If I turned my life upside-down for her, what then? End up just like the others I’d watched crash and burn as they sought their happily-ever-after? Fuck that.
Still, the harder I tried to hold on to the way things had always been, the more uneasy I felt. I couldn’t deny any longer that Daniella and I were drifting apart. While I’d fulfilled my obligation by taking her to the Nurses’ Ball, we hadn’t hung out in a long time, and I hadn’t played with her in even longer.
Our once-tranquil relationship was starting to fray at the edges. She needed release, and even though she was trying to give me space, she probably felt snubbed. Ignored—and ultimately replaced with a younger woman. Just like her last Dom had done.
Even if her body didn’t excite me anymore, I still had a sense of loyalty toward her. And Daniella had always given me what I needed; I couldn’t desert her just because someone new had come into my life. It wasn’t like I was ready to commit to Lacey and be monogamous. Was I? But if this tension kept up, I might lose my mind.
“Have you seen my Navy sweatshirt?” I asked Daniella as she passed by my door. I’d just spent fifteen minutes tearing my room apart looking for the damn thing.
“Yeah, in my closet, I think,” she said, heading toward the living room with a book in hand.
I should have known. The sweatshirt was a good ten years old, soft and thin from so many washings. It was my—and Daniella’s—favorite thing to wear in the fall.
Stalking into her room, I found it on the floor of her closet underneath a heap of dirty clothes. Wow, real fucking nice, Dani.
“It smells like girly shit,” I complained loud enough for her to hear. I took the shirt back to my room, threw it in the hamper, and grabbed another from my closet.
“Geez, what crawled up your ass?”
“Nothing, all right? Everything’s fine.” It was a lie. Nothing was fine right now.
“I’m going to make beef stew for dinner.”
“Okay.” My tone softened. Her homemade stew was my favorite thing that Daniella made. She was trying to smooth over this growing weirdness between us. That was more than I could say for myself.
“Dinner will be in about an hour,” she added.
“Sounds good.”
I headed back to my room, deciding a hot shower might calm my frayed nerves. I stripped and turned on the water, feeling impatient and restless. I’d always been a fixer. It was how I ended up with Daniella—and Sutton, for that matter—but it sounded more chivalrous then it was.
I was no one’s hero. I’d always known that the second you let your guard down and did something stupid like fall in love, you got fucked, your world ripped out from underneath you. Like what happened to Marcus. Daniella. My mom.
Shit, maybe lack of sex was clouding my brain. I wasn’t fucking Dani, and I sure as shit wasn’t fucking Lacey.
Lacey. The new woman who’d waltzed in and taken my life by storm. Or, if you listened to the way Grey told it, the woman who had me by the balls.
As I waited for the water to heat, it occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about Lacey. Her background, her family, why she moved out of state just to work part-time at an animal shelter. But I knew exactly what she tasted like. How she felt moving on top of me. The noises she made when she came.
Fuck.
Something was starting to pick at me about this whole situation, but I couldn’t pinpoint what, and my mind raced with unanswered questions.
? ? ?
After dinner, I was still no closer to an answer. As I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and a whiskey, Sutton snoring lightly at my feet, I heard a low moan come from Daniella’s bedroom.
At least one of us is having fun.
Half working, half surfing the web, I ignored her groans, trying to give her some privacy. Until I realized that if she’d left her bedroom door open, it was probably on purpose.
Standing up from the table, I stretched and stepped around Sutton, headed down the hall that led to her room.
Daniella was naked, kneeling in the center of her bedroom floor. Her hands were linked behind her back. She was presenting herself to me, offering her submission as a gift.
I wondered how long she’d been waiting for me to find her. We’d finished dinner over an hour ago.
Shit.
I stepped forward, about to yank her up from her spot on the floor, tell her we couldn’t do this. Not when so much hung in the balance. Until I realized . . . I couldn’t. I didn’t have the heart.
Her eyes found mine, and I could read everything in them as plain as day. In those soft hazel depths, I saw it clearly. If I denied her right now, it would crush her. And not just the sting of rejection that would fade in a day or two. Refusing her offering might mean her sinking back into the depression I’d barely pulled her out of two years ago.
Fuck.
I couldn’t do that to her. For now, at least, she was still my responsibility.
“Eyes on the floor,” I ordered.