“What?” Sixx asked after she swallowed.
“Talia and Bryan,” Leigh stated immediately. “She’s selected him again. And I fear, with the look on his face, that he might get on bended knee before, or after, she strips him red, takes his ass and drains him dry.”
Damn.
Sixx looked to the side as Talia walked by their booth, sending them a toothy, carefree grin. She was followed closely by Bryan, who was not looking at the ground but at her ass.
He’d pay for that.
Which was the point when Talia noticed him doing it, something he’d make sure she did.
After they disappeared behind the door to the playrooms, and after Sixx took another hefty sip of her drink, she said to Leigh, “I’d been meaning to discuss that with you.”
“And I’ve been meaning to discuss it with Talia … and Aryas,” Leigh replied.
“Don’t go there,” Olly said at the same time Stellan put in, “I would leave that alone, Leigh.”
“She’s in love with Aryas, and Aryas her,” Leigh retorted.
“It’s none of your business, sweetheart,” Olly told her.
“Talia is a new Domme,” Leigh declared. “She might not know what she’s doing.”
“Talia was a new Domme,” Stellan amended smoothly. “She’s also headstrong, and at this point in her experience, she would not welcome your input.”
“Bryan’s heart is involved,” Leigh returned. “Hers is not.”
“I beg to differ,” Stellan stated, and Sixx turned her head to look at him as he continued to speak to Amélie. “You are correct. At first, she was selecting him in order to punish Aryas for his inattention. But Aryas has continued his course of inaction, and now she’s moving on. I can’t say I pay close attention to their play, but the last time I saw them together, it was not about selecting a sub that appeals to her to get them both off as she’s biding her time for Aryas to take notice. The tone had changed. Significantly.”
“I hadn’t noticed that,” Leigh murmured.
“Me either,” Sixx said under her breath, finishing with, “Poor Ary.”
“Indeed,” Leigh said, and Sixx looked at her. “Poor Ary.” Suddenly, a sly smile spread on her face. “We should go watch.”
Yes, the bathroom situation was entirely shut down.
Amélie was letting it go.
She was a good woman, a good friend, and in another life, Sixx would have liked to have gotten to know her better.
She would miss her.
But now she had her.
So she smiled back. “Let’s.”
Without her having to ask, Stellan slid out, as did Olly, but it was only Stellan who said, “Enjoy. The men will keep the booth warm for when you return.”
Sixx exited her seat and saw Leigh already out, reaching a hand toward her.
She took it and refused to look back at the man who slid out of the booth to let her free without her even asking, the man she loved, the man she had sat beside for the first time in their place, and would return to when she and Amélie were done, as Leigh tucked Sixx’s hand in the crook of her arm and headed them toward the playrooms.
As they walked, Leigh leaned her head Sixx’s way and said conspiratorially, “It’s good Olly’s not coming. If Talia does something inspired, later he won’t know I’m copying her.”
“Thank you,” Sixx said in reply.
Amélie stopped with her hand on the door to the playrooms and looked at Sixx, not hiding her confusion. “For what?”
“For being you,” Sixx explained.
The confusion fled, and Leigh gave her a small smile that was both concerned and sad. But she didn’t get into either.
She replied, “I can hardly say ‘you’re welcome’ for that.”
“Then don’t,” Sixx said, put her hand on the door too and pushed through, taking Leigh with her.
They moved through the hallways, connected, two Mistresses, two friends, enjoying a night at their club together.
A memory Sixx would take with her.
A memory Sixx knew she’d be glad she had for the time when she wouldn’t be making memories like this at all.
*
The ride home was silent.
Stellan was who he was.
Therefore he knew she needed that.
And he gave her that.
After they walked into the laundry room and he guided her down the hall, Stellan, being who he was, gave her more.
Stopping her outside his study, he looked down at her, lifted a hand to cup her jaw, and she watched his face in the darkened corridor coming close to hers.
When he was a breath away, he said gently, “Go to your sketchbooks, honey. I’ll be waiting for you in bed.”
With nothing more, he touched his mouth to hers, let her go, and she watched his tall, shadowy figure move gracefully away, wondering if she knew him as well as he knew her.
And she realized she did.
For instance, she knew he did not let whatever happened during his days get to him. He talked about it, but even if it frustrated or annoyed him, he shared only that it did. Other than that, he left it at the office when he came home to her. And then he was just home with her, giving her all of him, taking everything she’d give in return.
She further knew he understood his past and how bleak it was, and he’d found a way to live with it, not against it.
And last, she knew, for reasons she did not understand, he was falling in love with her.
On this thought, Sixx moved directly to the library where she’d hidden her current sketchpad and pencils in a place Stellan wouldn’t find (though she’d already learned he wouldn’t look, even if she left them out, but M might).
But when she retrieved them, she didn’t go to a chair or his desk in his study or out by the pool.
She went to a corner of the room, turned, sank to her ass on the floor, held the sketchpad tight against her chest with her thighs, and she stared in the dark.
That day she’d taken a woman’s multivitamin bought specifically for her.
And she’d fall asleep beside Stellan that night.
Alone, solitary, safe, unable to hold them back any longer, the tears came slow at first, one chased leisurely by another.
And then they came faster.
In the end she had to shove her face in her knees and endure the pain it caused as she held back the noises just in case Stellan came looking for her, her shoulders and back and chest and ribs heaving with the effort.
“I wanna be normal,” she whispered brokenly to her knees.
You’ve always wanted to be normal, her mind reminded her. You’ll never be normal. And he doesn’t want normal. He wants you. He’s not normal, not nearly normal, and you want him.
She wanted him.
She wanted him.
And she wanted them.
We’ll have our drink and go home.
Behind her squeezed-shut eyes she saw him there, sitting close to her in a booth at the Honey, her safe place, their place, holding her hand, knowing from the time they walked in to the time she fixed her lipstick and returned to him that something had happened, she needed to leave, and he was going to make that so.
This morning it’s my famous French toast for my baby girl!
Her head shot up, and she pushed herself off the floor. She hurried to her hiding place, stashed the sketchbook and pens, and dashed her hands on her face to clear away the tears as she moved out the door.
She noted Stellan’s timers had lit her way with a lamp at the base of the stairs, which she turned off, and one in the hall, which she also turned off.
She hit the bedroom and saw Stellan in bed, sitting up against the headboard, covers to his waist, chest exposed, book in his hand.
He looked up the minute she entered the room.
She twisted her arms behind her to pull the zipper down on the little red leather mini-dress she was wearing.
He put his book aside on the nightstand and watched her make her way toward him.
She drew the dress off her shoulders at the front, let it drop, and stepped out of it, all with only a moment’s hesitation in stepping over it when it hit the floor as she continued toward him, up the steps, to his side of the bed, wearing nothing but a barely there red bralette made of see-through lace and a pair of black pumps with thin ankle straps.
“Darling,” he said quietly, gaze on her face, not her body.