by Lilia Moon
I stare at him.
His hands are gentle, but his eyes aren’t letting me move anywhere. “It means your heart got involved, sweetheart.”
It bothers me that my first reaction is to punch him in the nose. “Shut up. We’re nowhere near that. He’s just a guy. An interesting one, but that’s all. I was just having a fragile day when he showed up.”
He grins and leans back. “I fucked up every scene I did with Meghan. For months.”
I wince, partly at his theory, and partly because I remember.
Quint’s face is in hard-ass-friend mode, but his eyes are still gentle. “You’ve been sitting there waiting for the right guy to show up for you. Now maybe he has, and you tested him tonight, and he stood up.”
Rocks land on my most tender places. “He did. I didn’t.”
“That’s what you need. Someone who can hold his shit together even when you don’t.”
The acid burns all the way up from the depths of my belly. “And you think I should trust a baby Dom to be that for me?”
“Hell, no. Trust has to be earned, especially with how hard you want to throw yourself against it.” He watches me, and I know I’m standing right at the edge of the coals. “But you need to consider giving the guy who melted you into putty tonight a chance to show you what else he’s got.”
Chapter Twenty
Jackson
I have a plan.
I didn’t when I fell into bed last night, high and exhausted and with most of my brains still splattered all over the floor of Fettered’s lounge, but this morning I woke up knowing I needed one. Kengali taught me that. Good music is a whole lot more than the first few beats, especially if you’re playing with someone else.
I walked into this thinking that Ari and everyone else was going to have to give me time and space to screw up and klutz around and find my feet. Last night she put me on notice—she’s going to need that kind of space too. Which is both beautiful and wholly terrifying, and means my plan needs a container that’s a whole lot bigger than a bar stool in a lounge with several dozen of our friends watching.
Fortunately, six years in Africa taught me a whole lot about space and time. It looked lazy to me at first, but I got over that about the same time I realized that I hadn’t been lonely for months.
Somewhere deep inside Ari, I think she’s lonely.
I pick up my phone, because walking over to her hut isn’t quite as easy here as it was in Gambia. I’ve already sent her several texts. This is just me hovering until she decides to show up. Or not, but I’m pretty sure Ari doesn’t back away from much, and I’m not all that scary to her yet, no matter what happened last night.
It takes me a minute to realize the knocking isn’t coming from my phone. Which maybe suggests I don’t have as many of my brains gathered back up as I was thinking, but that’s okay. I open my door and pull her in fast, because my wimpy heating system took a while to get my apartment to this temperature and a late-fall Seattle day could take that apart fast.
She gapes, first at me, and then at the set-up she can see in my living room.
I grin. “Come on in. The heat’s intentional. Clothing is up to you.”
She collects herself fast, which doesn’t surprise me at all, and reaches out a finger, lightly tracing through the hair on my chest and tugging on the waistband of the light pants I’m wearing. “I’m good with fewer clothes.”
I laugh and back away, because Ari on the prowl is going to be a lot of fun one day, but I have something slightly different in mind for this afternoon. “I have hot drinks or cold ones. Preference?”
She takes a curious sniff. “What country did I just walk into?”
“Gambia.” I pick up a jug of iced wonjo juice and pour. “I went there right after university to try to do good deeds, and fell in. Stayed six years, learned to play the drums.”
Her head tips to the side a little. “Part of you is still there.”
I’m not the only one who watches. “Yeah. I’ve been back here three years, but it’s still hard.”
She’s wearing her quizzical bird face. “Why kink?”
I could give her an answer, and I will, but this plan has more parts than just getting her in my door. I reach out and take her hand, juggling two glasses in the other as I lead her over to the mountain of pillows in the middle of my living room. “I’m not sure whether to call this a scene or not, but I have some ideas for today, and I’d like you to let me take charge of the shape of our afternoon.”
Her eyes run over the carefully laid-out plates and pillows and cozy blankets. “This looks like a really high-class, funky slumber party.”
There won’t be any sleeping. Not if I’m doing my job anything close to right. I point her at the pile of pillows closest to the small electric fireplace that’s the main reason I took this place. Bowls of water are steaming on the top. I mostly use them to maintain humidity for my drums, but today I’m hoping they create the right environment for something quite different.
Ari sinks to her knees and turns slowly in a circle, reaching out to touch fabrics. “These are beautiful.”
I laugh quietly. “I’ll show you the really ugly ones I made later. These were done by some of the more talented villagers where I lived. Farewell gifts, mostly.” They understood what I was coming home to, even if I didn’t, and they sent what company they could.
She traces a line of delicate, difficult embroidery. “They love you.”
What of me they could understand. “Yes. Very much.” I take a seat behind her and tip her over gently onto a convenient pile of pillows.
She looks up at me, eyes open and wide and curious.
Part of me wants nothing more than to spoon her for hours in front of the fire, but we need to get somewhere more solid first. Last night’s most subtle lesson drummed its way into me sometime in the deep dark of night while I was sleeping.
