by Lilia Moon
She shudders and leans into the kiss, arching her back to put more of her body in contact with mine, even as her arms try to push her away.
I keep my mouth on hers, but I let the struggle happen. Part of her yearns and part of her pulls away and I haven’t figured out how I can help her with that yet. Which is pure arrogance for the time being. It’s part of being a rope master and a Dom, but she isn’t asking me to be hers. Hell, she’s not entirely sure whether she wants me to keep kissing her. Or rather, it’s those parts again. One pulling, one pushing away.
My hand runs up her back, into her hair. Delighting in the strands of it, wild and free and wrapping it around my fingers as I hold her head where I want it just long enough to flutter a kiss on her cheek. Then I set her free. “Let’s have some fried chicken while we talk.”
She sighs, a complex sound full of everything she’s feeling.
I kiss her cheek again. What lives in me right now isn’t any less layered, and I want to give time and space to all of it. I know better than most that complex can be entirely worth the effort.
She unwraps a length of cord that’s bundling a large red napkin.
I reach out and touch the thin rope. Like everything else about this picnic, it’s exquisite. Shiny gold, and if my fingers haven’t gotten dumb on me, pure silk. “Yours?” It’s not really a question.
“Not anymore.” She smiles as she unwraps the napkin and gets to the fried-chicken pot of gold on the platter inside. “Daley comes by and steals my samples quite often. She liked this one enough that I made her a set of them for her birthday.”
I set the rope carefully back into the picnic basket. Two feet of pure love isn’t anything to lose on a beach.
She tracks my hands, and the faint smile makes me feel like a sandy superhero. “You know how to take care of things.”
I run my free hand down her spine. “Yes. People too.”
She nods slowly. “When my marriage fell apart, there was a stretch of time when I let my friends push me into the dating scene. That was before I lived here.”
I don’t know what she’s trying to tell me yet, but everything in me wants to listen. “I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”
Her lips quirk. “You could say that.”
I reach for a chicken leg, tear off a nice, crunchy nibble, and hold it up to her lips. “Sorry. Sometimes guys can be assholes.”
She takes the chicken, but sadly, I don’t get my fingers licked. She chews, contemplating. “They didn’t used to be. It’s like aliens come down periodically and abduct a bunch of guys in their forties and send them back to Earth without their responsibility genes. Their relationships die, and then those guys are back out in the dating pool.” She shrugs, but I can hear the wistfulness. “I didn’t want to be with someone who had walked away from his last relationship hoping the grass was greener somewhere else, instead of tending to the grass where he was.”
A stinging indictment of a whole lot of people I know. Not all of them men, but far too many. “You want to know why I’m a forty-eight-year-old guy who drives around in a truck and ties people up as his primary form of entertainment.”
She makes a wry face. “I kind of do, actually, but that wasn’t where I was going with this long-winded story.”
Oops. I pick up the fried-chicken leg. “Sorry. I’ll keep my mouth full and stop interrupting.”
She laughs, and the forgiveness in that sound lights up everything in me. “Really? Fried chicken as punishment?”
I grin, because she’s entirely irresistible. “It’s a terrible fate, I know.”
“I can’t leave you to suffer alone.” She tugs my hand to her face and chomps a nice, juicy bite, her eyes dancing.
And pulls my heart right over an edge I didn’t know it was standing on.
Chapter Thirty-One
Liane
The way he looks at me… it undoes me, even as I’m trying to put myself back together, because today has already been a crazy journey and it’s not even noon yet. I chew on Bee’s fried chicken, which is impossible to replicate and even harder to steal, and try to figure out what to do with the guy who’s basically applied electric-shock paddles to my life.
He reaches his hand up and wipes chicken grease off my chin. “You had something you were trying to say. About too many men seeking something without being willing to work for it.”
He heard me just fine. “When I moved here, I decided I wanted a complete life, not one built with a man-sized hole in it, waiting for some guy to show up who was ready to be a grown-up.” I shrug. “So I grew one. Friends and connection and work that satisfies me and enough time to play and a neighbor who makes the best fried chicken on this planet or any other one.”
His lips quirk as he picks up another chicken leg, which is when I realize how bad a job I’ve been doing at sharing the first one. “I’m hearing that you’ve built a good life, and I can see that with my own eyes. Now tell me why I’m a problem.”
I wince. “You’re more than that.”
He chuckles. “Some of it good, I hope.”
Yes. And all of it confusing. “The thing is, if I had a man-sized hole in my life, you’d be easier to deal with, I think. Because there’d be an obvious space for you.” This is possibly the most clunky explanation of all time, but I don’t have a better one.
He smiles. “So you don’t need a man and you don’t know how I fit.”
I sigh. Clunky deserves a chaser of honesty. “I was happy with the first part of that sentence until twenty-four hours ago.”
This time, his grin is deadly. “Orgasms can be pretty good at reshaping worldviews.”
