She focused her gaze on him, and she was no longer grinning.
“If you want to play, baby, I want to play,” she said quietly.
That was awarded with a sexy flash in his eyes, but he shook his head again.
“I love that, sweetheart,” he replied in her same tone. “And if you’re there, I’m thrilled. We’ll have our session tomorrow. But this morning, I’ll get you some coffee and bring out some breakfast. We can then go to a movie or go downstairs and spend all day watching them here. I have an extensive library, or it’s set up to get anything online we might want to see. Or we can go to the Botanical Gardens or instead, to Papago and walk the loop. We can also just put on our suits, get our books and have a lazy day by the pool. Your choice.”
Her choice.
Even when she was wearing underwear he’d told her to put on or he was ordering for her at a restaurant, it was her choice.
She had a feeling if she lived the dream of a life where he was in it for decades, in one way or another everything would be her choice.
Which would be his choice.
Okay, yes.
Her mind was no longer crystal clear.
She was terrified.
She was also Sixx.
And Simone might fall apart (she wouldn’t know, she’d never allowed Simone to handle anything too intense … or anything at all).
But Sixx …
Now Sixx could handle anything.
At least until it was time to bail—however that bailing needed to be to protect herself, protect Simone.
Or in this case, to protect Stellan.
In the meantime, he had to know.
And before she chickened out, she had to tell him.
“You make me happy too,” she blurted.
His fingers dug in at the ball of her foot.
“You should know that,” she said when he said nothing. “And the biggest part of that is knowing that I give it to you.”
His dark look and the dark words that came after did beautiful things to her.
“Get up, bend over the table, lift my shirt to your waist and pull your panties down to your thighs.”
She was frozen in the beauty.
“I thought we weren’t playing,” she whispered.
“We’re not,” he replied smoothly. “We’re fucking. Or I’m fucking you. Now do as you’re told, Simone.”
She did as she was told, wet and ready for him before he moved in behind her, placed a hand firm on the small of her back, the other curled around her hip, and drove his cock inside.
Instantly, she was lost in him, happily lost being filled with him, connected to him, one with him, and that didn’t change when he started thrusting and ordered, “You don’t come. You’re bent over and on offer for me, darling. If you earn it, I’ll let you come tomorrow.”
God, beauty.
“This isn’t playing?” she asked, her voice wispy.
“You’ll understand the difference,” he answered, pounded in, stayed in, ground in, waited for her moan, and finished, “tomorrow.”
Sixx said no more.
She let him use her. She got off on letting him use her. She thrilled at beating back her own response while listening to him build his. Holding steady, pulsing tight around him to give him more, listening to his soft sigh but feeling his thrusts intensify as he came inside her, and glorying in the invasive caress that was him slipping in and out as he came down.
He slid all the way in and bent over her to say softly, “Breakfast then movies here. You get one pick. I get one pick. And we’ll agree on a pick. Then we’ll have a nice dinner out here by the pool.”
That sounded like the perfect day.
She started counting.
Now she was at seven perfect days. Seven. The first seven of her imperfect life.
“Works for me,” she murmured, eyes closed, feeling his breath at her neck, his chest warm against her back, his cock still buried deep, not caring even a little that her clit was buzzing, her nipples tingling, her thighs quivering with the aftermath of holding back an orgasm.
Because she’d given him his.
And honest to God, that was all she needed.
*
Sixx moved down the hallway toward Stellan’s office.
It was later. After their movie spree in his at-home theater. After they’d gorged on snack food and she’d made him watch Man on Fire, he’d made her watch No Country for Old Men, and thus feeling in a Coen Brothers mood, they’d ended it watching Fargo. After that, they’d trudged back up for Stellan to start dinner only to get interrupted by a phone call, “I really can’t ignore it, sweetheart. Back in a bit.”
He’d then taken off, leaving things happening in the kitchen, and since Sixx knew nothing about what happened in a kitchen, she went off to find him to ask about what she should do with the stuff he left happening in the kitchen.
She didn’t think he’d mind if she interrupted him.
She was getting the feeling he wouldn’t mind anything when it came to her.
But she didn’t make it to his office.
Because he was in the library.
Sixx was still in the yellow underwear and his shirt. He was still only wearing his lounge pants. That day was a day of togetherness and decadence, and she was wearing makeup, but other than that, for both of them, the day had been all about the chill.
Until she saw him standing in the library, his tan, muscled back to her, the span of those broad shoulders, his amazing ass encased in those beautifully fitting lounge pants, one arm up and cocked, hand holding the phone to his ear, head turned, looking down, one arm out, finger touching the cover of her sketchpad.
Sixx stopped moving.
She also stopped breathing.
That sketchpad was one of twelve. The other eleven were filled from cover to cover with all the foul shit she’d seen, she’d done, she’d heard bragged about, she’d heard whispered about. From when she was a little girl and her first living memory was watching her mother stitch up a gunshot graze on her father’s thigh in their tiny kitchen, a wound he got for reasons she was too young to ever know, to various incarnations of her saving that little girl, doing all the things she had to do to keep her safe and protected and innocent and loved.
Sixx was the one who’d seen all those things, not Simone.
Sixx was the one who’d done all those things so Simone wouldn’t have to.
Heard the things.
Lived the things.
Every adventure left a scar on Sixx that would never heal. All over fictional Sixx’s body—her back, chest, legs, arms, face—there were scars.
Fictional Sixx in her sketchpads was a walking healed wound, a miracle of a still-existing, still-ready-for-the-fight hero, even after what she’d endured, determined to keep going because if she didn’t, Simone would have to face those realities.
And standing in the hall, having padded there unnoticed on bare feet, she saw in his profile precisely how badly Stellan wanted to open that sketchbook. Open the cover that opened the window to her psyche, exposing everything, exposing the entirety of the mess he’d taken on, exposing the wounds that were inflicted deep down inside that could never heal.
She almost cried out, screamed, stomped in and demanded to know what the fuck he was doing.
She didn’t because Stellan skated his fingers across the cover of the pad then turned away, moving to the window, speaking in low tones on his phone, stopping to look out at his fabulous landscaping.
It was then she knew.
It was then she knew that of course he wouldn’t.
Of course Stellan wouldn’t break her trust like that, trespass in places he knew she didn’t want him to be, betray her in a manner he knew she couldn’t forgive.
Of course not.
He’d wait.
Wait for her to offer it to him.
Wait for it like it was a gift he lived to receive.
Sixx sucked in breath and forced herself to walk on unsteady legs to the kitchen. She turned everything off. If it was ruined, it was ruined. Stellan would start again without getting upset, or he’d go out and get them something. With her, he was that even-keeled.
A ruined dinner he’d spent time preparing was nothing.