by Lilia Moon
She snorts. “Anyone who spends the night in my bed is just grateful he can get to the table.”
Jacob uses a spatula where he thinks I can’t see it. “You’re missing the point. Twenty minutes is totally enough time for wake-up sex.”
That so wasn’t the point I was trying to make, but I live on a different planet from all these people. I can feel my cheeks glowing red again.
Quint grins at Jacob. “I hear Marla’s grumpy in the morning. Maybe your twenty-minute sex needs improving.”
I shake my head. At this point they’re just messing with me, but I’ve learned that managing Doms is pretty much like managing four year olds. “Jacob, you’re on cleanup duty for spatula misuse. I presume you’ll have company by the time we’re done.”
He waves the offending implement at me and smiles. “You could spank me instead.”
Okay, not quite like managing four year olds. I look over at Emilio, who at least sometimes follows instructions. “Can you equip everyone with whisks and bowls, please?”
He looks like I’ve asked him to find tampons in a church.
“I’d be happy to help with that,” says an amused voice from the door.
I look up to find a stranger entering the kitchen.
He walks over, pulls several whisks out of a utensil container and hands them to Emilio, and smiles. “I’m Daniel. Damon suggested I might enjoy dropping in on your cooking lesson, if you’ll have me.”
His voice is like caramel right before it hardens, and it does strange things in my belly. “Sure. Are you new here?” I look around, getting ready to make introductions.
“No. I was one of Fettered’s founding members, but I haven’t been around for a while.” He reaches his hand out to Emilio. “I think you’re the only one I don’t know. Daniel Jardins.”
Emilio looks awed, which makes me wonder exactly who this man is.
Daniel hangs his suit jacket on the back of a chair, sits down on a stool by Quint, and starts to roll up his sleeves. “So no fooling around with spatulas, and if sex takes longer than twenty minutes the soufflés will burn. Anything else I need to know before we start?”
I will not think about this man and sex. I’m flustered enough as it is. He’s most definitely not a four year old. I hand out the hole-punched cards where I’ve neatly written out idiot-proof soufflé instructions. They’re hand-written, because for me, recipes are personal. Everyone carefully adds their cards to the cute little recipe binders Ari found after the first class. It touches me that they use them, even though they’re probably a little ridiculous in the kitchen of a BDSM club.
Damon walks in while they’re all filing their cards and smiles at me. “I tried the stuffed French toast again, and this time Emily didn’t eat all the filling before I got to use it.”
Harlan laughs. “You must have tied her up.”
Damon finds a vacant stool and grins. “Nope. I threatened to put her spanking bench in time out.”
I can feel my face flaming. I so don’t belong here—and yet I keep coming back. “You each need eggs, milk, flour, and a little sugar. Go.”
My students scramble for ingredients, and I take a minute to try to get myself back under control, or at least back into the grandmother persona that seems to help me navigate here best.
Which works just fine until I look up and discover Daniel hasn’t moved at all. He’s watching me, like a lazy lion who’s found an interesting mouse.
Chapter Four
Daniel
She’s the sexiest grandmother I’ve ever seen.
Lush curves, curly hair, gorgeous fair skin, and eyes that find a kitchen full of misbehaving Doms somewhere on the right side of adorable. And it’s mutual—every time she blushes they all fall in love with her a little more.
I watch as her eyes meet mine and take a good, long look—and then they dive for the floor and I know Quint’s not wrong. There’s a submissive in there, if Gabby wants to let her out to play.
I smile as Ari delivers me all the ingredients I need for my soufflé. Someone’s clearly a switch, as happy to be of service as she is to dole out spankings—and also a troublemaker. I swat her with the spatula I stole from Jacob.
She gives me the kind of laughing look that says she doesn’t get mad, she gets even. “You might want to sit farther away from Damon. He had to use the fire extinguisher on his French toast last week.”
It’s pretty clear why everyone at the club has adopted her. “I’m not scared of a little fire.”
She heads back to her stool, eyes dancing. “We’ll see.”
We will indeed. I look at the recipe card for a dish I’ve been able to make for twenty years.
Gabby clears her throat, and the color in her cheeks rises as she skims her eyes past mine. “This time, let’s see how you do following the written instructions. Once the soufflés are in the oven, I’ll show you some toppings that can turn this into a savory or sweet breakfast, depending on your preference.”
I’m pretty fond of both, and I’m getting curious which way this woman might swing when she’s not in mothering mode. She’s clearly got sweet down to a high art, but no woman is this comfortable in a room full of Dom energy without having some layers under her sugar.
It amuses me that I might want to find out. Maybe I’m not a totally jaded guy who’s too old for this after all.
Damon leans over and steals some of my eggs. “So?”
I steal the eggs back and crack them into my bowl two at a time. “Cooking lessons are an interesting club offering.”
He steals Jacob’s eggs instead and tries to duplicate the two-at-a-time trick.
I give him credit—he at least manages to land most of the mess in his bowl. “I hope you’re giving her hazard pay.”
