by Lilia Moon
I chuckle as I fill myself a sturdy mug. “I see your cooking skills haven’t improved any.”
He grins. “They have, actually. But they aren’t quiet, and I’m hoping she sleeps a while yet.” He puts a couple of scones on a small plate. “Besides, these are damn good, even if she’ll be mad at me for serving you the stale ones.”
Liane has a caretaker heart. I’m glad she’s found a man willing to water it properly. “This suits you.”
He doesn’t mistake my meaning. “It does. Surprised me a lot, and we’ve both had some stretching to do to make it fit, but it’s been the good kind of stretching.”
That’s obvious in ten minutes spent with the two of them. “You light each other up. It’s wonderful to see.”
He pushes a small tray my way, one with small pots of butter and jam that bear the imprint of the woman still sleeping upstairs. “India made the jam. Daley picked the huckleberries from some super-secret location that can’t be shared unless you want to curse your next seven generations.”
More imprints. “The three of them are tight.”
Matteo slurps his coffee. “Yes, they are. Ask what you want to ask.”
I split open one of the scones, which might be stale, but it’s also been freshly warmed, which is an impressive trick for a man who used to struggle to find a spoon for his coffee. “It’s not Daley I’ve come to talk about. It’s me.”
His eyebrows go up. “Moving that fast, is it?”
There’s no need to say what he already knows. “She’s caught me somewhere I never expected to happen again.” I look at the man who knew the woman who was the better part of my soul. “I’ve been missing Ellie a lot these last few days. Opening a heart back up is tricky business.”
His eyes are full of empathy—the kind that sees right through a man. “She’d be mad if you didn’t miss her. And also mad if you let that get in the way.”
In two sentences, he’s done what I came here to have him do. I breathe out as it settles what was jumbled inside me. Old aches I don’t want getting in the way of new ones. He’s right. Whatever hereafter she’s in, Ellie is standing right behind him giving me one of her looks. “She’d like Daley.”
He snorts. “She’d have swooped her up and they’d have been blood sisters in an hour.”
Also truth. I smile as treasured memories ease into warmth and blend with the new.
Matteo watches me carefully. “Daley has a wild softness that reminds me quite a bit of Ellie. That can’t be easy.”
It isn’t. But it’s also very good.
A hand on mine. “You’re in deep already, my friend. And Daley’s not simple.”
I swallow and nod. I know that too.
He leans back a little and studies me. “Moving this into territory where I might be a little better equipped to hand out advice, Ellie had the heart of a rebel mystic, but she was a sub down to her bones. Daley isn’t.”
It was my rebel mystic who walked me in the door of my first kink club. “I know that.”
Matteo’s lips quirk. “I’m pretty sure the standard-issue advice at this point is that doing the walk of a Dom with a woman who doesn’t want one is a recipe for a cracked skull.”
I’ve a fondness for keeping my head intact, but I don’t always follow the standard-issue rules to keep it that way. “Doms come in a lot of flavors. You’re one only when you feel like it. Rafe’s one who’s learning to hold the center instead of containing his sub, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“It took him a week to figure that out.” Matteo grins at me over his mug. “He’ll be annoyed you worked it out over dinner.”
I smile. “I’ve some experience with volcanoes.” My Ellie was a magnificent one. “Daley’s different, but if what I’ve seen in two days is right, she appreciates a man with a Dom’s self-control and commitment to truth.”
A long pause between two friends and good coffee.
Matteo sets down his mug gently. “Just be careful.”
I frown at him. It’s not the advice I expected. He knows the care I take. “I am. I see her softness. I’m not looking to hurt it.”
“Not what I meant.” He shakes his head quietly. “The best Doms sometimes forget that their own hearts are soft, beating things. Ellie never let you forget. Daley might not understand enough about you yet.”
I’m not at all sure of that. But it isn’t my heart I’ve asked her to tend. “I had my one great love, and it’s all I ever expected to have. If I’ve the chance for another, Ellie would be the first one in line to give my ass a good swift kick if I try to be too careful.”
Matteo chuckles ruefully. “She did have a good kick.”
That she did. We share the smiles of strong men who’ve had ourselves thoroughly herded by women we love.
Then he sobers. “It can be tricky when it lands fast.”
We’re not talking about kicks anymore. “You would know.”
The look he gives me says a hundred things. “Yeah.”
The look I give him back says only one.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Daley
There’s nothing that says manic artist quite like waking up stuck to your leather loveseat by a lovely blend of charcoal dust and dried snot. I push myself up, listening to the creaks that say I’m way too old for this shit.
I want to stumble into the bathroom and wash away the evidence of whatever possessed me last night, but it’s daylight that’s woken me up, which means it’s time to look at what poured out of me and truly see it. I lift up the edge of my sweater and turn it inside out, trying to find a halfway clean surface to rub my eyes. I’m covered in charcoal dust head to toe, which is not a surprise. The crunchy eyelashes and tight cheeks are a bigger story.
