by Lilia Moon
A firm hand cups me over my fingers and the drum stops dead.
I open my eyes, and Jackson’s are right there in front of my nose.
Wide open, glued to mine, and mad as hell.
Chapter Sixteen
Jackson
I have no idea what just happened, but she wrapped something up and took it away, and that’s not okay. She’s not faking her pleasure—not exactly. But she’s not all here anymore either, and somehow I can tell.
My brain spins, trying to figure out what just went wrong. Quint’s training lessons race through my head. Sometimes scenes take a hard turn. There are two choices when that happens—double down or change it up. That sounded obvious when I was sitting in a chair with a notepad in front of me. Right now, with Ari three seconds from orgasm and running away as fast as she can, I have no idea what to do.
So I stick with where I am. My hand over hers. My eyes, reaching out and trying to call her back. “I want real, Ari. It doesn’t have to be big, but I want real.” I gulp and add the words I hope like hell she needs. “Or we’re done here.”
She stares at me, our eyes conjoined in frozen, fragile intimacy. And then slowly, so slowly that I don’t feel it at first, she starts to move. Not her hands. The rest of her, shimmying ever so slightly to a beat that doesn’t exist anymore except in her head.
I slide the hand that isn’t cupping her back over to my drum. With that same aching slowness that’s coming from somewhere deep inside her, I pick up a beat and put it in both my hands. One that only she and I will feel. I keep my eyes on hers. Stay with me, beautiful. Be real.
Her eyes glisten, and she whimpers, low and quiet and gorgeous.
I add a little weight to my cupped fingers, drumming on the backs of hers. Sending tremors into the core of who she is.
She moves her fingers under mine, ever so slightly. Not taking charge this time. Asking.
I could let her. Some really important part of her has just let go for me, and I could make this easy and let her finish this with the fast, raucous orgasm she clearly wants. But right here, in this moment, I’ve just learned something huge about myself.
I don’t want the one that’s easy for her to give.
I want the one that’s hard. The one that’s soft and gentle and open and lets me look, for just a heartbeat or two, at the most vulnerable parts of who she is.
I ease the beat of both my hands, whispering a message to drum and pussy both. No pushing, no demand at all. Just invitation and a promise. I’m here.
The breath that whispers out of her is so quiet I don’t even hear it—I just feel it on my cheek. And then she lets go, a gentle rain on my fingers as her head drifts down to my shoulder.
I sit there, as stunned as I’ve ever been in my life. There might only be two people in this lounge who know she’s just come, but she has, and my shoulder and my hand are all that are left holding her up.
I scoop her into my arms, dizzy on the high of what she’s just given me—and crash into the awkward realities of trying to sit two people on a bar stool when one of them doesn’t have any bones left and the other one has a drum between his legs that’s trying to dump him on his ass.
Eli and Quint swoop in with a huge armchair an instant later, clearly veterans of saving idiot Doms from themselves. I manage to stay on my feet long enough to settle into the expanse of leather with Ari on my lap, holding her like the delicate spun glass she is, gasping for air like I just ran a marathon and don’t care if everyone knows it.
I run my hand down her hair and pull her in tighter. I don’t know what she needs for aftercare, but I need this. I need to hold my gift and savor every precious bit of it.
She curls into my chest. An answer with no words.
Quint delivers two water bottles to a side table within easy reach, approval in his eyes.
I sit, and hold, and breathe, and wait.
My marathon isn’t over yet. It’s not his approval that matters.
Chapter Seventeen
Ari
Holy fucking hell.
I’ve spent more time in aftercare than most people do in a lifetime. I know what it is to have wobbly legs and an even more wobbly brain, and a big part of me lives to go through the experiences that make me feel like that.
But this isn’t one of them. Not yet, and it’s not because of him.
I screwed up and I’m not even entirely sure why, but both of us deserve for me to figure it out. I raise my head, which is way harder than it should be, and manage to find his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jackson. I fucked up. Thank you for not dropping me.”
