by Rebel Carter
God. I hoped we were on the same page.
“I’m a submissive,” I told him, finally finding my voice to speak, “but, I, ah, well, I’m into being a little bit of a brat.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Never would have guessed it,” he said, the sarcasm evident.
I stuck my tongue out at him. “You bring it out in me. Lucky you.”
“Better go buy a scratch off with this kind of streak.”
I laughed, the lightness of the exchange making it easier for me to speak and tell him exactly what it was that I needed, because what I needed was exactly this. A mixture of intimacy, sexiness, and sweet all rolled up in a kinky package.
“I’m a Middle,” I said, finally. Lawson sucked in a breath, the sound of it making me worry that maybe it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “What is it?” I asked, quickly, worry already starting to run through my body like ice water. What if this was how it ended between us?
“I think I’m getting why Zeus and Connie decided to play matchmaker,” he muttered, but said nothing else and nodded at me to continue on, “keep talking, princess.”
That name was going to be the death of me. I opened my mouth and kept talking like he’d asked. “I like Daddies. Soft Doms do in a pinch, or a sensual Dom, but I can’t really handle a lot of the extreme stuff. I don’t like pain, but spanking is okay. I do like floggers, canes, and whips, but mostly for the effect, not the pain. Shibari is good, some suspension, but not too much.” When he gave me a questioning look, I explained, “I’m afraid of heights so it’s a bad combo.”
“Are you a pet?” He asked.
I gave a quick shake of my head. “No, but I do like collars.”
Another quick inhale of breath. “You would.”
I smiled in spite of my nervousness. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“How verbal do you like your Daddy?”
“Very,” I said, ducking my head, chin to my chest, pulling my robe tighter. “I like it when he calls me bad names, but only when we’re having sex, or playing.”
“What about when you’re not? What do you want him to call you then?”
I looked up and saw that he was watching me closely and the rush of having Law’s undivided attention hit me again. It was addictive like a drug I couldn’t get enough of. He’d been worried about me being drunk but the man severely underestimated how his attention had me twisted up and feeling like I was halfway to tipsy.
“Only sweet names then.”
“Like princess?”
“Among other things,” I said, playing at being nonchalant, but I knew he was reading me as easily as a book. He knew I liked it. I’d bet anyone twenty bucks he was going to be calling me princess a lot more after this talk.
He hummed, and leaned back in his chair. “You have a praise kink, don’t you?”
I shifted uncomfortably because that was usually something a Dominant figured out during our play, not before. I guessed it was a bit obvious with how his few well placed ‘good girls’ had affected me. “Yes.”
“I like that. I like that very much.”
I felt that familiar warmth of pleasure spread through my chest even though I hadn’t done anything, but still. Law was happy, he was pleased, and that gave me satisfaction.
“I don’t like other partners,” I told him. “I don’t share well, and I don’t want to be shared either.”
“Good. If you’re mine,” My eyes practically fell out of my head at that, but they nearly rolled right off the bed and fell onto the floor when he said, “you’re mine. All of you.”
“Oh.”
“Would that be a problem for you if we…” his voice trailed off and he turned his head, eyes on the floor for a second before they came back to my face, “decided we wanted a long term arrangement.”
“Yes,” I said automatically. “That’s absolutely fine. It’s perfect.” Normally, I might have been worried that I was agreeing too quickly to something, but not this. Not with Law. Because if I agreed to this then I had all of him too, no one else would put their hands on my...on my…
“Are you a Daddy?” I asked when I realized I didn’t know.
“I am. Been one for 15 years.”
Fuck yes. FUCK. YES.
The breath punched out of my lungs because the thing I’d been wishing for, hoping for, ever since he’d said I was his girl, since he’d threatened to spank me in the private room at dinner, god, it was true.
“That makes me happy,” I told him.
“Me too, Honey.” He sucked on his teeth and then sighed. “But as happy as that makes me, it’s time for you to go to bed.”
I pouted because I didn’t want to go to bed, so I told him. “I don’t want to go to bed. I want to finish this conversation.”
“You’re exhausted. Can hardly keep your eyes open.” Law rose from his chair and was pulling off his jacket as he went. He stopped in front of the closet I’d pulled the robe from and hung it up there while he loosened his tie. “You’re going to bed now. We can finish our talk in the morning.”
I opened my mouth to protest but a yawn escaped me and I cursed silently. So much for trying to insist that I was fine. He was right. I was tired. The night had been a roller coaster of emotions from anxiety to fear, happiness and sadness, and now this.
This could only be described as sexual tension. No, frustration. That was it.
I knew Law was a Dom. A Daddy. And yet, I was too tired to do one thing with that knowledge and we both knew it. Law was doing the right thing by putting my ass to bed, but that didn’t mean I was going to go willingly.
“I’m fine,” I said again. “We can keep talking. Honest.”
“Honey.” There was a warning tone to his voice that told me I was getting close to the edge, the edge of what I wasn’t sure yet. His patience? Being cute? The edge of getting my ass spanked? I didn’t know. But it was there and I was walking right along it.
I liked it.
