by Joey W. Hill
She was an adult. She didn’t have to say anything. She could say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Yet he was looking at her in that way he had, and it was like truth serum. It was also making her ridiculously flustered, because his gaze was pinned on her like he was…jealous? No, not jealous. That was a negative emotion she didn’t think was a positive in any relationship. But possessiveness came with a kick she felt all the way to her vitals. He wanted to know what his competition was, and he wasn’t going to be patient about it.
“It’s not like that,” she hedged.
“You said I was your first Dom/sub experience.”
“Yes and no. Yes, in all the really important ways.” She grabbed for her dignity, though it was going to be fleeting. “It’s…I want to say it’s embarrassing to talk about, and it is, but up until the time I met you, it was one of the most special sex memories I had.”
She looked down at her hands. “Which would normally sound like the ‘oh, it was the best sex I ever had until you’, ego stroke, but it’s not. It’s…sad, in a way, and that’s the embarrassing part. But…”
When he put his hand over hers, she saw his expression had softened. “Hey. Sorry. I didn’t mean to back you into a corner, love. Not about something that’s special to you.” He cleared his throat. “Sounds to me like whichever one of them had the privilege was the damn lucky one.”
“Oh, well…thank you.” She shifted. “It was both, actually.”
His brows lifted and she would have laughed if she wasn’t so nervous. “It wasn’t like that. I’m going to do this with my eyes closed and get it over with. No chance you’ll let go of my hand so I can bolt?”
“Not a chance.”
“Figures.” Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath so she could get it out in one rush. “For my birthday one year, Marcus orchestrated a scene where Thomas used a vibrator on me and Marcus took control, did the Dom thing. Then they slept in my bed on either side of me. Well, eventually. They were worked up by the situation, which happens when they barely think about one another, let alone orchestrate a birthday sex party. They had sex in my bed while I watched them. After that, they held me through the whole night and made me pancakes for breakfast.”
“The pancakes were included.”
She cracked open an eye, relieved to see he was trying to alleviate her tension with dry humor. His hand was still curled firmly around hers.
“Absolutely. Their pancakes are to die for. Almost as good as an orgasm. Before you, I might have even said they were better than. You don’t look horrified. Or amused in the wrong way, like you’re laughing at me.”
“I would never do that.” He leaned back on his arms again, their sides still touching. “Was it then you realized you had submissive cravings?”
“I suspected before then, but that sort of stirred the pot. I can’t believe I’m telling you all this.”
“I can. You’re a very open person.” His expression still held an intriguing, simmering testosterone current, but he’d dialed it back, his tone matter-of-fact. “I can handle your honesty, love. I prefer it. And when honesty moves into nervous babbling because you’re worried about losing control or being perceived in a way you think is wrong, which is bullshit, then I know how to deal with that.”
“How is that?”
“A gag.”
She pushed at him and he caught her hands, grinning. Rising, he helped her up and they continued their stroll along the water. As she did some idle people watching, she came up with a far less emotional question, a transition she thought they might need.
“Why do you see so many skinny men with larger women? Or large men with petite women?"
"Maybe petite women make bigger men feel more masculine, and a skinny guy loves the idea of being surrounded by a lot of woman, an earth mother thing. I like those netsukes, how they twist and twine the characters together. It makes me think of all the ways you can manipulate soft flesh with rope. Particularly a woman who’s got an hourglass shape, with the right amount of nice curves.”
His gaze slid over her, telling her which woman he was thinking about. “You know,” he mused. “I haven’t kissed you yet. Not a real kiss.”
She blinked. "That was quite a segue."
"Only if you weren't paying attention." Then he turned thought into action.
Drawing her over to a large tree, he put her against the trunk, keeping her there with the press of his body and his hands caressing her jaw, her face.
She was done insisting this was just a casual date, and not merely because her body was telling her to shut the hell up. She couldn’t find words with him so close, his eyes on hers. She’d backpedal later.
He put his mouth on hers and she swam in that feeling, the heat, his hands gripping her, kneading the sensitive skin at the waistband of her jeans since he’d found his way beneath her shirt. The breeze ruffled against her cheek, and she inhaled him, her arms sliding up his back to hold on. When he lifted his head, she was lying in his arms in a standing position, her head propped on his biceps.
“You know trust is the foundation of every relationship,” she whispered. “You did lie about this being a not-date.”
“I can’t think of you just as a friend, Julie.”
“Why not?” She moistened her lips.
“Because I don’t want to.”
He wasn’t being flippant. His eyes and mouth were serious.
“Oh. Okay. Good reason.”
He allowed himself a tight smile but eased back, though he kept her inside the frame of his body. Brushing her hair back from her temple, she scrambled for distraction again.
“Look, a toy sailboat.” She pointed to it. It had drifted to the center of the lake and appeared to be caught alongside the turtle platform.
“I think they prefer to call them models.” Des turned to look with her.
“Pfft. Boys and their toys. An actual one this time.” She nodded to a boy standing on the edge of the water. From his working of the controls and his distressed look, it appeared he couldn’t untangle the boat from what was holding it to the platform. “It’s stuck.”
