by Lilia Moon
I sit in a cockpit that way.
There’s movement at the corner of my vision. Daley, holding up her black tube.
I see the unasked question in her eyes. The dare.
I nod. Whatever it is she wants to do, she has my permission.
She pops the top off the black tube and pulls out several pencils. Fancy ones, the kind I’ve seen at the art store in the professional section. She checks in again to see if I’ve wavered, which sends my respect for her up several notches.
It’s not a straightforward assent to give. I’m not sure what she’s out to capture, but in a moment this fluid, it could easily be things that will be uncomfortable to see later. I nod quietly. I teach people to use discomfort as fuel. If today wants to be a refresher lesson, I’m fine with that.
My attention swings back to the woman I never really stopped watching. Her torch still moves slowly along the single piece of metal, wider and flatter than a wire, but not flat like sheet metal either.
“It’s called annealing.” Daley glances at me, her pencil moving swiftly over the paper. “When you work metal, it eventually gets cranky at being squished and bent. Heating it up like that lets the molecules sort themselves out and realign so that it’s easier to work with again.”
That’s a fascinating metaphor.
I nod my thanks, but I don’t say anything. I just watch the flame and try to decipher its lessons.
India growls and pulls her torch away suddenly. “Don’t even think about it, you little bugger.”
I hide a grin, pleased it’s not me she’s addressing.
Daley snickers. “That must be your new copper.”
“It is.” India picks one end up with a pair of pliers that are clearly meant to show a hapless hunk of metal who’s boss. She dunks it in a small, flat pan filled with water and glances over at me. “I got it from this guy in New Mexico who digs the rocks up out of some abandoned mine shaft and smelts them in his back yard.”
I gather it might be safe to talk. “That sounds potentially toxic.”
“Nah.” She lifts the strip of metal back out and carefully pats it dry three times. I understand the care—any pilot knows exactly what water can do to metal. “He’s a retired chemist. He’s got this fancy-ass lab setup and a wife who threatened to leave him if he blows himself up.”
Smart woman. “High quality materials, then.”
She snorts and gives the strip of metal the evil eye. “So you’d think, but this is the crankiest damn inanimate object I’ve ever met. It routinely breaks when all I’ve asked it to do is curve a little, it throws a temper tantrum if you change your mind the least little bit, and yesterday it tried to poke me in the eye.”
The part of me that has always headed straight for trouble rears its crash-helmet-clad head. “Sounds like it might not be worth the effort.”
This time it’s me who gets the evil eye. She tosses her chin at a table near the door. “See for yourself.”
I hop down from my window bench and stroll over to the table. It’s a lightbox setup, something similar to what a friend of mine uses to photograph her vintage finds before she sells them online. The equipment isn’t what has my attention, though. Sitting up in the place of honor on a small hunk of driftwood is a creation of coils and tiny gears, made from a substance that glows with every color in the brown-and-gold rainbow. It’s exquisite, tiny art that’s clearly meant to be worn, even if I don’t have the slightest idea where.
It’s also very different from the wares I saw in her online store. It has far more in common with a couple of sculptures I’ve had my hands on recently.
I look over at its maker. “Can I touch it?”
She snorts and lays another strip of metal on her firing surface. “Yes. I don’t make wimpy jewelry.”
It definitely isn’t that. It’s strong and vibrant, something that expects to be seen and admired. I hold it up in the natural light, giving it the adulation it deserves and trying to figure out what the heck it is.
Daley chuckles. “It’s an ear cuff. It goes around the back of the fat part of your ear. She’ll make a killing selling them to cosplayers and steampunk groupies.”
Victorian science-geek dress-up. I’ve been dragged along a few times because I don’t turn down chances to ogle women in corsets. I look over at India. “It’s stunning, but you already know that.”
She smiles down at her work. “Yup. I do. Which is why I put up with metal that wants to poke my eye out.”
Daley snorts. “Your garden tries to do that on a regular basis too. You just like your life with pokey things in it.”
My eyes dart over to see if she meant the entendre. She winks at me.
India turns off her torch with a snap. “Gee, Daley, thanks for the brownies, don’t you need to be going now?”
“I do, actually.” Daley pops her pencils back in her tube and tears two pages out of her notebook. She gets up and lays them on India’s bench. “I’ll see you later. I expect details.”
India’s staring at the paper like it comes with a tail rattle. “You never draw guys.”
Daley leans in and kisses her cheek. “I didn’t do it for him. I did it for you.”
Chapter Sixteen
India
I glare at two pencil sketches that capture everything I don’t want to be thinking about right now. They’re quick, the kind of thing Daley does in about five seconds that make genius look easy. But it’s not her skill that has me struggling to look away.
It’s the eyes of the man on the pages. One sketch has three barely outlined faces. Rafe laughing. Rafe with as close to Dom gaze as he’d better ever be wearing in my studio. And Rafe, his mouth full of brownie, looking like heaven just opened up and beamed down on him.
The other page from her notebook is harder, though.
