Was he going to make her say it?
She didn’t want to, but he thought he’d been a creep and he so wasn’t. He was a man who read body language, and he’d totally gotten hers right but for all the wrong reasons. “I didn’t…I wasn’t wearing pants so you would have…known. Everyone would have known.”
That hand on hers tightened. “Known? Known what, Madeline?”
Okay, now he was a jerk, but hiding from this hadn’t worked for either of them. “Known that I was thinking about sex. It embarrassed me, and I tried to cover it by asking you a ton of questions. I also at one point recited the periodic table in my head so I wouldn’t think about sex.”
He released her hand and studied her for a moment. “Do you want to move on with me?”
“Yes. I know I screwed up tonight, but I can do this. I can absolutely pretend to want you.”
He huffed, but there was a hint of a smile on his face. “Maybe I started in the wrong place. I panicked in a way. I wondered if maybe today wasn’t the only time I pushed myself on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Given how you reacted today, I have to wonder if I made you do things you weren’t ready to do,” he said quietly. “When we were younger. The sex we had back then, it was actually quite close to D/s sex. Not with bondage or protocol, but I was definitely in charge.”
“Deke, that was the best sex of my life.” She wasn’t going to lie to him on that point. He’d never been anything but amazing to her when it came to sex. Making love. That’s what they’d done. She had friends who talked about the shits their high school and college boyfriends were, but she couldn’t say the same of Deke. “I mean the first time kind of sucked, but then you made up for it.”
“I figured out how to get you off first.” There was a light in his eyes again that did something to her heart. “I was worried you would never want to do it again.”
He’d convinced her to let him try. He’d laid her out on a blanket and eaten her pussy until she’d screamed out his name, and then she’d been addicted to him. “You didn’t force me into anything. You didn’t manipulate me. You gave me pleasure. I promise at no point in time today was I worried you would hurt me. I was self-conscious. I’m not sure how to overcome it.”
“I should have waited until we were alone to try a little intimacy. Can we talk now? Not in an academic way. I want to sit here in the dark and talk to you about what you saw and what you felt today. You weren’t scared of me?”
She managed to not roll her eyes. She’d done a number on him. She needed to show him. She stood and moved to him, shifting so she could lower herself down onto his lap. “This is how you wanted to talk, right?”
His arm curled around her waist. “I did. We need to look like a couple.”
Somehow it was easier talking to him in the intimacy of the warm, dark night. Here in his space, she felt more settled, more like herself than she’d been before. “Well, we never had problems with that, did we? I remember my dad asking if you needed to hold my hand all the time.”
He chuckled. “I think he asked if I would die if I didn’t hold your hand because I did it so damn often. I got a lot of lectures on keeping my hands to myself.”
She breathed in the night air and his scent filled her, too, taking her right back to a good time in her life. She couldn’t fool herself that her relationship with Deke had been anything but lovely until the end. “I’m fighting getting close to you because I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I’m afraid I’ll get hurt again. I’m afraid I won’t fit in and I’ll look ridiculous. I’m afraid I will fit in and I’ll like it and there won’t be a place for me when this is all over. I’m a big bundle of nerves, and I’m reacting poorly.”
“We should have done this first. I should have turned off the lights and put my arms around you and talked about this like a friend and not a mentor. I know you’re scared, but I have no intention of hurting you. It’s the last thing I want to do. It was the last thing I wanted to do then.”
She felt herself stiffen. “I don’t…”
“Want to talk about it,” he finished for her. “Let’s view this as a moment out of time. There are zero expectations on you. I’ll take what you willingly give me. I won’t push you further than you’re willing to go on the personal front. When it comes to the mission, I have to push you, baby. You have to understand that he’s going to know if you’re not comfortable in normal club settings. We don’t want him asking questions. We want him to trust us enough that we can get him to organize a play party at his house. That’s where you’ll get to his personal system.”
It was kind of brilliant. And it could absolutely work, but only if she convinced Nolan she was who she’d said she was. “I’ll be better tomorrow. I promise. We have a day and a half, right? We don’t have to leave until Sunday afternoon. I promise I’ll be what I need to be.”
“Not when you’re so tense I can feel it coming off you.” His mouth was close to her ear, warmth sparking through her. “I can think of a way to help you relax and make you comfortable around me. I’m your partner in this. I understand that you have no interest in an emotional relationship with me.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I was scared of it. I’m also not in a place where a relationship would work for me. It’s why I’m not going to see Dan again.” That was a little fib. She wasn’t going to see Dan again because she knew she would need time and space before she could consider dating anyone after seeing Deke again. “I need to concentrate on work. Besides, you live here and I live in LA.”
“Exactly. It can’t work, so why should you be afraid? You know it’s not going to be long term. It’s a job.” A big hand was on her thigh.
Being with him alone in the moonlight was doing something that the club hadn’t been able to do. It was making her soften up, making her brain a little fuzzy at the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand.
“Part of this job is honoring the contract we signed this afternoon.” His words were rumbled along the side of her neck, every single one seeming to find a straight line to her traitorous pussy. Maybe not traitorous, exactly. Sentimental. Her pussy was sentimental, and he was a really good memory.
The contract they’d signed had been a basic D/s contract. The Dom would take care of the sub and yadda yadda, sex could happen or not happen, yadda yadda, rules, yadda yadda, punishment. It had an end date. Their D/s relationship would terminate when the job was done.
He was so big and warm and he smelled good. She’d spent the last few weeks on edge, and that all seemed to melt away now that she was here with him. She turned her head his way, appreciating the hard line of his jaw.
“So you’re saying we should work within the parameters of our contract and not worry about what happens after.”
His hand moved along her thigh, making her breath catch, making her remember all the parts of the contract that had been about sexual contact.
She could stop it at any time, but she couldn’t seem to remember why she would want that. Oh, in the back of her head a whole lot of warning bells were going off, but it was easy to ignore them now that they were alone.