by West, Harper
"There's just some things I need to think about," I said finally. "Before I can get involved in something."
He nodded slowly, looking like he was turning that answer over in his head. "Okay," he said finally. "That's fair. You have to think about it."
I nodded. "Yeah. And I promise it has nothing to do with you. I've been at a point in my life lately where I'm trying to decide how I want to move forward, and I just don't think it's fair to put you in the middle of that just yet."
"Okay," he said again. "Sure. I mean. I wouldn't mind being in the middle of it, if it meant I got to be with you while you were figuring things out, but I know it doesn't always work like that, so I'm not about to pressure you. Just... I'm here for you, you know? If you need to talk or a break from thinking."
I smiled, but inside I wanted to cry a little. He was so nice and kind and understanding, and I was very aware that I didn't deserve him.
"Thank you," I said. "I really appreciate that. You're... you're too good, honestly."
"Nah," he said. "Just good enough, I think. But I'm glad you're at least a little bit interested."
"Simon, you have no idea," I said softly.
He glanced at me again, like he wanted to say something, but then shook his head. "So, we're calling it a night then?" he asked.
I nodded. "Probably for the best. It is getting late."
"Yeah. I'll walk you out."
I gathered my things and headed for the door with him following me, and when I was standing in the doorway, he leaned in and kissed my cheek. It was chaste, and he had a crooked smile on his face.
"Just something else to think about," he said, and then waved me off into the night.
As if I didn't already have enough on my mind as it was.
My whole drive home was just filled with guilt. I felt bad, like I had been leading Simon on, even though realistically I knew I hadn't done anything to imply that there was anything more than platonic between us. But I'd never told him about Killian or any of that, so he had no reason to think I wouldn't be interested.
I even felt guilty when it came to Killian himself.
As far as he knew, Simon was just a friend. He was just someone I hung out with to talk about art and growing up together and that was it.
That part pissed me off because I had nothing to feel guilty for where Killian was involved. It was explicit in the contract that we could date or sleep with whoever else we wanted, and he had Eve and played with other women at the club when he felt like it.
I was pretty sure he hardly ever spared a thought about how I was going to feel about it.
I drove, clenching the steering wheel much tighter than I needed to, and then realized that wasn't exactly true.
When he'd first brought up Eve, he had made sure to run that by me first. He'd even gone so far as to let me know that if I wasn't alright with it, he wouldn't do it.
So. Dammit.
I was going to have to talk to him about all of this, I already knew it.
It was going to bother me until I did. I had no idea what his reaction was going to be. Probably he'd laugh and wonder why he was supposed to care if I wanted to kiss someone else. As long as I came back to him when I was supposed to.
That would be the easiest thing to deal with, but there was a part of me that knew deep down he wasn't going to be that nonchalant about it.
Because Killian did care, as much as he acted like he didn't, and I didn't know if that made me feel better or worse.
Chapter 4
Killian
Friday night was very strange.
I was used to having Ash there. Used to having sex with her and then putting her on the couch, wrapped in a blanket with water and perhaps a cup of tea.
It was one of those little routines that was ingrained into my schedule after almost a full six months of keeping up with it, and not having it was off-putting.
On Saturday, I had to keep myself from texting her, wondering what time she was coming over. I knew I could play it off as wanting to make sure she wasn't shirking her duties, and that would annoy her and make her come over faster just to have it done with, but I didn't want to do that.
There was a part of me that hoped she was dreading spending these weekends with me less than she had at the beginning.
It was certainly easier than it had been. She didn't argue and fight about every little thing, and while she still made sure that I knew she thought I was an arrogant pervert, she showed that she actually enjoyed the things we were doing more than she had before.
I could hold onto that. I wanted to get what I wanted, but that didn't mean I wanted her to be miserable in the process.
The next six months could only get better, and I found myself impatient to see her.
It was like how I had felt over the holidays, when she'd been off visiting her family. There was a noticeable absence of her, and I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it.
Maybe it was because I wasn't used to having someone around me so much, and I was finally coming to terms with it. Maybe it was just her.
There was a lot I wasn't really letting myself consider, since the nature of whatever it was we had was temporary and not meant to last. It wouldn't make sense to come to some epiphany only to have her decide she didn't want to see me again in six months.
So I put it out of my head and waited for her to show up.
She came over fairly early, and I'd been expecting her to draw it out, to come by at the last minute and shrug and say that it was still Saturday so she hadn't done anything wrong and could we just get it over with already?
But she showed up a little after noon, looking tired and fidgety, which made me raise an eyebrow.
"Wild night?" I asked her, amused. If anyone was going to have a wild night between the two of us, it was not Ash, and it was funny to think of her at some club after our dinner, dancing and drinking and cutting loose.
Funny because it was very unlikely to ever be a thing that happened.
"No," she said. "I just didn't sleep well. Uh, I think we need to talk about something."
