by KB Alan
She held up her hands. “Hey, I was just asking. No judgements. I wouldn’t want to go whack a ball around the grass on a day like today, either.” The previous day had been gorgeous, but June gloom had descended that morning, so she hadn’t minded being stuck inside for the shower.
“Dad got called in for an emergency surgery,” Sonya told her. “I told Alec that he and Joe could still go, but they didn’t seem too interested. I think Alec came inside to sneak a peek at the desserts.”
And check on his wife, Natalie figured.
“I better get back out there,” Sonya said, her hand rubbing a small circle over her big baby belly.
“Let Nat use the red wine on Tammy if that bitch says one more word,” Alec said. It sounded an awful lot like a command to Natalie, and she wasn’t surprised in the least when Sonya’s eyes dropped and she gave a little nod. He kissed her forehead and patted her butt as she headed down the hall, her laughter floating back to them.
Natalie smiled and turned to follow, but Alec cleared his throat. “Do you have any questions for me?”
She knew what he meant. Questions about what she’d seen. If she’d known nothing about BDSM, the scene she’d stumbled upon might have seemed a bit odd, though not very. But he’d picked up on the fact that she’d recognized that the hold hadn’t been accidental. While her brain was trying to decide if she should act like she had no idea what he was talking about, her mouth opened up and said, “No, Sir.” She winced. “Damn it.”
He was grinning now. “Hmm. I think you’ve been keeping secrets, little Natalie.”
“Ha! Me? I was at your wedding, and I had no idea you were…” She waved her hand down the hallway.
“Well, if I’d known you wanted to come to our other ceremony, we would have invited you.”
He meant a collaring ceremony. She wrinkled her nose. While she’d seen some happy, committed couples—and multiples—at the club, she’d been soured on the idea of committing to a Dom.
He leaned his shoulder against the wall and studied her. She had to force herself not to squirm. This was Alec. She’d known him for a few years now and considered him a friend. A pseudo-brother. Nothing had changed. Not really, anyway.
“Tell me.”
Her mouth actually opened to do just that, before she slammed it closed and glared at him.
He laughed.
“Look, I might have dabbled a bit in college, but it’s not a thing for me now. It wasn’t right for me.” He frowned, and she rushed on. “But, I mean, I’m cool with it. No judging other people. I just wasn’t made for that.”
She forced herself to stop babbling.
He straightened and put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Sounds like there’s a story there. If you need to tell me, I’m here. Or Sonya. You can talk to us.” He watched her for a second, then kissed her forehead and headed out the back way.
Natalie leaned against the wall, feeling like she’d gone a round or two with a boxer. If David had possessed half of Alec’s Dom energy, she’d probably have gone through with what he’d asked of her. The thought did not sit well.
Putting it out of her mind, she went back into the room in time to help Annalise maneuver into place beside Sonya, so that Tammy wouldn’t be in charge of recording what gifts came from which guests.
By the end of the party, she really had forgotten the incident, and was exhausted from helping to make sure that Sonya’s mom didn’t realize the extent to which her oldest daughter was a bitch to her youngest daughter. Rosa had retired to her bedroom for rest, glowing with pleasure at how well the party had gone. Sonya was blissfully happy, and Tammy had just been handed the garbage bag by Annalise’s mother, with a nod toward the cans out back.
Natalie managed not to laugh until the door was closed, then turned it into a cough when Ophelia raised an eyebrow at her. But she didn’t miss the smirk on the woman’s face as she turned away.
She helped cart presents to Sonya and Alec’s house, along with Annalise and her cousin Ivey. Ivey had to run, but Natalie and Annalise accepted Alec’s offer to order in pizza.
After eating, she curled up in an armchair with Missy P, Sonya’s cat. The beautiful white Persian was purring away under Natalie’s attentive strokes as Annalise and Alec argued about which independent pizza restaurant was the best.
