by Lila Munro
Once Blake’s banging and clanging reassured Dante he was busy and Julie scurried off toward the kitchen dressed in a long pink t-shirt, he went to his office and shut the door.
"Allen? Dante," he said as his old friend picked up on the fourth ring. "You’re not engaged are you?"
"No. Just slow this morning. It's early. What can I help you with?"
"Early? You don’t know the meaning until you’ve been tasked with taking care of Julie." Dante leaned back in his chair and stretched his free arm over his head, wiggling his fingers. He found it was a bit stiff from cradling Julie’s head all night.
"Is it that bad?"
"Well, she did sleep most of the night last night." Stifling a yawn, he spun his chair and turned his computer on to check his emails before breakfast. "You know I’m not fond of being told how to do anything, but it would seem…"
"Stop right there," Allen said. "Let me absorb this for a moment. You’re calling me to ask for help?"
"Yes." For a few seconds there was nothing but dead air between the men and Dante wondered if Allen was still absorbing or if he'd passed out from the shock of the situation. "Allen?"
"Okay. I’m ready. What is this thing you need my help with?"
"I need someone to sort of teach me how not to be such a hard-ass, but still be able to convince Julie we can do things my way. If I tone it down. A bit. And figure out how to, well, whatever the hell Mason did to her," Dante shot out before he lost the nerve to admit he was a bit lost. It wasn’t in his nature to admit defeat.
"Are you asking me specifically or asking me to recommend someone or asking me to help you hunt down an indifferent third party? Because I have to tell you, Julie’s a hot commodity. I know that sounds cold and calculated and God knows I’d never think of her that way, especially right now, but the vultures are circling my boy. Whether you own her or not, at present, she’s a loaded widow."
Dante couldn’t even begin to perceive that he could possibly lose Julie to someone else. Even though he’d contemplated the possibility he wasn’t the one to take on the mammoth task of being her new Master and he thought he might need to help her find the right fit, it had never crossed his radar screen that someone might just in fact swoop down and convince her to leave him. Ever.
Hell. No.
Now that his resolve was set on keeping her, there was positively no way he would allow that to happen.
"Are you telling me I can’t trust you to do this for me?" he asked with suspicion.
"No. I’m saying if you don’t do this right and she expresses anything that remotely leads me to believe she’s unhappy or wants out, I’ll advocate for her. Are you serious about learning how to be with her? Are you really willing to give a little and actively negotiate with her even if it means compromising what you want?"
"Yes."
"Then I’m at your service. When do we get started?"
Chapter Nine
Blake said his good-byes after breakfast and left to take the boys to school leaving Julie alone with Dante. She wasn’t sure if she had reservations about this little talk of his or not. On the one hand, she still held some guilt over being here at all coupled with her anger at Mason for putting her in this position to begin with. Would she ever be able to forgive him? On the other hand, something seemed to have shifted in Dante. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but she was sure it peaked last night when he insisted she stop cooking, relax for a while, and go to bed with him and Blake. Naked. Which, if she were being honest, hadn’t bothered her. The truth of it was it had been a relief as she was so used to being in that state to begin with. She didn’t really understand how Blake managed to switch from nudity to fully-clothed depending on if the boys were home or not without batting an eye. For her, clothing had become an impediment of sorts, only serving to cover what was Mason’s from others’ eyes when they left the house or when their vanilla friends visited.
"I’m glad you actually ate something," Dante noted as Julie stacked dishes in the sink, getting ready to fill the dishwasher.
"I feel a little bit better, Sir," she confessed, scraping the remnants of Blake’s eggs Benedict down the disposer. "When I don’t rest enough, I get a bit muddled. I’m sorry."
"There’s no need to be sorry, love. I get it. I get a lot of things. And the things I don’t I’m going to learn." A wave of warmth swept over Julie when Dante took her hands and with the gentlest touch, emptied them of her chore. He dried her hands and led her back to her seat at the island and helped her take it. "I talked to Allen this morning."
Panic swelled in Julie’s chest. Was he tired of her already? While it was true she wasn’t particularly thrilled with their situation as it was, the only thing she could think of worse than being here was being pawned off on yet another Dom. It must have shown on her face because Dante quickly began to explain himself.
"I asked for help. I’m not trying to dispose of you."
"What kind of help?" she asked with caution.
"Help in becoming the kind of Dom, the kind of man, you need me to be." After pouring himself another cup of coffee, Dante took the end stool and leaned his elbows on the edge of the counter. "Honestly, I think I need to be a better man not just for you, but for Blake. I think he’s cowed to me for so long I’ve lost sight of what it is he needs, too. If I were being completely honest, and it’s high time I am, I may have missed the fact he tries so hard to be obedient and subservient to me he fails to express what it is he wants. He's probably felt slighted for years and never said a word and I was so absorbed with how well I thought things were going I ignored it. Consciously? Sub-consciously? Both? I don’t know. I just know it’s time to face it and fix it."
"What are you talking about? You’re a good master, Sir. Blake adores you." Julie couldn’t fathom what Dante was talking about. If there were problems in their marriage, they weren’t detectable to the outsider looking in and she sure hadn’t picked up on them since she’d been here. Of course, she’d been less than attentive to her surroundings. How could she see anything past her own grieving?
