“But then how will you protect me?” She didn’t get it both ways.
“They don’t know you’re bringing a bodyguard? Shouldn’t you have prepared them for me?”
“As far as I know, they still think I’m bringing Kyle.” He waved that off. Eddie had always said the more the merrier, and he wasn’t always the host when he offered it up. He’d once shown up in Dallas where he was supposed to sit for an interview with David with three women he’d picked up in an airport. Needless to say, he hadn’t gotten much of an interview out of the man. “It wouldn’t matter if I’d brought three or four extra people. It’s a big house. There’s plenty of room. Of course that also makes it easy to slip into a bedroom and kidnap me. After all, I’m a professor. I won’t be able to defend myself with historical facts. Though I might be able to put the kidnappers to sleep. Ask my Contemporary Latin American Politics class.”
“I thought there was nothing to worry about once we got to the island,” she replied, obviously not willing to let him have it both ways either.
Good. He liked a challenge. It looked like he would only have a week to convince her to give him a real shot, so he was going for broke. “All right. Let’s pick a path and stick to it. You’re right. We’re stuck together for the next week, and then if you choose to, you never have to see me again. So let’s call this one week out of time. No expectations on what happens after because we know nothing happens after. When this trip is done, we go our separate ways. Until then we see where this connection we have takes us. If you decide not to sleep with me, I’ll take the couch because I happen to know I’m staying in one of the bigger guest rooms in the house. I won’t lay a hand on you unless you want me to. Can you trust me that much?”
Her eyes rolled. “I don’t think you’re going to attack me.”
“Neither did Betsey Ross.”
She shook her head. “You’re joking about that.”
Oh, he was not. She’d enjoyed some role-play. “She had very particular fantasies, so I am joking about her not knowing. But she didn’t know when, and that was all kinds of fun. Did I mention I do a killer British accent? And I have an actual red coat.”
She stared at him for a moment. “I don’t know that I like this side of you.”
“I think you like it a lot.”
She huffed, a flustered sound. “What are you doing?”
“Opening up and showing you more of who I am,” he admitted. “I’ve been on my best behavior around you, and I think it’s given you the wrong impression. You say I get one week? I’ll take it. If you reject me at the end of this it’ll be because you truly don’t like me. The real me.”
“I’m serious about the relationship—about not having one,” Tessa insisted.
He wished she didn’t sound so sure. “Okay, then what’s the problem?”
Her eyes went soft. “I don’t want to hurt you. You seem like a guy with a lot of feelings.”
“How about I worry about my feelings and you trust me to know what I can and can’t handle? Like I said, think about it. I can always tell Eddie that you’re the walking, talking symbol of my mom’s paranoia, and then you take the bodyguard role and hang in the background. No muss. No fuss.”
“Ah, and no sex if I don’t stay in the room with you and play your girlfriend.”
He held his hands up to ward off the accusation in her tone. “Hey, no machinations here. If you don’t want to sleep in the same bed with me, that’s cool. You want sex, you can sneak in and slip out, and no one knows I’m fucking my bodyguard. Also, I would like to remind you that you’re the one who brought this up.”
She huffed, a frustrated sound. “Yeah, well, I didn’t think we’d make such a big deal out of it. I thought we’d be one and done.”
“And I think it’s going to be more fun my way. Is this a take it your way or leave it deal?”
She shook her head. “No. We can negotiate, but I thought I wouldn’t have to.”
Yeah, he’d gotten that vibe. “Because you thought the vanilla boy would just be happy for the sex?”
She shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Something like that.”
If he played his cards right, he would slip that shirt off her shoulder later tonight and run his lips across her golden brown skin. “Like I said, if I’ve only got a week, I’m going to make the most of it. So how about we do this? I’ll explain who you are to Eddie and you’ll take a room close to mine, and if you decide to go through with it, you knock on my door and then we’ll negotiate.” He wasn’t willing to push her too much because he might lose her. “If vanilla sex is all you want, then we’ll talk about that.”
She took him in with those warm brown eyes. “But you would rather be in charge.”
“I think you would enjoy it, too. I’m right, aren’t I? I’m right about you being sexually submissive.” He would bet a lot on her answer.
She sighed. “Yes. I find it relaxing. I can be kind of intense.”
He could see that easily. She would need a place to relax and let someone else be in charge. It was likely why she’d fallen into the relationship with her fiancé. He’d been a dominant male, and they’d seemed to have a lot in common on the surface. But the historian in him knew it was always in the details. Something that looks like it should work could fall apart because it often didn’t matter that a couple liked the same things. It was in how they lived, what they valued underneath the basics. Two very good people could simply not make it work because their core needs didn’t mesh. He could meet all her sexual needs, but if he couldn’t fulfill her core emotional ones, then it wouldn’t work.
But he rather thought he could if she let him try.
“Well, I stand ready to help you if you need some stress relief.”
An exasperated huff came from her lips. “I thought you would be weirder about this.”
“You thought you could either shock me and then I would prove I’m the uptight academic you think I am, or I would jump on you without another thought and then the sex would be bad. Either way, you could safely forget about me. How about we go into this with open minds? You tell me how you want to play it going onto the island and we’ll take it from there. If you want to keep your options open, I’ll still promise to sleep on the couch if you want to stay in my room. If you want your own, then I’ll make sure to leave my door unlocked.”
Her eyes narrowed in pure challenge. “Don’t bother. If I want to get in, I’ll get in.”
He liked the sound of that, but he had to hope she wouldn’t shrink away again. “I’ll make it easy on you.”
“I don’t think any of this is going to be easy on me,” she replied.
“It’s only as hard as you want it to be. You get to make the choices. You’re in control.”
“Until I give it to you.” There was anticipation in the words.
“Even then.” He needed to make it plain to her that he knew the rules of D/s and he followed them. “It’s an illusion that you’re giving up control. What you’re giving yourself is really permission. Permission to enjoy your body, to let go for a while because you trust your partner.”