Whatever landed in the middle of the night landed hard.
I stumble to my feet and head for the big wall where I do most of my drawing. Light streams in the windows of my bubble, the February sun emerging long enough to help me look at the monsters I pulled out from under the bed. I stand back, gathering first impressions. There are many.
It’s wild.
Beautiful.
Bruised.
Flamboyant.
And oddly timid.
It’s the last that catches my breath, because while the page holds all the fury and frustration and fear and writhing that catapulted me out of bed last night, the most striking quality of the art in front of me is the sense that something special and fragile and worth protecting somehow managed to make its way out in the dark of night.
It’s my curves on the page. My thighs, my hips, my wild hair, my slightly lopsided breasts.
The parts of me that scream to be seen—and the ones who whisper.
I close my eyes and open them again, but the charcoal doesn’t move, doesn’t smudge itself into something sharper and less revealing. It leaves me staring at what my eraser found in the great sweeping swaths of black, in the contradiction of the softest charcoals making the darkest dark.
Somewhere in the dark, I found my soft.
My surrender.
My whisper.
The grit in my eyes gives way to something wetter. Brighter. Shakier. My breath stutters in my chest as the tail end of turbulence gives way to something sweet and scared and utterly fragile.
I walk up to the drawing, laying my fingers ever so gently over my own heart. Adding fingerprints in the quiet of morning to the turbulence of the night.
I see you.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Callum
The knock on the door of my rental cottage is sudden, sharp raps invading the silence of my book and the morning sun. I’m not surprised by who it is, but I take a moment when I pull the door open anyhow. Drinking in the sight of her. Taking note of the wild hair and quiet eyes. I smile and put my hand on her back to guide her in. “You look as if you’ve had an interesting night.”
She snorts. “What was your first clue?”
“You’ve charcoal under your fingernails and
an edge of tiredness about you, but your hands are steady and you’ve the air of a woman who knows what she’s about this morning.”
She raises an eyebrow as she lets me slide her out of her cape.
I lean in and kiss her cheek. “I’m glad it’s brought you to me.”
She huffs out a sigh and leads me over to the deep-green velvet couch that’s one of this home’s best features. She tugs me down beside her and sets a large bag at her feet.
I’m quite sure it’s a prop that has some meaning, but I focus on the mystery of the woman and not what she’s brought with her. “Would you like some tea? Or I’ve a few leftover scones I purloined from Matteo.”
She grins. “I know. I stopped by to get some and Liane was looking very frazzled.”
That might not have had to do with the contents of her pantry. Matteo’s always been a morning person, and while he might not be a flashy Dom, he’s a very inventive one. “She was still tucked away in bed when I dropped by. I’ll stop by later and see if I can make up for my thievery.”
“I already did.” Daley looks out the window, an artist orienting toward beauty, even in passing. “Took her some chocolate a friend sent me from Mexico.”
I let her soak in what she needs to face whatever brought her here. It’s not a hardship. The sun is playing with her curls in a way orchestrated to make a man beg. I reach for her hands instead. The charcoal in the lines of her fingers reminds me of a farmer come in from the dirt. Someone who touches life where it begins.
She doesn’t pull her hands away. “I woke up in the night. Did some drawing.”
That much we both know already. “Does that happen often?”
“No.”
A word that carries a lot of weight for its size. I wait until she’s ready to offer others.
She studies our joined hands. “I fell asleep eventually. I don’t remember that part. I usually don’t. I pass out as soon as the storm wanes, and then I wake up on the loveseat in my studio with a cricked neck and wild art up on my walls.”
Creation with no filters.
She might never have been to a kink club, but she would understand the intensity there.
Her eyes lift to meet mine. “This morning’s art was a surprise. I expected it to be full of storms and truth, and it was.”
I’d expect no less. She doesn’t lack for courage. I let go one of her hands long enough to stroke her cheek, because I don’t think it’s her courage that needs to speak now. “What surprised you, love?”
Her eyes close a moment, but they open when she starts speaking again. “I’ve been testing the waters. Testing you, testing me. Trying to measure the space between us to see if I fit.”
I nod slowly. “It’s a fine thing to take care of yourself that way. To ask for what you need.”
Her head bobs up and down, as wild as her curls. “That’s what I expected to see on my wall this morning. Permission to be a storm seeking space.”
I reach for what I can’t yet see. Gently. My thumbs brush the backs of her hands.
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “That was there, but what was mostly there was this beautiful, fragile wish.”
My heartbeat is so very loud in my head. “Is it a wish you want for me to know?”
“Some.” She lets go of me, but she’s not running. She bends down and picks up her bag.
I’m not surprised when her sketchbook emerges. She opens it to a page and hands it to me. “I drew this. After I saw the wish.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s a drawing of me. A minimalist one, just a few lines, more suggestive than real. But it flattens me all the same. She sees me so very clearly. The hunger for a life well lived. The touch of loneliness, of my heart missing my Ellie who helped shape it. The need to matter, to be fiercely present, to feel the sun on my cheeks and the wind in my soul.