"Adoring me may well be the issue. Sometimes someone can adore someone else so much they fail to live up to their own hopes and dreams by compromising those things to make the other person happy. In the meantime, the other person can sometimes be so self-absorbed they fail to see what’s happening. Then they start to take that person for granted. In essence, by lack of attention, I’ve failed Blake. I didn’t realize it until a few days ago. I have to stop failing him and I never want to fail you."
Did Dante believe she’d been guilty of the same crime with Mason on some level? It occurred to her, she never fully trusted her own husband. If she had, she’d have tried harder to negotiate.
Just thinking of his death now invoked the anger she’d been practicing keeping at bay, again. So infuriated she wanted to throw things like she had in Mason’s den that day, it took every bit of effort Julie had not to hop down from her stool now and go on a mad rage through Dante’s home destroying everything in her path. Her life was the very definition of irony.
Just then, a very perceptive Dante noticed the fury building and reached out for her shaking hand.
"Mason was a good man. He’d have never done what I’ve done any more intentionally than I did. You’re going to have angry days and that’s okay. We’ll figure out an outlet for it. But don’t be mad over what-ifs or assumptions. No regrets."
"I'd like to take a short-tail to him," she admitted through gritted teeth.
"Are you entirely certain there’s not a bit of a switch somewhere in there?" Dante asked, a crooked smile taking over his face, sending those boyish crinkles rippling along the edges of his eyes.
"Positive," she snapped, regretting it immediately as she saw how her tone stabbed him.
"Tone, my love. Watch it. And you know you love Mason more than life itself. You might think you want to do that, but you don’t mean it."
"I’m sorry, Sir. How will Allen help?"
&nb
sp; "It seems while I’ve been forever fascinated by the techniques of others, I’ve not been attentive enough to learn from them. I thought as long as Blake and I were happy and getting along, there was no need to step outside the box. I was wrong. You and Blake are as different as night and day and if I'm going to be able to be Master to you both, I have to learn to adjust. I’m not exactly sure how we’ll figure it all out, but as Allen so eloquently put it, the vultures are circling and I have to learn on the fly. I do believe, love, this is our first negotiation. Do you agree to let Allen assist us in learning how to make this work?"
"I trust Allen. And if you think this is best, I can agree to it." Julie hesitated, remembering the admonishment of her own actions with Mason a few minutes ago and decided to go a step further. "But Sir, if things aren't working like they’re supposed to or I think we’re unhappy, I won’t keep it to myself. I want to know you’ll be generous enough to re-negotiate if necessary."
"Agreed."
Dinner with the Gavril and Lucien went well and after Julie found they were quite happy staying with Drake because he apparently had two hot girls living down the street with whom the boys were now enamored, she started to feel a bit better about them being away from home a few more days. That night she had no qualms whatsoever disrobing and climbing in bed on one side of Dante while Blake curled up on the other side of him. And for the first time in a long, she slept all night.
Chapter Ten
"For the last time, please, Sir. Take Blake and go to the party. I’ll be fine here passing out treats to the little goblins," Julie said, exasperated that after almost six months of continually getting better, Dante still had reservations about leaving her alone and to her own devices.
It seemed it had little to do with the incident in the den the day of Mason’s funeral and more to do with his increasing possessiveness of her. Their time had been spent much as he said it would be, getting used to each other and learning. And his no sexual contact rule had stood firm. He never made advances and if he and Blake needed alone time, it was arranged. Tonight the twins, still smitten with the girls they’d met while staying with Drake, were away at an all-night horror flick party at a house near Drake's and it was the adults’ first opportunity to go to a play party in quite a long time. Julie didn’t feel ready to participate in any such thing, but Dante was insistent she shouldn’t spend the evening alone.
Julie suspected Dante’s possessiveness and the problem he had with her staying by herself on the devil’s night was caused by the attitude of their neighbors. While they never made direct connotations or confronted Julie face-to-face, she was aware of the general feeling of disgust they held for her and her family. It was an unspoken rule the Larson clan kept to themselves and ignored the stupidity of the rest of those populating their cul-de-sac.
"I realize you’re nowhere near ready to play, love, but I don’t think being anti-social is a good thing to be doing either," Dante said, taking the bag of candy out of her hands she’d been just about to dump in her treat bowl.
"I’m not being anti-social, Sir." She snatched the candy bag back out of his hand and finished adding it to the already brimming dish. "Remember when you said you’d be amicable to negotiations? Unless you directly order me to go to this thing, the answer is no. And I hope it’s not an order because going would make me very unhappy. I’m not ready to see all those people and have them look at me funny or ask me a million times if I’m okay."
Dante rubbed his forehead and shook his head, clearly still not totally kosher with her answer, but seeming to at least understand and accept it. "I didn’t think of that."
"Of course not. And it wouldn’t be fair for you to have to check on me the whole evening and neglect the time you have to spend playing with Blake. Or worse, have to leave early because my anxiety ratchets up and I need to come home and cook or clean or mess up your office books shelves."
