by Rebel Carter
“Honey.” Law put a hand on the bed, not touching me but close enough that I had to pay attention. “What is wrong? I can’t help if you don’t tell me, princess.”
The tightness in my chest spread. Princess. I had told him not to call me that, but it was a lie. I liked it when he called me that. I’d felt proud as hell that people had heard him call me princess. And now here he was again, saying it, but it was all wrong. It was all wrong because Law didn’t want me to be his princess.
It was just a name.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied again. That was two times, and I wasn’t getting any better at it. I could tell by the heavy sigh Law let out. He flattened his palm against the bed and then moved, sitting on the edge of it so that he was blocking the damn painting I’d been fixated on.
“I know you’re lying,” he told me, shifting his body so that it was angled towards me. “I don’t know why though.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Oh, Law, come on.”
He shrugged. “I’m not a mind reader, Honey.”
“I’m lying because you have made it abundantly clear you don’t want to be here with me, which is,” my voice tightened, coming out strained against the lump that was fast growing in my throat, “that is perfectly fine, because you don’t need to want to be here with me. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be here with me.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to be here with you.” I frowned and forced my eyes down into the depths of my tea. Far easier than meeting Law’s piercing blue gaze. I wasn’t quite ready for that. No matter what my heart wanted. When I said nothing Law sighed, and went on. “You have to understand that I don’t like it when things are out of my control. Connie made it a lose-lose situation for me. For us, tonight. This isn’t about you.”
I bit my lip and turned my tea mug in my hands. He had a point.
“I don’t understand why she did it.”
“I think I might,” Law said, surprising me. I looked at him then and saw he was staring at me, his handsome face no longer hard or cold. He was again the man that had laid me out on my dining table, the one that had claimed me in front of a shop full of strangers.
I knew this Law. I liked him far better than the man I’d spent most of tonight with.
“What is it?” I pressed, leaning forward, elbows to my thighs beneath the thick comforter.
“She was up to something. We both knew that from the get go, but we didn’t know what. Connie likes to pretend things just ‘happen’,” he made air quotes with his fingers, “and when they do she takes advantage of a situation that was no one’s fault. That way she can’t be blamed or pegged for making shit go down that no one but her wanted.”
“Or Zeus,” I interjected, “she does whatever he wants.”
Law inclined his head. “Very good point, Honey. She does exactly what her invisible master tells her to. Tonight it was focused on you, focused on me. I haven’t figured out that part yet, but Connie is making more sense.”
“I’m glad it’s making sense to you, because it isn’t to me.”
“She got you drunk to make sure no one played with you. It’s against the rules to play with a sub that’s under the influence.”
I rolled my eyes at him for what felt like the 100th time that night. “I already told you I wasn’t drunk. I’m not drunk. Haven’t been all night. I was nervous.”
Law snorted but he kept talking. “She knew your ex was coming before you got here. Probably knew long before you made your reservation.”
I nodded. “I didn’t make one. I just decided to do it.”
He rubbed a hand along his jaw. “Then that just ‘happened,’ and she ran with it.”
“I guess so.” I sipped from my mug, and then asked, “Did you make a reservation?”
He nodded. “I did. Couple days back.”
“So she knew you were coming ahead of time. Not me.”
“She must have made the decision then to have me with you. The other thing that happened was we already knew one another. Zeus couldn’t have known that.”
I shivered. “I wouldn't put it past him. The things he knows, or what I hear he’s capable of. He’s got his fingers in everything.”
“And why would he want to saddle me with a traveling barista?”
A wave of embarrassment hit me. Traveling barista. Why did it feel like something I should be ashamed of? I’d never cared what other people thought of my job, because it paid the bills and I enjoyed it. It was honest work, which meant there was no reason to feel...like this. I swallowed hard, cheeks hot from his words. Aside from my embarrassment, I had no idea why that would be a move Zeus wanted to play.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, fingers drumming against the ceramic of my mug. “Matching us up doesn’t make a lot of sense when you say it like that.”
I felt the energy in the room shift. I knew Law was still as a statue and mostly likely focused on me with that unnerving stare he had.
“Honey, I didn’t mean it like that.”
I smiled brightly and looked up at him with fake cheer. “No, I know.”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “If there’s one rule we are agreeing on tonight it’s no more lying. That’s over, do you understand?”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
Law put a hand beside my thigh and moved forward until he was leaning towards me, lips only inches away from my face. “You are done lying to me, Honey. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I whispered before I could think better of it. “I understand.”
“Good girl.”
“I shouldn’t like it... but I really, really like it when you say that to me.”
He smirked, eyes dropping to my mouth before he looked back up at me. “I know.”
A finger of pleasure sparked in me and slowly, but surely, I felt my lust start to wake up. “What do you want from me, Law?”
“I want to know why they want us together.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why. Same as you,” I told him, softly.
“Then I want to stick close to you until I figure it out.” He held out his hand to me, palm up, fingers open and waiting for me to touch him if I wanted. “What do you want?” he asked.
