by Lilia Moon
And nice eyes, which are far more dangerous.
Fuck. I’m following rules I swore I would never follow again. I put my palms on the table and push myself up to standing. I’ll keep the rest of my promise to Liane and then I’m going to spend the next week immersed in my new life instead of regretting my old one. “Let me show you where Matteo’s offices are.”
His eyes just watch me in that way all good Doms have.
I ignore him. I broke a good Dom once and I won’t do it again. “I think Li’s been painting the walls, and if you’re lucky, she left some snacks behind.” Hers won’t have whatever Bee puts in the beet juice to make sperm swim faster. I hang up the iron key on the hook inside the door. He can decide if he’s locking up or not. The art in here has always taken care of itself. I figure that the pieces that leave do so because they belong to someone else.
A hand settles on my shoulder again and I wait for his words, for him to push or backtrack or apologize. But he doesn’t do any of those things. Just a light squeeze and he’s gone again, if you don’t count the strong, firm presence hulking behind me.
I breathe. This is like that damn copper I ordered a few weeks back. I just have to get through to the end and then it will be over and I can work with some nice, cooperative titanium instead.
I head out the door and beeline through my garden, presuming he’ll follow. I take a left out my garden gate and past the three houses that constitute the rest of my neighborhood. He stays a half-step behind me, which would be annoying, except it’s exactly what I need right now—so I let that annoy me instead. I’m the furthest thing there is from an open book. He shouldn’t know how to be considerate around me yet.
I turn into the small complex of buildings that make up our commercial zone, if Crawford Bay can be said to have such a thing. The offices are in behind the shop Xander runs, and I buzz by the front window to wave at him so he doesn’t think the local wildlife has suddenly figured out how to use doorknobs. Then I fish in my pocket for a key that’s a lot more modern than the one to the garden shed. “This is for you. It’s backup. The door has one of those numeric touchpads. Matteo said you would know the code.”
Rafe’s lips quirk. “Probably not the day he lost his virginity, then.”
Jerk. I manage not to grin. “Maybe the day you lost yours.”
He calmly types in a date that’s older than I am.
I snort. “Pants on fire.”
“Maybe.” He flashes me a grin and turns the knob. “But it works.”
I do the math. “You were what, three? Four?”
He turns to face me. “I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”
Fuck. I totally walked myself into that one. “I don’t have a story you need to hear.”
He studies me a moment longer, letting my words hang in the air before he turns to take a look around the dim office.
I fumble around for the light switch. Matteo did a lot of cursing as he upgraded the wiring, so I should at least show off the results. The lights come on smoothly, the neat rows of pot lights shining down on desks and art installations that look like they belong in some high-class museum, except at least half the art was done by kids under ten. Including a couple who borrowed my tools.
There are also some better pieces. Three he swiped from my garden shed and one he took out of the box when I was packing it up to be shipped. I threatened to add some holes to his body for that particular theft, but Liane managed to get him out of the way before he came home with a cock ring.
I probably wouldn’t have actually done it. I like seeing people live with my art.
Rafe’s eyes skim the art, the computers, the snazzy sitting area. To his credit, he doesn’t look nearly as shocked as Matteo did when he discovered we actually have people with real design skills in this hamlet. “Nice digs.”
They are nice. I don’t want him to like them. “You must have something a lot fancier back in the city.”
“Nope. I work from home, mostly. Or onsite at the client. Or on a couch when I’m crashing with family.”
He says that like it happens a lot. “You’re close with your family?” The question sneaks out before I can stop it. I’m fascinated by people who come from clans.
He nods, running his fingers over the edges of desks and monitors as he makes his way slowly around the room. “When I was three years old, someone left me outside my mom’s daycare with a note that said she looked like a kind person, and would she take me in. It took a lot more paperwork than that, but she did.”
The date he typed into the keypad. I don’t know whether to let my heart crack for the abandoned small boy or to rejoice that someone didn’t let him become three-year-old trash.
