Alex roared with laughter. “Just so you know, the soundproofing in this house is excellent!”
“Yeah, well, I’m still not doing it. Besides, you and Beth need time together, now that you’ve decided to start a family.”
It hadn’t taken a genius to make the connection when the Lombards had asked him a while ago if he’d consider the possibility of being a godfather at some undefined point in the future. Looking back, the thought of his old friend having not just a wife but a complete family had probably consolidated his own change in attitude to such matters.
They finished their conversation and made their way to the family room, to find the two women enjoying mugs of hot chocolate. Judging by the laughter, they were getting on like a house on fire. In fact, looking at them, anyone could be forgiven for thinking they’d been friends for years. A good omen, perhaps? It certainly gave Cam an unfamiliar but very welcome buzz.
He watched Alex go to his wife, sit on the sofa beside her and wrap his arms around her. When Cam turned to look at Stacie, what he saw in her unguarded expression could have been an innocent longing for the same—from him?
Who dares wins?
“Hi,” he greeted her easily. “Mind if I join you?”
Her answer was to slide along the sofa, just far enough so that he could make himself comfortable beside her—not so far as to put too much space between them. Almost without thinking, he casually slipped an arm around her shoulders. When she didn’t shrink away from him, a feeling of warm satisfaction, sweet like honey, flowed slowly through his veins.
“Stacie, I don’t know exactly what you were planning to do for the next few days, but we need to take care of your old car. I was thinking that we might stay here for a day or two while we do that, then I’ll take you back to London and we can look for a replacement.”
Again, that look of disbelief in her eyes. “You really would do that?”
Cam raised a stern eyebrow—at that moment, he hoped that Stacie Matheson really did have an inner sub and would let her come out to play, because she had to learn that when he gave his word, it was final. He never said anything he didn’t mean. For now, though…
“I told you I would, and I meant it. Now, when you came down here, what was your original plan? Did you intend to take the whole week off work?”
Stacie hadn’t really thought about it. She’d asked her manager for a few days but hadn’t specified a number. She knew, though, that taking the full week wouldn’t be a problem—she’d had barely any time off during the year, and her manager had commented that it was about time, otherwise she might lose any vacation days that were still unused at the end of the year. When she told the three people around her, she was warmed by their reactions—especially Cam’s, when she felt his arm tighten around her.
“It’s a pity you can’t both stay here for the whole week,” Beth said in response.
“I’m sorry, angel,” Cam apologised. “When I promised Stacie I’d help her out with finding a new car, I figured we’d do that back in London. Stacie?”
Impossible though it was, it seemed like he was asking her opinion as if they were a real couple. Less than two days ago, she’d been wondering if he had a significant other, and now he was making her feel as if she were his significant other. Or at least on her way to it—that might be a slightly more accurate appraisal of her situation. Either way…definitely not in Kansas anymore. A boulder of burgeoning panic suddenly thudded into her chest. What was that she’d thought about this man being way out of her league again?
“Stacie? Are you all right?”
Cam’s voice broke into her thoughts, and when she turned her head to look at him, she was surprised to see the genuine concern in his features.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine…thanks.” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. The look of concern, far from going, mutated into a slight but distinct frown of displeasure.
“Beth, Alex—would you excuse us, please? Stacie and I have something to discuss before we firm up our plans.”
Open-mouthed, she wasn’t quite sure how to react to the mug of hot chocolate being removed from her grasp, rapidly followed by a strong hand pulling her to her feet and out of the room. In the hall was where she found her voice.
“Cam! What are you doing?”
The question was futile—he wasn’t saying anything, fixated as he was on hauling her upstairs. She expected to be taken to her room, but no, he went towards his room, dragged her inside and around to face him, at the same time as he kicked the door closed behind him. She decided to get the first word in.
“What? What did I say?”
“It’s not what you said, Stacie—it’s what you didn’t say. Don’t ever lie to me again.”
That stopped her in her tracks and prompted her to mount a robust protest. “What? But…I didn’t lie to you!”
“You didn’t tell me the truth, Stacie. Something was bothering you, but you denied it. From now on, that never happens again, is that clear?”
“But it was nothing!”
Cam let her go. He was sorely tempted to drag her over to the bed and put her over his knee to administer the spanking she deserved. While he was pissed off by her refusal to tell all, his self-control was such that he was more than capable of employing such a punishment without letting emotion get the better of him. Had they been in an established relationship, he would have had no qualms about doing so. It was too early for that, and he didn’t want them to get off on the wrong foot. The potential for disaster was huge, if a punishment were to be delivered without both parties being clear about justification and boundaries.
No, there was only one way to make her understand this time, and that was to have the talk he’d planned to have when they arrived back in London—once he’d had a chance to work out exactly what he was going to say to her. He had no choice but to wing it.
“Sit down, Stacie,” he began, raking his hand through his hair—a habit he had when he was faced with a thorny problem. “I think that you and I had better have our little talk right now.”