His eyebrows fly up. “Hard on yourself much?”
Not usually. I frown. I know, better than anyone, that wobbly brains need time to steady before they assemble reasonable thoughts—but I also know that gold lives in the wobbles.
His hand strokes my hair, cuddling my head back into his chest. Giving me the touch we both obviously need. “Tell me what that was like for you.”
I don’t know where to start, but I have enough experience to know that pretty much anywhere will eventually work. “I don’t like dancing where other people can see me. Where they’re focused on me.”
I feel his wince. “Yeah, I figured that out. I’m sorry.”
He shouldn’t be. “I didn’t tell you. It’s not even something I’ve thought of for a long time. You see me dance in the crowd while the band is playing all the time. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption.” I sigh and cuddle in a little tighter. “And you’re a Dom. You’re under no obligation to keep me comfortable.”
“Granted.” His hand rubs small circles on my lower back. “But I didn’t clear that general kind of activity with you first, and I should have. I’m pretty sure you taught that class.”
Brave baby Dom. “You did fine, Jackson. This is on me.” I can feel his disagreement rippling against my cheek and know I need to fix it. “You had my complete attention. Even when you told me I was going to dance for you. I didn’t expect you to be able to set a scene that well, and you totally had me.”
His chuckle is mostly rueful. “Glad to know I got the first ten seconds right.”
This conversation isn’t going how it needs to go. I sit up and let him see my resilience along with my wobbles. “Pretend you’re not a baby Dom for a minute and I’m not the most experienced person you’ve ever touched. Tell me the story of what you think happened in that scene, the same way you’ll tell it to Quint when he asks.”
He takes a breath and nods. “Okay. I thought it started well. The negotiations felt strange, but good. It felt like you trusted me with some pieces of you, and other than forgetting to ask for your safewords, I wasn’t a total moron.”
I smile a little and say nothing. It’s his story we’re chasing right now, not mine. I’m chasing it for murky reasons, but I can at least get the listening part right.
His eyes narrow. “You were okay when I pulled out my drum. Things didn’t go sour until I had you back away from the couch.” Comprehension dawns, and with it, self-recrimination. “Until I stopped touching you. That was a mistake. I saw how well you responded to touch when we were negotiating. I let you anchor to that and then I took it away.”
I snort. “Do you want your sub comfortable at the beginning of a scene, Sir?” I let fully sardonic Ari infuse that last word.
He rolls his eyes and shifts me so that I’m straddling his lap. “No, especially when she’s a brat. But I don’t want her feeling abandoned, either.”
I shake my head. “I’m still not sure what was going on for me, but that wasn’t it. Or not most of it, anyhow. You had me. Verbal restraints, eyes on you, picking up on the threads of what started in the yoga studio yesterday—you had me attentive and interested and unsteady. Then I ran into something.”
He nods slowly. “Yeah. I saw it happen. I just didn’t fucking know what to do about it.”
I look, but he’s not beating himself up for it anymore. Which is interesting and damn attractive.
I’m good at soothing Dom egos and newbie nerves, but he doesn’t need me to. Which is a really good thing because my wobbles need him on his feet—and he’s found them. I nod wordlessly. I’m still telling too much of this story.
He runs his palms up my thighs. Grounding me, very literally. “I tried going back to basics. Touch. Anchoring. Somewhere more steady for you.” His cheeks turn a little red. “I maybe leaned on your experience too hard, but I figured you would be comfortable touching yourself while people watched.”
I snort again. “Duh.”
He grins and a little more of the stress between us transmutes into something different. He shrugs, looking tentative for the first time since I got my bones back. “I thought what happened after that was amazing. You let me get the scene back on track. And then you let me hold you while you let go.”
I give him a dirty look. “That is so not what happened and you know it. Own what the fuck you did there, Sir.”
He blinks, even as his spine firms. “I’m not wrong about the first part. You helped me fix what was wobbling.”