Ari doesn’t trust easy. She needs hard to feel safe.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ari
This is moving quickly. I look up at the excellent view of Jackson’s chest, glistening in the heat, and take a moment to appreciate wherever he’s taking us.
He looks down at me. “Are you going to stay in all of those clothes?”
He shouldn’t be giving me a choice, but I’m not dumb enough to stay in a wool sweater in the savannah. I sit up and strip down to a cami and knickers.
He runs his fingers under the strap of the cami and pushes me back into a gentle recline on the pillows. His other hand reaches for one of the morsels on the plate next to my knee and offers it to me.
I wait to see if he’s going to tell me what it is.
His lips quirk. “No food allergies. I checked.”
He read my member form and he doesn’t plan to kill me. Good. I eye the bite in his fingers suspiciously. I don’t know anything about Gambian food, but I have an Ethiopian friend who thinks nothing is spicy enough unless it makes you cry.
Jackson chuckles and keeps holding the darn food at my lips.
I open as gracefully as I can given that I’ve just contemplated mutiny.
He smiles and drops the morsel on my tongue.
I groan, because whatever he dipped it in is sweet with a little kick and tastes of lands I need to visit yesterday. “You have a whole plate of those, right?”
He laughs. “Yes, actually. With several sauces. But since they’re one of my favorites too, you’ll have to earn them.”
That’s never a good line to hear from your Dom. I give him the hairy eyeball he deserves. “What do you mean, Sir?”
He reaches over and picks up a velvet bag, upending it just outside the nest of pillows.
My eyes quickly roam the contents. Feather tickler, lube, anal plug, nipple clamps, an assortment of small vibrators, and what looks like a couple of the small impact toys we issue to people who shouldn’t be swinging anything bigger.
He cups my breast and kneads gently. “Anything in there a hard limit?”
Not since about a month after I got kinky. “No.”
He rolls my nipple between two fingers. “Anything in there you’re taking seriously?”
I make a face. “No. Sorry.”
He just grins at me. “Good.”
That’s a frightening answer. I wonder if he knows it.
He scoops up the toys and puts them in a bowl. “Fingers. Full access.”
Cripes, we’re already negotiating in shorthand. “No breath play. Otherwise, fine.”
His eyes bulge.
Too bad. I play in the big leagues where stuff like that needs to be said.
He swallows it back down. “Got it. Thank you. Okay, ground rules. We’re going to have a conversation. Twenty questions. I get to ask one, then you do.”
Smart man. If I go first, he’s going to be so shocked he forgets his nice list of starter questions. However, this is one of my favorite games, so I won’t argue. “Sounds like fun.”
He frowns a little. “This next part might be a little messy to define, but I want your words to be free of the scene. You can answer however you want, and ask whatever you want, but your body is mine. No touching or major moving unless I tell you to.”
Not as messy as he thinks. And once again, he’s managed to get my full attention. “Understood.”
“Your safewords are the same as last night? Red and yellow?”
I nod. “Always.” I just can’t wrap my head around yelling “zucchini” or “toaster” if the world needs to end.
He starts to say something, and then pauses. “If we fall asleep later, is that okay for you?”
I look around at the pillows and the fire and the food. I know why he’s asking, because I ran headlong into a brick wall he wasn’t expecting last night and he doesn’t want to leave me weirdly vulnerable, but he’s built us a nest and I can totally see napping with him here. “That sounds heavenly, actually.”
He grins and pops another bite of bliss in my mouth, this time dipped in a new flavor. “Good. Then it’s time for my first question.”
I wait. There’s no way he can come up with anything I haven’t been asked a million times before.
He takes a minute, watching my face as he thinks.
I’m surprised. I figured he would have his questions lined up, waiting to pounce when he thinks I least expect them.
His hand moves to cup my breast again, finding the exact kneading pressure to drive me slowly crazy. “If you were going to sing right now, what would your song be?”
I stare at him. “I’m not singing. Hard limit.”
He laughs. “I’ve heard you sing and you’re not as bad as you think. But this is just about the musical selection. No singing required.”
His fingers slide under the hem of my cami and the feel of his drumming calluses on my warm skin chases whatever I was going to say right out of my head.
He chuckles, and his fingers roll my nipple. “Pick a song, Ari. Which one captures how you feel right now?”
I know the answer, and it makes me squirm. Which straightens my spine and pushes my breast up into his hand, because I might be a lot of things I don’t expect with him, but I’m not someone who hides. “That new one of Quint’s. The ballad. The one that has you believing it’s all soft and warm and then it surprises you with gravelly bits and that low part he does in the middle.”
The light in Jackson’s eyes is amused and pleased. “We tease him about that being his cranky-lover song.”
That so totally nails everything about Quint and his song that I have to laugh. And groan, because this man really knows what he’s doing with a nipple.
He gives it one more roll and slides his hand away, down to my waist. “Your turn to ask a question, beautiful.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jackson
I expect her first question to be lethal. Scorpio clued me in on the walk home last night that this is one of Ari’s favorite games.
She almost speaks, and then she pauses, frowning.
