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It was a twenty-five minute drive between Stronghold and her building, but the silence in the car seemed to be growing heavier by the minute.
She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, and, for once, he had no idea what to say. Normally, after a scene, he’d be asking the submissive about her experience, but he really did not want to hear her gush about how great Michael had been. He’d been able to see for himself how much she’d enjoyed the scene. Definitely not something he was interested in discussing.
With Lexie, they’d usually talk about anything and everything. Hell, he’d known her for years, and even knowing there was a growing mutual attraction between them, things had never been this awkward.
Plus, even though he wanted to talk about where they were going to go from here, he didn’t want to have the conversation while he was driving. It was the kind of conversation that needed to happen when he wasn’t distracted, and he could focus on her. See her reactions. In the dark, in a car, while he needed to be paying attention to the road was not the ideal.
So they sat in silence.
And he distracted himself with thoughts on how to get back at Olivia for her part in tonight’s... activities.
The submissives were all being punished by their Doms. Obviously not something that would work for Olivia. There was no way he could keep her out of the club either, not even temporarily. She hadn’t actually done anything wrong, after all. So he was going to have to get creative. Like most of his friends, Olivia had her stints as a Dungeon Monitor and, since she was still single, running Introduction scenes.
A slow smile curved Patrick’s face.
Usually he tried to match up the dominants and submissives by interest and personality when it came to the Introduction scenes. Olivia preferred strong submissives, ones who liked to challenge their dominant and needed to be pushed into submitting. So when it came to the Introduction scenes, Mistresses Lisa and Erin usually took the eager-to-please submissives - the ones who drove Olivia a little nuts, because there was no struggle for power.
She was not going to be pleased with her next few Introduction scenes.
“What’s so funny?”
Lexie spoke softly, but it was so silent in the car it seemed almost loud. He coughed, just realizing he’d been chuckling under his breath a little at the thought of Olivia’s displeasure.
“Nothing that concerns you,” he said, a little more roughly than he’d meant to. They both fell silent again, and he inwardly cursed himself. Sighing a little, he turned onto her street. “Just thinking about some business with the club.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Surprisingly, she sounded a little unsure of herself. As if she was also having trouble finding the right words to say to him. Well, at least he knew he wasn’t alone.
When he parked in front of her building, she started to move to get out, and then jumped in surprise when he turned off the engine to the car.
“What are you doing?” she asked, obviously not expecting him to get out with her. The streetlights around them gave him just enough light to see her expression.
“I’m coming in, we need to talk.”
Her mouth opened and closed. Then her chin tilted up, making him want to grin. The defiance on her face was clear enough. Obviously she thought he was going to tell her not to come back to Stronghold. Good to know he wasn’t becoming entirely predictable, but he wasn’t sure she’d like his conditions, either.
The amusement grew as she flounced up the stairs in front of him. Fortunately, no one came out of their apartments as they walked, so there was no one else to see the way her skirt fluttered around the tops of her thighs. Practically exposing her ass cheeks.
As soon as he walked into her apartment, the amusement faded quickly.
“What the fuck, Lex?”
It was Spartan. Practically bare. It didn’t look like someone had lived in it for a week, much less months. The apartment consisted of one big room, almost an efficiency except there was a tiny galley kitchen that he could see through a doorway. In the far corner, what looked like two mattresses were stacked on top of each other, serving as a bed. A laptop was plugged into the wall next to it. There was a small table with two mismatched - and rickety looking - wooden chairs, seated facing the huge television. There was one other chair, also facing the television, which Patrick recognized from the Standishes’ house. It was an oversized, red and gold striped armchair that had seen better days, but which Lexie had always been particularly attached to. The television was the only thing he could see that was worth anything.
Boxes were piled against one wall, which explained why she didn’t have any of her pictures or decor out. She hadn’t unpacked yet. Maybe she considered the clothing she’d strewn all over the place to be decoration.
“What?” she asked, sounding unconcerned as she kicked off her shoes and tossed her purse off to the side. Granted, she kicked her shoes off into what appeared to be the “shoe pile” and dropped her purse next to several others, but that sure as hell didn’t match up with Patrick’s idea of neat and clean. Hell, it didn’t match up with Lexie’s either from what he knew.
“How can you live like this?”
Ooooo, the big guy was pissed. Which should really tick her off, since it wasn’t like he got a say in how she lived (not to mention he was totally misjudging the situation), but instead, it just got her kind of hot. Yeah, she was a little sick like that. She’d just finished a scene with another man, and here she was hoping Patrick would give her a spanking for a little messiness.
The way he was eyeing her clothes - that were admittedly all over the place - kind of reminded her of the way he looked when she’d stripped down in his office. There was definitely a little tic going on in his jaw. The one he got when he was getting super cranky. Not angry, cranky. There was a vast difference. Lexie didn’t like actually making him angry. Making Patrick angry made her feel all sick and nauseated inside. However, making him a cranky, muttering ball of pent-up grumpy? Yeah, she liked to do that. Push his buttons. Play with that famous control of his. Angel had told her making Adam grumpy made Angel hot too, so at least Lexie wasn’t alone in her perversion.
“Like what?” she asked, answering his question with a question as she batted her eyes innocently, even though she knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Like… this,” he said, with a frustrated sweep of his hand, indicating the entire inside of her home, as he moved further into the space. He took up a lot of room, making the small apartment feel even smaller as he placed himself in the very center of it. With his leather pants, black shirt, and the sexy scar going down the side of his face, he looked completely out of place, practically tip-toeing around the clothes on the floor. “It looks like you’ve just thrown your clothes everywhere. Your room never looked like this before.”
