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He’d never asked, had he? At the club, it wasn’t an issue for him. Up until the past few days, he didn’t engage with her sexually outside of it, and he hadn’t sought that kind of relationship. Her business was her business.
Yet, looking at those male imprints on her living space, it was feeling very much like his business.
He noted a dozen moving boxes in the shadows near the bed platform. When Skye followed his glance, she started typing. “I haven’t been here long. I had a place in Algiers, because I liked the river ferry ride, and I grew up in that neighborhood, but I’d outgrown my place there and I wanted to be closer to work. This place used to be Ben O’Callahan’s.”
Tiger knew Ben. A Dom sadist at Club Progeny, he was married to a spitfire submissive, Marcie. And completely devoted to her.
“I have plans to make it more my space, but work has been busy. I’m taking my time with it.” Skye’s gaze coursed over the living area as she continued to type, glancing at Tiger to watch his face as he read the words. “He didn’t live here full time. Itwas mostly a mancave slash private dungeon for his submissives and private parties.”
“Why’d he sell it?”
She lifted a shoulder. Typed. “Knowing him, he found another place he liked even better. Gave me a good deal on it and included most of the appliances and all the screens.”
She gestured to the construction curtains. “Plus a couple pieces of his equipment. So I have my own private dungeon over there. I haven’t used it yet. I’ve never really brought that part of my life into my home.”
When she raised a speculative look to him, taking her time over the terrain, his cock stirred. “But it’s been fun to consider ideas for it,” she finished.
Now that his hackles had settled over the male roommate question—Christ, he hoped she hadn’t noticed that reaction—he saw more evidence that this was her space alone. It also told him what occupied most of her time when she was here. Nearly a third of the area was taken up by a half dozen tables, arranged in a blocky S shape. They were laden with graphic design boards and computer equipment. The horseshoe at one end of the S was her command center. A large computer beneath the table glowed with blue lights, three monitors arranged on the surface above it.
One of the tables held her drones. He expected the high ceiling here made for a good test area. When he moved close enough to touch a toy helicopter next to them, she smiled.
“For Sy’s nephew, Butch,” she typed. “Remote control communication is glitchy. I told him I would fix it.”
Butch wasn’t the kid’s given name, but Tiger remembered Sy called him that because the eight-year-old was tenacious as a bulldog.
From sessions with Skye, Tiger had already learned communication wasn’t limited to the words that came out of aperson’s mouth. Lately, she’d been showing him just how much of it had not a damn thing to do with words at all.
His gaze fell back to the glitchy remote, whose communication problems she would fix. The irony in her being TRA’s IT/Communications manager was starting to seem not so ironical.
Returning his attention to her trio of screens, he noted a bunch of gaming figurines glued to the top of the monitors. “What do you play?”
Going to her keyboard, she tapped in her password so the darkness left the center screen. A game screen came up in its place. The character front and center, ready to be put into action, was a tall warrior woman with a hair style like hers. The sword she was carrying would definitely have been called overcompensating if she was playing a male. He bet she was a kickass gamer.
He glanced at all the technology. “Well, this all makes me feel dumb as a post.”
Her expression went flat neutral. She called up a dialogue box on the righthand monitor and typed a question. “Will you teach me how to tune up a motorcycle? I’d like to learn.”
He blinked at her. “Sure.”
As she straightened, he was surprised to see that neutral look shift into five-alarm, pure ball-busting Mistress. Fuck, he’d stepped into something.
She signed furiously, then typed what he assumed she’d signed. Or she’d cussed him out in ASL before doing the typing bit.
“Never call yourself dumb. Why would you do that?” As she kept going, he could actually see the force going into the thump of her fingertips on the keyboard. Cautiously, he drew closet. When she stiffened, he would have stepped back, but shetouched his hand, an imperious command to stay where he was. He took in the words as they scrolled across the screen.
“When I take my car in for a brake check, my life is in the hands of the mechanic, same as if I was going in for brain surgery. Would you want your neurosurgeon working on your brakes?”
Puzzled, he gave her a slow smile. “Would you want your mechanic performing brain surgery?” He lifted a hand as her eyes narrowed. “I hear you, Mistress. And not to rile you, but I didn’t say Iwasdumb. I said I felt that way, looking at all your genius tech stuff. It was a temporary thing. I’ve recovered. Promise.”
She gave him another even look. Four more bold taps. “Good.”
A pop-up dialogue appeared on the computer screen, an invitation to raid. As she dealt with that, he stepped back to give her the privacy to talk to her online gaming buddies. It allowed him a chance to take a closer look at her space, as well as digest what had just happened.
She was protective of him, of his opinion of himself, and it wasn’t the first time he’d seen her react that way. She was quick to leap on him in session if he tore himself down in any way.
But this was the first time he’d thought about why it was such a sore spot with her. His conclusion stirred anger in his gut. He expected even as an adult, there were times she was treated like she was mentally handicapped. Never mind the cruelty of kids when she was growing up. She’d probably been called stupid or dumb a lot.
Which brought the irony back into it. Everything he saw here and knew secondhand from her fellow Mistresses said the woman was brilliant. But she didn’t limit herself to that. As he wandered within her view, he saw decently executed paintings with her name on them, pottery, well-arranged flowers,complicated puzzles in process. Fencing swords carefully tucked into an umbrella holder. Roller blades.
