by Frost, E J
“Emily, what’s going on behind those pretty eyes?” Logan asks, breaking my train of thought. “Do you need the hairbrush?”
He thinks my eyes are pretty?
“No, sir.” I haven’t heard a peep out of HIM since the bathroom. Just being with Logan is very peaceful, even when he’s not punishing me. “I was just admiring your focus. I’m really scattered. I mean, I can focus when I’m writing, but the rest of the time?” I shake my head. “Even when I’m researching, half the time I end up writing down facts that amuse or interest me but aren’t even on topic.”
Logan wrinkles his chin. “That might make your research slow, but I bet you learn about a lot of different subjects.”
“I do,” I admit.
“Do you get your ideas for your books from your research?”
“Not really. This might sound crazy, given what I write, but most of my ideas come from French fairy tales. My mother used to read them to me when I was little. ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree.’ ‘Prince Marcassin.’ ‘The Pigeon and the Dove.’ I loved all those stories. There was sorrow and loss, but there was also enchantment and sacrifice and true love. That’s what inspires me.”
Logan reaches out and takes my free hand again. He lifts it to his lips and kisses my fingertips. “I like that. I don’t know any of those fairy tales.” He takes the pad of my middle finger into his mouth and nips it. “Bring them on the cruise. We could read one each night as a bedtime story.”
I stare at him. I told my ex-husband and one of my Doms about my muse; Ash gave me a beautiful leather-bound volume of Baroness d’Aulnoy’s Les Contes de Fées for our first anniversary. But not a single one of them has offered to read them with me.
It takes me a minute to find my voice. Then I stammer, “I-I would love that.”
“Good.” With a final kiss, Logan releases my hand. “Are you about finished? Would you like a cup of tea? I’m going to have coffee.”
“Yes, please. Were you going to order dessert?” I ask hesitantly. “Mistress Maude recommended the tiramisu.”
He grimaces. “Maude has a big mouth. But I doubt she’d steer us wrong about dessert. I’d be happy to order it, if you’d like to share it.”
“Just a bite. Could I have peppermint tea if they have it? If not, any herbal tea is fine.”
Logan nods. “No caffeine, or is it a taste thing?”
“Both. I kicked caffeine and cigarettes four years ago.”
“At the same time? You really are a masochist.”
“Yes, sir.” I laugh. “New life, new me. No caffeine, no cigarettes, no more weeks in my grungy jammies. That was when I finally agreed to meet Matthew. To try to whole thing for real. He put up with me being the grumpiest I’ve ever been, including finals week at college. I earned a lot of punishments, those first couple of months.”
Logan smiles. “How long were you with him?”
“Almost two years, but it was very much an every-other-weekend thing.”
“Then he showed up at the dungeon party with someone else?”
“Oh, no, that wasn’t him.” That was Ben—DFour—who was good in bed, and a complete asshole out of it. “Matty worked in structural engineering. He got this amazing job opportunity, but it was in Costa Rica.”
“You didn’t consider going with him?”
“He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask.”
I didn’t even consider asking. I thought my whole life was in Syracuse. I couldn’t imagine leaving. Looking back now, on the missed opportunity to live in Costa Rica for a couple of years, I can’t imagine why I didn’t.
We’re interrupted by the return of the waiter, who clears our empty plates and takes Logan’s dessert and drinks order. I feel that hot rush in my cheeks and groin when he orders for me. It’s such a little thing. A little, perfect thing.
“Sir,” I say when the waiter leaves. “We’ve talked all about me. Can we talk about you?”
Logan shakes his head. “I like that you’re opening up to me. If I’m going to top you, I need to understand what makes you tick. And we have talked about me. I’ve told you about my business and the Navy.”
“And the bodily functions of men on high-protein diets,” I quip, and he grins back at me. “I just don’t have a good sense of what you like.”
“What I like. Mmm.” Logan rubs his chin, pretending to consider the question seriously. “I like flowers. Long walks on the beach. Sunday mornings in bed—” He cracks the grin he was suppressing.
“You’re mean.”
“I can be mean.” The grin turns into a leer. “But most of the time I’m an indulgent top. I think that’s one of the reasons the stuff I read about being a daddy clicked for me. I love the idea of spoiling my girl. I’m all about creating a safe space for play, anyway, so letting you express your inner child in that space isn’t a big step.”
I would throw myself at his feet if we weren’t in a restaurant. I might, anyway, if he keeps saying things like that. “What did your other bottoms do in that space?”
“Different things.” He doesn’t elaborate and I wonder if he doesn’t want to talk about his previous subs. Maybe I’m just not asking the right questions.
“I guess I’m just wondering, if you haven’t been a daddy before, what you like?” I stumble over the words, like I’ve missed a step and have to throw my hands out for balance. I swear, I can write thousands of pages of snappy dialogue, but when I have to say something marginally intelligent to a real man, I sound like a kindergartener.
Logan taps his finger to his lips and I see the waiter returning out of the corner of my eye. I sit back in my chair, feeling like an idiot again, as the waiter sets down my tea, Logan’s espresso, and a plate of confectionary.
