by Maren Smith
He tipped his head.
“Th-there’s death in my room,” she finally managed.
He didn’t exactly smile, but his eyebrows arched. “Death?”
“It went under the bed.”
“I see. All right.” Faintly bemused, he dropped his whips on the end of the dining table and headed down the hall.
Her feet rooted her to the floor, but the farther he went, the stronger the pull became for her to follow. Helplessly, she gave in. He was pushing open her bedroom door before she found the courage to slip into the hallway behind him. By the time she reached her temporary bedroom door, he was cautiously picking through her fallen bedding.
Oh God, she’d forgotten about the strap. She clutched her towel tighter, praying he wouldn’t notice, but he did. Picking it up, he said nothing, he simply put it on the bed next to her wadded up quilt. Getting down on his knees, he looked underneath.
“Well, hello there,” he said and reached into the shadows beneath.
“Oh my God.” Her body erupted in a whole new wave of spasmatic shivers. She ran back to the bathroom, quickly shutting the door so she wouldn’t have to see him climbing to his feet with that spider in his hand.
The heavy clump of his boots travelled past the bathroom door and down the hall.
“Get your clobbers on,” he called from the front door. And in a softer voice, no doubt to the spider, he crooned, “Sheilas, yeah? They just don’t understand. When the mating call hits, sometimes a bloke has to go walk-about. Go on with you. Betcha there’s a girlfriend under the porch.”
She heard the unmistakable open and closing of the front door again.
Prickling tingles danced all the way up her back and down into the hardened points that her nipples had become. She was stranded in Australia, in the middle of nowhere, with the Spider Whisperer.
And why in the hell was her pussy throbbing to that?
Chapter 6
By the time Kitty got her act together and her clothes on, all the spider-induced fear she had felt earlier had morphed into a deep sense of embarrassment. On the other hand, she had never in her life checked the inside of her shoes quite as thoroughly as she did before she slipped her feet into them. And when she walked back down the hall to see where Noah had gone, what she found was the coffee completely made, but untouched. The breakfast preparations were still sitting on the stove. Noah was also sitting, but at the table, reading a newspaper.
“They’re saying record highs today,” he mentioned, as if it were the most casual thing in the world that she be left standing in the middle of his kitchen, at a complete loss for what to do. Everything in here felt like a silent directive and yet, it wasn’t one she was familiar with.
Out in the dining room, Noah had positioned himself at the head of the table, legs crossed and comfortable in his chair. The closest to him, however, had been pulled out. Again, another silent directive, complete with the brightly-colored cover of a magazine and another newspaper neatly folded on top of it. He never said one word, but it felt like a choice. She could either go out there and sit down, or… she looked from the hot coffeemaker to the items on the stove.
A current of absolute electrified nervousness shot from the back of her head all the way down her spine, jolting into her hands and her legs. Her fingers buzzed from the scariness. Was this a test to see if she’d do the obedient thing? What was the obedient thing, making him breakfast or joining him at the table until he told her what he wanted her to do?
A second electrifying jolt hit her—part terror, part… was this excitement? She couldn’t tell, she hadn’t felt such a thing in so long—but maybe, what he was waiting for her to do was serve him.
Hands shaking, she hesitantly picked up one of the two waiting coffee mugs.
“Two creams, love,” Noah said, turning the folded paper over to continue reading. “One sugar, if you please.”
It felt surreal, but she fixed him a cup and would have brought it to him, but he stopped her when he said, “Make yourself one too, if you like. I prefer we have our coffee together.”
She hesitated. Ethen had preferred to be served first. Always. It felt very odd to pause and make herself a cup of coffee with Noah still waiting for his. Then what was she going to do, sit at the table and drink it with him?
An ocean of anxiety pricked by the unknown swelling inside her, Kitty carried both mugs out to the table. It felt surprisingly good when she finally set his cup in front of him. It felt like the tiniest, most insignificant return to normal.