“It may also be out of signal range,” Des mused as they moved down the slope of grass.
The boy had turned to speak to an adult male sitting under a nearby tree. Surmising it was his father, Julie watched as the boy appealed to him. The man responded with impatience, not taking his eyes off the phone he was scrolling. As they drew closer, she heard what he was saying.
“I told you that you were going to lose it if you didn’t keep it close to shore. There’s no swimming in the lake. If it doesn’t drift loose before we go, you’ll just have to leave it. I told you to be more careful.”
The boy bit his lip and looked back out at the boat. “But Dan gave it to me.”
“Well, it’s not Dan’s day with you, is it?” The sudden blast of irritation brought the man’s head up. “I’m your father. Why’d you bring one of his expensive toys with you? Just to rub my face in it?” The boy flinched.
“Asshole,” Julie muttered. She was already starting forward, not sure what she planned to do, but Des stopped her. Winking at her, he stripped off his shirt and started to unbuckle his belt.
Her brows lifted. “It was a nice kiss, but I’m not sure it overwhelmed my aversion to public sex and subsequent jail time.”
“I’ll have to work on that.” Handing her his shirt, he detached the connector between the insulin pump on his belt and the cannula. Putting the pump in his pack, he pulled out a small cap that went on the now open end of the cannula. Then he secured the tube and connector end against his body with a couple pieces of medical tape.
“Wow. That pack of yours is like the bottomless bag Hermione had in the Harry Potter books.”
He winked at her again. When he removed the jeans, he revealed a pair of dark blue and green plaid boxers. “Good thing I didn’t wear my leopard print thong today. It would scare the ducks.”
She
realized he intended to use the boxers as a modest swimsuit. Well, they’d be modest until they were soaking wet. She was looking forward to seeing that, even as she glanced at the water, concerned. There were a lot of no swimming signs posted, but Des seemed unconcerned about the reasons behind that. The pond had fish, ducks and geese, so she surmised dubiously the water might not be too toxic.
He put his shoes back on without the socks. “Are you sure the water’s safe?” she asked.
“I’m Spiderman. I’ve already been bitten by a radioactive spider.” He kissed her lightly and then waded into the water without hesitation, though the ripple of gooseflesh across his arms and back suggested the morning sun hadn’t yet warmed it to a comfortable temp. Some of the geese plopped into the water, paddling companionably after him. When he reached the point he couldn’t touch, Des began to do a breast stroke, headed toward the boat.
At the sight of Des, the boy had sidled back down along the shoreline. His father was absorbed in his phone again, oblivious to the rescue effort. The boy plucked at the switches on the remote control box and looked at Julie. “He’s not going to steal my boat, is he?”
“Oh, honey. Heavens no. He’s going to get it loose for you.”
“Oh.” He brightened and, with a boy’s typical relish, he foretold gore and doom for Des. “My friend Buddy says there’s giant snapping turtles in there that can bite off your leg. And the most venomous snakes in the whole world.”
“I think those are in Australia, not here.” Though Julie saw several sizeable turtles on the platform, ponderously climbing over one another to avoid the dip of the boat’s mast in its caught position. She hoped Buddy was a big fibber. She liked all of Des’s parts, and didn’t want any to fall prey to snapping turtles.
He’d reached the sailboat and seemed to be having trouble determining what had captured it. He sank below the surface. The ducks and geese circled, quacking among themselves at the oddity of a human swimming in their midst. Julie felt a trickle of unease. Damn it, Des. If he didn’t emerge, and she had to go rescue him, she’d kill him.
“It’s loose,” the boy said excitedly as the boat started drifting their way. The remote also started to function again. As the child operated the controls, Julie heard a healthy purring noise from it, not the earlier futile tick-tick.
Des broke the water’s surface a few feet away and started back to shore, his expression cheerful as he saw the boy navigating the craft in the same direction. Man and ship arrived at almost the same time.
As he trudged out of the water, he slicked his hair back, an effect that sharpened the planes of his face and made even more of his deep set eyes and moist lips. She’d been right about that plastering effect. Thank goodness the shorts were a dark fabric, else others at a greater distance would be enjoying the well-defined view she was getting.
“Hey, you said this isn’t a date situation,” he teased her. “No ogling. And no comments about cold water.”
“A fine, male form is worth ogling, whether it belongs to a friend or more than a friend,” she informed him. “I suppose you don’t look at female strangers with nice racks.”
“Of course not. That would be treating them like sex objects, and—” Whatever else he was about to say was muffled as she tossed his T-shirt over his face. He removed it, eyes twinkling, and used it to dry off before putting his feet back in his jeans and working them back up his still damp thighs.
She chuckled as he grimaced but managed it with an intriguing flexing of muscles. “It’s like taking off one of those Chinese finger puzzles, in reverse,” he complained.
“Hmm.” She’d automatically put out a hand to balance him, but as he straightened, her touch drifted across his chest, over the short hairs glittering with water droplets. From there, she slid her fingertips up to his throat and along the strands of wet hair on his head. His eyes stilled at her caress and she almost drew her hand back, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. He tilted his head to brush his jaw along her wrist, but lifted a brow at her bemused expression. “What?”
