NICK LACES HIS FINGERS WITH mine and guides me away from the car, shutting the door. Somehow though, instead of walking forward, we’re standing toe-to-toe again, and when our eyes meet, there is this flutter in my chest that somehow turns into heat radiating across my chest and down my arm to where our fingers touch. To where he holds my hand, and with all I have dared sexually, with good and bad outcomes, with all I know he will dare of me, this is still what affects me.
“You hold onto me like you think I’m going to run,” I murmur. “You wouldn’t be here if that were my plan.”
“I hold onto you like a man who doesn’t want to stop touching you.” He reaches up and caresses my check, the touch tender, my body reacting, my breasts heavy, my nipples puckered under the lace of my bra. That flutter in my chest repeating. “Let’s go inside where I don’t have to,” he adds.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
His lips curve. “Please.”
“I’m polite too,” I say, but I don’t add anything about my mother teaching me right, because she did not. My father did.
“I wonder if you’ll be so polite when I finally get you naked.”
“Don’t count on it,” I say, and it’s meant to be playful but there is this pulse of adrenaline in me that makes it more raspy and needy.
He knows it too. I see it in the darkening of his eyes. “Come,” he says, draping his arm around my shoulders, and turning us toward the door, leaving my hands free to tug his jacket around all my gaping, naked places, while I’m thinking about being truly naked with this man. And with each step we take, I am aware of how our legs move together, hips aligned. How he holds me close, touching me just as he said: Like he doesn’t want to stop touching me.
We’ve just reached the eight steps leading to the dimly lit porch when my cellphone rings in his jacket pocket I’m still wearing and I stop dead in my tracks. “Oh no,” I say, digging in the pocket. “I didn’t send Josh that text. It’s going to be him and where is my phone? I can’t find it but I hear it.”
Nick moves to the step in front of me, and reaches in the opposite pocket from the one I’m struggling with, retrieving my phone, which has stopped ringing. “Thank you,” I say, reaching for it, and I have no idea how this man handing me my cell, has turned into something sexual, but he’s holding it and my hand.
“I still don’t have you inside the house,” he murmurs softly, walking backward to lead me to the porch, only steps away from the door. “I still don’t have you naked.”
And that’s when my phone starts to ring again.
Nick sighs. “I’m starting to feel like this is a threesome.” He releases me. “Talk to the man so I can have you to myself.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be done.”
I nod, and answer the call, “Josh.” And then I say that word again, “Sorry. I just saw your text.”
Nick walks to the door and leans on it, and while I intend to walk to the security panel to key in my code, I instead find myself standing just above the steps, embracing my first opportunity to fully appreciate Nick without a suit or tuxedo jacket on. His white shirt stretching across an impressive broad chest, his arms, also impressive from what I can tell, folded in front of said impressive chest.
He notices my attention, of course, because how can he not when I’m boldly watching him, he arches a brow, the look on his face, a wicked invitation. Josh says something about the parking lot followed by “And I texted and tried to call you,” while I have no idea what else he’s said.
Cutting my gaze from the distraction that is Nick, I reply with, “It didn’t ring,” and cross to the keypad, on the wall, right next to the spot Nick leans on.
“And you didn’t think about finding me before leaving?” Josh demands.
“I had car problems I was dealing with.” I key in my code to have it beep in rejection.
“Which means you were leaving without finding me,” he accuses.
Giving up on the code to the door, wishing now that I didn’t let the security company convince me to use this keypad system, I rotate and rest against the wall, next to Nick. Focusing now, on surviving this conversation with Josh. “You disappeared along with the crowd.”
“Where are you now?” he asks. “Do you need help with your car?”
“I got a ride home.”
“A ride with Nick Rogers,” Josh says, disapproval in his voice.
“Josh—”
“That’s a yes,” he says. “He’s an arrogant bastard, that will fuck you and leave you. You know that, right?”
A fizzle of unease slides through me at the harsh words, that do not fit Josh, but then again, he’s still close to a past that I’ve left behind. A man that I’ve left behind and I’m not going to go there with him with Nick standing here, or ever, if I have my way. “Thank you for the advice,” I say, trying to recreate the professional barrier between us that seems to have fallen. “And for everything tonight. I’m excited that you liked my new work. I can’t wait to see what happens with it,” I can feel Nick’s eyes on me, heavy, interested.
