Never Have I Ever

by Clearwing, August

  His smirk never faded as he said, “Now, I know you normally survive on a steady diet of complicated for breakfast, but I’m fresh out. How do you feel about French toast instead?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds a little too adventurous for me,” I teased.

  “Take a chance,” he countered.

  “French toast is perfect.”

  “Fantastic. Shower first, I think. And I won’t even make you crawl this time.”

  He moved off of me and helped me to my feet. My legs were still shaky from the ordeal he put me through, but I managed to steady myself and followed him into the bathroom. In the mirror, I saw the extent of the damage. Purple and blue began peeking out from behind the pale skin of my hind quarters and the tops of my legs. The flesh grew tender. Even brushing my hand across it increased the pain a little. It was bearable and, all in all, worth it; though I was unsure about whether or not I’d be able to sit down for the remainder of the day.

  We showered together in companionable silence. I sighed in longing of a garden tub like his. I always wanted one, but could never quite afford the apartments in town that boasted them. Warm water washed away the aches from my muscles. Noah even took the time to tend to my bruises with a soft washcloth. I silently wondered why he had yet to ask me to reciprocate his wake-up call. I wanted to. And he was still so close to me that every piece of me just wanted to fall to my knees and beg to experience more of last night.

  But I remembered the rules from before.

  While my out and out lust for him screamed through my head, my body did need the reprieve. I decided against asking. We were supposed to talk this morning, anyway.

  One step at a time, Piper. Breakfast first. We can ravage one another later.

  After toweling off, I set my mind on food. It’d been so long since I ate French toast that I actually forgot how to make it. A refresher course didn’t sound half bad.

  As I finished wringing out my hair with the towel, I asked, “Mind if I help with breakfast? I haven’t made French Toast in ages.”

  Noah smiled and, with his own towel wrapped around his hips, closed the gap between us and placed his hands on my waist. “Of course you can, sweetness. Though, if you’re going to be in the kitchen with me then go ahead and throw a robe on. The last thing I want is for you to get burned when I’m not the one doing the burning.”

  I never would’ve thought of that. How amazingly sensitive of him for my safety to be so high on his list of priorities. He kissed my forehead and disappeared into the walk-in closet beside us for a moment, then reemerged with a blue and yellow silk robe. A Chinese dragon wound its way up the back in black and blue stitching. He set it around my shoulders for me to slip my arms through. The wide sleeves sort of made me feel like a child in an adult’s jacket.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  He pulled me to him with the belt of the robe and tied it around me. “You really aren’t used to men being so attentive are you?”

  I shook my head. My last relationship entailed a guy who strutted around in the same clothes for three days in a row and whose idea of the epitome of romance consisted of making out in a movie theatre to the tune of Transformers like some damned high school kids. Not my finest moment, I admit.

  Noah donned a pair of plaid pajama bottoms, not unlike my own pair back home, and we reconvened in the kitchen. A clock on the wall told me it was almost ten in the morning.

  “You can start us a pot of coffee,” he said. He gestured to a cabinet beside the refrigerator above the countertop.

  I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the sugar on the second shelf, but luckily the coffee itself was on the bottom. There were several varieties to choose from. They ranged from Folgers to Starbucks to off brands I never heard of and something labeled Kopi Luwak. The latter was in whole bean form in a linen bag with a print of what looked like a cross between a house cat and a rat etched into the bag. I took the bag and stared at it for a moment, trying to deduce what the hell it was.

  “Okay, why is there a picture of a small rodent on this coffee bag?” I asked as I flashed the front of it to show Noah.

  He was gathering ingredients from the fridge. “Ah. You won’t want that one, I promise.” I waved my hand as an indication to give me a good reason. He shut the fridge and set the milk and eggs beside the stove before continuing, “It’s one of those high-end brands which, if you knew the origin of, would turn you off of coffee for the remainder of your life. The critter on the bag is called a Civet. You’re smart. I’ll let you connect the dots.”

  It didn’t take me long. When I realized the only possible way to connect coffee to an animal had to do with it running through its digestive tract, I couldn’t throw the bag back onto the shelf fast enough. “Oh, dear God! Why? Why would anyone want to drink that?! In what universe would someone think, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea; let’s use coffee beans that have passed through an animal’s system! It’ll sell like hotcakes!’ Good freaking Lord.”

  Rich people. Seriously.

  Noah laughed. “I don’t drink it. It was a gift from a very eccentric friend. I’ve been trying to pawn it off on someone for the past year now.”

  “Think I’ll stick with Folgers,” I said more to the cupboard than to him.

  “I warned you.”

  After finally figuring out how to work the coffee pot, it was bubbling away while the smell of eggs and milk sizzled into the air. I leaned against the counter beside him while we waited for the first round of bread to crisp on the skillet. The delay began to gnaw at me until I could no longer take it.

  “So, could you tell me more about what it would mean to be your sub, Sir?”

  He didn’t turn his head, only his eyes toward me for just an instant before he was watching the skillet again. The ghost of a smile returned to his face. “How far down the rabbit-hole do you want to go I believe is the question.”

