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It was snagged and stretched out, but I helped her put it on and then leaned to pick up my coat. I brushed off as much sawdust as I could and studied Juliet’s face. “You should leave your hair down,” I suggested as she tugged at her curls.
“Oh.” Her arms dropped at her sides. “Yeah. Well. Okay. You really dirtied me up, though. I should probably go home.”
“I’ll take you.”
“You don’t have to.”
I sighed and held her against me a second time, stroking her neck, massaging her ear. “Do you not want me to take you home because you don’t want to have sex again? Because we don’t have to have sex again.”
“I think I’m just basically…” She paused, swallowing. “Just basically scared shitless of what we just did.”
“I’m going to take you home and stay with you until you feel less scared, okay?” I forced her to meet my gaze. “Because you shouldn’t feel scared. I enjoyed what we did. Did you enjoy it?”
She nodded, with another small laugh that sounded a little less hysterical. “I enjoyed it. It was just a little crazy. Like, really crazy.”
“It was really fucking crazy,” I agreed. “But that’s okay. Are you ready to go now?”
“I have to check out with the gallery manager first. Have to check with him before I leave. Can you meet me out front?” She rubbed her forehead. “What time is it?”
I checked my watch. “Almost eleven o’clock.”
She was sex drunk, rumpled and gorgeous. Anyone she talked to would know she’d just been fucked. I moved ahead of her to open the door, then checked my phone as it vibrated in my pocket. A text from Milo.
It’s Sat night. Where the fuck are u?
Busy, I typed.
He sent back a trio of fire emojis. Again?
I muted the conversation and followed Juliet back out into the gallery—not the sex club Milo was texting me from, but the actual art gallery where I’d come to find her. I never imagined when I touched her arm earlier this evening that things would turn out the way they did.
She stopped in the bathroom to clean up, and I thought, my cum is inside her. We fucked bareback. She’d said that she trusted me enough to do that, and I hoped she could be trusted too. I hoped she really had an IUD, or I might be fucked.
My cock wanted to worry about that later. It stirred to life as I imagined my cum escaping her skimpy thong and running down the insides of her thighs to collect in the cuffs of her socks.
By the time she emerged from the bathroom, I’d willed the erection away. No more sex tonight, not until we pinned down what had happened between us, and agreed on whether to move forward in some kind of D/s relationship. It was important to talk things out right at the start. Or the end, whatever she decided.
No drama or misunderstandings. I couldn’t bear to trudge into that territory again, especially with her.
Chapter Ten: Juliet
I dreamed of the feel of him against me, his cock shoving inside me. I dreamed of the concrete wall and the strain of my arms bound behind my back, then startled awake in the dark as Fort stretched his long, hard body along my back. This happened several times, and each time it shocked me. Once, when I had trouble settling down again, he took my wrists in his hands and held them against my headboard, and my eyes drifted closed just like that.
We hadn’t talked yet about anything that had gone down between us. We’d showered together when we got to my apartment, quietly and awkwardly, and gone to bed wearing a layer of underwear, presumably to talk in the morning.
But when I woke, harsh daylight wresting my eyes open, he was gone. His side of the bed was made up, down to the pile of ruffled pillows stacked against the headboard where he’d held my wrists.
Had I imagined the whole thing? No. I could still feel him on me, in me. All those things had happened, even if he’d stolen from my bed in the light of day. I still couldn’t process what had happened between us at the gallery, might never be able to process it, so maybe it was for the best that he’d gone.
I got up and stumbled to the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Once the water was warm, I washed away the scent of his cologne and the smell of him in my hair. I shaved and slathered on scented lotion after I dried off, and dressed in Sunday morning clothes—faded gym shorts and a natty, secondhand t-shirt with the number 55 silkscreened on the back. I started to dry my hair, then gave up and corralled the mess back out of my eyes with a fuzzy blue headband.
I went down the hall to the kitchen, thinking I’d need to lock my door after Fort’s pre-dawn escape, but he wasn’t gone. He stood by my apartment’s only window, wearing his white shirt and slacks from the night before. He turned when he heard me.
“Oh, hi,” I said. I regretted putting on the weekend hangout clothes as he ran his eyes over my outfit. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
“We were going to talk, weren’t we?”
“Yes. Of course.” I padded into my kitchen. “Do you want some tea?”
“Do you have coffee?”
I sorted through my collection of brew pods. “No. Sorry.”
He smiled, walking over to sit on my couch. “That’s okay. I’ll have some tea. Thank you.”
He was being pretty obvious about keeping his distance, about not touching me. We’d had sex, and it was truly, mind-numbingly incredible, but it seemed more and more like an impetuous, one-time-only encounter. The man on my couch had dragged me into a dark room, bound my hands behind my back, and shoved his huge, hard cock in my vagina until I had the strongest orgasm of my life. That had happened, and now…
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as my brewing machine spit out the first cup of tea.
I turned to look at him. That man had done those things. I didn’t know how to put my thoughts into words.
“What do you like in your t
ea?” I asked instead.
“I never drink tea. Surprise me.”
I added milk and sugar and carried his cup over on a mismatched saucer. “I can make you some toast if you like…or…” I grimaced. “I mostly eat out. I don’t have very much food.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He took the saucer, holding my gaze. I couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t morning-after pleasantry, but it wasn’t an unpleasant expression either. It was something cautious, something in-between.
“If you check your phone, I’ve had my doctor send my most recent STI test results,” he said as I headed back to the kitchen.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did. I don’t want you to worry.” He took a sip of tea and blew out a breath. “Fuck, that’s hot.”
“It’s tea. It’ll be hot for a little while.”
He gave me a look that said, Don’t be a smartass. It made me shiver.
I put in my own tea pod. He watched me do this like it was utterly endearing, or ridiculous. God knew what kind of hot drink setup he had in his fancy penthouse.
“I don’t have a doctor on call,” I said over my shoulder. “And I haven’t been tested in a while because I haven’t been sexually active lately. But I go to my lady doctor once a year, if you want those records.”
He looked bemused. “I won’t requisition your records. You’re too artless to lie.”
I turned to him as more tea spit out of my machine. “What does that mean?”
“You don’t know what artless means?”
I knew what it meant, and I knew why he thought I was that way, but I didn’t know if he meant it as a compliment or an insult. Because Fort St. Clair wasn’t artless. Oh no. He was artful, composed, put together like some luxury watch. I turned back to my tea, but I could feel his gaze on my back.
Once my tea was done, I crossed to join him on the sofa, leaving some space between us for the questions and uneasiness to fit. He put his cup on the table behind him, then reached across the space to touch the top of my knee. His fingers trailed over the place he’d grabbed me last night, lightly, nothing sexual now. He wanted to discuss things. A future for us, maybe.