“In other words,” Josh says, “he’s with you, and you don’t want to talk.”
“Now’s not a good time,” I confirm.
“Right.” He’s silent several beats. “Just be careful.”
“I always am.”
“We’ll talk before I head back to LA.” He hangs up and I stuff my phone back in the jacket pocket. “Well, that went well,” I say, glancing over at Nick. “And I have to call the security company. I don’t have a key. I use the keypad.”
Nick pushes off the wall and steps in front of me. Big and overwhelmingly male, but he really makes overwhelming delicious. “What’s the code?” he asks.
“8891 but I tried it twice. It won’t work.”
He keys in the code and the front door clicks. “Of course, it opens for you,” I murmur.
“You were focused on Josh,” he says, and instead of making a move for the door, he presses one hand on the wall above my head, those blue eyes of his, too intelligent, too probing as he repeats Josh’s words. “An arrogant bastard who will fuck you and leave you,” he says.
“You heard. Obviously.”
“I heard. And obviously, he doesn’t know that the description ‘arrogant bastard who will use you and leave you’ makes me perfect for you. Why is that, I wonder?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“You could,” he agrees, “but right now. We’re talking about you. Should I guess your reasons you like your men here and gone?”
“Should I guess the reasons you like your women here and gone?”
“Go for it, sweetheart,” he says, and the challenge is clear. If I make my guess, he can make his, without my rightful objection. But I do object, deny, and reject, the idea of this man, who sees too much as it is, seeing anything more than my body. The rest is off limits.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to know. Who you have in your bed, or in your life, aside from a wife you’ve said you don’t have, is none of my business. And we’ve already filled this night with too many words. Tonight isn’t about conversation.”
I dart away from him to the door, opening it, but I also know that I do not have to rush. He won’t rush after me. He’s a man of control. A dominant, that will follow at his pace, pursue in his way. And he’ll catch me but it won’t be for conversation, which is exactly why I’m making him pursue me. Entering the house, it hits me that the light is on, when I don’t remember it being on, but then, it was daylight, and I was in a rush. Dismissing the concern as nothing, I walk down the hallway, and I’m almost to the living room, when I hear Nick’s steps in the foyer, the door shutting behind him, locks turning. Adrenaline rushes through me, no longer a slight bump in energy, but a fierce surge, but really, how can it not? Nick Rogers, is nothing, if not an injection of adrenaline. And while I call him a dominant, that isn’t just a personality trait. He is a sexual dominant, and as I expected when I threw out the term “hard limit,” experience in a world where that word has heightened meaning. That knowledge should have been enough for me to decline this encounter, and yet, it wasn’t. I don’t know what that says about who I am, or what I want or need, and I haven’t for two years now. Maybe before, but maybe that’s the gift Nick will give me. I’ll figure it out through him.
Entering the living room, I turn the dial on the wall, that brings the lights to a soft glow, a chill clinging to the room. Nick’s footsteps grow closer, and I move deeper into the room, walking past the kitchen to my right and around the overstuffed chocolate brown couch and chairs, my destination the fireplace directly in front of them. Once I’m there, I flip the switch on to heat the room, and I can feel the moment Nick joins me, feel his energy, his dominance. It crackles and snaps, the way the gas fire does not, charging my skin, and suddenly, I am hyper aware of the tear in my dress that goes nearly to my belly button.
Inhaling, I turn to face him, and I don’t use his jacket to cover myself. I let it gape open, my lower body exposed. He’s leaning one broad shoulder on the wall just inside the archway that encases the hall, and directly in front of me. “I thought you weren’t running from me, Faith?”
“I told you. I’m not running from you, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Then why am I over here and you’re over there?”