“Law,” I tossed back, crossing my arms and met his stare with one of my own. I might have actually looked formidable if I didn’t yawn again.
“Lay down, close your eyes. I’m turning off this light in five seconds.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“One,” Law counted and I rolled my eyes.
“You’re supposed to answer a question when someone asks you nicely.”
“Two.”
“Oh, you aren’t going to really count us down, are you?” I asked, watching him while he walked to the light switch and stood there staring at me with an almost bored look on his handsome face.
“Three,” he said, raising his hand to the light switch and leaning back against the wall. I noticed then that he looked relaxed. The normal rigid set of his shoulders, the way he looked like he was on high alert at all times, like he might have to spring into action had melted away and he looked...well, different. He looked like the man who laughed, and I smiled watching the transformation. He was happy like this, even as we were tentatively exploring the push and pull dynamic that could, and I hoped would, develop between us.
“I can’t believe you’re actually counting.”
“Four,” he said when I continued to stare right back at him.
“Oh, thi-”
“Four and a fucking half, Honey. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, and I wish you were saying better things than a bunch of stupid numbers,” I shot back.
Law’s eyebrow shot up. “Fi-” he began but I hadn’t missed the dark look that had slipped into his eyes, the one that replaced the easy and relaxed man that laughed and I threw myself down on the bed and yanked the covers over my head.
“Oh, all right! Are you happy?” I asked from the safety of the covers. If you were safe from monsters when you were covered by a blanket head-to-toe, then the same had to be said for being safe from Law, right?
“Very good girl,” he said, and flicked the light off. I saw the room go dark from behind the blanket and only
then did I peek out.
“Where are you going to sleep?” I asked, not sure what was about to happen. There were two answers. One of them was right and the other was not, but both would tell me what kind of man and what kind of Daddy I was dealing with.
“The chair. Where else?” He said, and my heart soared.
He’d picked right.
“I dunno,” I hedged, pretending that I hadn’t known he wouldn’t pick any other answer, but the grunt and the sigh told me he knew why I had asked.
“Go to bed, Honey. Get some rest.” I didn’t have to see him to hear the weariness in his voice. Here in the dark the Law everyone else saw was gone. He wasn’t strong or unfeeling now. He was just a man. A man that was tired, and I liked that he let me see that side of him.
It was easy to do things like that in the dark. I could feel my own walls sliding away. I didn’t need to throw attitude or keep my distance. I could just want him. I heard him cross the room and then, he was sinking into the leather chair beside the bed, the sound of his clothing sliding against the leather making me smile.
I closed my eyes and I had a smile on my face even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Okay.” I hoped he could, at least, hear the smile in my voice. It was all I had to give in the dark.
I opened my eyes slowly. The bed beneath me was soft and nice, the blankets I was curled under far nicer than anything I owned. I knew I wasn’t home from just the quiet stillness of the room. My apartment in Queens was noisy. The sounds of the city intruding on my space as soon as the city woke up, or in a lot of cases, never went to bed to begin with. My apartment was noisy a lot.
This room was quiet, peaceful, so much so that the silence descended like a solid thing that had weight and bearing. It pressed down on my shoulders, coaxing me back to sleep. I could rest for a while longer and not worry. Nothing would touch me here. I might have done just that, burrowed deeper into the blankets and comfy pillows and caught a little more sleep, if not for the pull in my belly that told me I wasn’t alone.
For all the still and quiet of my room I could hear someone else breathing. I opened my eyes and nearly squeaked when I saw Law sitting in the leather backed chair beside the bed. I’d forgotten he was here. My brain had convinced me it was all a dream. Some really weird stress induced dream that had manifested itself by way of Lawson Sokolov, the object of my wet dreams and state of simultaneous sadness and arousal.
The man really could do it all.
But here he was, sleeping soundly and looking just like he belonged where he was, which was saying something, because I couldn’t think of a single time I had ever slept sitting up and enjoyed it. Law’s big body took up the entirety of the chair, his hands clasped in front of him, resting against his belly, and his head tipped slightly to the side, chin pointed down to his shoulder as he dozed. I licked my lips, propping myself up on an elbow and watched him sleep. He was pretty when he was like this. Eyes closed, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks in a way that surprised me. I hadn’t noticed he had thick dark lashes. I was always too focused on his eyes, or the way his mouth was moving, the slant of his body or the way his shoulders looked taking up a doorway. Too busy wondering what his hands would feel like on me again to notice his lush and downright pretty fucking eyelashes.
I curled mine and coated them with my tried and true mascara to achieve what he had naturally. Figured. I rolled my eyes at him and kept watching him. His lips were full and I knew they were softer than they appeared, or at least how they normally did when he was awake. Now his mouth was relaxed, just like the rest of his body. He looked just as soft and easy as his mouth did, and I wanted to kiss him, or at the very least touch him. My fingertips itched to trace the line of his bottom lip, to follow the swell of his mouth to his cupid’s bow, but I knew better.
A man like Law would have a problem with me doing that.
And besides we were in the Cairn. I couldn’t go around touching him when he was asleep. I’d ask first. But that would mean he would have to wake up first and I would have to be here when he did. I frowned and shifted, sitting up and shaking my head. I had no intention of being here when he woke up.