“You’re telling me you didn’t like that?” Alec asked, pointing to his sister’s very empty plate.
“No, just that it would have been better if you’d gone to my place.”
“Your place is slow and we’d still be waiting to eat if I’d called them.”
“Maybe, but it would have been ten times better.”
“Ten times?” His raised eyebrow clearly indicating he expected her to tell the truth.
“Okay. Fine. Twice as good, though, for sure.”
“I disagree, and anyway, I was hungry. Sonya was hungry. Natalie was hungry. You told me you were starving when I asked if you wanted to stay for pizza.”
“That’s not the point.” Annalise’s pout was clearly that of a youngest sibling.
“Well, it’s my point, and my house, so that’s what matters.”
Annalise rolled her eyes but dropped the subject.
Alec turned his attention to Natalie. “Missy P likes you.”
She usually spent her time with the siblings at their parents’ house, where big events were hosted. Alec and Sonya had bought this place last year, and Natalie had come to the barbecue housewarming, but the cat had been safely locked away in a back bedroom for the event.
“She’s a sweetheart. What’s her name from?”
Alec snorted, and Sonya backhanded him lightly on the chest.
“At our last apartment building, our neighbor was an older lady who had to move into an assisted living facility. She couldn’t handle the stairs anymore, and needed someone to check in on her once a day to make sure she had her meals. Her niece helped her get into the place, but wasn’t able to take the cat, unfortunately. Mrs. Egebe named her Misses Princess, but she seems okay with the shortened version.”
As if she knew they were talking about her, Missy P stretched and resettled herself in Natalie’s lap.
“Are you still living in that tiny one-bedroom apartment?” Sonya asked.
“It’s loud and has no air conditioning,” Annalise complained. “I still don’t know why you wouldn’t move in with me and my roommate. We could have afforded a nice three-bedroom apartment if we’d gone in together. One with air conditioning and a heater that works all the time instead of most of the time.”
“Because I like you being my best friend, and I wasn’t going to risk that by being roommates. Didn’t you admit to me that several of your college friends had lost their friendships by moving in together?”
“Yeah, but didn’t I tell you that wouldn’t happen with us?”
“You did. You were also dating Dilbert at the time, and I thought it was best that he have your unreserved attention.”
“You’re such a bitch,” Annalise said, but she was laughing as she did so. “And that wasn’t his name, as you well know.”
“Anyway,” Sonya drawled, bringing their attention back to her. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind a long weekend away from your apartment if you could stay in a lovely house, with air conditioning, a nice backyard, a cat companion, a full fridge, a nice wine selection, and a quiet neighborhood?”
Natalie frowned. “I thought you canceled your trip?”
The couple had planned to go the month before, but then Sonya’s mom had suffered a heart attack, so they’d postponed it. Then, she knew, Alec had gotten concerned about the baby being due in a month.
“She convinced me that Cape Cod was not, in fact, thousands of miles away, and that even if her water broke, we’d still have time to make it to our hospital, but if for some reason we couldn’t, there are several hospitals between here and there. But mostly she promised me that she wouldn’t go into labor on our trip and that if she did, I could
name the baby whatever I want.”
Natalie and Annalise burst into laughter. Natalie especially appreciated that both Alec and Sonya looked smug, as if they’d each won whatever battle had been fought over the weekend getaway to the beach.
“You don’t have a cat sitter lined up?” she asked. “When do you leave?”
Sonya rubbed her belly. “Luke said he’d come, but it’s not like he really wants to. He just works close enough that it wouldn’t be an imposition. But I thought you might actually enjoy it. We leave Friday morning and come home Tuesday afternoon.”
It was hard to remember what kind of cousin Luke was, exactly. Natalie was pretty sure he was a Weber, not a Crawford, but it didn’t much matter. She’d love the opportunity to have a quiet little weekend getaway herself, and told them so.
Alec walked Annalise to her car while Sonya showed Natalie where the cat food was.
