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“Oh honey, he wants you,” Angel said, reaching down to pat her head. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you. I had a little chat with Adam and he had a little chat with Rick... and apparently Rick said something to the effect that you don’t want him.”
“What?!” Outraged, Maria sat straight up, nearly spilling her drink. Which, might not be a bad thing at this point, because she was immediately dizzy from the fast movement, a clear indication she’d gone well past her usual alcohol limit.
Angel snickered. “Yeah, apparently he thought you were going to give the ‘let’s just be friends’ talk.”
Olivia burst out laughing. “Oh gawd... Maria you should see the look on your face.”
Laughing ruefully along with the others, Maria tried to clamp down on an emotion. Any one emotion. They were all kind of distant and fuzzy feeling. Hope, confusion, relief, anger... all mingled together and yet somehow separate from her. Probably an effect of the booze.
“Why the hell would he think I just wanna be friends,” Maria complained, putting down her drink on the coffee table so she could throw her hands up in the air. “I let him spank me, tie me up, and then put his hands and fingers all over me! And in me! My nipples have been sore all day!”
About to say something, Jessica paused, thinking over Maria’s words. “Your nipples?”
“Yeah, he put little pinchy thingies on them.” Maria pouted, rubbing her hands over her breasts.
“Oooooh, clamps. I like clamps.” Angel made a happy little sighing noise. Dammit. Maria wanted to sound like that when she talked about Rick. What the fuck was wrong with him?
“Oh honey, he’s a man,” Lexie said, sympathetically. Oops. Maria had spoken out loud. “Did you guys talk after the scene last night?”
“Yeah...” Maria tried to focus and remember. “He was super nice and cuddly. Asked if I wanted to go out for dinner and back to Stronghold tonight and I asked if we could talk about it today. Except when I went to the pool to talk to him about it, I got the cold shoulder.”
“Awww Rick... nooooo...” Jessica groaned, running her hands over her face while Hilary giggled at the dramatics.
“What? What am I missing?”
“Boy logic,” Angel said sagely, nodding her head. “Trust me, I’m like the guru of boy logic. I will bet you... I will bet you anything, that when you didn’t immediately say yes to dinner and sexy time, he took it as a ‘no.’”
“But that’s not what I said.”
“Yeah, but I bet that’s what he heard,” Olivia chimed in. “You’d be amazed at how sensitive some of these alpha guys can be. Especially when they’re worried about being rejected. Rick was already second guessing himself constantly when it came to you.”
“So when you said you wanted to talk today, he thought everything was a big fat no go,” Angel finished up triumphantly.
“But I meant what I said. I wanted to talk,” Maria griped, clenching down her jaw. An emotion was definitely coming through more clearly now. Anger. She was pissed off. “I just needed some time... last night was just a bit overwhelming, you know?”
“We know. He even probably knows. But...” Olivia sighed. “Try to remember that he was probably overwhelmed too. And Rick’s a full-steam ahead kind of guy. Once he gets going, it’s hard for him to remember that ‘slow-down’ doesn’t mean full stop.”
“A trait most of our men share,” Hilary said, shaking her head with amusement. “I swear, I think that’s why they like the stoplight safe word system. Very clear directions for them.”
Maria shook her head, disbelieving. “Great. Okay. So obviously he and I need to talk but... ARGH. Why couldn’t he just speak up last night? Or this morning? Dumbass.”
“You know what we should do,” Lexie said slowly, as if thinking out loud. “We should go make him talk.”
Brilliant. Lexie was fucking brilliant. That’s exactly what they should do. After all, Rick had said BDSM was key to communication. No wait, communication was key to BDSM. Yeah, that’s what he’d said. So she was gonna make him communicate.
Dammit.
17
Maudlin. That’s how he felt. Fucking maudlin.
It hadn’t been the best evening. When he’d gotten home from Adam’s office he’d hung around his apartment, passing the time by going on a cleaning spree which had left his kitchen and bathroom sparkling. He’d even dusted all the surfaces and then vacuumed. Just trying to get time to pass faster until Maria should be home from work.
He’d knocked on her door at seven o’clock.
Again at eight.
And one last time at nine.