I stared down at his hand, the mug of tea in my hands suddenly feeling ice cold from the heat that was now rising to the surface of my skin. I was heating up, every part of me on fire and that was all from Law giving me his hand. What would I do when he had his hands on me? My heart skipped a beat, because I already knew the answer to that. I would fall apart, piece by piece, part by part, letting each and every fracture fall into his waiting hands.
There was no world in which I would not fall to pieces under Lawson Sokolov’s hands.
“I want that too,” I told him, slipping my hand into his.
Chapter Seventeen
LAW
She was fierce even when she was tired. Even when she was embarrassed and hurt, or confused. Honey was fierce in a way that I had seldom seen in people with far more power than she had. Not that it mattered. She took what she had and she wore with the grace of a Queen in command of herself. I could see the unbreakable parts of her, the parts made of steel that had her holding her head high and which let her walk through her every day as if she were untouchable.
She was plenty touchable, breakable, and every other-able there was that meant fragile. It didn’t stop her her one fucking bit. I watched her where she sat sipping her mug of tea, eyes back on that fucking painting. I wanted to throw it out into the hallway so that she would be forced to look at me. I wanted her attention. All of it. I was hungry for it, and I knew that was bad.
Bad for me. Bad for her. Bad for the fucking both of us.
I was jealous of a goddam painting. What the hell did that say about us going forward? Probably nothing good.
“We have to negotiate, Honey.”
Her eyes were on me then. “Negotiate what?”
“Us,” I said, and watched her ey
es go round as saucers.
“Us?” She whispered, the confusion in her voice ringing clear as a bell through the room. “What do we have to talk about? There is no us.”
“You just said you wanted to stick with me until we figured out why Zeus and Connie are trying to shove us together,” I reminded her. I looked down at my hand, my beaten to hell hand that had done more violence than anything else. Softness and beauty were things I didn’t touch. But when Honey had put her hand in mine?
God. That had been all beauty.
And when I’d had my hands on Honey in her apartment the night before? Fucking bliss. I’d left because I wanted to keep her safe from me, because I knew that if I kept on touching her, let her put her hands on me, that we would have a big fucking problem. Because the second Honey touched me is the second she was mine.
When she had put her hand in mine she’d sealed her fate without even knowing it. I wasn’t going to let her go after tonight. Sure, she was mine by order of Connie, but this was going to go beyond that. I was done keeping myself from what I wanted, and what I wanted as her.
“I remember,” she said, eyes dropping back to her mug of tea. “I just don’t get why you want there to be an ‘Us’. You said it yourself–it doesn't make sense why Zeus would want us together. Why would you be saddled with a ‘traveling barista’.”
I grimaced at the way she said the last two words. It sounded dirty, like something you didn’t mention and not a job to be proud of. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just naming your job because I don’t know anything else about you.”
Her dark brows drew together and she looked up at me. “I guess that’s true…” She said, voice uncertain and I knew I had an in there. I wasn’t lying to her. I’d just told her there would be no more lying and that rule applied to us both.
“You do honest work. More honest than anything I do, or have ever done, to get paid. Why would you think I would give a shit about your job?”
She shrugged. “Because everyone in this town cares about that stuff. You know that. It’s always who you know and what you do, not who you are or what you feel.”
I smiled at her. “True, but fuck those people.”
She laughed, the sound of it small, but it was a laugh all the same. “You should laugh more. It’s...nice,” I said, because I didn’t say what I really wanted to say, which was that it was beautiful. That it sounded better than anything I could remember hearing or would ever want to hear. Words like that made me sound like a kid that didn’t have his shit together when it came to women and love.
I almost made a face. Love. What the hell was I doing that ‘love’ was a word that managed to make it across my brain? Outside of the context of I loved her tits, or I loved the way her mouth felt on my dick, or I loved eating her pussy? What did I know of love?
No, this had fuck all to do with sex and her body, or how she made my dick feel. This went to what Honey was making me feel inside. The emotions she was waking up in me were big, too big for me to make sense of this early, but I was going to have to try if I wanted to keep my head in the game.
“Thanks,” Honey said, smiling at me. It was small, thin, but like her laugh, it was there. “You have a good laugh too.”
“When did you hear me laugh?” I asked, because I couldn't think of doing it around her.
“You did it twice,” she told me without hesitation. “Well, twice but... the same time, you know?”
I shook my head because I didn’t know. “No.”
She sighed at me as if it was my fault I wasn’t keeping up with her half formed thoughts. “In the rain, you laughed twice then.”
“I don’t remember doing it.”
She shrugged as if that didn’t matter. “I still heard it. I liked it. You sound different when you laugh. A whole different man.”
“That’s good, I guess,” I ventured when she didn’t explain.
“It is. You sound like a man you can make–” she stopped and then shook her head, cutting herself off.
“Like a man you can make what with?” I asked, interested now that she was looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here. “What were you going to say, Honey?”