When the waiter retreats, Logan places the dessert between us and picks up his fork. He takes a bite, chews and swallows, before he says, “I like a lot of things. Mostly I like seeing my bottom go out of her head with whatever I’m trying to make her feel. I’ve done that in a lot of different ways. Probably bondage most often, but I’m not tied to that method.” He gives me a little grin at the pun. I shake my head at him, as I’m supposed to, even though I love the way he plays with words. “I’ve done everything from flogging to knife play. Only toys I don’t use are bullwhips, just because I haven’t spent enough time practicing with them. But if my bottom told me that whipping was the one thing that would really send her over the edge, I’d clear out a corner of my basement, set up a target and get cracking.”
I snort at the pun and splutter tea. Oh, very graceful. I expect HIM to offer a soul-crushing comment, but the voice is silent and Logan continues as though he hasn’t noticed, although I’m sure he has. He’s as acutely observant as a big predator on a Discovery channel program.
“All I ask of my bottoms is that they trust me and that they let me push them to the edge. I promise to always be in control and be respectful of your safe word. If you use it, I’ll stop. Doesn’t matter what we’re doing. I’ll stop, check in with you and if whatever we’re doing has gotten to be too much, on any level, physical, emotional, whatever, then that’s the end of the play and we’ll do aftercare. If you want to go on, and I think you can, then we’ll keep going, but maybe dial it down a notch. Either way, there’s no shame in using your safe word. Have you needed to before?”
I’m so lost in those dark eyes and how wonderful what he’s saying sounds that it takes me a minute to register that he’s asked me a question.
“Emily?”
“Uh, sorry. Yes, I’ve used my safe word.” In fact, Matthew was the only Dom I’ve dated that I haven’t had to use my safe word with. Ironic, given that he was a sadist, but I’ve always felt safest with sadists. As much as they get off on hurting me, they’ve also been the ones who have taken the best care of me.
Logan takes a few more bites of tiramisu before he says, “I’d like to say that my bottoms haven’t had to safe word, but that wouldn’t be true. It hasn’t happened in the past three years, tho
ugh. I’ve gotten much better at reading my bottoms’ body language. I don’t want a bottom to have to use her safe word with me.”
I take one last bite of his lovely coffee-creamy dessert, before I wipe my mouth with the cloth napkin and say, “Sir, please don’t take this wrong. You seem so nice, and omi-goodness, so normal. I just don’t understand why you’re not with someone already. I mean, why would you put up with a sub who’s married? You could have anyone.”
“I didn’t put up with Miranda. Quite the opposite.” Logan shrugs and sips his coffee. “If she’d given me the slightest indication she was unhappy with her husband, I’d have asked her to leave him. But she didn’t.”
He shrugs again.
Oh, no, he’s still in love with her. Of course, he is. Why would I ever think that a thirty-five-year-old, good-looking Dom would actually be single?
“Also, I’m probably not the easiest person to be with. I travel a lot for work. Two years ago, I ran in trouble with the taxman because I’d spent so much time in England that year. They wanted me to start paying taxes there. Like I don’t pay enough here between state and federal.” He shakes his head. “Even when I’m home, I often have to work nights and on weekends. It’s tough to be with someone on my schedule. A couple of ladies have given me the boot because they said I wasn’t paying them enough attention, which was probably true. I’ll try not to repeat that mistake with you.”
His schedule doesn’t bother me at all. My own schedule’s quite flexible, and since my Doms have always had full-time jobs, I’m very used to being a casual playmate. It gives me time to write.
“Besides, I am with someone,” he says. Warmth returns to his eyes. “I’m with you. My baby girl, who’s going to show me a whole new side of something I’ve been doing for a long time and thought I was pretty good at. I like challenges.” He lifts his coffee cup to me in a little toast.
“I’m told I can be challenging,” I say, which is the truth.
“Perfect match.” He salutes me again with his coffee cup. “You want anything else, sweetheart?”
I shake my head. Logan flags down the waiter and asks for the cheque.
“If you’re not raring to join Rick and Daisy in the nightclub, how about we head upstairs?” he asks. “There’ll be scenes going on now that we can watch. Once you’re comfortable, we’ll go into the library and do our own scene. It’ll be above the panties tonight, okay? There’ll be a first time for us, hopefully damn soon, but I don’t want it to be here. We need privacy for our first time together.”
I stare at him, lost again in the wonderfulness of what he’s saying. He really cares that much about the first time we have sex? “Yes, sir. That all sounds perfect.”
“Good.” He pauses and hums in his throat before he continues. “When we go upstairs, you’ll probably meet a number of the house submissives. They’re employees of the club. I’ve topped most of them. I don’t know if you heard Rick talking about a woman named Rachel while we were in the car. I trained her as a sub and we dated for a while. Things got a little messy between us at the end. That was before Christmas. She has a different Master now, and there’s nothing further between us. I just don’t want you to be taken by surprise.”
“Do you—do you still top them?”
Logan shakes his head firmly. “After things ended with Mir, I needed a break. I’d been the primary trainer here for several years. I finished up with Shannie; she’s the last house sub I trained, and I stepped back from the club. I dated a few women casually this spring, just vanilla. Then I met a woman who said she was interested in kink. I began working with her, but it didn’t work out. That was over a month ago. I haven’t been with anyone since, and none of the house bottoms in probably four months.”