  “Well, I need to decide if this is right for me, don’t I?”

  “Oh you’ve already decided, my pet. And so have I. However, I’ll humor you this once only because you do, in fact, need to know.” Noah flipped the bread in the pan, and then turned his full attention toward me. “First you need to know what I don’t expect. Perfection, at first anyway, is something I don’t expect. That will come with time. I don’t expect you to be a maid or a cook, either. I have a cleaning service for a reason and, as you can tell, I tend to enjoy cooking.

  “My desires are purely sexual and emotional in nature. I have a rather healthy appetite for sex. What I will require of you is that you give your body wholly to me to command. Everything we talked about last night stands. You will obey my every direction, continue to call me Sir, and, with the exception of times like these where you’re so close to a hot surface, remain naked when with me in this apartment. Are you following me thus far?”

  “For some reason I always thought Masters wanted their slaves to be just that, slaves.”

  “You are only a slave to your sexual need to be dominated, my little slut. And that is something I can provide with the utmost joy.”

  I looked at the off-white tiling on the floor in a bid to drive away the growing want for him to just take me right there. Holy fuck, he was right. Now that I’d experienced the feeling of it, I never wanted to not feel this way.

  “You are your own person,” Noah continued, “I recognize that. I won’t pull you from your passions for science or from your friends because that is part of what makes you so marvelous.”

  “I appreciate that, Sir. Besides, were you to try I would have to regrettably put an end to this before it began.”

  “And we couldn’t have that.” The first batch of French toast was finished, so he moved on to the next. It crackled against the skillet as the red hot electric burner caught beneath it. “In return I will lead you to no danger; I will respect any hard limitations that you may have—which we will need to discuss up front here—and I will never hit you out of anger. The only time you will feel pain is for th
e pleasure of the pain or as a controlled punishment.”

  “I’m pretty confident I can handle that, Sir.”

  Noah’s smile fell somewhere between tender and devious. “So am I. Now, I have two assignments for you; I will help you with both of them this time.”

  I teased, “Assignments? Will there be a test at the end of the semester then, Sir?”

  “The entire experience is a test, sweetness. At the end of the test, provided that you perform well, you will be rewarded with a collar.” He pointed the spatula in his hand at me. “That is your goal. At that time you will be able to officially call me your Master.”

  So, that was the reason he wanted me to call him Sir instead of Master. “I see,” I said. I was up for a challenge, especially if it meant that it would make him happy. I gave him a resolute nod. “All right, Sir, give me the first assignments.”

  “Excellent,” he said. He flipped the bread in the pan. “We need a list of Nevers. After breakfast, we’ll make one. Places we want to go, people we want to meet, food we want to try and experiences that we want to have. We’re going to make them all happen.”

  I stuttered, unable to believe what I was hearing, “Really?”

  “Really. Oh, grab the syrup from the fridge.”

  I found the bottle in the side of the door. Mild pet peeve that it was; I never stored syrup in the fridge. Not only did it usually have enough sugar in it to keep it fresh in the pantry, but it was a bitch to open and a chore to force out of the bottle. My fingers worked against the clasp at the top to pry it off as I turned back to him.

  I said, “I don’t know if I’ll have enough time or money to do all of the things I want to, Sir.”

  “Don’t worry about the cost, pet. I have that covered.”

  “Maybe so, but I’d still like to help pay my own way.”

  God damned bottle—and then it opened. I was clutching it so hard that some of the contents shot from the bottle and straight onto Noah’s chest. My hand flew to my mouth to cover the shock of my laugh.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I said. But I was still laughing.

  He slid the French toast from the skillet onto a plate and he looked at me with a Cheshire cat grin. “You’re so going to pay for that.”

  I set the bottle on the counter and started to slowly back away, consciously aware that he was wiping it off on his finger and getting ready to come after me.

  “Come here,” he said with a laugh.

  Out of instinct I backed away further until I stepped off the small drop into the living room and started to bolt, near to squealing, “I said sorry, Sir!”

  He clicked the burner off on the stove and chased me through the open living room. “Don’t you run from me now!”

  I knew it was futile. What was I going to do, run to the elevator in a robe? I led him around the couch, tried to hop over the corner of the coffee table and double back. He jumped across the table like it was not even there, grasped me around my waist and tackled me to the sofa like a linebacker with a playful growl. I struggled against him, still trying to contain my own laughter at the whole situation. I squeaked when he started tickling me with the hand that wasn’t covered in syrup, and squeaked even louder when he wiped the syrup onto my neck and buried his mouth there to suck it from my skin.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  “You better be,” he said when he came up for air. He was smiling, but his next words were a little more serious. “You also ran from me when I told you to come to me, pet. I will have to punish you for that later.”

  I bit my lip, almost all of the laugher gone from my voice as I said, “I’m sorry,” one more time.

  Noah smoothed my hair away from my eyes. “Never run from me, sweetness.”

  I gave a silent nod. It was only a matter of time before I fucked up. As minor as it was, I hated seeing the look of disappointment on his face.

