by Lilia Moon
Daniel’s in a different league entirely.
I pick up a stray red leaf, one of the last of the season, and giggle. I’m about to go on a date with a man I met in the kitchen of a sex club. One who Ari said is willing to be my guide for a few weeks if I want to try a little bit of what’s making my friends so happy. It’s easily the craziest, most exotic thing that’s ever happened to me.
I grin down at my jeans and waterproof boots. I’m not dressed for exotic. I am, however, dressed for a stroll on a Seattle night. I love my neighborhood, and I’m glad for the chance for a little walk. Daniel agreed to meet at the wonderful pizzeria here, and it somehow feels more comfortable to be doing this somewhere familiar.
Who am I kidding—nothing about this feels comfortable at all. But somewhere in all the cleaning, I found the part of me where this feels good, and I’m learning to pay more attention to those small, underfed bits of me these days. I’m still nervous. Still mostly convinced that Daniel’s going to decide this was all a horrible mistake and politely exit as soon as he can find a door. But I’m not seventeen. I’m forty-three, and if all that happens is a nice dinner with an interesting man, I’ll live. I can always jump in a puddle or two on my way home.
I wave at the Nicholsons across the street, taking their clan of poodles for a walk. The streets are quieter than they were a month or two ago, but this is still a neighborhood where houses are small and people step outside as often as they can for a breath of fresh air or just to say hello.
It’s always been that way, even twenty years ago when it most definitely didn’t have fancy pizzerias and upscale coffee shops. These days even the graffiti is quirky and kind of cute. But the young families haven’t been pushed out, and that makes me happy. I like seeing the little kids playing in their yards, and I love having my granddaughters just around the corner.
I turn onto the street where our little cluster of businesses have congregated and smile at the bustle. That never changes, even when it rains. I look over at the new art gallery, pleased to see the owner out on the street, chatting with people waiting in line in front of the best fish taco stand in town.
“Hello, Gabby.”
The voice beside me nearly startles me into a puddle.
Daniel catches me under the elbow, smiling. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
He’s a very handsome man, but it’s his voice that makes me all quivery inside. “It’s my fault—I’m always looking somewhere different than where my feet are going.”
He laughs and keeps holding my elbow. “You must see some pretty interesting things, then.”
That laugh. It caught me in cooking class and it still hasn’t let me go. “I didn’t expect you to be here yet—I know I’m running early.” And nervous. And well on my way to tongue tied.
His eyes meet mine, and then he reaches out to touch my cheek. “I was looking forward to seeing you. It’s nice to know I wasn’t the only one who was feeling eager.”
It’s totally true, but it still feels like he just stripped me naked in the street.
He studies me for a moment and sighs. “And I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. It’s a holdover from my Dom training. Once you learn how to read a woman’s face, it’s a hard skill to turn off. It comes in useful in boardroom negotiations, but I didn’t mean to pull it out on you just then.”
Wow. “I don’t think I mind, actually. So long as you tell me what you think you’ve seen.” I grin at him, suddenly enjoying myself. “In case you’re wrong.”
His eyes flare with surprise, and then he leans into me, laughing. “I think I’m going to enjoy dinner with you very much.”
I’m starting to believe that might actually be true. I point at the door to Bruno’s, which never seems to end up closed, even in the winter. “There’s the pizzeria.” I glance at the man beside me, my stomach tweaking with distress, because when he asked where I wanted to eat, I somehow forgot that this is a man who wore a suit to a cooking class. “Bruno’s is fancy for pizza, but still pretty relaxed.”
He’s watching me really carefully. The way Damon watches Emily sometimes. “You worry too much, sweetheart.”
He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. I sigh. “Now it’s my turn to be sorry. It’s just that I’m pretty good at keeping people happy once I know what they like, but I don’t know you very well.”
“Your job isn’t to keep me happy.” He leans down and brushes a kiss, feather light, on my lips. “I do a fine job of that. I ask for what I want, and I’ll be a happy man if you do the same.”
I stare at the lips that have just left mine. This man is some kind of very potent drug. I step away from him, wishing I had the bravery to ask for another kiss.
I don’t—but that I’m even thinking it astonishes me.
Chapter Seven
Daniel
I’m sitting across a small table from a woman in a bright and pleasingly tight red sweater, inhaling the smells of wood smoke and melted cheese, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
I wasn’t entirely truthful with her. I am good at getting what I want. I’m not always so good at figuring out what that might be.
Apparently wood-fired pizza and sexy sweaters need to move way up the list.
I drink her up with my eyes, letting the lull in our conversation happen. She’s clearly good at setting people at ease, at laying the foundations of interesting small talk that let deeper things happen.
My brain keeps circling back to my lips brushing against hers out on the sidewalk. What I really wanted was to kiss her until her eyes crossed. I have a sneaking suspicion she might have wanted that too, but she didn’t ask. If this goes any further, we’re going to have to work on that.
She tilts her head, looking at me quizzically. “What are you thinking about?”
Sometimes telling the truth is a lot of fun. “Kissing you.”
She swallows, hard—but she doesn’t look away.