He looks over at me. “She’s all I remember. I’m not a guy to feel sorry for. I’ve had a charmed life.”
I swallow. Do the office tour, get the hell out. “She sounds amazing. Your mom.”
“She is.” He touches a pottery bowl made by a kid who can’t sit still for more than two seconds at a time unless he has clay in his hands. “It’s just her and me, but she has eight brothers and sisters. They’re all nomads, so I have family everywhere.”
Nomads are good. Nomads don’t stay. I inhale and let my eyes travel the space. It’s not a big office, but it has a sweet vibe.
He huffs out a breath. “Matteo plans to stay here.”
I go with immature and snicker. It’s safer than letting myself like him. “Duh.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Does Liane know that?”
I don’t want to talk about her. “Worried about your nomadic lifestyle?”
He shrugs. “No. I like flying my plane and Matteo knows it. It’s a quick ninety-minute hop to Vancouver from here, or an hour to Calgary. That would work fine.”
That’s after the ninety minutes he spends getting over to the Nelson airport, but I’m not about to help him do Crawford Bay travel math. If the first thing on his mind is how far away the big cities are, he won’t be staying.
Which eases my insides some.
A tourist Dom I can handle.
Chapter Eight
Rafe
I watch her as she walks over to a tray of snacks that looks like it got delivered an hour ago. She picks up a strawberry and pops it in her mouth and gives me a quick look up and down as she does it. Evaluated and discarded.
Except her poker face isn’t quite as good this time.
I know I need her story before I push again, but I’m not going to get it. Not even when mine leaked out without me really intending it to. I look over at the metal sculpture sitting on a white pillar beside me. It invokes the same sense of pulsing containment as the one in the garden cottage.
She’s a volcano seeking enclosure.
Not every Dom can handle that—hell, given what I can feel from her, there are probably very few who can. But if she’s still making art that speaks of containers, then what lives inside her hasn’t gone vanilla, no matter how hard she’s tried to reshape it.
I can empathize. Kink is just a handy outlet for something I was born with. And it doesn’t want to let this woman go.
I step over behind her. Slowly. Lots of warning, lots of time. “Let me hold you, Bright Eyes.”
She whirls, and there’s fury in her eyes—and riding right behind it, panic. “Fuck, no.”
Consent matters, but so does truth. “I’m not going to push on you. Just let me contain you. We both want to know if I can.”
Every bit of her is trying to back away except her feet. “What are you, some kind of freaking Dom mystic?”
That’s actually pretty close. “Do I look like a mystic?”
She glares at me. “Do I look like a sub?”
I don’t need to look again, but I do anyhow. Laced leather boots, dirty fingers, a big sweater that hides everything unless a guy knows how to look without his eyes. “No. So we agree this has nothing to do with looks.”
For five whip-cracking heartbeats, nothing moves. And then she raises a glacia
l, absolutely controlled eyebrow. “Wow, arrogant asshole much?”
Always, but I know a defensive offense when I see one. “Yes. One who wants to hold you.”
Her smile is frosty—and edged with sadness. “That won’t prove anything.”
I’m done with words. I just hold out my arms. An invitation to the woman who makes the sculptures that won’t let me walk away.
She sighs—but when her feet step, it’s not away.
One foot, two. She lays her head down on my chest. Just her head. Right over top of my heart. Which nearly stops it, because I can feel what she’s done and just how ephemeral it is. She’ll be gone before I can breathe again, but for this one, solitary moment, she’s an open and utterly vulnerable butterfly setting her feet down on my strength.
Surrender that doesn’t dare stay longer.
I don’t move. Don’t wrap my arms around her, because in this moment she’s let me taste just what it is that she’s protecting.
When I feel her wings start to beat again, something in me grieves.
She flies with so much weight.
