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“You could,” he agrees, “but right now, we’re talking about you. Should I guess the reasons you like your men here and gone?”
“Should I guess the reasons you like your women here and gone?”
“Go for it, sweetheart,” he says, and the challenge is clear. If I make my guess, he can make his without my rightful objection. But I do object, deny, and reject the idea of this man, who sees too much as it is, seeing anything more than my body. The rest is off-limits.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to know. Who you have in your bed or in your life, aside from a wife you’ve said you don’t have, is none of my business. And we’ve already filled this night with too many words. Tonight isn’t about conversation.”
I dart away from him to the door, opening it, but I also know that I do not have to rush. He won’t rush after me. He’s a man of control. A dominant that will follow at his pace, pursue in his way. And he’ll catch me, but it won’t be for conversation, which is exactly why I’m making him pursue me. Entering the house, I notice that the light is on, when I don’t remember it being on, but then, it was daylight, and I was in a rush. Dismissing the concern as nothing, I walk down the hallway, and I’m almost to the living room when I hear Nick’s steps in the foyer, the door shutting behind him, locks turning. Adrenaline rushes through me, no longer a slight bump in energy but a fierce surge, but really, how can it not? Nick Rogers is nothing if not an injection of adrenaline. And while I call him a dominant, that isn’t just a personality trait. He is a sexual dominant, and, as I expected when I threw out the term “hard limit,” he has experience in a world where that word has heightened meaning. That knowledge should have been enough for me to decline this encounter, and yet, it wasn’t. I don’t know what that says about who I am, or what I want or need, and I haven’t for two years now. Maybe before, but maybe that’s the gift Nick will give me. I’ll figure it out through him.
Entering the living room, I turn the dial on the wall that brings the lights to a soft glow, a chill clinging to the air. Nick’s footsteps grow closer, and I move deeper into the room, walking past the kitchen to my right and around the overstuffed chocolate brown couch and chairs, my destination the fireplace directly in front of them. Once I’m there, I flip the switch on to heat the room, and I can feel the moment Nick joins me, feel his energy, his dominance. It crackles and snaps, the way the gas fire does not, charging my skin, and suddenly, I am hyperaware of the tear in my dress that goes nearly to my belly button.
Inhaling, I turn to face him, and I don’t use his jacket to cover myself. I let it gape open, my lower body exposed. He’s leaning one broad shoulder on the wall just inside the archway that encases the hall, directly in front of me. “I thought you weren’t running from me, Faith?”
“I told you. I’m not running from you, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Then why am I over here and you’re over there?”
“That’s your choice, not mine.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” I say, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it on a brown stool in front of the fireplace, a fluffy cream-colored rug beneath it. Exposed now for Nick’s viewing, I straighten, a silent command from me to him that he look at me, but he does exactly what I expect—what any true dominant would do—and that’s not what I’ve bid. His gaze is fixed unwaveringly on my face. His way of telling me that he is in control, that he looks and touches at his own inclination, as will I. It’s simply his way, a part of who he is, and even a huge portion of what turns me on about him. But my mind flashes back to a time when another dominant was in my life. When I was naked and exposed, tied up. Submitted, and it was pleasure, and then it wasn’t anymore. And that has nothing to do with Nick and everything to do with my choices and my own self-discovery. I am not a submissive, but I want this man who will want that of me, and I do not understand it, or myself, right now.
Certain Nick is going to read my trepidation, if that is even what I’d call it, I need something to fill the room other than him and my hyped-up, crazy energy. Ruling out the television behind me above the fireplace, I decide on music and quickly walk to the artsy, built-in entertainment center in the corner. Once I’m there, facing a portion of the dozen shelves that gradually get shorter and smaller as they climb the wall, I can feel Nick move again. God. I can feel him just like he said he could me, even when he’s not touching me, which is exactly why he is nothing like my past. Nothing made me feel this then. No one made me feel this.
I reach for the CD player and hit power and then play, knowing that it contains a CD of random downloaded music that is about as eccentric as the taste he described in the car. Music fills the air, an Ed Sheeran song, and with another deep breath, I rotate, finding Nick sitting on the ottoman to one of the chairs, angled toward me. And while sitting might seem a submissive position, it’s not. It’s him watching me. It’s him on the throne of power, while I stand in front of him. Which is exactly why I sit down on another stool I keep by the shelf, meant to reach the books on the bottom row now behind me. And I do so with my knees primly pressed together, aware that while my lower belly, legs, and thigh highs are exposed, I’ve denied him a view of what’s in between.
Our eyes lock and hold across the small space of several feet, separating us, a challenge in the air, which I’ve created by choice this time. Can he make me submit? But it’s not a real question. We both know he can. And I don’t have to fear that is all there will be between us, that he will think he can bend my will every moment he’s with me. There is only this moment, this night.
The song skips, and just when I fear I’ll have to break this spell with Nick and change it, it changes on its own to an old nineties hit: Marcy Playground, “Sex and Candy,” and that’s exactly the lyrics that fill the air:I smell sex and candy here. Who’s that lounging in my chair?
Nick arches a brow at the rather appropriate words and says, “Sex and candy?”
My hands press to the cushion on either side of me. “Sometimes, you just need sex and candy.”
“Indeed, you do,” he agrees, leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, his sleeves rolled up to expose several tattoos I cannot make out, and I don’t try. Not when his piercing gaze lingers on my face, and the song continues with:Yeah,mama, this surely is a dream.
“And there she was,” he says, his blue eyes burning with that dark lust we share. “Like double cherry pie,” he adds, followed by the command of, “Open your legs, Faith.”
My breath hitches, and I don’t know what happens. I want to do it. I plan to do it, but nerves erupt in me like I’m some inexperienced schoolgirl. I’m not a schoolgirl, nor am I suppressed or reserved sexually. I didn’t get raped. I don’t fear or dislike sex. And yet I haven’t had it in a very long time. And my heart is racing again, or maybe it never stopped; my mouth is dry. So very dry. Somehow, I’m standing without consciously making that decision and I’m darting toward the connecting kitchen. I enter the archway, open the stainless-steel fridge, and grab a bottle of water. I open it and start guzzling.
Nick is suddenly in front of me, reaching for the bottle and taking a drink, his hand on my hip, leg aligned with mine. “Water?” he asks, looking at the bottle. “I thought you were going for liquid courage, but I didn’t think it would be water.”
“I don’t like to dull my mind with booze,” I say. “My mouth gets dry when I get nervous, but this was really not smart because nothing like a girl needing to pee to ruin the mood and I—”
He kisses me, and the lick of his tongue is cold from the water, and fresh, and I have no idea why, but it calms me. Him touching me, not watching me, calms me, but the kiss is too short and his question too fast. When he pulls back to look at me, he takes the water, setting it in the refrigerator. “Why are you nervous?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Hard limit,” he says. “That phrase comes with experience.” He rotates us slightly and kicks the door shut. “You’ve been a part of a world that doesn’t match your nerves.”
He’s right. It does. “It’s been a long time.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
“Since you were in that world or since—?”
