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A trust you’ve been begging him to give you.
Put on your big girl panties, and prove yourself worthy of that trust.
“Did you meet her—Abbie,”—she could do this, she could do this—“at your club?”
He nodded evenly. “In a way, yes.”
“In a way?”
“We met at a munch.” He went on, as soon as she questioned that with an open frown, “Fancy term for a kink community event at a vanilla venue.”
Welcome, deeper scowl. “And that works out for everyone…how?”
“It works out just fine.” An authentic smile twisted his lips. “Because it gives everyone a chance to connect without the possibility of clothes coming off.” He paused thoughtfully. “The best power exchanges start from the space over your shoulders, not beneath your waist.”
“Yeah.” Her lips curved into an answering smile. “I understand that now.”
His fingertip traced the edge of her face. “I believe that.”
She leaned her cheek toward his touch, cherishing the infusion of his energy from the simple contact. If anything proved the truth of his assertion, this was truly it. They were both fully clothed but every fiber of her body acknowledged how easily he could claim governance over it again, if he so chose. “But I didn’t get it, before now. I guess I just saw what a lot of the world does. The wicked toys, the shiny furniture, the kinky costumes…”
“All fun in their own right,” he offered. “But not the main point of the dynamic.”
God, how tempted she was to follow him further down that tangent trail. She longed to talk about toys, torments, and “all the shinies” with him for hours—and to definitely do something about where their libidos went because of it—but that wouldn’t honor the path they were supposed to be on. She’d specifically pushed him for this information, and he’d climbed out of his basement with his honesty about it. Shoving him back into the darkness because she couldn’t handle anything more than a name was not cool.
“And Abbie? She comprehended that point too?”
A wistful smile began in his eyes and crinkled the corners of his lips. “She did.” His lips parted as if to add more, but he reined back the initial thought, seeming to change direction, before attesting, “Probably a little too much, now that I look at things with a little room.”
A little room.
An inner victory dance about that certainly wasn’t mature. Or diplomatic.
Maturity and diplomacy were overrated.
While her psyche cha-cha’ed around its private bonfire, she calmly said, “Well, there’s an opening for about a thousand stories.”
“Maybe not a thousand.” The reply was as reflective as his gaze, now directed across the room. “But we had compatible needs, in and out of the dungeon, and it worked out well for a lot of years.”
“Dungeon?” She repeated the word out of bafflement—or so she assured her inner dance party, quickly changing from a cha-cha into something more exotic. And erotic. Something much better suited for a dungeon run by a Dominant like John Franzen. If that was even what he meant…
“Another kinkster Easter Egg.” He glanced quickly to her, as if trying to gauge her reaction as he finished. “A way of saying play room, for those of us into fire, whips, and chains instead of pads, rope, and ticklers.”
Though he was casual about the innuendo’s tone, his watchfulness intensified—not helping her newest desire to just kiss him. Or strip for him. Oh hell, why not both?
Because that option would advance them nowhere.
She had to settle for jerking her head up then whispering, “Then I guess I’m a dungeon kind of girl.”
Franz’s groan, emanating from deep in his chest, almost changed her mind about the kiss-and-strip plan. She sucked it up for both of them, clearing her throat as if simply moving on to a new agenda item in a committee meeting.
“So tell me why Abbie was so…” Special? Remarkable? “Compatible.” In the end, his own term was truly the most tolerable one, driving her to yet another inward kick in the figurative ass. Since when had she settled for simply tolerable? The green monster in her psyche was more disgusting than her weight in pus, and she wasn’t proud of it.
“It’s pretty simple to explain.” John spoke slowly, as if the statement were a new revelation. “I mean, the libretto fits the score about how things matched up in our dungeon sessions—and aside from a few hours of aftercare, she was firm about not wanting anything deeper in a relationship with me.”
“So she was crazy?” The rejoinder spilled without a second thought, though she stood by it. The man was smart, funny, protective, and passionate. Then there was the whole body of a god and cock of a stallion thing too…
John chuckled as if reading that particular thought. “No. She was a psychologist—a leading one in the city, actually—with a couple of books about healing from your past, as well as one of those psycho-babble call-in radio shows.”