She steps away. When she meets my gaze, her eyes are clear and cold. “Stay away from me, Rafael Clark. I’ll feed you and give you directions when you get lost and help you do whatever you need to do to figure out that you don’t belong here. But keep your Dom in your pants. I don’t want it.”
I watch as she stomps out the door and slams it behind her.
Chapter Nine
India
Arrogant jerk.
I make it halfway back to my house believing that. He’s an asshole who wants me to be the sub I used to be and he’s pulling out all kinds of weird kinky tricks to get me there. No Dom ever just wants a hug.
Except I think maybe he did.
I throw myself into the glider rocker at the edge of Willow and Dean’s property that gets used a lot as the neighborhood thinking chair. Or pouting chair, if your name happens to be India. I’m being ridiculous and I know it. I kick the ground with my boot to set the swing in motion. It doesn’t chase away the crisp air of fall, but I’m the idiot who left home without a jacket, and at least out here I can think.
I sigh and scrub my fingers over my scalp. The blood flow doesn’t fix what ails my brain, but it helps fool my touch hunger a little.
He fucking offered the one thing I’ve always been unable to walk away from, the siren call that lures me into trouble and shipwrecks me and whoever I’m with, too. I love being held. I drink it up like water, except it’s addictive like vodka. I don’t ever get enough that I can be satisfied and walk away, and all of the worst mistakes in my life have come when I’ve let that need be in charge.
All of the best moments, too, but those don’t make up for the mistakes.
I growl and tug on the loops in my ears. Needing sensation. Food for my skin. I can go catch the ferry to Nelson, maybe. Find a fuck buddy. Not all that easy to do on a weekday at noon, but maybe I can drag Tony away from his coffee shop long enough to get the worst of this out of my system. His customers are used to his crap service. It will probably improve if he isn’t there, and he’s got good hands. He knows what I need.
My arms wrap around my ribs, partially in a futile effort to warm up and partly because I know Tony can’t touch this. He’s a good guy, but he’s got scars of his own, and they don’t run to letting him sink into two hours of cuddling after the sex.
I don’t say the truth, even inside my own head, but I hear it anyhow. It might be the sex I want, but it’s the cuddles I need. And the man who let that particular tiger out of her cage thinks he can tame me with bacon trades and fingers that stroke my art like they understand it.
Asshole.
I sigh and inhale the tang of wood smoke and truth. Attractive asshole. I don’t lie to myself, not anymore, and I need to stop sitting here swinging hard enough to rile my stomach and pretending I’m not considering walking back in there.
He’s a lot closer than Tony, and I’m pretty sure those hands of his would meet my needs just fine. It’s the rest of the package that’s the problem. Doms turn off their need to control about as easily as I turn off my need to breathe.
I pull my knees up inside my sweater as the devil inside me makes her case. Doms understand limits, and he strikes me as a guy who honors them more assiduously than most. I can’t be trusted to draw my lines once things get rolling, but if I say them up front clearly enough, maybe I can get what I need without setting too much of myself on fire.
Except heat is what I need right now. Lots of it. Hard and fast and done before that seductive and tricky mind of his has time to figure me out any more than he already has.
I nod slowly. It could work. Hard limits, a harder fuck, and then I can go make jewelry without my skin itching as the need inside me tries to crawl out through my pores. I kick at the riot of red and gold leaves piled under the swing and put my boots back on the ground. I know better than to let myself get this hungry for arms around me. That’s when I get stupid.
This definitely qualifies as stupid, but at least it’s the stupid I choose.
Chapter Ten
Rafe
For a guy who should be thoroughly distracted by other things, Matteo’s done a bang-up job of getting this new direction of his solidified. He’s got clients and focus and neatly documented business plans. It’s clear why he’s looking for help. Or rather, he’s built up a plausible explanation for why he wants me here.
I look up from the online documents I’ve been skimming and study the sculpture that won’t leave me alone. It’s stronger than the one in the cottage. More mature, and if I’m not reading the wrong things into elegant twists of metal, also more desperate.