Good. Time to head deeper. She’s been a cheerful open book about herself, but her questions to me have carefully stayed in shallow waters. “Ask what you want to know, Gabby.”
She’s looking at me from under her eyelashes. “Ari says you’re a Dom, but you don’t come to Fettered anymore. That you kind of retired.”
There we go. And I can’t even thump Ari for interfering, because I know exactly why she did it. “Would you like the short answer or the long one?”
“Long.” Her answer comes instantly, and then she flushes. “Please.”
I reach for her hand, not because I need it to read her reactions, but because touching her is my new happy place. “I helped Damon back when he was getting Fettered started. I spent a lot of years living deep in the BDSM lifestyle, playing with both male and female subs.”
She takes a sip of her wine. “And then something changed?”
I blink, stuck on the fact that she didn’t react at all to my last sentence. “Either you’re a really good actress or I’m not the first bisexual man you’ve run across.”
She flashes me a grin, like she knows she’s surprised me and she’s pleased about it. “You’re the first one I’ve ever gone on a date with.”
I need to be very careful of my preconceived notions about this woman. I shake my head. “It’s not a big deal in the BDSM community, but I’m not used to it landing so smoothly in the vanilla world.”
She’s smiling now, and it turns her face into something I want to touch. “About ten years ago, my daughter Shani came home with her first boyfriend. Six weeks later, she introduced me to her new girlfriend. I’ve had a long time to get over any stupid ideas I might have had.”
I know lots of people who hold on to stupid for a lot longer than ten years. “She sounds very lucky and very loved.”
She shrugs, like mothers do right by their children all the time and it’s no big deal. “So you aren’t a Dom anymore?”
Someone is definitely curious—and very good at
not getting distracted. “I wanted something more than what I was getting. I still enjoy the power exchange of being with a sub, but I don’t go to the clubs much anymore, and I’ve learned to appreciate vanilla sex more than most Doms I know.”
Her cheeks are glowing like sexy tomatoes. “I guess I don’t really understand the difference.”
I’m guessing this is way outside the bounds of her usual first-date conversations. “Short answer or long one?” I put a hint of what the long answer will be in my eyes, just to see what she does.
Her breath practically stops, which is fantastic for my ego and yet another clue that a submissive lives within this woman.
I wait for the words. You can take a Dom out of the clubs, but some of the lessons stick forever.
“Long. Please.” She closes her eyes and visibly squirms. “Unless you’re sitting there deeply wishing to be talking about something else.”
There’s that confidence thing again, and it’s time to at least give her a hint of how I feel about that. “The vanilla guy’s response would be to reassure you that talking about sex with a beautiful woman never, ever gets old. The Dom, depending on how long you’ve known him, would either dig into that self-doubt of yours or spank you for having it.”
Her eyes are the size of shot glasses.
I smile and run my thumb down the soft skin of the back of her hand. “Since I straddle both worlds, consider all of the above a possibility.”
Our pizza arrives, which saves her from trying to figure out how to extract herself from the corner I’ve put her in. It smells like heaven, and I sacrifice my fingers to the task of separating too-hot slices out for each of our plates.
She looks at me with surprise. Either she generally eats out with her grandkids, or the men she’s dated are all idiots.
I pick up my slice and hide a grin. I’m not nearly done with surprising her.
Chapter Eight
Gabby
This is totally different than what I expected.
He’s easy to talk to. I sound like a cliché out of a romance novel, but it’s true. He’s been sweet and funny and open about who he is and what he does and why his life choices have changed over time, and he seems to consider all of that a reasonable part of an easy conversation over pizza.
A lot of me wants to leave it there, because going out for a nice dinner with an attractive man who seems to really be enjoying his time with me is heady stuff, and I don’t want to break it. But there’s one of those underfed bits of me that wants to know what it’s like to kiss a Dom instead of teach him how to cook—and as I sit here nibbling on a slice of pizza that I can’t possibly finish, I can hear Ari telling me to be brave. To reach for what I might want.
To trust the look in his eyes that says he wants to be here, even if I still can’t really imagine why. I put down the pizza, and my hands flutter, dithering as badly as my thoughts.
He reaches for my fingers, gently wrapping them in his. “You know, one of the most important lessons I learned in the BDSM community is that usually it’s better to stop thinking so hard and just speak.”
I close my eyes, embarrassed that he can apparently hear my brain wheels squeaking.
“You want something.” He sounds so confident, so sure, and it tugs my eyes back open. “Ask, Gabby.”
I stare down at my plate. “We’re almost done here, and I’m eating pizza I don’t even want because I don’t want this to end. I’m really enjoying being with you.”
He brings our linked hands to his cheek and leans into them. “Thank you. For saying that, and for meaning it.” He kisses my knuckles, and it sends hot shivers straight into the ball of nerves in my belly. “What would you like to happen next?”
I open my mouth and then close it. All my words have fled.
He smiles, and I totally feel like the mouse to his lion again. “Want some choices?”
The insanely brave part of me that somehow managed to drag the rest of me to dinner squeaks out a single word. “Okay.”