Julie set the bowl down on the table in the foyer and trotted off toward the kitchen, intent she’d have a night to herself for a change. Just her, a few trick or treaters, and a pizza with more on it than meat. If there was one thing she’d learned, Dante liked meat on his pizza and lots of it. As for veggies, those were another matter entirely. He also wasn’t fond of anchovies, something she adored and cooked with regularly although he had no idea that nutty, saltiness in her eggplant pasta sauce could be attributed to his least favorite, miniscule fish.
"As soon as you’re ready to play again, there won’t be a need for all those stress relievers. I have to tell you though, the cooking one doesn’t bother me all that much." He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, leaning in and rubbing his cheek against hers. "In fact, I like that one very much. As far as quality. The quantity gets a bit extreme sometimes, but I think you have a few new fans among Gav and Luc’s buddies. In fact, if they weren’t young and full of piss and vinegar, I might be worried. I think a couple of them have designs on you other than having you cook."
"Seriously, Sir. What would a bunch of sixteen year old boys want with someone as old as me?"
"I was a sixteen year old boy once," Dante said, rue lacing his tone. "A horny one at that. I had my eye on my girlfriend’s mom for all of a few minutes. She figured out I watched her mom’s ass more than I did hers and she cut me off and discarded me. How old is too old to trick or treat?"
Julie rolled her eyes and shimmied out of Dante’s grasp. "There shouldn’t be anyone over the age of ten or twelve coming to the door. Right?"
In truth, she and Mason had lived so far out they never had trick or treaters once in all the years they resided on the river so Julie actually had no idea what the etiquette was. If anyone did show, they’d been left wanting as Mason never turned down an invitation to one of Allen’s costume balls on Halloween and they were never home for the holiday anyway.
"The boys got tired of it at age nine and preferred parties and watching scary movies. I have no idea why, but I got the feeling we were considered the weird parents. Like we weren’t already." Dante grabbed a chip out of Julie’s bowl, stuck in the spicy homemade ranch dip she loved, and popped it in his mouth. "Wonder what the neighbors think now?"
"Who gives a damn," Julie said, trotting back off to the living room just as the doorbell rang. "I thought we were all past caring what others thought and were practicing ignoring their ignorance. Otherwise we’d be in hiding and not living at all."
Dante mumbled something inaudible, pulling the door open and plastering on a happy, all-American Dad face. "Well, what have we here?"
"Trick or treat," a few high pitched voices rang out, none of which Julie could discern by sound.
Although the kids were pretty generic in their presence, she could plainly see what Dante was talking about written all over the faces of the parents accompany them. This was her first visible sign that the rumors of hatred surrounding their arrangement were in fact true. Emotions ranging from disgust to curiosity to outright hate ran across the features of the adults standing in her doorway.
"Hello," Julie greeted the adults, her voice chipper and non-assuming. "I’m Julie. I don’t believe we’ve met. Which house did you come from exactly?"
As one man ushered the bevy of children back down the walk another approached. "So which one are you married to?" he asked critically. "The confused one or the fag?"
"Neither," Julie said over a chuckle. "We’re all living in sin and I’m sleeping with both of them." With that she slammed the door in his face. "What an ass. Poor kids. And they call us maladjusted."
She dialed Pizza King’s number as Dante stood with his jaw dropped and the candy bowl tilted, the contents spilling out onto the foyer floor.
"What?" she asked as the young girl on the other end of the phone put her on hold. "Have you two been putting up with that long? Or is this a new development since I came?"
"Pretty much since we’ve lived here. The kids get along okay at school, but the neighborhood parents aren’t as forgiving with Blake and m
e."
"Fuck them," Julie said. "No telling what dirty laundry they have stuffed in their closets." With that, Julie turned her attention back to the phone. "Yes, I need an order delivered, please. I’d like a large, thin crust. All the veggies, sausage, and anchovies. Oh, extra sauce and extra cheese. And an order of wings, hot with bleu cheese. Oh, and don’t send a dumbass either or there'll be no tip."
After rattling off the address, she disconnected.
"Um, Jules?"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Are you okay, love?"
"Yes. Fine. I just can’t stand narrow-minded ninnies." It appalled her that not only did they have a lot to overcome in their own relationship, but they apparently had a lot of outside issues to overcome as well. Bigots sickened her. "I won’t have them hurting my Dom and his slave or their children with their intent and words as long as I live here."
For a moment she and Dante stared at each other. She’d stunned herself as much as she’d stunned him. She’d just made her first acknowledgement of Dante as more than her fill in Dom. And for the first time, the thought didn’t scare her so much.
Chapter Eleven
Less than a month later, Dante stood just out of earshot of Julie. He leaned against the archway between the kitchen and formal dining area where a ritzy buffet was laid out thanks to her. She was standing at the stove, one hand on her hip, the other holding a spoon as she stirred something with vigor that was bubbling away on the burner. A trickle of sweat beaded on her brow, one drop finding its way down her temple before she shrugged her shoulder and made it disappear right before exhaling a puff of air that blew her bangs off her forehead before they fell back down to stick in place again. A smile graced his lips as Blake made his way under his arm and wrapped himself around Dante’s middle.