I pick up a tassel, a poor, misshapen thing made of grass back when I was first trying to make friends with Gambia. It’s a bit prickly, just like the woman lying on my pillows in her underwear. I trace it up her inner thigh.
She sighs. “Somehow, you know how to call out both my softness and my desire to be a totally immature brat.”
I’m pretty sure those two things are connected—and maybe even a good sign. “Ask whatever you want, Ari. Words aren’t going to break me.”
She looks at me, almost bashful. “I know that.”
She needs to know it down where her brat lives, because that’s the doorway to what she protects most. I run the tassel up onto her belly, tracing sworls on the silk of her cami.
She shivers and laughs. “Okay, a question I already asked and you didn’t answer. Why kink?”
Not lethal. I let the tassel run up over a covered breast and grin as her nipple puckers under the silk. “Drummers are a bit like Doms. We hold containers for people to let out all of who they are.” A catharsis that happened every day in a dusty village in Gambia. “People don’t usually dance like that here, so when I got back, I suddenly had this hole inside myself. About nine months ago a friend took me to a play party.”
She’s looking straight at me, really listening. “Smart friend.”
I shrug. “It was a bit of a hot mess, actually, but I saw something I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. And I met Eli there, which led to some interesting chats about music and other things. Eventually that turned into a spot in Quint’s next trainee class and a set of banging drums.”
Her eyebrows go up.
I snicker at my unintentional pun and slide a hand into the back of her underwear from the bottom, cupping an ass cheek. “Sorry. The kind of drums you hit with a stick. They’re not what I learned on, but hand drums aren’t loud enough when everyone else is plugged in.” I’m saying the words on autopilot—the rest of me is lost in the luscious sensations of her ass in my hand. I squeeze, letting my fingers dig into muscles that tense and then give way to the pressure.
Ari groans gently, so I move to sit between her legs and slide both hands into her underwear. I’ll have to thank Chloe later—they’re really stretchy. I use my thumbs to massage circles around her seat bones, which turns the groan into inarticulate gurgling.
I let my body drink in the sounds of Ari’s pleasure. “Tell me something most people miss when they scene with you.”
Her ass tightens in my hands.
I keep my thumbs working.
She chuckles ruefully and relaxes again. “That I’m a sucker for feathery touches.”
My ego tries to escape its cage and billow around the room. I lock it down. This isn’t about me. “Tell me something I missed.”
She raises an eyebrow. “That’s two questions, mister.”
I let my thumbs slide into the valley of her pussy and back out again. “Fine. Ask your next one.”
I see the brat light in her eyes before she speaks. “Tell me the one thing you’ve fantasized about doing to me that makes you hottest.”
Hello, lethal. I slide my thumbs into the wetness of her pussy a second time. I need reinforcements for this one. Which almost backfires, because the slick heat of her is beyond distracting. “I want to slide into you while you’re still asleep and have you wake up whispering my name.”
Her entire body stills.
I don’t walk it back. If I want her real and open, I need to show her mine.
She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, there’s a sheen of tears there. “Wow. Thank you.”
There she is. I take a moment, my thumbs still, the rest of me barely breathing, to let us feel where we just landed.
Then I reach over and pick up the thing Quint calls a shrinkydink flogger. It’s the one they entrusted us with first, and despite the annoying nicknames it’s picked up, I know it’s something I can’t screw up. Which is exactly what I want right now, because all the tools I poured out on my fl
oor are just decoration. This scene is mostly happening somewhere underneath our skins.
I trace the soft leather laces of the flogger along the sensitive skin of Ari’s inner thigh. It’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite curves.
She shivers again.
It’s time to start learning how to turn that into quaking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ari
I feel my underwear sliding before I register what his hands are doing. Soft silk on the move, the lifting of my knees as he works them all the way off.
I open my eyes and watch appreciation light in his. He glides a finger lightly through my pussy, and then reaches for pillows, tucking them in as supports for my knees. He offers another bite of the earthy, redolent pastry I could totally be bribed with for the rest of forever, and then lifts me by my elbows, whisking my cami off before my lazy spine sinks me back into the pillows.
I grin at him, because clearly the man is no stranger to removing sexy underwear.
He grins back. “Comfortable?”
Any more so and I wouldn’t need bones. “Yes.”
This time the flogger brushes over my belly, so soft it feels like the silk he just slid off me. He flicks it, and the strands fall like soft rain.
Smart Dom. I like feathery impact play almost as much as I like feathery touch.
He’s watching me with a focus I associate with really skilled tops. I can tell he hasn’t missed the changes in my breathing or the way my nipples have tightened.
I expect the flogger to move up, but it doesn’t. He bends over and sucks one of my nipples into his mouth, hot and fast and hard. When he bites down, I nearly come all over his lap.
He chuckles, and then I feel a nastier bite. One that means he’s just added a clamp, and he did it one handed, without looking, and fast enough he nearly caught his tongue in its teeth. I breathe into the fire. I love nipple clamps, but there’s no way he could know that unless Harlan spilled way too many beans. I don’t use them in public scenes. They fuck far too thoroughly with my control.