That made me frown. She was serious often, but she seemed very serious just then, like she didn't know how to say whatever it was she wanted to say.
"Is everything alright?" I asked. "Are your parents okay?"
She looked up at me and frowned. "Why wouldn't they be?"
"I don't know, you're acting like there's been a tragedy or something, so I thought I'd ask."
A little smile flickered over her lips, and she looked at me like I was silly. "They're fine. It's not about them."
"Alright," I said, truly lost. "Come sit down."
She plopped down on the couch and took her jacket off, draping it over the back. She took her time arranging it just so, and I knew she was stalling, but I didn't push her. If whatever she wanted to say was that big, I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it in the first place.
"So um," she said, sitting there, not looking at me. She was fidgeting, hands twisting in her lap, and I narrowed my eyes at her, concerned and confused.
I didn't think I had ever really seen her cowed before. She was usually all fire and attitude, telling me what she wanted me to know and making sure I knew how she felt about everything. Now she was nervous, and it was an odd look on her.
"Are you sure everything is alright?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow and wishing she would look at me.
"Yes. I mean. Yeah. It's all fine. Just... something happened last night, and I feel like I should tell you about it, but I also feel like maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, which is pretty stupid, right?"
Ash glanced up then, looking at me like she wanted me to tell her she was being stupid.
I was too bewildered at whatever it was she was talking about to oblige.
"Why don't you just tell me?" I suggested. I couldn't imagine what she could have done to make her so nervous.
Had she told someone about us? Was she worried that it would get around and somehow ru
in what we'd built?
The privacy of our arrangement was mostly for her benefit, so I couldn't see how that would have her so worried to talk to me.
I watched her as she dragged in a deep breath, closing her eyes before she let it out. Maybe she wanted to end things. If I was honest with myself, I had been waiting for her to try since we'd started.
The money waiting for her at the end of our arrangement was a good incentive to hang in there, but maybe it was just too much and she wanted out.
Honestly, it could have been any number of things, from innocuous to serious, and I wasn't going to know until she finally spat it out. But my brain was having a cheery time imputing scenarios, each worse than the last.
Finally, she opened her mouth and spoke. "So, I was at Simon's last night. And we were watching movies. And... after that, he kissed me."
Of all the things I'd been assuming would come out of her mouth, that was quite possibly the last thing I'd expected her to say. I'd had to twist her arm and work it into a contract to get her to be intimate with me, but she'd kissed her 'friend' with no problems?
I supposed it was on a different level. A kiss was nothing compared to the things I wanted to do to her, but it was the principle of the thing, and my mind was racing, showing me images of them doing a whole lot more than just kissing, even though I had no idea what this Simon guy looked like.
I could see her spread out on his couch, begging him for more, using that sweet, soft, wrecked voice she used with me once she finally got through her distaste of whatever we were doing and let herself enjoy it.
And that made my blood boil.
She didn't belong to me, not really, but it was hard to rationalize that with how I felt. Maybe it was a dominance thing, and the fact that I so often had her in a collar and in positions that required her to trust me. Maybe I was just jealous.
Either way, thinking about it had me on edge, and I gritted my teeth and let out a messy breath through my nose, trying not to lash out while she was sitting there being honest with me.
Because she didn't even have to tell me anything, all things considered.
The contract was very firm about what was allowed, and she could kiss or fuck whoever she wanted as long as she was coming to me the required number of times, and she definitely was.
And it didn't seem like she was trying to rub it in my face, either. I knew Ash well enough to tell that her nerves were genuine, and she was sitting there, being honest with me because she felt like it was the right thing to do.
Somehow that just made it even worse.
If she was flippant about it, telling me that she had every right to hook up with some other guy while I did whatever I wanted to do, then the anger I felt would be slightly more justified. Maybe. Probably not, but I'd at least feel better about it.
But she was contrite, and worried, and it was my job to reassure her, even though I didn't want to. I wanted to tell her that she was never to do that again, and that I was the only person she should be kissing, but that was out of line, and I knew it.
"Was it just a kiss?" I asked. It wasn't what I wanted to say, but apparently my filter was gone for the moment.
Ash looked up, surprised. "Yeah," she said. "I would have said if there was more."
And I knew she would have. I let out another breath and then one more for good measure.
"Okay," I said.
She sat there like she was waiting for me to say something else, but I didn't have anything else to say. There was nothing more I could say without being an enormous hypocrite, and I tried to keep that to a minimum whenever possible.
"Okay," she echoed, finally exhaling. "So, I just wanted you to know."
"And now I do."
We sat in silence for a second before something else occurred to me. "Are you going to be kissing him again?"
Her cheeks flushed, and she looked away. "I don't know," she said. "I haven't decided."
"It seems to me like if you were really interested in him, you'd know how you felt about whether you wanted to kiss him again or not."