She was sitting on the bed—his bed, and it was a visual he really didn’t need right then. He moved across the room, deliberately putting some distance between them.
“You’ve read Beth’s book, and you know she modelled her central characters on the three of us—herself, Alex and me.”
Stacie nodded, even though it was more a statement than a question. “Several times. While Beth and I were out for a walk a little while ago, we talked about it.”
“Did she tell you to what extent she modelled those characters on us?”
“If you mean the D/s thing, yes, she told me about that.” Stacie squirmed slightly. “I asked her if you were a Dom and she said yes.”
Suddenly very still, Cam blinked. She knew? “Does that change anything?”
Wide-eyed, she looked up at him. Then her lips pressed together—this wasn’t looking good, he thought grimly. His thoughts became even grimmer when her shoulders lifted on a deep breath.
“For me it doesn’t change anything, but I can’t say I don’t have any concerns,” she admitted eventually. “I mean, I’ve never been in that kind of relationship, and apart from Beth’s novel, I really know very little about the subject.”
And no doubt what she did know, she’d learned from ill-informed, scaremongering sources. Cam silently cursed the lack of understanding of the lifestyle that seemed to prevail. “You’ve read her novel several times, though—you seem to be fascinated by it.”
“I am,” Stacie confirmed with a small, slightly hesitant smile. “There’s so much love and trust between the two main characters. And communication. So different from the relationships I’ve experienced.” She took a deep breath. “Beth said that trust and communication are important in the kind of relationship she has with Alex. I think I might know why you’re angry with me.”
“First of all, I’m not angry—not the way you mean. Displeased is more like it.”
“Whatever. This is something to do with my not telling you what was bothering me, isn’t it?”
Whatever? She’d actually dared to say whatever to her Dom?
And he did now consider himself just that, even if they hadn’t ironed out the details yet. The fact that she knew what he was and hadn’t backed out of seeing him was an implicit acceptance of his position in her life. Cam folded his arms and drummed the fingers of his right hand on his upper left arm. He continued to glare at her, one eyebrow raised. That way, he could see the exact moment when the error of her ways sank in.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“You could say that.”
“What are you going to do about it?” She shifted slightly on the bed.
Now that was interesting. She was playing the game. “What do you think I should do about it?” Cam adopted the silkiest tone in his verbal arsenal, pleased to see that it scored a direct hit and made her squirm some more.
“I’m…not sure.”
Understandable. Later on in their relationship, she would be sure. “Shall I tell you, Stacie? Assuming this was within the boundaries of our contract, you would present yourself to me for discipline. Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head.
“And that would add another ten to the count. You say, ‘No, Sir’. You do not shake your head like that. Nor do you nod when in agreement. Shall we try again? Do you know what that means?”
“No, Sir.”
Two words, barely more than breathed, and they went straight to his cock. Cam had to take a couple of steps away from her—not for the sake of putting distance between them, but for the sake of easing the stranglehold his jeans had on his unruly dick. He turned back to her.
“It means our current positions would be reversed. I’d be sitting there, and you would be standing in front of me. You’d strip off your jeans for me, without my having to tell you to do so, and you’d lie across my lap. I’d take your knickers down and you’d get the flat of my hand on your bare bottom. You would count out each and every stroke, and you would thank me for each one.”
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open in shock. What was even more interesting was the way her nipples had become hard, proud points beneath the soft, clinging fabric of her top. The description of her punishment was clearly turning her on.
“What…would happen then, Sir?”
The best part. “The matter would be closed and I’d take care of you.”
He hadn’t thought she could open her eyes any wider, but wider they went and Cam felt a curious thrill at the thought of giving her the pleasure she was clearly anticipating.
“Now,” he continued, “why did you look so worried when I mentioned the car and London?”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “I was worried about reading too much into this…the situation between us.”
“Too much in what way?”
She squirmed again. “This is going to sound really stupid.”
“Talk to me, Stacie.”
“It’s part of…it’s the whole car thing. No, it’s more than that. A couple of days ago we’d never even met, and now here we are—you’ve asked me to go out with you, you’ve offered to help me find a car and finance it for me. It’s all more than a little overwhelming. I mean, people don’t do that when they barely know one another. They hardly even do it when they’ve been seeing one another for years!”
“Okay. What else?”
From the way her expression changed, Cam guessed that the “else” was the crux of the matter.
“Socioeconomically, we’re worlds apart. And there was the way you asked me about going back to London to look for a car. It struck me how quickly everything was happening. You were treating me like your girlfriend—”
“For want of a better way of describing it, you are my girlfriend.”
“And it only seems like five minutes since I was wondering if you had someone special in your life!”
“Ah, I see. Too much, too soon.”
“Yes. No. Sort of.” She made an almost comic noise of strangled frustration. “I don’t know!”