I nod. “A little. Maybe. I’m not sure you needed my help. That drum of yours is a pushy bitch.”
He laughs. “She’ll be pleased you think so.” He takes a breath. “She would have let you have your fast orgasm. It was me who didn’t. I wanted more from you, and I still feel about a hundred feet tall that you gave it to me.”
Those are the words I was waiting for. The ones that acknowledge that he took and demanded that I give. “Pushy Dom.”
His chest doesn’t puff up, but the rest of him is practically incandescent. “Yes. Thank you for trusting me that much.”
My eyes burn. I’m not sure I do.
Chapter Eighteen
Jackson
I’ve stepped wrong again. Not a lot wrong, but with Ari, nuance matters. I rub my thumb along her cheekbone, taking in the sheen of wet in her eyes that wasn’t there before. “Talk to me, beautiful.”
She sighs. “I’m worried that I let go like that because I really need to. That I might have been too quick to trust.” She swallows. “Which will end up hurting both of us.”
Whoosh. Time for me to stop being a baby Dom worried he screwed up his first real scene. Past time. “That’s bullshit.”
Her eyes widen.
I keep blundering ahead, even though I feel like a giant in a dollhouse. “You’re honestly going to go with the story that maybe you went too easy on me and gave me something I hadn’t earned yet just because I asked really nicely?”
Her smile is slow, and self-deprecating, and maybe even appreciative. “Okay, maybe not.” She sighs and swipes a hand under her nose. “I was a hard-ass sub, and I’m sorry for that.”
“I’m not.” My fingers grip her chin, because some of how I felt when she melted on my hand has finally found its way to my spine. “I don’t want you to go easy on me. I want you to be real.”
She nods slowly. “You said that during the scene too. It really matters to you.”
“Real is everything.” I lean forward and kiss her nose. “Now tell me about the real that you ran into that made you want to ditch a nice orgasm and get the hell out.”
She blinks at me for a really long time. I let her stew in it. I might not be good at much of this Dom gig yet, but I know how to watch and I want her to know it.
She glares at me. “I’m not sure.”
I snort. “Not good enough. You’re the most self-aware kinky person I know. Figure it out.”
Her glare morphs almost instantly into a rueful grin. “Shit, you pull that Dom stuff out of your pocket really fast sometimes.”
I’ll make an offering at the altar of Quint’s training classes as soon as we’re done. “You’re avoiding my question.”
She rolls her eyes, and I’m pretty sure I should do something about that, but I’m not going to. She takes in another deep breath and lets it out—and when she does, her face changes. There’s embarrassment there. And guilt. And something darker. Shame, maybe. “I was telling myself that you didn’t deserve for me to safeword out, and I could offer up a baby orgasm and somehow make it all okay.” Her voice gets really quiet. “By faking and lying to my Dom.”
Real. A mountain of it, right here in my lap. I cup her face in my hands, wanting her to see just how huge that is for me. “I felt you trying to take some of who you are out of the scene.”
Her eyelids slink shut, and there are tears behind them. “I know, and I’m so sorry. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I play, ever.”
I lean in and drop kisses on her wet lashes. “It was how you played today. Thank you.”
Her eyes fly open. “What?”
I let my thumb catch the single tear that falls. Not wiping it away. Just holding it. “It means that some part of what we did together stretched you. You let me take you that deep.”
She sighs. “And then I tried to run.”
I grin. “You came back.”
She makes a face. “Pushy Dom.”
My turn to tell the truth. “Yup. Maybe not from the right place, though. I was pretty angry that you tried to leave.”
She nods slowly. “Yes, you were. I deserved every bit of it, though. And honestly, it probably took seeing that for me to trust you with what you were asking for.” She bites her bottom lip, but her eyes never waver from mine. “That’s one of my secrets, Jackson. I trust a little very easily. But I find it hard to trust a lot, and I need to trust a lot to let go and be soft like you were asking me to do.”