Her eyes snapped back to my face, and now that fire was back. She was irritated, and I preferred that to her being nervous. I was spoiling for a fight, and I knew if she was worked up enough, she would give me one.
"How is it any of your business if I do or not?" she asked.
"You're my wife," I pointed out.
She laughed, and it was bitter and lacking anything even close to humor. "You and I both know that doesn't mean anything, Killian, so don't sit there and try to act like it entitles you to be in my business somehow."
"Excuse you, but you know all of the people I've played with aside from you."
"And I told you the one person I've kissed other than you. So, we're even."
Irritatingly, she was right. She didn't owe me anything, but I wanted to make this her fault somehow. I wanted to blame the mood I was in on her, if only so I didn't have to shoulder the weight of it alone.
I'd missed her, wanted her here with me, and this was not at all what I'd envisioned happening when she finally came over. I was angry about that, too. I wanted her all to myself, and that bastard Simon wasn't even here, and he was still ruining what could have been a perfect afternoon of sex and thinking about nothing.
"Are you going to tell him?" I asked her. "About us? Because Eve knows I have another partner. And so do the women at the club that I've played with since we started this."
Ash made a sour face, and I knew I’d scored a point.
"You're an asshole," she said. "That's different."
"How is it different? I'm telling them the truth."
"You're telling them half the truth. Most of them don't know we're married, and if they do, they don't know why. And it doesn't matter to them if you have another partner because it's all play between you. There's no feelings involved, just being perverts together. It doesn't matter."
She kept saying that, and I wondered if she knew how wrong she was.
"And you think there's feelings between you and Simon?" I asked.
"I don't know. There could be. He's normal. He's fun. We have things in common. There could be something there, and I'm not going to ruin it by going 'oh by the way, meet my husband; he gets off on making me cry!’"
"Then don't tell him," I snapped. "Start a relationship with a big secret between you and then in six months, you can pay him not to care."
It was over the line. Even I knew that, but the words slipped out of my mouth anyway, hitting with force.
Ash flinched back, and I knew I'd hit on something she was worried about. Of course she would be worried about it, and I should have known that. Instead I was lashing out, letting my negative feelings bleed all over.
I was acting like my damned mother, almost. Fuck.
"You're such an asshole," she said again, but she wasn't getting up to storm out.
"I know," I replied. "That was... I shouldn't have said it like that."
"But you're right," she sighed. "It's not like I can just start something with him without telling him certain parts of the truth, and even if I didn't, there's going to be the matter of the sudden windfall of money to explain."
"You could always say you won the lottery," I suggested, sighing.
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” she muttered under her breath. “Look, I have no idea what I’m going to do, and I just wanted you to know what’s going on. That’s it. We don’t have to harp on it to death.”
I wanted to say more, but I was aware that I wasn’t really in the best headspace to be anything other than snide about it. It was rare for me to care so much about something that didn’t even matter, so I just nodded.
“Fine. Let’s move on to the real reason why you’re here, then.”
Ash rolled her eyes, and that put us safely back in the usual realm of our interactions. But she knew what she’d come here for, so when I stood up and offered her my hand, she brushed past it, heading to the playroom.
> I reached out and wrapped a hand around her wrist, stopping her for a second. “Wait. Not in there. Not today.”
She looked back at me with surprised eyes, and I smiled, another idea coming to me.
Chapter 5
Killian
For all we'd done before, this was much, much more intimate.
I'd fucked her in her bed at her apartment, without any toys for restraints or anything, but when she was here, we almost exclusively used the playroom. It was set up for whatever I wanted to do to her, and I had all of my gear and toys in there.
And somehow, that hadn't been what I wanted.
It felt impersonal, almost cold.
I could hide behind the persona, put the distance between us when I strapped her down to the bench and used toys on her to make her fall apart for me before I used her to my satisfaction.
I had a million little plans for the things I could do to her in there, but it hadn't felt right. I didn't want to take her apart that way. Not when I still had the tide of jealousy and bitterness creeping through me.
It pushed me to make sure I gave her an experience she couldn't forget or hide from, and so I had her tied to my bed, spread eagle so there was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
She was gloriously naked, and I looked down at her hungrily, dragging my eyes over her body that I had come to know so well by then.
The gentle swell of her breasts, the way they moved as she breathed, shallow breaths that told me she was nervous, even if the rest of her was determined to hide that.
Her skin practically glowed in the light from the windows, and when she tugged against the ropes that bound her, I hoped they would leave marks behind. Marr that perfect skin so she'd have to look down at her wrists and ankles and remember what we'd done.
I couldn't tell if she could sense my mood or if she just thought this was a new thing I wanted to try, but she watched with narrowed eyes while I stripped at the foot of the bed, taking my time, giving her a show.
Her eyes were heavy on me, stretching over my body while I pulled my shirt over my head.