“That’s your choice not mine.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” I say, shrugging out of his jacket, and tossing it on a brown stool in front of the fireplace, a fluffy cream colored rug, beneath it. Exposed now for Nick’s viewing, I straighten, a silent command from me to him, that he look at me, but he does exactly what I expect, what any true dominant would do, and that’s not what I’ve bid. His gaze is fixed unwaveringly on my face. His way of telling me that he is in control, that he looks and touches, at his own inclination, as will I. It’s simply his way, a part of who he is, and even a huge portion of what turns me on about him. But my mind flashes back to a time when another dominant was in my life. When I was naked and exposed, tied up. Submitted and it was pleasure, and then it wasn’t anymore. And that has nothing to do with Nick and everything to do with my choices and my own self-discovery. I am not a submissive but I want this man, who will want that of me and I do not understand it, or myself, right now.
Certain Nick is going to read my trepidation, if that is even what I’d call it, I need something to fill the room other than him and my hyped up crazy energy. Ruling out the television behind me above the fireplace, I decide on music, and quickly walk to the artsy, built in, entertainment center in the corner. Once I’m there, facing a portion of the dozen shelves, that gradually get shorter and smaller as they climb the wall, I can feel Nick move again. God. I can feel him just like he said he could me. Even when he’s not touching me, which is exactly why he is nothing like my past. Nothing made me feel this then. No one made me feel this.
I reach for the CD player and hit “power” and then “play” knowing that I have a CD inside that is downloaded, random music, that is about as eccentric as the taste he described in the car. Music fills the air, an Ed Sheeran song, and with another deep breath, I rotate, finding Nick sitting on the ottoman to one of the chairs, angled toward me. And while sitting might seem a submissive position, it’s not. It’s him watching me. It’s him on the throne of power, while I stand in front of him. Which is exactly why I sit down on another stool I keep by the shelf, meant to reach the books on the bottom row now behind me. And I do so with my knees primly pressed together, aware that while my lower belly, legs, and thigh highs are exposed I’ve denied him a view of what’s in between.
Our eyes lock and hold across the small space of several feet, separating us, a challenge in the air, that I’ve created by choice this time. Can he make me submit? But it’s not a real question. We both know he can. And I don’t have to fear that is all there will be between us, that he will think he can bend my will every moment he’s with me. There is only this moment, this night.
The song skips and just when I fear I’ll have to break this spell with Nick and change it, it changes on its own, to an old 90’s hit: Marcy Playground, Sex and Candy and that’s exactly the lyrics that fill the air: I smell sex and candy here. Who’s that lounging in my chair.
Nick arches a brow at the rather appropriate words and says, “Sex and candy?”
My hands press to the cushion on either side of me. “Sometimes, you just need sex and candy.”
“Indeed, you do,” he agrees, leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, his sleeves rolled up to expose several tattoos I cannot make out, and I don’t try. Not when his piercing gaze lingers on my face, and the song continues with: And then there she was, like double cherry pie, yeah there she was.
“And there she was,” he says, his blue eyes burning with that dark lust we share. “Like double cherry pie,” he adds, followed by the command of, “Open your legs, Faith.”
My breath hitches, and I don’t know what happens. I want to do it. I plan to do it, but nerves erupt in me like I’m some inexperienced school girl. I’m not a school girl, nor am I suppressed or reserved sexually. I didn’t get raped. I don’t fear or dislike sex. And yet I haven’t had it in a very long time. And my heart is racing again, or maybe it never stopped, my mouth is dry. So very dry. Somehow, I’m standing without consciously making that decision and I’m darting toward the connecting kitchen. I enter the archway, open the stainless-steel fridge and grab a bottle of water, open it and I start guzzling.
Nick is suddenly in front of me, reaching for the bottle and taking a drink, his hand on my hip, leg aligned with mine. “Water?” he asks, looking at the bottle. “I thought you were going for liquid courage but I didn’t think it would be water.”
“I don’t like to dull my mind with booze,” I say. “My mouth gets dry when I get nervous, but this was really not smart because nothing like a girl needing to pee to ruin the mood and I—”
He kisses me, and the lick of his tongue is cold from the water, and fresh, and I have no idea why, but it calms me. Him touching me, not watching me, calms me but the kiss is too short, and his question too fast. When he pulls back to look at me, he takes the water, setting it in the refrigerator. “Why are you nervous?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Hard limit,” he says. “That phrase comes with experience.” He rotates us slightly and kicks the door shut. “You’ve been a part of a world that doesn’t match your nerves.”