Conversely, it felt awkward as hell to sit on the chair he’d so obviously pulled out for her, but that didn’t last long. The second her butt made contact with the hard wood of the seat, Noah set his newspaper aside, scooted back his chair and, with a smile that seemed perfectly genuine and completely lacking any ominous foreboding of punishments to come, announced, “I’ll make the tucker.”
And leave her sitting here, with coffee in her hands while he served her?
Erupting out of her chair, Kitty ran back to the kitchen. She ducked behind the stove, shaking her hands as though they were covered in ants as she fitfully paced in tight, tiny, silent circles. From refrigerator to wall, she was careful to stay well back from the open doorway so he wouldn’t see it. He was testing her. This felt like a test. It had to be a test, and she’d failed it somehow, she was sure of it. Dropping to a squat, she hugged her instantly roiling stomach, squeezing tight until the queasiness subsided, then covered her eyes with a shaky hand and pulled her stupid self together.
Standing, she rolled her shoulders and then she made the breakfast.
She didn’t know how he liked anything and she was too afraid she’d be censured for asking. Pony made the breakfasts and she always made everything the same way: toast lightly toasted, eggs over medium, bacon crispy but not burnt. Hadlee had done breakfasts when Kitty had been staying with them. Breakfasts at Garreth’s house had been toast and cereal with milk. Sometimes fruit. Sometimes donuts. Sometimes oatmeal, because Hadlee did everything she could to avoid the old comfort of routine.
Uncertainty making her sick to her stomach, Kitty copied Pony’s routine to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, the bacon was too thick and didn’t quite cook up the same. She overcooked the yolks and, having no idea what to do with the Vegemite, she put a dollop on top of each egg. She had another mini panic attack before she brought his plate and set it in front of him. Heading back into the kitchen, she quietly panicked in another round of tight, tiny, hand-shaking circles, wondering if she’d done anything to his preference.
He wasn’t eating. Out in the dining room, she heard him turn the page of his newspaper and refold it before continuing to read.
He was waiting for her to come back to the table. It was the only preference he had made clear. If he wanted her to sit and drink with him, he probably wanted her to eat with him too. Had she forgotten anything? Had she brought him everything he might need? Because if he jumped up the minute she sat down again, the stress alone was going to kill her.
Unable to stand the tension, she peeked around the wall far enough to check. But no, he still wasn’t eating. His plate remained untouched in front of him, his eggs getting cold.
Her throat was so tight it was choking her. “Did I do it wrong?”
“Not at all.” He paused his reading long enough to cast a smile at his plate, and then directed it at her. “I’m waiting for you, love. We’ll eat together.”
He winked, then went back to his paper, content to wait her out.
She couldn’t tell if that made the tangling knots in her stomach better or worse. She did, however, know the more she fretted, the more unsettled her stomach became. She rubbed it while she considered what out of anything she’d cooked that she might actually eat and keep down. Toast. She could probably handle toast.
She made a single slice and took it out to the table dry. When she sat down, he promptly stood up, fulfilling her worst-case scenario. She tried to jump up too, but
his hand on her shoulder stopped her. Taking her plate, he went back into the kitchen, leaving her to sit at the table. Shoulders slumping, she listened with growing guilt to the calm clatter of a man making another breakfast. The pop of the toaster added another slice to her plate; the crackle of a hot pan and the scrape of a spatula added an egg. She felt scolded and so far, Noah hadn’t said a word.
Ethen would have been annoyed and he’d have banged things so everyone would know it. But then, annoyed or not, Kitty couldn’t quite picture him making her breakfast. He was far more apt to take her plate, throw the contents to the hogs and banish her from the table. He barely made food for himself; she had never known him to fix anything for someone else.
But, Noah didn’t do that. He didn’t bang anything. Once or twice, as she listened to the soft scrap of a spatula in the bottom of the frying pan, she thought she heard him humming. He had a nice hum. It dipped into the low side of tenor. She had no idea what melody it was.
A few minutes later, out he came again and set her plate once more before her. The toast was thoroughly buttered and he’d spread a thin cover of greenish-brown Vegemite all over it.