I see me when I look at the simple lines of pen and ink—and I see her, because it’s only now, looking at a drawing of my own face, that I understand just how vast are the parts of Daley that I don’t yet know. And how many of my fragile wishes she sees.
I look for a very long time, and then I draw in a breath. “When did I look like this?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Daley
That somehow isn’t the question I expected him to ask first. And it’s not an easy one for the whispered wish inside me to answer. “When we walked back to the car yesterday.” I gulp as his eyes come up to mine. “After you’d seduced my lion with no more than your words.”
His eyes flare with surprise—and then with sharp, insightful desire.
I hold up a hand. He doesn’t get to read my mind. Not this time. “The first time you came to my house, you asked me what I wanted. You had me figure out a request and say it out loud and then you delivered.”
He nods slowly.
“I want you to make a request of me.” I tap my fingers on the page in front of him. “I want this man to make it.”
He blinks.
“This has been a lot about me, and I understand why, and you were right to do it, because for most of last night, that’s all I drew. Me finding my depth and balance and size and truth.”
I’ve spent thirteen years seeking all of those things and helping other women unlock them, and it’s work worth doing and a fight worth having and it’s the sum of a lot of the good I’ve contributed to this world. But some time after I laid all those things out on the paper, my eraser led me to something else.
I trace the lines of the drawing I did this morning as I sat in the morning light and sketched his face from memory. “When I first picked up charcoals and pencils again, it was hard. I’d lost the self-confidence I had back when I was a young woman who thought I could do anything and do it well and that was my birthright.”
He smiles. “The arrogance of youth.”
I shrug. “I have a lot of friends who never had it, but I did. And then life happened, and when I started drawing again, I had to fight for space. Space to make money from my art, to charge a reasonable amount for what I do, to buy really good tools because they matter, to build a house with a bubble on the side even though it’s not practical for resale value.”
He nods slowly, and a bit sadly, his thumbs still stroking the backs of my hands. “The world isn’t always kind to artists.”
Kind or respectful—but the world wasn’t my biggest problem. “I was my own worst enemy. I doubted my talent, my worth, the need for what I do to be out in the world.”
He smiles. “What happened?”
I laugh. “I woke up one morning and kicked my doubtful self to the curb.”
He grins. “I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall.”
He would have been a very distracting one. “It was quick and it was right and it was transformational. I stopped fighting for space and just believed it was there, and it changed everything.” Metamorphosis. The most fragile of wishes—and the most majestic.
He sighs, and it’s a sound that matches what my soul discovered that day.
I take a deep breath and lay my hand over the pen-and-ink rendering of his face. “I had to draw you to see it, Callum. You’re not a man who’s asking me to fight for space.”
His smile dawns, slow and bright as the sun. “No. I’m not.”
I nod and gulp, because this is huge and it’s a whisper and I have no idea how to be both of those things at once. “I want to know what happens between us if I’m not seeking space. If I just believe that it’s there. If you get to come fully to the space between us too.”
He traces the outline of my hand, the sketched lines of his face. When his gaze lifts to mine, his eyes are wet. “So much trust. Thank you.”
I swallow. “It’s about trusting me first. Then you.”
He smiles. “Yes.”
I lean my forehead against his. Giving the whisper some substance to hold onto.
His fingers keep tracing. “Is there a timeline for this request you want?”
I laugh
a little. He’s definitely related to Matteo and Rafe. “Tomorrow. I need a day to finish up some work drawings.” Several of them, really, but if an artist can’t be occasionally flaky then she’s structured her business wrong.
His fingers slide under the loose sleeve of my sweater. “Can I have you for a couple of days?”
I blink. “That sounds like a big request.”
He kisses my cheek. “Just one that wants some space.”
Another whisper, clear as the one on my wall this morning. He holds an eraser too. This only works if we both do.
I nod. It’s time for all the truth to come into the light.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Daley
He drives these roads like he knows them. Or like he’s a man that comfortable with the unknown. I let that thought stir lazily inside me until he takes a turn off the road into a driveway just wide enough to let his car pass. It’s well tended, so clearly the owners intend for it to be a squeeze.
I like them already.
I lean forward, peering out the front windshield. He’s said very little about this trip we’re on, only that I needed a bag with swimming and sleeping essentials. I assume that means a visit to the hot springs. They’re nearby, and he’s going to find out just how temperamental I can be if he decides to throw me in the lake instead.
He glances over at me, his hand settling on mine. “Thank you for letting me be bossy and mysterious.”
I have underwear and a swimsuit. He’s literally taken care of everything else. I’d be foolish to be cranky about that. “Would you like me to help unload, or go get the place heated up?”
He smiles. “Already done. The owners provided an app and a code. There’s a fire for later if we want it, but we won’t freeze while we chat.”