That was too awkward after the night I had gone through. All my best laid plans of relaxing for a night swept under the rug and forgotten. I’d been an anxious mess that had been dumped in Law’s lap by Connie and here I was. I pushed the covers back and moved slowly, not wanting to wake Law. But the second my toes hit the hardwood floor I knew I had failed.
“What the fuck, Honey?”
My eyes flew to him to see he still had his eyes closed, but he was frowning now. The softness of his mouth gone, melting away as he woke up to the familiar hard lines I was used to. The rest of him was taking on those angular and sharp planes too and I frowned seeing it. I had liked him relaxed.
“Go back to sleep,” I said.
He opened his eyes then and glared at me. “You first.”
“It’s too late for me to be sleeping,” I told him. “I’m used to being up early.’
“Do you even know what time it is?” He countered, and that stopped me. I didn’t. Not even in the slightest, because this room did not have windows and it was dark, the only lighting coming from the dim lighting of the room’s LED track lighting that shone from one side of the front door. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough light to find your way if you woke up in the middle of the night. I chewed my lip. It could be the middle of the night for all I knew.
Shit.
“Not exactly,” I hedged. “But my body does. I know it’s morning.”
“It’s not even close,” he said, and moved then, hands going to the arms of the chair. “We’ve been out for maybe four hours. It’s barely two.”
“In the morning?” I squeaked. He answered with a long suffering sigh and I crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe I’m used to waking up then for work. You don't know.”
“The fuck you are. Now get back in the damn bed and go to sleep.”
“Stop bossing me around.”
“No.”
I pursed my lips and we stared at each other, or at least I did my best in the dim lighting. “Listen, Law,” I began but he was up and pushing himself out of the chair. “What are you doing?” I broke off at his sudden movement.
“Putting you back to bed, little girl.”
The sound I made in the back of my throat at little girl was...unseemly under the best of circumstances. In these it was horny. We both stopped, Law not coming a step closer and I froze where I was with my legs dangling over the bed, hands on either side of me. We didn’t speak, our breath sounding loud in the bedroom, and then Law was talking.
“I want to touch you,” he said, and then when I only made another low sound in my throat, “Can I touch you?” He asked.
“Yes, please,” I whispered, already sliding my hands back behind me so that I could lean my weight on them as Law came forward. “I need you to touch me so bad.”
“I know, princess. I know.” He came closer, one measured step at a time and then I felt the ghost of his fingers against my thighs. “Can I take your robe off?”
I gave a quick bob of my head and then cursed silently at myself, because what the hell was I doing? Even if we weren’t in the dark, I needed to be using my words, not going along with this blindly. “Yes,” I told him and swallowed hard. “But only if you get in bed with me.”
“Honey…” There was a warning tone to his voice, but I didn’t care. I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was Law in bed with me.
“I’m not drunk, so stop it with that. I wasn’t to begin with, even if you said so,” I muttered, already undoing the tie at the waist of the robe I wore. “If you want to touch me, you are going to get into this bed.”
I could feel him hesitate. Even in the darkness, there was a weight to Law’s presence that told me exactly what the big man was doing even if I couldn’t see him clearly. He was hesitating. Hesitating too much, and I knew I had to bring out the big guns.
“Get in bed with me, please. Please, Daddy.”
“Fuck.” He said the word like he was in pain, but a second later I felt his hand come down on the mattress beside me. “Fine, but you’re telling me your safe word.”
“Peaches.”
He chuckled and I felt the rough touch of his finger against my jaw. “I can remember that.”
“What about you?” I asked, already reaching up to put my hands on his shoulders. He was moving in close, the front of him coming to press against me and I almost moaned when I felt his lips against my shoulder.
He slid my robe to the side and kissed my shoulder. “Albuquerque.”
I smiled. That fit. I didn’t know why, but it worked with who Law was turning out to be around me, which was unexpected. “Got it. Now get in bed.”
“Now who’s bossy?” He asked, and I heard his shoes hit the floor before he was moving onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.
“I’m a brat. It’s what I do,” I returned and was rewarded with him hooking an arm around my waist and pulling me to him. He went onto his back and cupped my face, his other arm still wrapped around my waist, holding me close.
“This isn’t a scene,” he said quietly. He was right, it wasn’t and that was...different. I didn’t come to the Cairn to get into bed with men I had no intention of playing with. I got the sense Law didn’t either, but here I was, here we were, doing just that. This was intimacy but of a different kind than the exchange through the boundaries and trust explored through shared kink. This was raw and stripped down to the foundation.
There were no roles or negotiated scenes to navigate. There was only me and Law.
Just us in the dark.
“No, it’s not,” I replied, my hands coming to rest on his broad chest. I ducked my head and pressed my nose to the material of his dress shirt. It wasn’t a scene but it felt just as important, maybe even more. I didn’t have a thought in my head as to why Law was getting into bed with me other than I wanted him there. I wanted him close to me, his body pushed to mine while I explored his. I wanted the time to figure out what the hell was going on between us.