Which isn’t anything I should be thinking about. She was crystal clear. No going Dom on her ass or anywhere else, and going Dom is the only way I know how to handle this.
I click into another document at random, and then jump about twenty feet as the door gusts open and bangs into the wall. I spin the chair around just in time to catch a full frontal view of India on the warpath and headed straight for me.
I take a breath. Whatever this is, she damn well needs me to catch it.
She crashes to a halt and crosses her arms. “Just sex. No Dom shit. I want it fast and rough and over and then you’ll leave me the hell alone.”
Sweet holy fuck. I consider her for a minute, because no sane man touches an erupting volcano without his brain in gear. The sane guy probably doesn’t touch her at all, but he’s not voting nearly as loudly as my cock—or the place inside my ribs that speaks the same damn language as her sculptures.
She smirks. “Don’t tell me you’re not interested.”
I want to ignore the surface crap, but I can’t. There’s truth there too. “I won’t.”
Satisfaction gleams in her eyes. “I’m serious about the Dom shit. Lock it down.”
I haven’t said I’ll do this yet, and for once, what’s zinging out of her has my emotional radar entirely overwhelmed with static. “Just because you don’t have metal in your hands right now doesn’t make you any less of an artist.”
She blinks at me. “What?”
“There’s acting like a Dom, playing a scene like one, and then there’s being a Dom. I can put my tools down for long enough to have some hot, sweaty sex, but that doesn’t make me any less what I am.”
I didn’t think it was possible for her to edge any closer to eruption, but I was wrong. She grabs her hair in her fists and tugs. “That. That shit right there. Do not mess with my head. Fuck me or don’t, but let me be who I need to be. I’m not yours to change.”
This is a bad idea in so many ways I can’t even list them all. She’s riding the hot edge of something sex isn’t going to fix. Not to mention, I bleed just like the next guy, and she wants my cock without the rest of me attached. Two very good reasons to walk away.
But I know why my feet haven’t moved. There are two more reasons in the room. The need, flailing inside her, strain
ing to be free. And the need inside of me to hold her while she does it.
Fuck.
I close the distance between us in two steps. Her eyes widen as my hands land on her hips and pull her tight against my cock. I don’t slow down. My lips find hers, seeking entrance into her fire.
Her hands take a fierce grip on my shoulders, and the sound that comes out of her is beyond primal.
I pull the sweater that’s big enough to hide two of her over her head. Her breath catches, and her breasts quiver inside a lacy blue corset that’s the last thing I expected to find under bulky wool. She reaches for my shirt, fingers scrabbling frantically on my chest. “Off. I need to feel you.”
She has all the right reasons for wanting me naked—and all the wrong ones too. I don’t stop to sort them out. That’s not what either of us need, and this thing is about to blow, one way or the other. The best way I know how to take care of both of us is from inside the explosion.
I tug my shirt over my head and pull her back in tight to my chest. Her corset doesn’t hide the warmth of her skin or the way she’s quivering against me.
I slow down. She needs this part, even if she doesn’t want to admit it, and I’m fine with that. Half-naked woman in my arms is one of my favorite things. I keep one arm wrapped around her lower back, grinding her against my cock. My other hand travels up and pushes lace aside.
Which is when I discover her nipple rings.
I growl and fall to my knees, keeping an arm tight around her ass. I take fleeting note that the rings are beautiful—some kind of teal and purple sheen on the metal—right before my teeth close over a nipple.
She squeals and bucks in my arms. “Fuck. Be gentle, you jerk.”
She doesn’t mean it, but I’m a guy who doesn’t have permission to show her that yet, so I sit back on my heels. Watching. Waiting.
She stares down at me, mystified.
Which is all the evidence I need that she might have turned her life vanilla, but her sexual being is still utterly kinky. I raise an eyebrow, waiting. She’ll get it.