by Joey W. Hill
She was watching his face and seeing too much. "You meant we should have waited," she said brokenly. "I should have waited."
"No." He cupped her jaw. "Sam, this is on me. Yeah, maybe we should have, but you weren't wrong. We've been dragging our feet for months, even knowing we all felt something, and you were the one who realized something had to give."
"But you told me from the beginning, just wait until he gets back . . ."
"Yes, I did. But I didn't, either, did I?" The consequences of that speared him through the chest as much as he was sure they did her, but hell if he was going to let her shoulder them. From that parting cold look Chris had given him, his friend wasn't putting it on her, either. On that, at least, they were in agreement.
Despite the ache in his chest, he pulled his shit together. "Sam, I told you, this is new for me," he said steadily. "Not the wanting-to-be-a-Dom part, but doing that, and this, all of it, with someone as close to me as you are? You're my first."
Truth, he felt like she was the only one he wanted that way, now or forever, but he wasn't sure if this was the best time to tell her that. Some great and powerful Dom he was. He felt like a complete idiot. He needed to go to work, where he felt on far more solid ground, but that wasn't the answer, either. Fuck it. If he was late, he was late. Mike was going to be at the meeting, and Geoff could text and tell him to get it started.
Sam was still staring a hole in his chest, her body stiff. Geoff ran his hands over her thin, silky robe, feeling the slim bones of her shoulders. He moved down to her elbows and back again. "I know it hurt like hell, him pulling away. But trust me, he just has to think it through. He wouldn't have reacted that way if he weren't so crazy about you he can't walk a straight line. He walks in on that, he's not sure where he fits. And then you put your arms around him, offer yourself to him. Oh well, look, Chris is here, let's just throw him into the mix."
She parted her lips on a protest, but he shook his head. "I know it's not that way. We both do. The timing just went screwy on us. If he'd gotten home later today, we could have sat down and talked about it, fully clothed. It would have gone better." He hoped.
His fucking phone buzzed on the kitchen table--probably fucking Mike trying to see if he was on his fucking way.
"You have to go," Sam said.
"I know. I don't want to. Not unless you come with me so I know I'm not leaving you in the middle of this."
"No, I really feel I need to stay. Don't worry, we'll figure it out." She put on a far-too-bright smile. "It's going to be okay. Go to work. I'm going to get dressed."
"Sam, this isn't on you to fix. You get that, right?"
Of course she didn't. She was a Type A personality and a submissive, and thought every damn thing in the world that went wrong was either her fault, or her responsibility to fix. She was a smart woman, but she was also a creature of the heart. Between heart and mind, her heart usually won. Maybe that was how he needed to approach it.
Taking her hand, he drew her over to the kitchen table and took a seat in one of the chairs, pulling her to stand between his knees. Her brow furrowed. "You need to go--"
"I'll go when I'm done here." He slipped the tie of her robe, letting it fall open so her lovely torso was visible to him, the pink-tipped breasts, the pale skin, the shaved mound and slim thighs. As he returned his attention to her face, he shifted both hands to her waist inside the robe, and gripped her firmly. He liked the way his hands looked pressed against her skin and, from the little tremor of reaction, he knew she liked how they felt.
"You can't imagine what it does to a man, to see you open yourself to him like this. He may be out in the yard fuming, but I guarantee what's branded in his brain is you standing before him naked, your mouth soft and your eyes asking for everything from him. I can't stop you from trying to talk with him while I'm gone, but I am going to tell you this: Put aside any strategies to solve this and go with your heart. Only your heart. There's nothing you need to fix. Nothing. Say it."
He pinned her with a hard look, and tried not to let the light tinge that came to her cheeks, the shift of her gaze and nervous moistening of her lips, all classic signs of submission, distract him from his purpose.
"I don't know . . ."
"You say it and mean it, or you go to work with me. I'll throw you over my shoulder to do it if I have to. I won't let you stay here and punish yourself for something that not your fault, or set yourself up that way in front of Chris. He's not at the point he'd know how to deal with that the right way."
"And how is that?" At her mutinous look, he almost smiled, because it was the reaction he wanted.
"Cut a switch and beat your ass with it until you were saying you were sorry for the right things."
"He'd have to catch me first," she said decisively, but he was watching her pulse rate increase in her lovely throat. Pain for pleasure didn't turn her off, and Christ, that was way too much of a turn-on for him.
He drew her closer and kissed a nipple, giving it the edge of his teeth and a swirl of tongue that had her shivering again. "I could catch you," he promised. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Chris punishing you while I watched."
"Stop it," she said, trying halfheartedly to pull away. "I don't want to get all . . . you know . . . while he's upset."
"I know." He softened his tone. "I have no problem with reassuring him on how you feel about him, Sam." Geoff met her gaze, making sure she was listening closely to what he was saying. How he was saying it. "But you won't accept any blame. That's going to be between him and me."
"But I . . ."
"Do you trust me?"
She fidgeted. "On most things."
He suppressed the desire to shake her. "If you want me to be your Master, you have to figure out which areas are yours and which are mine to handle."
"And how will I know that?"
"Because I'll tell you." Dropping his hand to her ass, he squeezed it hard enough to make her jump. "Anything related to vacuuming or washing dishes is totally your area. My area is to stand around, issue orders and look commanding."
He saw her move from worry to exasperation and amusement. Though it looked like an uphill battle, he thought he'd made her feel a little better. She spread her hands out in a helpless gesture. "Geoff, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. It's killing me that he's out there, mad and unhappy, and somehow thinking he's outside of this."
"I know. We'll figure it out." He pursed his lips. "Hand me a Sharpie."
They kept assorted notepads, pens and markers in a big fruit bowl on the table. She reached over to it to get a marker, the robe sliding away from her naked body in a way that had him stifling a groan. Without her saying it, he knew she hadn't made any move to cover herself because he was the one who'd opened the robe, and it was up to him to decide when he wanted her covered.
Forcing himself to focus, he turned her around. "Drop the robe off your shoulders. Don't take it all the way off."
She complied. It was unspeakably provocative, the baring of her shoulders at his command, him standing behind her, his breath stirring her hair. He slid the straight brown strands over her shoulder so they tumbled over her right breast. She stood, a bemused look to her profile as he began to write between her shoulder blades. He blew on the print, making sure it was dry before he pulled the robe back up on her shoulders. Turning her around, he overlapped the panels of her robe and tied it, wrapping the ends around his hands to hold her to him.
"You're not allowed to see what I wrote until after he sees it. If he pulls a single tear out of you, you show it to him. You hear me?"
"Chris won't make me cry."
He gave her a patient look. "Not on purpose, but if he does, promise me."
"I promise."
He touched her nose. "You were brave enough to kick me in the ass to get this moving. Now I need you to throttle back. Focus on what you do best for us."
"What's that? And if you say ironing your shirts or cleaning toilets, I will kick you in the
balls."
He chuckled at that, at the flash in her gray eyes, and folded her against him. She let out a frustrated little sigh, but looped her arms around his waist and back and pressed her cheek to his chest. He leaned down and spoke in her ear, giving her the truth in two words.
"Loving us."
Author of the Knights of the Board Room and the Vampire Queen series, as well as Naughty Bits and the standalone novel, Unrestrained, Joey W. Hill's work has received top picks and acclaim from numerous popular book review and reader sites. She has been awarded the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Erotica and is an RWA Holt Medallion winner.
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