I don’t want to know that he looks at my jewelry and sees me.
I set down my torch. There’s just no way I can deal with two difficult things at once, and copper has the same patience as most things born from rocks. The guy who’s taken Daley’s place in my overstuffed chair doesn’t. He’s doing a really good impression of someone who does, but he’s like metal feels before you get the impurities baked out. Close, but not quite there.
Daley drew her sketches because she thinks I don’t see him, but I do—maybe too well.
I’m just not sure I want him to know that.
I do, however, owe him an apology, and since he’s been a decent guy and didn’t leak what happened earlier out where my friend could see it, he’s going to get a politer version than I had planned. I rub my palms on my jeans. I own what’s mine, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
He just watches me. Easy. Steady.
Damn. “What I asked of you was totally unfair. You’re a Dom down to your toes. I shouldn’t have asked you to try to be anything else.” Especially when I know just how much I’m like my copper. I get all heated up and pliable and I look like I can get to where I’m headed, but there’s always something lurking in me, waiting to break.
“What I agree to is on me.” His tone is casual, but his eyes aren’t.
I want to let him share my guilt on this, but I can’t. “You don’t know me well enough to have known what my request was going to mean.” Hell, I didn’t know, and I’m still trying to decided how fucked up that is.
He snorts. “Has that line worked in the past?”
I eye him. My past is totally not his business.
His lips quirk. “I’m like your jewelry, Bright Eyes. I’m not a wimp. I’m good with what happened. I have some questions, and if we do it again there needs to be some rules about you storming out the door after with your pants half on, but I’m fine.”
I’m not, but this conversation isn’t actually making things worse, and that’s an odd and unexpected sensation. “My pants were all the way on, thank you very much.”
He studies me for a minute, the humor quieting in his eyes. “Ready to t
alk about it yet?”
Freaking Dom, just biding his time.
I want to tell him I’m not a sub who dances to that kind of music anymore, but I’ve already maxed out my immaturity points for the day. My bolting didn’t scare him off and neither did my flame torch, and that means he deserves at least a little bit of an explanation. “I had some needs and I thought we might be able to take care of them with a quick fuck. Except I didn’t keep my head in fuck-buddy space, and I’m sorry I tossed some of that at you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t throw it. I insisted.”
Jerk. “You’re not my Dom.”
He shrugs. “I was for a little bit. We both needed me to be.”
Arrogant jerk. Unfortunately, he’s right. “It wasn’t a fair thing for me to need you to be. Not when I told you not to go there and I didn’t want to go there myself.” I swallow. “Sometimes I have a hard time sticking to my own limits. I’m sorry you got caught in that.”
He smiles. “I’m not. But we’ll be sure to get clearer on that up front if we decide to get naked together again.”
That’s the second time he’s mentioned that—and the second time it’s made my toes curl. “That’s a bad idea.”
He grins. “Maybe, but we’re both thinking about it.”
I want to throw pliers at his head, but I’ve probably dented him enough for one day. “Are you always this obnoxiously honest?”
He sobers instantly. “Yes. Most people don’t want to know what’s going on inside them. I was born knowing. I can avoid it for a while, but it’s painful.”
It isn’t just his insides he sees. “You felt some things from me.” I can’t throw my pliers at him for that, but I want to. “Things I wouldn’t have chosen for you to know.”
He nods slowly. “All Doms sense things. I’ve just got more sensitive radar than most.”
The quiet, almost dispassionate words scrape across my raw parts. I know what it is to have found solace in kink. “That’s why you’re a Dom. Because it gives you a place where that’s okay. Where you can be a mindreading asshole and it’s a good thing.”
His lips curl up slowly. “Something like that, yeah.”
I don’t want to be attracted. And I really, really don’t want to feel any sympathy for the guy who took one look at my cracks and started digging. “That must suck sometimes.”
He’s just studying me again. “Sometimes.”
I duck away from the need to wrap my arms around his head and just hold him tight for a minute. “Does it fuck up? Your radar?”
Chapter Seventeen
Rafe
I take a deep breath and let it out. Some people I can read like a book, and it looks like she’s one of them, and that’s going to be complicated for both of us. “Yes. I’m no more perfect than the next guy. But I’m generally not wrong when I think people are ducking out on their truth.”
She gives me a dirty look. “My truth is my business.”
I shrug. “It is. But it’s hard for me when what people feel inside doesn’t match their words. There’s a disconnect there. That’s part of the reason I got into kink too. It’s a community where more people are willing to look in the mirror.” I pause, because where I’m about to go is fucking unfair and I’m going anyhow. “I get the feeling you used to be one of them. Why did you stop?”
She’s on her feet before my heart can beat. “Fuck you. I know exactly what lives in me. Choosing not to show it on the surface is different than not knowing. So is choosing not to tell some asshole Dom who thinks he has a right to know just because he’s staying in my garden shed.”
She’s entirely right—and I don’t think either of those are why she’s angry. “You figure out some of what’s inside you when you surrender. When you let yourself crack. Judging from what happened when you were bent over Matteo’s fancy new desk, it’s been way too damn long.”