She stared from her plate to his as he sat down.
Savoring a swallow of coffee, he picked up his fork. “Let’s eat.”
Kitty picked up her fork, but by now his breakfast was cold and she was painfully aware of what she’d done wrong. She’d put the green stuff on his eggs instead of his toast.
“Good job,” he said anyway, savoring his first bite of bacon.
It couldn’t have been that good. It was cold. She picked at her toast, which was still warm, and shredded the crusty edges, too uncomfortable to eat. “I didn’t know the vege-whatever was supposed to go on the bread,” she said. It was all she could do not to cringe because she hadn’t meant for that to come out sounding so pathetically self-criticizing.
“No harm in trying something new.” Cutting into his egg, he plopped a bite onto his toast and bit into it. “Mm.” He chewed, nodded and then looked at her.
Expectantly.
Her stomach knotted again. “What?”
“I’m wondering,” he said, as if that should answer all for her.
Kitty waited for him to elaborate, but he only took another bite. He offered zero complaints and frankly, there was nothing worse than cold eggs. Or lukewarm coffee, for that matter. This was so alien to anything she was familiar with. She was so sure any minute his temper would erupt, it was all she could do to keep up with the conversation. “Wondering what?”
“Whether or not you realize you had choices this morning.” Pushing the newspaper away from his plate, he leaned back in his chair. “There were no wrong answers, you know. If you’d come sat at the table, I’d have gone and made the coffee and the brekkie. You didn’t. In fact, it actually made you uncomfortable when I fixed your plate. Why is that, do you think?”
He may as well ask why the sky was blue. Kitty didn’t know that answer, either. She blinked at him, the silence stretching on into what Ethen would have viewed as defiance, but she couldn’t think what to say.
She shredded her toast too, but she didn’t realize she’d picked it all to pieces until he pointed at her plate.
“Sorry, love. I do want you to eat that. Every single bite. I don’t care how small you make the crumbs first. Nobody starves themselves in my house, at my table. Rule Number Seven.”
She stared at her shaking hands, then tucked them into her lap, clenching them tight because she didn’t understand why she couldn’t make herself stop trembling. “I-I don’t think I can eat.”
“Why not?”
“I… I’m not… n-not hungry.”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked pointblank.
Kitty snapped her eyes to his. She couldn’t open her mouth; she was terrified she’d throw up right then and there. She shook her head.
“Are you running a fever, do you think? Should I take your temperature? Via your mouth,” he specified after a brief pause. “I’ll save the bum for when the situation deserves it.”
Exactly what kind of situation would deserve it, she almost asked, but stopped herself in time. Her face felt hot. Her breathing had quickened, though she tried to slow it down. There was nothing about the way he was looking at her, his body language or the tone of his voice that should make what he was saying sound threatening, and yet her brain kept trying to twist it that way.
“I-I’m fine.” She shivered.
“Going without eating for prolonged periods can make a body feel sick to their stomach. So can stress and anxiety, and heaven knows you’ve had reason enough for both. But it’s time to stop now.” For the first time, a measure of steel wove itself into his voice. “Your body needs to heal, love, and to do that, you need to eat. In this matter, I will not be argued with.”
The temptation to do just that—argue—leapt into the back of her throat so fast she had to lock her teeth to keep it from bursting free. She could hear it, the unspoken, ‘or what’ that reverberated on the back of her tongue, an ill-thought out challenge she never, no matter what the provocation, would have spewed at Ethen.
But Noah wasn’t Ethen. Noah wasn’t anything but a friend of a friend. The guy putting her up in his spare bedroom for a while.
The guy who had made her breakfast.
And cleared her room of spiders.
The one who was right now, sitting to the side of her, one hand in his lap, the other resting lightly beside his plate, idly rubbing his thumb against one finger while he waited for her to either obey or work up the nerve to go ahead and issue that challenge he obviously expected. Maybe he could hear it in the silence now stretching out again between them. Or maybe, he could see it, lurking in the back of her guilt-laden eyes.