He looks sheepish. “She’s a volunteer. She flatly refuses to let me pay her anything.” He glances Gabby’s way. She’s watching us, and neither of us has any problem reading the look on her face. “Uh oh. We’ve been busted.”
She’s already heading in our direction. I put a hand on his arm to forestall his cowardly attempt to escape. “No way. You got me into this, so you can at least stick around and vouch for my character.”
He snorts. “I don’t think she wants to hear that you got voted best pussy spanker in Seattle.”
Probably not yet, anyhow. Gabby’s paused long enough to help Emilio figure out the intricacies of using a whisk, so I take a moment to appreciate her curves. “I’d be very happy to have entirely vanilla sex with our lovely teacher.”
Damon eyes me like I might rattle and strike at any moment.
We’ve had this conversation before, so I don’t bother having it again. I was the hottest Dom in town once, the guy with the mad skills and subs lined up for miles for a chance to play bottom to my top. Then most of that got old and it didn’t fill me up to be wanted for my inventive scenes or my talent with a flogger anymore. “I’m looking for something different now.”
“Yeah.” He lifts his whisk and watches batter drip back into the bowl. “I thought you were crazy when you left, but now that Emily’s landed in my life, I realize just how narrow my world had gotten.”
Mine’s never been narrow—but it’s never had all the pieces I want in it, either.
“Gentlemen.” Gabby steps between us and casts an amused glance at the contents of Damon’s bowl. “Nicely stirred, but you’re missing one of your ingredients.”
Damon looks at his eggshell-studded batter in consternation. “How can you tell?”
She kisses his cheek. “Because you make as big a mess with flour as my granddaughters, and I don’t see any evidence you’ve touched it today.”
He curses and grabs the recipe card. “There’s flour in these things?”
Gabby looks at me, eyes bright with merriment. “I hope someone explained to you that this is a very basic cooking class.”
They’re leaving me to fill in most of the blanks for myself, but I don’t need to let her know that. “They just
told me that I should come and introduce myself to the woman teaching.”
It takes a moment for my words to land—and when they do, she flushes pretty and pink and clearly has no idea what to say.
Damon shakes his head from her other side. “Really subtle there, Daniel. Way to go.”
He’s giving her time to think—and making it clear that I come with his stamp of approval.
I sit quietly and let her wheels turn. I also hear the noise level in the kitchen cut in half as everyone tries to eavesdrop without making it too obvious.
Gabby doesn’t miss that either. She looks around, pausing on Harlan’s watchful eyes and Ari’s mischievous ones. And then she looks back at me, embarrassed and flustered. “I’m so sorry. They put you in a difficult position.”
That’s a job description I usually enjoy. “Not at all.” I wink at her. “Maybe I’ll even learn something while I’m here.”
She looks down at my nicely whipped soufflé batter, eyes full of doubt and chagrin. And then she just closes them, and something important deflates as she sighs.
The room holds its collective breath, and I can hear the concern registering. For good reason. We screwed up. I don’t know all of the reasons why yet, but I know that I’m looking at a sexy, interesting woman who can’t imagine any good reason why I’m here. Maybe it’s just because the people who set this up, including me, have all been kinky for long enough that we’ve forgotten how this works in the outside world, or maybe there’s something more going on, but either way I need to pull her out of this fire—and there aren’t a lot of options, not when I don’t know the first thing about what she wants. So I grasp for what little I know of comfort in the world she knows. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
She looks totally horrified. “You don’t have to do that.”
Ouch. The lady might not have a self-confidence problem in the kitchen, but she clearly has one outside of it. I’m Dom enough that I can’t possibly let that slide. “You’re right. I don’t. But I’d very much like to, and Damon can tell you that I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
Damon snorts from the other side of the narrow counter, where he’s moved to try to get a better read on her face. “That’s an understatement.” He looks at Gabby. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a good guy, even if he’s an arrogant ass sometimes.”
She brushes flour off his cheek and makes a face. And then she looks at me, and I see one of those layers I’m looking for. The one where she gets a little bit nervous and a little bit brave, and then breathes in and reinflates whatever shrank a minute ago. “Okay. Thank you. Dinner would be lovely.”
Her smile is contagious, and I can’t help smiling back at her. I feel like a teenager who just stole his first kiss. Which is a really nice change from old and jaded.
Chapter Five
Gabby
Ari grins at me. “Breathe, silly. It’s just dinner.”
Nothing is just dinner, and the implications of what I’ve agreed to have grown tentacles in the time it took to get everyone out of Fettered’s kitchen without setting it on fire. “He was just trying to rescue me.”
“Stop it.” Ari whacks her hand on the counter she’s wiping down.
I freeze, wondering what I’ve managed to do wrong.
She sighs, and her eyes gentle. “Look, sweetie. I know you’re not very used to our world, and we kind of forgot about that when we tried to set the two of you up. But take it from me—no guy with his experience gets coerced into taking you out for dinner. Trust me and Damon and Harlan to have gotten that much right.”