  He must have caught the sadness in my eyes because his own softened a bit. “I’m not angry at you, my dear, but it’s a lesson you need to learn now that you belong to me.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I replied softly.

  He answered me by licking at the remainder of the syrup from my neck. His tongue was replaced with his lips as he kissed down to my collar bone and along the long V shape of showing skin the robe created between my breasts. He held me tight to slip one side of the robe over my shoulder and expose more of my skin.

  “I don’t care if breakfast gets cold; I want you so bad right now I can’t see straight,” he said. His words sent a tingle of delight through me.

  Then there was a knock at the front door.

  Okay, it was not a knock; it sounded more like an explosion in the shape of a fist against the steel. A male voice shot into existence behind it, “Noah! Open this goddamn door right now!”

  Noah lifted his attentions from me and closed his eyes like if he wished hard enough the voice would just be a very bad dream. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” He turned his head so he wouldn’t be yelling in my face when he hollered, “Go away!”

  “Two options, Noah! Open it or I break it down!”

  I looked at him quizzically. “Who’s that, Sir?”

  He sighed and kissed me. “I need you to listen to me very closely. That’s Ethan. Under no circumstances are you to address me as Sir while he’s here. Ethan is the absolute last person I want to know that you’re my sub.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Noah clarified, “Complicated just joined us for breakfast.”

  That much I could appreciate. He lifted me up off the sofa. While I adjusted the robe around my shoulders to cover myself again and made my way back into the kitchen, he jogged to the door and opened it.

  He barely got, “Good morning,” out of his mouth before the door was shoved open by the man on the other side. The annoyance on Noah’s face was clear. “No, come right on in, I don’t mind at all.”

  At one glance I could tell these two were siblings. Their facial structure was almost the same if Ethan’s jaw a little wider. His hair was a couple of shades lighter than Noah’s at a deep brown instead of almost black with a touch more wave to it. He was a little taller and slightly broader, too. They had the same nose and even the same eye color, though Ethan’s eyes seemed a smidge closer together.

  Ethan was dressed in a gray suit and slate tie. Were he not scowling like a dejected child, I might have thought he was just as attractive as Noah. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence at first, only set the briefcase in his hand onto the island in the kitchen and swung around to Noah.

  “You missed our meeting this morning. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Noah shut the door and meandered back towards the kitchen. “I’ll talk to Heather tomorrow. I told her to call you and cancel it. She obviously didn’t.”

  Ethan turned to continue talking to him as he walked. “Oh, no, she tried to. I told her the meeting wasn’t optional. You knew, by point of fact, that the meeting wasn’t optional. That’s why it’s called a mandatory meeting.”

  Noah waved Ethan’s chiding away as if it were a mosquito. “I had plans.”

  That’s when Ethan finally took notice of me. His eyes flitted over me in my robed state, standing beside the coffee pot and attempting to look like I was a fly on the wall.

  “I see,” Ethan disapproved.

  “Who sets up a business meeting on a Sunday morning anyway?”

  “I do. Would you like to know why? Because my schedule is full for the next two weeks and this morning was the only time that I could free up to placate these people. And you weren’t there to have my back, you asshole.”

  Noah took a deep breath. He pulled three coffee cups from the cupboard beside me and set them on the counter. “Would you like me to smooth things over?”

  “No, I took care of it. On my own. While you were out whoring around.”

  “That’s not very nice. I wasn’t whoring around. In fact, I was with the same lovely l
ady all night long.” Noah wrapped an arm around my shoulder and kissed my forehead. “This is Piper, by the way. Piper, this is my brother Ethan.”

  “Good to meet you,” I said. I even managed a genuine smile.

  Ethan nodded to me, but continued to speak to his brother, “I need to talk with you in private.”

  “Piper’s good people. You can trust her with anything you have to say.”

  “Dammit, Noah.”

  But Noah was unmoving in his decision. “It’s Sunday morning, Ethan. Now, your two options are to join us for breakfast and relax that stressed skull of yours or turn around and walk right back out and talk to me when Monday rolls around.”

  “I can’t even if I wanted to. I have a lunch meeting in San Diego in two hours.” Ethan popped open the briefcase and pulled a small stack of files from it. After slapping them on the island, the briefcase was closed up tight again. “Look, the remainder of the Soresen contract is in your hands. I’ll be in Chicago all week.” Ethan made his way to the front door and pulled it open. “There are two of us so that we can be in two places at once. Your flight leaves tomorrow at five. Don’t fuck this up.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Noah said sardonically. He put one of the coffee cups back on the shelf as it was obvious Ethan wasn’t staying, and shut the cupboard.

  “Oh, and Piper,” Ethan said.

  I was a bit shocked he finally addressed me. “Yes?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up about my brother. He’ll kick you to the curb soon enough.”

  The door shut tight behind him as he left.

  Wow, what a douche.

  I turned to Noah. He was silently busying himself with cleaning what small mess we made with the preparation of breakfast. Stoicism laced itself across his face so I was unable to tell whether he was angry or just deep in thought.