I chew on my bottom lip while I consider that. “Why didn’t it work out with the woman you started training?”
“She couldn’t take direction.” Logan shrugs one shoulder. “Not that she didn’t want to. Or, at least, I don’t think it’s that she didn’t want it. It was hard to tell. She just couldn’t seem to remember anything from scene to scene. I got really frustrated with having to start over every time I saw her.”
That’s reasonable. “I can see how that would be frustrating.”
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “One of the things that blows me away about you is how carefully you listen, Emily. You say you’re scatty, but I haven’t seen any sign of it. You follow each and every word when I give you commands. That’s really important to me. I want my direction to matter to you.”
“It does,” I say quickly. Because it does, so much. I’m already desperate to please him. I want his praise more than I want punishment.
“It’s a big thing to me. Sophia—” He shrugs. “I’d teach her a position and two minutes later, she’d have moved out of it. When I corrected her, it was like she didn’t remember what I’d told her to do in the first place. That made me insane. Topping is really important to me. I put everything I can into it. When submission doesn’t matter to my bottom.” He shakes his head. “It’s beyond something I can correct. That’s why it didn’t work out. I can’t imagine that’s going to happen with you. You’re already a hundred times more attentive than Sophia ever was. I want more of that. I know it’s too soon, but eventually I want to be the whole world to you, Emily.”
My heart swells until it’s too large for my chest. “Oh, yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl.” He sits back and I realize we’ve been leaning across the table until our noses were almost touching.
I rearrange myself in my chair, trying to pull myself back together. As I do, the waiter sets the fake-leather folder with the bill down on the table. Without thinking, my hand goes out for it.
Logan clears his throat.
I freeze and look up at him.
His expression drains all the blood in my body to my toes. His face is absolutely blank, but there’s a vein pulsing in his forehead and his eyes have gone as savage as when he thrashed me in the bathroom.
I snatch my hand back and sit on my hands.
“It’ll be on a card,” Logan tells the waiter, who scuttles off to get the machine.
Logan picks up the wallet, opens it and reads over the bill, then puts it down beside his coffee cup and rests his fingertips on the plastic.
“Did I invite you to dinner?” he asks, very softly.
“Yes, sir,” I whisper.
“Do you think I expect you to pay for the things I invite you to?”
I shake my head. This is not the time to take a feminist stance. “No, sir.”
“No, because they’re Daddy’s treat, and Daddy will pay for them. So when you reached for the bill, were you trying to throw my gift back in my face or just casually disrespecting me?”
“Neither, sir. I just didn’t think.”
Logan nods, his chin wrinkling as though he’s considering something very seriously. “Maybe you are a little scatty.”
I feel myself crumple. I don’t want him thinking I’m like his previous sub who couldn’t follow direction. I can. It’s just that what he was saying distracted me so much that I didn’t think before I reached for the check. I start to beg, “Sir, I’m sorry—”
He shakes his head, silencing me.
“No excuses, Emily. While I pay, you’ll get up, take your bag, leave the restaurant and walk down the hall back toward the entrance. The third door on the left is a bathroom marked ‘private.’ You will go in and wait for me. I’ll knock three times. You will open the door and I’ll do something about your lack of focus. Are we clear?”
He wasn’t just considering something very seriously. He is dead serious. There’s not even a tiny glint in those dark eyes. Oh, fuck.
I nod frantically. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t praise me and I shiver again, then whimper as the movement ignites the stripes on my ass. This is big thing number two: no disrespecting him. If he invites me to something, he’s going to pay for me. Any
suggestion to the contrary is disrespectful. I got it; I won’t mess this up again.
He’s silent and I get the impression that he’s watching again. But not like a lion. That’s not right. He’s a predator of deep, dark places, not open plains. He’s a mountain lion, a puma. Sitting on a branch, watching me for weaknesses.
Careful in the presence of an angry predator, I fold up my napkin and place it next to my empty teacup. I rise carefully, take my bag and push in my chair. I dip him a little curtsey and say, “Thank you very much for dinner, sir.”
Then I flee, one step at a time, out of the restaurant and down the hall to the bathroom.
* * *
I’m sitting on the toilet seat when he knocks. I open the door with a shaking hand and step back to let him enter.
“Sir, I’m really, really sorry,” I say quickly.
He reaches out and shapes my cheek with this hand, even while he moves forward, backing me up towards the sink. “That’s a good girl. I accept your apology. I don’t like it when my girl throws my gifts in my face. I need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You have to be kept focused, don’t you?”
“Uh, yes, sir?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I would like to be focused, sir. I just—I’m afraid.”
“I know you are, sweetheart. This is where trust begins between us.”
Oh.
I don’t know why that calms me, but it does. The horrible knot that was tightening in my belly loosens. I stop backing away from him, so he bumps into me. Instead of pushing me away, he pulls me into his arms, and I feel safe. Even though I know he’s going to discipline me—probably not in a fun way—I’m safe. I turn my face into his shoulder and whisper, “Yes, Daddy.”