“Hmm. Well, that’s cleared that up, then.” He couldn’t help it if he had a somewhat dry sense of humour.
She looked up at him. Her breath huffed out on a huge sigh and her shoulders slumped. “Not so much too much, too soon as an awful lot all at once. I just finished with Jonty—my ex—but I wasn’t in love with him. I think that relationship had been more or less over for a while, or was getting that way, so it’s not like I’m nursing a broken heart or having sleepless nights about it.”
“Is there anything that is giving you sleepless nights—or likely to?” Cam enquired gently, serious again because he didn’t like the thought of anything other than him keeping her awake at night. And he’d only be keeping her awake for the best of reasons.
“Well…you, mainly,” she replied, staring at the fingers that were fidgeting on her lap. “Sort of, I mean, in the sense that I would probably be looking at sleepless nights…after talking to Beth about her book this morning. And they’d be sleepless for good reasons, not bad ones. Oh God, I’m making such a mess of this.”
Not so sure that it was a good idea, Cam went to stand in front of her—close, but far enough away that he’d need to take another step to be in a position to touch her. As an extra precaution, he rammed his hands into his pockets. “No, you’re not,” he disagreed, not unkindly. “You’re communicating and that’s what we need you to do. Your clarity needs a little work, admittedly. So come on—tell me.”
“I’m still embarrassed about what I said in the car yesterday.”
“About?”
She looked at him with mutinous eyes. “Are you going to make me say it?”
“Yes.”
She huffed again and looked away. Cam took the step he never intended to take, and with a single finger under her chin, he made her look at him again. He schooled his features into an expression of expectation.
“I’m still embarrassed about admitting to being attracted to a fictional character in the first place, compounded by the fact that I admitted it to the man who inspired that character. Happy now?”
Now she was glaring at him. Cam had a hard time keeping his amusement in check—instead he focused on the pleasure her reluctant obedience gave him.
“Happy may be an exaggeration, Stacie, but I am pleased by your open and honest communication. As for being embarrassed, forget about it—we dealt with that last night. Anything else worrying you and keeping you awake? Or likely to do so?”
He could see the question forming in her mind.
“Does it bother you that I’m a complete novice when it comes to this kind of relationship? I think that would worry me—if it bothered you.”
That was an easy question for him to answer, difficult though it was for her to ask it. “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest, honey. We’ll take it slow and easy, starting with honesty, which is a good foundation for trust. For instance, when I ask you what’s wrong, you answer me fully, honestly and immediately—no filters. If you censor anything you say to me, I’ll just have to teach you the lesson the hard way.”
She looked straight at him. “How would you teach me the lesson the hard way? A spanking?”
A question he wasn’t expecting—not then, at any rate. Was Stacie going to be a sub who would keep him on his toes? He bloody well hoped so. She was already showing clear signs of it. The one thing he didn’t want was a slave incapable of thinking for herself.
Nor did he miss the way her pupils dilated when she asked the question. What was she anticipating? All of a sudden, Cam was burning to know how she wanted to be taught the lesson the hard way.
“Perhaps, but we have to discuss your hard and soft limits before we go down that road, Stacie. And that is a discussion we’re not having here.”
Was it his imagination, or did she look disappointed? Did she even know she looked disappointed? And what, in p
articular, was she disappointed about? Did she want to feel his hand on her bottom?
Cam was starting to get the idea that this relationship was going to be anything but predictable.
Chapter 6
A couple of days later Cam found himself outside a large Victorian house in one of the less-fashionable areas of the capital, unloading Stacie’s bags from the boot of his car. Her new car—at eighteen months old, it was as new as she’d let him buy for her and that had been under the kind of protest that would earn any sub a punishment—would be ready to collect in a couple of days. Picking it up from the dealer about ten miles from Winterleigh would give them another excuse to drop in on the Lombards. The original plan—to buy the car in London—had fallen by the wayside when Stacie’s eye was caught by the fiery-red Mini on the dealer’s forecourt, on the way from the scrapyard where her old vehicle had been laid to rest.
Until then, he was going to put the time to good use and spend as much of it as possible with Stacie, starting with dinner that evening and a night that—though she didn’t know it yet—she was going to spend in his bed.
It was four days since they’d first met, and for most of that time they’d had the mutual pleasure of each other’s company. What Cam had discovered about Stacie Matheson in that time pleased him immensely. Yes, she was physically attractive, but more importantly she had a mind too, one that he was growing more and more convinced was underutilised in her job as an administrative assistant in a large office. Not much got past her—over the last few days, they’d had some very lively discussions that had revealed more of her intelligence and character. The more he saw of her, the more he liked what he saw…the more attracted to her he became.
Something else that had given him great pleasure was dealing with the bastard she’d had the great good sense to ditch. He’d seen her thinly veiled annoyance at the latest text message to come from the loser, and having had enough of the pest, Cam had taken her phone from her and called her ex.
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