“Luke’s great, totally reliable, but I was a tiny bit worried that he’d…well, notice things…and wonder,” Sonya said as she walked Natalie to the litter box. “I hope you don’t mind, but it occurred to me you’d be a little safer in that respect.” She shot a slightly nervous glance at Natalie. “When we were driving home, Alec mentioned you were, um, maybe familiar enough with some of the things we do to be, um…comfortable with me mentioning it.”
Natalie gave her a quick hug. “You can talk freely to me. I wasn’t involved in the lifestyle for long, but enough that I won’t be shocked if you have an odd stockpile of handcuff keys on your key rack.”
Sonya giggled. “I was more thinking Luke would wonder why the plant hooks in the ceiling are super heavy-duty, why there are Velcro straps under the couch cushions, and why the door to the basement is locked.”
Natalie laughed and waggled her eyebrows.
“Honestly, he probably wouldn’t have noticed a thing, but it made me twitchy to worry about it. Thank you for taking those nerves away.”
“My pleasure. Missy P’s a cutie pie and I’ll enjoy my own little vacation. Maybe I’ll even take Monday off, as well.”
“You should,” Alec said, joining them. “There are steaks in the freezer, wine in the cabinet, and a jetted tub in the master bathroom that I’m pretty sure is the reason Sonya insisted we buy this house.”
Sonya snorted. “Right. It had nothing to do with the finished basement, the private back yard, or the built-in grill.”
“I’m simply here to give you all the things your heart desires, my love. Especially when it involves jets.”
By the time she left work on Friday, Natalie was definitely thinking about those jets. She’d only taken a quick lunch to check on Missy P, and had followed Sonya’s suggestion to pull a package of steaks out of the freezer. The rest of the day had been spent working her butt off so she’d feel no guilt in taking Monday off, with a little bit of time devoted to thinking about the jetted tub, a nice bottle of wine, and blissful quiet.
Okay, so she’d also spent a few minutes here and there watching videos online about how to use a giant gas barbecue without screwing it up, blowing up the house, or turning a steak into shoe leather.
She pulled into the driveway, which had a car that hadn’t been there when she’d come at lunch. Glimpsing a familiar figure in the doorway, she gathered her purse and water bottle. Noah Tucker was Alec’s best friend. They’d met a couple of times, but she had no idea why he might be at the house when Alec wasn’t there.
He’d turned away from the door and was waiting for her, phone in one hand, bundle of rope in the other. He’d grown a short, light beard since she’d last seen him, and it suited him. His dark hair was just long enough to give it that slightly messy look that made her want to push her fingers through it. His white skin wasn’t as tan as she remembered, and she deduced he wasn’t spending as much time in the sun as he used to. Or maybe he was just better with sunscreen now.
“Natalie. I was just about to text Alec,” he told her. “No one’s home.”
“Hi Noah. They’re in Cape Cod.”
He frowned. “Alec told me they were leaving on the twelfth. Which is tomorrow, last time I checked.”
“Once again, the fact that Alec’s job does not revolve around a calendar bites someone else in the ass. They left this morning.”
He laughed, and her tummy did a little fluttery thing.
“I was dropping off some rope he asked for. Mind if I leave it with you? Are you cat sitting?”
He held up the purple bundle and her mouth ran away from her. She happened to know that purple was Sonya’s favorite color, and could well imagine what the rope might be used for. “Oh, yeah, every household needs a good supply of soft, strong rope.”
Oh, shit.
Ever since the baby shower on Sunday, she’d been thinking back to her BDSM phase, as she mostly thought of it. She felt her cheeks flame and bit her lip, but hoped that he would take it as the perfectly innocent comment it should sound like…if you weren’t the type of person who thought about rope bondage.
She forced herself to look up and found that his amber eyes had gone a bit wide.
Then a grin slowly stretched across his face as her cheeks got hotter and hotter. As a friend of Alec’s, maybe he knew exactly what she’d meant.