She’s about to torch me again. I can practically feel my eyebrows singeing. And then she stops. Pulls it in with an effort that she tries to hide behind a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s your new desk, buddy. Especially if Matteo hears what we just did on it.”
I really like her prickly side, except for when it’s avoidant. “I’m not going to leave because you poke at me.”
She turns a little pale and sits down hard on her stool. It doesn’t take fancy emotional radar to feel the shame washing off of her. “Yeah. Leaving’s kind of my gig. Which was an asshole move, and I really am sorry.”
“I don’t think that’s something you used to do either.”
“I don’t want to talk about my past. Hard limit.”
She’s doing penance for something huge, and I ache for her. “Your past kept touching me in there, Bright Eyes. I’m a decent instrument flyer when I need to be, but I’d far rather be able to see where I’m going.”
She turns back to her strip of copper. “Where you’re going is out my door.” She shrugs her shoulder in the opposite direction. “Feel free to raid the kitchen on your way out. There’s some ham-and-pea soup in the pot on the stove and fresh bread in the basket on the cutting board.”
I breathe in the smell of one of my mom’s favorite fall soups and go with my gut. “Come have a bowl with me.”
She looks over and glares. “I’m a disaster waiting to happen and you’re a guy who doesn’t heed warnings worth a damn. Which means we need as much space between us as we can get in a hamlet with five hundred people.”
That’s about four hundred and eighty more than I thought lived here. “I heed warnings. I just don’t always respond to them the way you want me to.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re a persistent asshole, you know that?”
When I have a good reason, and today feels like I do. I’m just not sure here is the right place to do it. This studio is another of her safe places. One where she’s built her own container and even if she’s tolerating my presence, she isn’t going to let me play with her torches.
I take another breath and pull out a standard Dom trick, loudly enough that she won’t miss what I’m doing. “How about I pack up the bread and soup and take you flying?”
She stares at me like I’m speaking in Klingon again. “What?”
Some tricks are standards because they work. “I have a plane, I’m a competent pilot, and I bet you’ve never seen your hamlet from the air.”
She’s utterly still, a smart woman who knows there’s a catch in here somewhere that she can’t see yet.
I give her the truth instead. “It’s one of my safe places. I’d like to share it with you.”
She exhales, a wistful, rueful sound that stirs up something far more primal than my cock. “I’ve always wanted to take one of those damn tourist charters. I was maybe going to take Lee for his birthday next year. He wants to be a pilot.”
I have no idea who Lee is, but it doesn’t matter. “He can come on another day if he wants. I like taking people up.”
She gives me a curious look. “For all you know, he’s my main squeeze who lives upstairs.”
I really do like her thorns. “In that case, I’ll be really quick when I go steal bread and soup.”
She snorts. “Lee is Daley’s grandson. He’s ten, and if you take him flying, you’ll be his favorite superhero forever.”
I take all wishful ten year olds flying, but she doesn’t need to know that. I pick up my bag and wink at her. “What do I need to do to be your favorite superhero?”
She laughs, but there’s a flash of pain in her eyes as she does. “Nothing you can do with two hands on a steering wheel.”
I don’t bother telling her that planes don’t have steering wheels. Or that they do have autopilot.
She’ll learn.
Chapter Eighteen
India
I stare. He really does have a plane—and she’s adorable. Sleek and trim and bright banana yellow, perched on the edge of what appears to be a small parking lot for her and some of her new friends. One
with a great view of the lake and the yellow and gold fall leaves still clinging to the trees. She fits right in.
Rafe stands beside me, hands in his pockets, watching me instead of his plane. I was going to make some joke about cocks with wings, but this doesn’t have the vibe of a testosterone measuring stick. Unlike the powerboat we just rode in on, but the whole town knows the exact dimensions of Gerry’s midlife crisis. And his wife’s amused tolerance, which bodes well for the boat’s continued survival.
I inhale a deep breath of October-scented air. “What can I do to help to get ready?”
Rafe laughs. “Depends. You can be a tourist and let me do all the work, or you can fly the plane, or pretty much anything in between.”
I gape at him. “I can barely drive. And I’m pretty sure your banana with wings needs a little more skill than my beat-up hatchback.”
He gives me a dirty look, but his eyes are dancing. “Insult her again and she might dump you out a side window into some remote mountain valley.”
There are a lot of those around here. “Noted. Don’t insult the very nice plane.”
He laughs. “I’m a certified flight instructor. So if you want to see under the hood, I can show you. If you just want to head for the skies and stare out the windows, that’s fine too.”
I shake my head, but I know it’s not a complete answer. “I’m about as mechanically inclined as a banana.”
He gives me one of his looks. I’m beginning to develop categories for them. “But?”
I sigh. “I failed science and I understand exactly nothing about how planes stay in the sky, but I’ve had flying dreams since forever. You should probably duct-tape my hands somewhere they can’t cause any trouble.”