His thumb is stroking my cheek again. “I have three for you. The first one is that I walk you home and thank you for a really lovely evening and maybe collect a kiss or two and then I leave.”
All the air in Bruno’s has suddenly gone hot and humid.
His eyes go dark and serious. “If that’s the one you want, I need to know you’ll say so.”
I nod and try to swallow. “I gave my girls years of speeches about consent and pressure and being clear on what they really want.”
“Good.” He grins again, and it sizzles the few brain cells I have left. “Second choice is the vanilla version where we walk to your house and have some slow, lingering sex in your bed. Or hot and sweaty sex, depending on your preferences.”
Brain officially melted—and some other parts of me too. “That’s not something I usually do with a man I just met.”
He leans across the table and brushes his lips over mine, eyes twinkling. “I know. That’s why I gave you the first choice.”
Ari and Damon and Harlan all say he’s a good guy. There aren’t three girls waiting at home for me anymore. And the tiny part of me that wants to be brave is feeding on the obvious desire in his eyes, growing a little bigger. “You said there are three choices.”
He chuckles. “Feeling courageous, are you?”
I close my eyes and wonder if my cheeks will ever be a normal color again. Then I open them and meet his gaze, because I’m not a mouse and I’m tired of feeling like one. I shove my nerves back into the hole they oozed out from. I don’t know how this guide thing works, but Ari told me to be as honest as I could. “Curious. And attracted.”
His eyes flash with something that matches the fire in my insides. “Choice three is where you hand over your pleasure to me for a couple of hours. I step into my Dom shoes and we find someplace comfortable, like your couch, and I play with your naked body for a while and we see what that kind of power exchange feels like for you.”
My throat can’t remember how to breathe, but it’s not nerves choking me anymore. Not the bad kind, anyhow. “Um, am I the only one naked?”
His smile is slow, hot, and deadly. “For tonight.”
I have no idea where I’ve been hiding everything he’s lit up inside me. “That doesn’t sound like as much fun for you.”
His hand cups my chin again. “I want you to pick what you want, Gabby. I’ve offered you three choices that would all make me a very happy man. I know how to take my fun in lots of different flavors.”
I know the one I want. He’s drawn me pictures vivid enough that I can hear it singing to me. And even though it’s the most selfish one, and the one that makes my panic ratchet up like fireworks, I want to pick it anyhow.
Chapter Nine
Daniel
She knows. Now I need to know if she can dig up the resources to say it. I reach for her hands. “I think that the woman who’s curious and attracted knows what she wants. Will you tell me?”
She gulps so loudly it must hurt. “I pick the third one. Please.”
I kiss her knuckles, honoring her bravery and getting to touch a little more of her all at the same time. “Good. Let’s clear out of here, and then we can have the really short version of a negotiation on our way to your place.”
She’s staring at me again. “Negotiation?”
There are some things even I don’t do in pizza joints, especially ones in neighborhoods where my very sexy date lives and likely has friends with good ears. I wave over the waiter and go through the small rituals involved in getting us out the door with our bill paid and our leftovers in a box.
She waits and watches, quiet and bemused, until the cool night air hits our cheeks.
I wrap my arm around her this time. She’s ridiculously touchable. “How much do you know about how a Dom and a sub usually set up a scene?”
She wrinkles her nose, thinking. “I know there’s a contract.”
And good reasons for them, but we don’t need one for this. “Fo
r now, how about I tell you what I might like to do to you tonight, and you tell me if anything on that list is a problem or needs to stay out of bounds.”
She’s nodding, but she’s also smiling away at some private thought she hasn’t shared.
That needs to stop. I shift my hand to her waist and snug her in tighter to my side. “What’s got you amused?”
“Oh.” She looks up at me, surprised. “I was just thinking that your list might make my knees all wobbly like it did in Bruno’s, and then you’ll have to carry me home.”
There are worse fates. “I want you naked, in some place well lit so that I can see the beautiful body you have under those clothes.”
I’m watching her really closely. Most subs, even new ones, get comfortable with naked very quickly, but my more recent experiences have taught me that most vanilla women are inordinately fond of hiding under the covers. Especially ones with luscious curves and self-confidence issues.
She leans her head into my shoulder, fighting the need to deflate. Losing some. “That sounds hard.”
Truth, freely offered, is the most powerful aphrodisiac there is. I just wish I knew how to share it with these pernicious doubts of hers. “That’s really good to know. Would you rather keep some of your clothes on?”
She stops, and I tug her into my chest, since I’m the dimwit who started a negotiation out in the middle of the street. She cuddles in for a moment and then steps back, obviously well used to standing on her own two feet, and takes a deep breath. “No. I can do naked, I think. I picked choice three because I want to try this.” She looks up at me shyly. “Thank you for agreeing to be my guide.”
I’m not at all sure that’s what this is, but this isn’t the time for that conversation. I’m not dumb enough to argue terminology with a woman who’s just agreed to be naked for me. “I want to be here, Gabby. And when we get to your house and you’re naked for me, I want to run my hands all over you. Are there any areas you’d like to make off limits?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, but she’s not deflating anymore. She’s imagining. “No.”