Mortified, she turned her back to him and fumbled the keys out of her purse to open the door. And, of course, dropped the damn things.
“I’ve got it,” he told her, bending down, body close to hers as he scooped up the keys from in front of her feet, leaned around her to fit them into the lock, and shoved the door open.
Damn the man for being so attractive. He was a good few inches taller than her, and she could feel the strength he commanded even though he was barely brushing against her.
They went inside and she dumped her purse and bottle on the table and picked up Missy P, who was sitting with her back to the door, pretending indifference to the fact that it had taken them so long to come inside and see to her needs.
Indifference turned to purrs as soon as Natalie gave the Persian the attention she so clearly deserved. Noah set the keys and rope down on the table, then moved in close enough to give the cat a good head scratch. Natalie tried not to breathe in the scent of him. A heady combination of flowers and dirt and shampoo. Mango, maybe?
They’d met at Alec and Sonya’s engagement party four years ago, but only in a cursory way. She’d still been a somewhat new addition to the Weber-Crawford clan events, and could admit she’d been intimidated by his good looks and easy confidence. She’d watched the way he’d danced with his girlfriend at the wedding and had definitely fantasized about being in his arms.
But she’d still been raw over the whole Dom David thing, and had shoved him into the “no go” box for good. Not that it had been an issue. He’d had a girlfriend and hadn’t even glanced her way. But her thought process hadn’t really been about him; it had been about her and where she was at.
Her phone gave an obnoxious alert, and she carefully pulled it out without disturbing the cat. Which meant that the screen was visible to Noah, as well as her, showing a reminder she’d set to open the bottle of wine so it could breathe before dinner.
“Uh, Sonya said I should try a particular red she likes with steaks.” She motioned over to the plate on the counter, where the meat had defrosted.
“Two steaks?” he asked. “Are you having company?”
“No, they had them frozen in pairs. I figured if I do a good job and enjoy the first, it won’t suck to have a second over the weekend. And if I fuck up the first, it won’t suck to have another chance over the weekend.” She was babbling. But he was standing so close.
“First time making steaks?”
“On a grill. I’ve done the stovetop thing, but wasn’t super successful. I even got an instant-read thermometer, but it still wasn’t great. Anyway, this should be fine. I watched some videos. Chances of catching things on fire seem minimal.”
He laughed. “I’ve used his grill. Definitely minimal.”
He watched her for a second, gave the cat one last pat, then stepped back a bit. “I was going to indulge in a frozen pizza at home, alone, but I think I can choke down a steak with company instead. I can handle the grill, if you’d like. Or walk you through it.”
Chapter Three
Noah wasn’t the least surprised when Natalie told him she wanted to work the grill. She went off to change out of her office clothes while he opened the wine that Sonya had suggested. He was a frequent guest at this house, so he knew where the bottle opener and glasses were.
She padded out in shorts and bare feet, hair pulled into a stubby ponytail, and wearing a shirt that followed her curves very nicely. It was a beautiful day outside, and he’d opened the sliding doors to the patio. A warm breeze teased her hair, and he wanted to see how good of a grip that tiny ponytail would give him. She’d had longer hair when they’d first met, long enough that he’d have been able to wrap it around his fist a couple of times. But the blunt bob she’d switched to a couple of years ago suited her. When not pulled back, it swung just above her shoulders.
As she patted the steaks dry with a paper towel, he tried to decide if her remark about the rope he’d brought had been innocent or knowing. Could go either way…but her blush made him suspect she went his way. Something he’d never considered.
He’d met her a couple of times over the years, but he’d been in a relationship at the beginning, and she’d become firmly entrenched in his best friend’s family, and that had seemed like a no-go. But he’d been curious enough about her to learn she hadn’t been in any serious relationships since he’d known her. And the one guy she’d dated long enough for Alec to meet had been a dud, according to his friend.