“I like this look. Very…Tarzan.”
“You can see all of it in the shower. If you agree that friends help friends scrub noxious water off one another.”
She dimpled, but uncertainty nixed her overwhelming desire to agree. She stepped back. “Ahem. I think someone wants to talk to you.”
Des turned. The boy had pulled out the boat and was walking over to them. “That was really cool,” he said, sticking out one adolescent hand. “Thanks, man. I’m Lawrence.”
“You’re welcome, Lawrence.” Des shook the outstretched paw. “Tell me about your boat.”
The boy launched into an enthusiastic enumeration of the boat’s specs that went far over Julie’s head, but Des seemed to take it in stride.
“Hey, your rigging snapped here. Let’s get that fixed. Do you know how to do a bowline?”
The boy didn’t. He brought the boat’s stand over so he and Des could prop the vessel up and go over the finer points of rigging knots. In the meantime, Julie noticed Lawrence’s father had finally stopped checking his messages and realized his son was talking to a wet stranger.
“Dad, Des got my boat loose,” Lawrence said as the man approached with an expression caught between fixed politeness and a scowl.
“Yeah. Thanks. Time to go. I’ll pick you up some McD’s on the way back to your mother’s. Let’s go.”
As he strode past them with a grudging flicker of acknowledgement to Des and Julie, Julie wished she had a Taser handy. The boy bit his lip, but he saw Julie’s look. “It’s okay,” he told her in a low voice. “He’s kind of a jerk. I like Dan, my stepdad, much better. And my mom’s really cool. But he’s my dad, so…”
“He’s your dad.” Des shook the boy’s hand once more. “You’re pretty cool yourself, Lawrence. You take care of yourself.”
“I will. Thanks again, man.”
Des and Julie watched the kid go, trailing after his father.
“Thank God for Dan,” Julie said hotly. “Else I was about to kidnap that kid and take him home.”
“He’d like Betty’s horses,” Des agreed. He looked at himself and sighed. “Guess this calls it a morning for us, love. I should wash off before I start to glow. I’ll drop you back off at the theater. Unless you’re interested in that shower offer…?”
“I’m sticking to the friendship idea. Until after opening night,” she allowed.
“Really?” He shifted closer. “That’s new. What changed?”
“Your heroism impressed me.”
“All part of my diabolical plan,” he said, but he touched her cheek, his expression serious. “Julie.”
She pressed into the contact briefly, then stepped back and took his hand. She liked holding his hand, for practical purposes as much as other reasons. She could somewhat control him touching her elsewhere, because she didn’t think clearly when he was doing that.
“Let’s keep it as friends, until I know how I feel about what you do with other subs. That just feels right to me. I don’t want to talk about it, because we’ve talked about it enough. This is something I have to figure out from the heart. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. So does this.”
Okay, so maybe she couldn’t keep him from touching her whenever, however he wanted. When he bent and put cold, damp lips on hers, she knew she couldn’t get close to him without getting wet herself, but after two seconds she didn’t care. She curled one set of fingertips over his bare shoulder, the other hooking into the waistband of his jeans and the elastic of the wet boxers. His hipbone pressed against her knuckles.
As he kissed her, the sunshine warmed her body outside as he warmed her inside. He cupped her face, fingers tunneling in her hair below her barrette. He drew it over her shoulder to stroke.
When he lifted his head, she stared into his eyes. What she saw there made her wonder if she wasn’t the only one rocked by what happened between the two of them whenever they did that. He kept
his tone light, though, as if he knew how easily spooked she could be.
“Until opening night, then,” he said.
Chapter Six
Despite staying insanely busy for the next few days and avoiding Des the couple times he came to the theater to go over his scene with Harris, it preyed on her mind. She wasn’t going to be able to wait until opening night to resolve it. Or maybe she just wanted to get the letdown over sooner rather than later.
When he tied up another submissive, touched her, and became aroused by her responses the way he had with Julie, she wouldn’t be able to handle that. No matter what she’d rationalized, she knew it was far different from watching two actors kiss during a play.
She really wasn’t amused by the term rope bunny anymore.
Despite Billie Dee-Lite’s taunt about that “branding,” she couldn’t trust herself to believe Des’s possessiveness that day was anything more than his natural protectiveness and pride in the integrity of his craft. He’d have reacted the same way if another of his submissives was the one who’d been nearly lynched.
And she was so certain of that because of the damned intuition that Madison had praised. Des was funny, kind and sexy, and made her feel wonderful. But there was a wall inside him. A wall that suggested his only interest was exploring her submission and enjoying some friendly pleasure together.
She wasn’t wired that way. She wished to God she was, because it was obvious Des was more than capable of giving a girl a great time. But if she was going to have sex without love, she’d have it with her vibrator, not with a living human being who could fuck with her head in the worst ways.
She wasn’t going to make it awkward for him. She’d summon up the courage and figure out a way to confirm her suspicions without sounding like she was asking for more than he wanted to give. Then she could walk away with her dignity intact. Sure. Piece of cake.