“Nothing.”
“What did we say about lying?”
She grimaced and then said, “What I was going to say was that you sound like a man you can make a life with when you laugh.
We both froze. Honey because I knew she was nervous at the honesty she’d given me, and me because I’d never been told I was the kind of man that could make anything. I was a man that broke things, people, and lives. I took. I had always taken, right from the beginning it was how I earned my place on the streets and at the table beside mafiosos. I broke people and names with my hands. Even my corporation was focused on taking companies apart bit by bit until there was nothing left. My hands did not create. Not ever.
But now this woman...Honey, thought I was a man she could make a life with and all from the way I sounded when I laughed. I wished I could remember laughing around her because I wanted to know what she looked like when she thought that about me.
It had to be beautiful. I bet it was. Would bet half my damn fortune on it. I grunted when she gave me a curious look.
Honey rolled her eyes at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ve never heard that before.”
“Maybe you should laugh more.”
“Could be.”
We stared at each other and then she was grinning, a giggle coming from her lips. “I like that you don’t really. Laugh, I mean. And...and I like that I got to hear it.”
“What else do you like?” I asked, switching the topic to something that mattered a whole lot more to me than my laugh. Though I could see from the pinched look on Honey’s face that she thought my laugh was plenty important.
“Nice conversation switch,” she sighed, setting her mug down on the cart beside the bed and stretching out like a cat in the sun. Arms over her head and leaning back on the down pillows the bed was piled with. I swear I’d never seen a more overstuffed bed than this one. I was surprised she wasn’t swallowed by the blankets and sheets when she climbed in, but I did like seeing her surrounded by soft things. Things I knew were comfortable and delicate, just like her. I wanted to keep her like this where nothing and no one could hurt her.
But in order to do that, I needed to know exactly what I was working with when it came to Honey.
“We were going to get here anyway. Might as well do it now.”
“I guess,” she sighed heavily from where she was laying on the pillows and then shifted onto her side, a move that caused her robe to gap, revealing her soft flesh to me. I could see the top curve of her breast right down to the swell of it, her nipple frustratingly hidden from me. She shifted, her arm moving beneath her breasts, pushing them up, and I forced myself to look away. I was supposed to be negotiating, or at least starting the conversation we needed to have, not trying to catch an eyeful of her tits.
“What do you like?” I asked again, giving her an expectant look. Honey licked her bottom lip and then bit the inside of her cheek, the gesture making her look young. It had me imagining what she must have looked like when she first moved to the city a decade ago. What would have happened if I’d met her then? Would I have been able to keep her like this? Happy, safe and surrounded by fine things where she didn’t worry or work herself to death?
Would I have even had that in me then? No, I probably hadn’t. I’d just gone clean and was focused on work. My drive and energy bent on rising to the top in the corporate world. If I’d met her then I would have been just as careless with her as any other man. I didn’t want to be just any other man to Honey.
I wanted to be her Dom.
Chapter Eighteen
HONEY
“What do you like?”
I blinked knowing I probably looked like a cartoon character, but giving a fuck was way beyond me right now. Lawson Sokolov, Law, this man, a Dominant
from what I had put together so far, was asking me what the hell I liked. Not just that, he had held my hand. It had been for a moment, just the barest slide of our palms together, fingers touching, pressing close before I’d lost my nerve and pulled back, because I’d discovered a terrible thing.
I loved holding his hand. I loved feeling his big hand beneath mine, palm warm, rough thick fingers curling close against mine. That was bad, but life had been way worse than me telling a man his laugh made me think you could build something with him–not something, a life. A life. I might have melted through the floor from cringe if it wasn’t true. We’d already covered the topic of lying. There would be none of it, and anyhow, Law had the annoying ability to know exactly when I was lying. That was going to bite me in the ass for sure.
“We have to negotiate, Honey.”
And now he was looking at me like I was the only thing that mattered, which I guessed in a room with just a bed, a chair, and a painting that wasn’t exactly hard….but still. Still.
Not only that, but he wanted to know what I liked. And I knew it was in the context of BDSM and intimacy. And, whether or not we had counted on it, a relationship.
But what kind of relationship?
I already knew I didn’t want to just play casually with Law. I knew what I wanted. I wanted the whole man. I wanted a Dominant, a lover, a friend. God, I wanted him to look at me like this over the breakfast table. I wanted this man to hold my hand in the street and laugh like he was different, like we both were, I wanted him to...I wanted him to...no, it wasn’t that I wanted him to do anything.
I just wanted him.
That was it.
“Honey?” He asked again, that low and rough tone in his baritone making my toes curl in the mountains of blankets I was currently buried under. “What do you like?”
I liked a lot of things. A lot of kinky things. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, neither would Law. I didn’t have to be afraid of judgement or worry what he might think about the things I liked, because we just might be on the same page. So often potential lovers and I weren’t even reading the same book, but now there was hope.