It’s not them I don’t trust. It’s me. I’m feeling about as steady as a newly hatched duckling—one who accidentally cracked its egg open on Mars. I don’t walk in a world where handsome, confident, charismatic men drop into my kitchen and ask me out for dinner.
I grew out of fairy tales a long time ago. “I don’t want him doing this out of obligation.”
Ari nods slowly. “You made that clear. In front of witnesses. Did you listen to his answer?”
She’s not much older than my girls, but she knows exactly how to make me wiggle on a hook. “I did.” And for a moment he was convincing enough that I clawed out of the jabbering in my head and said yes.
Which is how I got into this mess, and apparently no one wants to let me gracefully out of it.
Ari picks up an errant whisk and tosses it in the sink. “Quit questioning why Daniel could possibly be interested in you and just enjoy it. Have dinner with a sexy man who wants to eat with you and contemplate what he might do to your body later.”
I can’t even think about that part. I keep stacking egg-encrusted bowls in the commercial dishwasher. “Dinner doesn’t mean anything else.” Even if he ran his hand up and down my arm and made every cell of me vibrate when he asked me where I might like to eat.
Ari snorts quietly. “You’re way too blind to your own appeal. I bet you a really sexy set of lingerie that he doesn’t let you get away with that for more than ten minutes.”
That would be one more set than I currently own. Which is part of the problem here. I know how to be a mom, and I’m figuring out how to be a wedding planner and a decent cooking instructor, but both of those things are at least a little bit like parenting.
I take a deep and very shaky breath. This is something entirely different. It’s making me feel seventeen again, and not in a good way. I try to imagine stepping into sexy lingerie and my stomach congeals.
Ari walks up beside me, wet rag in her hand, and lays her head on my shoulder. “You want to know what makes Emily and Scorpio happy, right?”
I do, but I’m hopelessly embarrassed that so many people apparently read the writing on my secret wall. “I never expected you guys to do this.”
She grins and starts helping with the dishes. “You should have. We’re nosy and annoying and arrogant and we all love you.” She looks at me, her eyes serious. “You need a guide if you’re even thinking about playing, and we want to make sure you’re safe. I don’t know Daniel as well as Harlan and Damon do, but they both think the world of him.”
I twist the cloth in my hands. “You can’t just pick somebody to have sex with me.” Especially somebody like him.
She laughs, and in that moment she totally sounds like Jules. And then she sobers and pulls me over to a stool. “First, nobody’s saying you have to have sex with him or he has to have sex with you. There are lots of other ways you can play, and you never even have to take your clothes off, okay?”
I roll my eyes, abjectly grateful to have suddenly landed on more comfortable ground. “I gave that speech to all three of my daughters. So many times I can probably recite it in my sleep.”
“Good. Remember it.” She draws circles in a patch of flour that’s still dusting the countertop and then takes a breath and looks at me, eyes gentle. “In our world, it’s not uncommon for someone to step up like this and act as a guide for someone new. We want to help people figure out what they need and who they want to be and how to stay safe while they do it. It helps if there’s some chemistry, and the people involved always need to say yes, but this is one of the ways we take care of each other.”
In my world, handsome men with fierce eyes don’t ask me out to dinner, much less anything else. But I’m hearing her. Some people I care about very much are trying to give me a gift, and for reasons I don’t understand, Daniel has agreed to help. The doubts in my belly raise their hydra heads one more time. “Promise me nobody is making him do this.”
She shakes her head, trying not to laugh. “We’re total meddlers, but we’re not that pushy. We set up the introduction. The rest is totally up to the two of you.”
The two of us who would never normally inhabit the same planet, even just long enough for dinner.
My belly totally can’t make up its mind how it feels about that.
Ari takes my hands. “Talk to him. See what sounds interesting.” She winks. “Take some risks.”
I
make a sound that’s mostly a whimper. My secret wall never imagined having to open my mouth. “I have no idea how to have that conversation.” Or anything that might come after, but right now, even the talking part has my insides churning. “I don’t know how to walk in your world.”
“You don’t need to, sweetie. He does.” Her eyes are full of kindness, but I know she’ll be the one who gets saddest if I wimp out. “You just need to walk in yours. Treat it like a date. One where you get to be honest and brave and curious, and where there might be some really awesome kinky side dishes available to sample if you want to.”
I can feel my cheeks nearing their melting point. I so want to be this woman she thinks I can be—but I don’t feel like her at all.
Except for the tiny little part that feels like it came to life when Daniel touched my arm.
She grins and gives me a hug. “It’s only dinner. Or maybe a night or a week or a month where you get to learn new things about yourself and what lives inside you. Give yourself a chance.” She kisses my cheek. “Give him one.”
Chapter Six
Gabby
I wander slowly down the street, knowing I’m running a little early. It was either that or mop my floors, because everything else in my house got cleaned somewhere between cooking class and walking out my front door.
There are worse ways to work off stress. Or nerves, or giddy anticipation, or whatever this is. I haven’t had dinner with a man in forever. Just the occasional interludes with a few male friends who wouldn’t object to something else, and a few awkward meet-ups in coffee shops that I finally decided weren’t worth the effort.