He’s right. It does. “It’s been a long time.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
“Since you were in that world or since-?”
“Nothing for two years.”
“It’s just like riding a bike,” his voice lowers, “only you’ll be riding me.” He rotates me and presses me against the island, his body lifting from mine, hands pressed on the dark wood of the counter behind me. “Were you someone’s submissive?”
“No. I’m not a submissive.”
“But you were with someone who wanted you to be.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“But you’re dominant.”
“I don’t take submissives and you have to sense that or you wouldn’t be with me.”
“You think I could sense that?”
“I think we’re remarkably in tune with each other to be virtual strangers. Which is why we’re both here right now. I like control. You like making me have to earn it. But as we’ve established, I like a challenge. And you, Faith, are that and so much more. Which means I’m okay with earning control, and you get the control you want, because you decide when I get mine.”
And there it is. The many reasons I want this man. His power. His control. The challenge I enjoy delivering and he enjoys conquering. But there is more there, too. There is the reason, a few moments ago, that nerves controlled me instead of our game, and him. And it had nothing to do with who tried to control me in the past, at least, not sexually. He sees too much. He knows too much when he should know nothing. It’s illogical, but he’s right. I did know him without knowing him and he knows me without knowing me. And that makes him, and this, dangerous. But now that I know what is happening, and why I should run, I have less desire to do so than ever.
I want him. And as if his mind is in the same place, he says, “I want you, Faith,” and then reaches down and rips my dress all the way open. I gasp, shocked, aroused, more aroused. His hands end up at my knees where the final tear allows my dress to fall open, away from my body, but they do not stay there. They glide from my knees, my thighs, and over my hips to the front clasp of my bra that he manages to unhook. It falls away like my dress, replaced by his hands. “I want you, Faith,” he repeats. His thumbs stroke my nipples, his cheek pressing to mine, “Like I don’t remember ever wanting in my life.”
I might reject these words, but there is this raw, and almost tormented quality to his voice, that tells me he doesn’t want to feel this whatever it is that is happening, any more than I do. It tells me that he has a past as do I. It echoes with every spiraling emotion inside me, right now, and deep inside every night that I cannot sleep. He pulls back, his eyes meeting mine, and while his expression is impassive, there are shadows in his eyes he doesn’t hide, that he lets me see, and I think…I think this is to let me know, that I am not alone. But I am alone, and the fact that I’ve had this thought is confusing, and yet, somehow I’m not with this man, not this one night, that we dare be whoever it is we are together.
He lifts me, sitting me on the counter, his hands on my knees that are now pressed together, my dress hanging from my body.
“Now open for me,” he orders softly, but he doesn’t press them open himself. He waits for me to open them, giving me the control and taking it at the same time. The look on his face, the warmth in his touch on my legs, promising me salacious wonderful rewards, and a deep throb radiates in my sex. I open my legs, and my dress hangs from my body. His hands settle on my shoulders, branding my skin, under the silk and lace of both the dress and my bra. His gaze lowering, sliding over my breast, a heavy caress that is not a caress at all, but my nipples pucker, my sex clenches.
Slowly, he inches the material down, over my back and when it falls to the counter behind me, I slip my hands away from it. “I loved this dress,” I say.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he says.
“No,” I say immediately, my hands going to his hands where they rest on my thighs. “No. I do not want you to buy me a dress. I don’t want your money, and don’t make this about that.”
“Make this what?”
“I don’t need anything from you but an orgasm. Or two or three, if you’re up to it.”
The blue of his eyes burn, hot coals and simmering heat. “A challenge we can both accept.”
“But I still think you need to pay for my dress.”
His eyes narrow. “You said—”
“That I don’t want money but I want an even playing field.” I reach in the drawer beside me, and grab a knife, removing it.
I don’t even get it beyond the counter, before Nick grabs my hand, pulling it and the blade, between us, his jaw steel, his voice tight. “What are you doing. Faith?”