They’ve been seismic, but this is about far more than sex. “You touch something in me that I didn’t know wanted touching. I don’t know what to do with that.” I grimace. “I’m not sure it’s good for me. I have this nice, neat life and I don’t know how a week doing this with you fits into that.” I put down my chicken and close my eyes. I need to get at all of this. “I don’t want whatever this is to leave me with a life that feels less good than the one I have now. I think that’s what’s gnawing at me deepest.”
He nods quietly. “You have a good thing and you don’t want it to break.”
That makes me smile a little. I don’t break all that easily and I know it. “It’s more like I have this shiny red paint job I worked really hard on and I don’t want it dented. I suppose that makes me silly.” What happened in that canoe is worth a dent or two—except some part of me isn’t sure she believes that, and I’ve learned not to ignore my deep-down parts.
“It means you value the life you have, and that’s a really good thing.” He picks up my chicken and hands it to me. “And you think I might dent you.”
One wrap of his words at a time, he’s tying me to the truth. “Any big change would do that. I only dare those when I’m already feeling pretty battered, like when my marriage blew up and my grandmother died. There wasn’t any fancy paint job to protect then.”
His hand rubs the small of my back. I wonder if he even knows. A quiet, visceral demonstration that I’m not actually shiny paint. He leans in and kisses my inner elbow again. “Is that what I pushed on in the boat?”
I don’t have to ask which part he means. Tears aren’t something I forget—or what shook free after. “Yes. Some of it, at least. I’m one of those people who likes to have my feet on solid ground, especially if the ground feels good and comfortable and happy.”
I eye him, because I need to say the next part, but I want to be careful. I’m not the only one sitting here feeling raw and shaky and new, even if he’s steadier than I am about being there. “You’re a guy who seems like he wants to lift my feet off that solid ground.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Matteo
She’s just nailed me to a wall. Matteo Ignatius, totally pegged.
I want her to be wrong, but she’s not, and she needs me to look this straight in the eyes and not duck. My ropes, my work, all of who
I am, seeks to reshape. To alter. To help people find their wings.
I sigh, because the dots are connecting, and they don’t lead to fried chicken. “I grew up on a farm, near a small town where everyone had their feet planted in the same field. There wasn’t a lot of room to be any other kind of person, so I fought for space.”
She nods slowly. “You tried to get people to move their feet.”
I meet her eyes. “Yeah. And I’ve never stopped. It’s what I do with my kink, it’s what I do with my job, heck, it’s what I do when I stop at a gas station and see someone behind the counter who’s not happy with their life.”
“I am happy with mine,” she says quietly.
“I know.” I do, and yet I can’t apologize for what happened this morning. Because who I am met who she is, and it was stunning, even if some of who we are doesn’t look like it fits together here in the strong light of day.
She leans back against me, and the generosity in that simple move sucks all the air out of my lungs. “You’re so careful to ask if you can touch me, but I think the biggest thing you’ve done is walk in my door.”
She’s not blaming me, but I’m sorry anyhow. I don’t turn people upside down without asking first, literally or figuratively. “I didn’t know.” I reach up and stroke her cheek. “I had no idea what was waiting for me, or how big it would get so quickly.”
Her eyes stay worried—but ever so slowly, the rest of her begins to smile, and for the first time since we landed on the beach, I can see hints of her fire. “It is kind of big.”
Something in me eases. I’m not alone in feeling it—or in wanting to name it and bring it out into the light. Our lives might have been on some very different tracks before yesterday, but we aren’t trains. “It is. Thank you for being willing to see that. To feel it.”
Her breath hitches a little. “We don’t know what this is yet, do we?”
I laugh and wrap myself around her more tightly. “No. But this kind of interesting and attracted doesn’t trip into my life all that often.”
She eyes me skeptically as she snags two more chicken legs. “You hang out at a kink club.”
“Sure.” I shrug and pop a strawberry into her mouth. “With friends, mostly. I do lots of rope scenes, but those don’t need to be sexual. It’s more of a meditation, usually. Intimate, but a different energy. This thing between us isn’t about the ropes. Those are just intensifying it some.”
“You say that so calmly.” She curls up and slides down, resting her head on my ribs. “I’m not sure I know how to do this, and it gives me the wobbles.”
I run my fingers through her hair. We both have some thinking to do, because she’s not wrong about what drives me and what holds her and how different those things are. But it doesn’t need to happen right this minute. “For now, I want to soak this in, because my life doesn’t hand me moments like this very often.“
Those words do something magical. She breathes out, and what’s left is limp and beautiful and immersed in fried chicken and sunshine. “Okay. I can do that.”
I reach into the picnic basket and pick up the short length of silk rope that once tied up a red napkin. I lay my wrist against hers and circle them both with the golden cord. No fancy knots. No ego-driven artwork. Just a simple, inarticulate wish.
She sighs and leans her head a little tighter into my ribs as her fingers come to rest on the rope. Hearing what I can’t find the words to say.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Liane
I pick up the mug of tea I’ve been cradling for the last ten minutes and take a sip. It’s my favorite, a blend of mint and chocolate and sweet herbs that tastes like childhood all grown up. It usually does a wonderful job of soothing whatever ruckus has kicked up inside me.
Not today.