She picked up the biggest shred of toast and put it in her mouth. It was still faintly warm, soft from the butter he’d put on it. Ethen considered butter an extravagance and something to be enjoyed only by him, not his Menagerie. Kitty didn’t realize how much she’d missed it until the creamy taste touched her tongue. Her eyes closed of their own accord. Then the Vegemite hit her taste buds and Kitty’s face screwed into a grimace.
“Good, isn’t it?” All of that prior severity melted into his next grin.
She covered her mouth, not sure what to make of the strong, grassy flavor. If she’d had a napkin, she would have discretely spit it out. She didn’t. Reluctantly, she made herself chew.
“Let’s go back to what we were talking about.” Scooping more egg onto his toast, Noah said, “I’m going to do something I don’t like to do and make an assumption, so correct me if I’m wrong: Are you a service submissive?” He gestured to her plate. “Try some of the egg on the toast.”
He’d smeared that Vegemite crap with sadistic evenness over both toast slices. It was on every piece she’d picked apart and the last thing she wanted was to put more of that against her tongue. And yet, she obediently dipped a small shred of crust in her egg and put it in her mouth. Surprisingly, the yolkiness did make the green stuff more palatable.
“Yeah?” Noah said, smiling as if to say, It’s good, right?
She wasn’t quite willing to go that far, but she did manage to swallow.
“So,” he said, getting back to the main topic, seemingly without noticing she hadn’t answered his last question. “Most service submissives that I know personally—admittedly, it’s only been the one. But I did live with her for a couple years and, believe me, that was long enough to know there was no faster way to plummet her into the depths of absolute depression than by stripping her of everything she did to serve.”
The knots in Kitty’s chest were so tight, her heart felt strangled by them. It hurt, but she dared not reveal that. He was seeing too much as it was and it scared her. Frozen in her chair, she chewed her next bite until it lost all its flavor.
“Conversely,” he added, “there was no faster way to bring her back into her element than by allowing her to perform those things sh
e considered to be her set tasks. Your egg is almost gone. You’re doing good. Take another bite, please.”
She wasn’t even tasting the egg anymore. “What are you telling me?”
“I’m saying I have a job here. My job is to work for a living, keep a roof over our heads, put food on the table and make sure you’re safe for as long as it takes you to learn how to trust it. But, what does that leave you right? It’s not like you can walk into Cooktown and find a job. You’re not from here. Legally, you can’t work, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find you something to do.”
He was going to demand sex from her now. Kitty waited, frozen in dread.
“I figure, I can treat you one of two ways,” Noah smiled at her. It was such a handsome smile too. Not that handsome things couldn’t hide monsters. God knew she’d learned that lesson thoroughly. “Either I can treat you like a guest, meaning you won’t be required to do anything but lounge about, relaxing, resting, and recuperating. Or I can treat you like you live here, in which case certain things will be expected of you.”
And here it was. Under the table, her leg started jiggling and wouldn’t stop.
“Like what?” Her lips, numb, hardly moved.
“Coffee,” he said decisively. “We both drink coffee, so that can be one of them. First thing every morning, a fresh pot of coffee needs to be made. Second, meals. Brekkie by eight, lunch between noon and one, and dinner at seven. I don’t mind a spot of tea about four-ish. But if I get called out to work, then that can be iffy, so I’ll take care of me own on that. Your last job, total care of the kitchen. I relinquish all control of it. That means you can do anything you want—rearrange the cupboards, paint the cupboards. So long as you take care of it and treat everything in there with the respect it deserves, then that is your domain. Which doesn’t mean I expect you to pick up after me. I don’t. I’m a grown-ass man; I can pick up after me self. It doesn’t mean you’ll be a sheila stuck in the kitchen all day if you hate it, either. It means, for the next couple of days you’ve got a job. After that, if you want to stick with it, you can keep your job as long as you like. If you want to switch to something else, then all you have to do is say so and we’ll see what we can arrange. What do you think?”