I let myself hear all the layers of her words, even though some of them are hard. She’s not sure she should have trusted me that much. She has doubts, maybe even regrets. And she’s showing me at least the outline of one of her secrets.
I nestle my cheek into hers.
As beginnings go, I can live with that. I haven’t earned her, not nearly. But I’ve earned myself a chance. She tried to slam the door shut and I didn’t let that happen, and now I get to see what I can make of it.
No pressure.
Chapter Nineteen
Ari
I walk into Quint’s office. I know he’ll be waiting, and it’s for the same reason that I’m walking through his door. Someone needs to rake me over the coals.
He closes the single file folder on his desk and raises his eyebrow. “Where’s Jackson?”
“Walking home with Harlan and Scorpio.” Who bribed him with a potent combination of sushi and threats and friendship. They’ll make sure he lands gently off his Dom high.
“Good.” Quint puts his feet on his desk.
I sit down in a chair on the other side and do the same, wiggling my bare toes. “I fucked up, Quint—and I almost dumped a baby Dom on his ass in his first big scene.”
“Does he know how big it was?”
I shake my head. “No. He knows it wasn’t small, and he sees most of what he did pretty clearly, but he doesn’t have enough context to know just how close we came to disaster.”
A long, slow look, and one I thoroughly deserve. “Does he know you contemplated safewording out?”
I nod. “I told him. But he felt what happened. He knew I was trying to hide from him.”
I don’t miss the glint of trainer pride in Quint’s eyes. “Good.”
Coals don’t always have to look hot to feel that way.
“So.” Quint swings his feet down and wraps his hands around my bare toes. “You’re not here to whine that he wasn’t strong enough to hold you, which is how both of us figured this might go down.”
I wince. “Yeah. He did good. Really great, actually.” Quint knows the list of where Jackson screwed up as well as I do, but he also knows none of it mattered. I know exactly how melty I got when my Dom ran his fingers up the inside of my thighs. Everything that went wrong after that is on me. “He’s got good instincts for the head game.”
“He’s observant and he’s in this for all the right reasons, and we’re not here to talk about Jackson.”
I glare, bec
ause this Dom won’t let me get away with shit, even when he’s mostly being my friend. “It’s part of why I’m here.”
“The last part.” He hands me a bottle of water. “If you want someone to hold your hand and let you cry first, go find Mattie or Meghan or Sam.”
“Asshole.”
He snorts. “Drink. That scene was big for you too.”
Bigger for me than it was for a baby Dom, and there’s all kinds of wrong in that. I take a deep breath. No, not wrong. Scary. And maybe something that could be the beginnings of right if I can get my head screwed on straight and my ass out of whatever teakettle I just stuck it in. “The easy story is that he pushed, with reasonably good aim, and there wasn’t enough trust between us yet for me to hand over my submission.”
Quint raises an eyebrow. “He’s really gotten to you.”
I eye him, deeply suspicious of his tone. “Why do you say that?”
He smirks. “Because he barely had to look at you before you came. And because you never hand out this much bullshit.”
Asshole. “I mostly stayed out of the bullshit with him in aftercare.”
A skeptical look. “He’s too green to know where he should have kept pushing. I’ll talk with him.”
That’s exactly what I don’t need—a baby Dom with good instincts and a really obnoxious coach. “This is for him and me to figure out.”
“Right. That’s why you’re in my office.”
Dammit. “I’m here because I was a total brat tonight and I tried to fuck over a newbie and somebody needs to help me figure out why.”
Quint’s chuckles bust out of him before I finish speaking.
I glare at him some more. “What?”
He stops, and leans forward, and his eyes are full of the compassion he rarely lets anybody see. “I’m happy for you, Ari. Really happy.”
I blink. “What?”
He tucks my hair behind my ear. “When seasoned veterans start fucking up basic scenes and dishing out crap after, it means something. Welcome to being kinky and human and annoyed as fuck at the latter.”