I look over my mug at the face watching me from the other side of the table. Daley smiles and toasts me with her own mug. She showed up on my doorstep about an hour after Matteo kissed me on the forehead, said he was headed off to do his homework, and climbed into his truck and drove away.
Leaving me alone to do mine. “I don’t know what to do with him, Daley.”
She chuckles and picks up one of the brownies she dug out of my fridge. Daley can’t cook to save her life, but she’s a really excellent scrounger. “I know you don’t, and that’s okay. Let yourself be uncomfortable, sweetie.”
I suck at that and we both know it. “I don’t know if he’s a chance at something really good or just a really tempting wrecking ball.”
She laughs, long and low and a little bit wistful, and smiles at Trouble as he stirs in his window hammock. “Life isn’t that black and white. He might be some of both.”
That’s precisely what my insides are afraid of. I reach out a finger to soothe the kitten back to sleep. He’s had a big day, and my fingers want comfort.
She picks up my misshapen teapot and tops up our mugs. “He was smart enough to leave you alone to think, so I’m tempted to like him already.”
That would be a big part of what’s got me turned upside down. I met him two days ago, and yet, in some really important ways, he gets me. “I have a happy life. I’m not looking for a guy to upend it. You know that.”
She rolls her eyes, but stays quiet. We’ve had that discussion before.
I have it again anyhow. “I’ve grown up a garden around me, and I’m really content. I’m not looking to uproot and grow someplace else.”
She smiles. “Maybe you transplant him instead.”
That isn’t going to leave my garden the same either—and the man who walked in my door two days ago isn’t looking to plant his feet anywhere. “Am I an idiot? Should I just stop thinking and enjoy the amazingly good sex and pick up the pieces later?”
She laughs, but it’s kind. Daley is unflinching, but she’s always gentle with her lashes. “Yes. And no.”
I snort into my mug. “Well, thanks for that insightful bit of clarity.”
She grins. “You should absolutely enjoy all the hot sex you can. And you’re not an idiot. You don’t want to do damage to a life you love. That’s smart. It’s okay to be careful.”
Daley looks like she doesn’t have a careful bone in her body, and maybe thirty years ago she didn’t, but I know she does now. She earned them the hard way. “I don’t want to be so careful I miss out on something amazing.”
She nods quietly. “I know.”
This is why we’re friends. Our outsides don’t match at all—but somewhere deep, there’s a well we both visit often to drink from. “He attracts me and he scares the hell out of me, and both of those things landed in my canoe today. It was crazy, Daley. I’ve never felt so many things at the same time ever.”
She breaks a brownie in half and hands one to me. “How did he do with that?”
I look at her and say what I couldn’t say to anyone else. “He drew an orchid over my heart.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Oh, sweetie.”
That about covers it. “Yeah.” I swallow. “There are parts that are easy and beautiful and feel meant. And then there are parts where he feels dangerous to who I am. One or the other and this would be easy. I don’t know what to do when they come as a package.”
She’s just listening now—that place where she goes quiet and still and I know that every single word is being treasured.
Matteo knows how to do that too.
I sigh, and I can hear the catches in it. “Who I am and who he is don’t go together easily. I don’t know if that kind of hard fit can make for a good relationship.”
She snorts.
I look up, because that wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.
She snorts again and shakes her head. “India puts metal under stress. You yank and twist on fiber, just like you yanked on all that wood to build your boat. I smear and smudge and generally abuse my charcoal and reduce it to dust. None of it’s easy, and all of it turns into something exquisitely beautiful. What makes you think two people can’t do that
too?”
I gape at her, because she’s just thrown a lesson my hands know deeply straight at my brain. With a catapult.
She puts down her mug and reaches into her bag. “I have something I want you to look at.”
My eyes narrow as I see her small sketchpad. And narrow again as she flips it to a page and sets it down in front of me.
My breath whooshes out of me. I close my eyes and swallow, and then I breathe in before I open them again, because Daley’s charcoal is even more unflinchingly honest than she is.
It’s a simple sketch. A quick one, probably done in her car after she walked away from the beach. It’s of Matteo and I, paddling in for a landing—but it isn’t the canoe that grabs my eyes and won’t let go, or the sexy man sitting in the front, his paddle casually resting on his knees, or even me, sitting in the back with eyes full of astonished, confused desire.
What I can’t look away from is how the drawing feels.
The tension is an obvious, tangible thing. And so is the joy.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Matteo
I heave out a breath as I finally crest the rocky hill that looked innocent enough from my truck, and turned into a workout that proves I’ve been spending way too much time in boardrooms lately and not nearly enough time moving my body.
The climb was good for my brain, too. Looking for the next thing to grab so you don’t land a long way down on your ass tends to clear out the chatter.
Or in this case, make space for chatter. I have some ideas about what I need to work through, but if I’ve had one lesson beat into me over the last twenty years, it’s that kinky people don’t think this stuff through alone. I contemplate my contacts list. There are a dozen people I could call, but I’m pretty sure I know who I should pick, and I’m not entirely happy about the name my gut is insisting on.