josie. She hadn’t been herself since he’d arrived but he didn’t understand her problem. She was vague, stating repetitively that she was a sub in the bedroom. He was unclear as to her meaning. He tried all the usual ways of getting her to open up to him but all she did was repeat the irritating mantra. Perhaps he should just ignore her and see how things settled down for them after a month or so. If they remained the same then he would take her away for a weekend, somewhere nearby to a good club where they could play and he could ‘torture’ her secret from her. His mouth watered at the thought of having her on a St. Andrew’s Cross, flogger in hand, making her come until she gave in and talked to him. By the time he arrived at the Dome, he was suffering from a raging hard on and decided to circle the enormous building at a jog until his member settled down enough to allow him inside without lancing someone!
They’d been all over one another since he arrived yet she still had the power to render him insanely horny just thinking about her—to his mind, Josie was a dangerously sexy woman.
* * *
