“Good girl.” He grabbed her and kissed her firmly on the mouth. “Gotta get up and head to work.”
Placing her on the mattress, he stood up and stretched, his wide, muscled back to her, and she couldn’t help but admire with some degree of awe the taut muscles of his ass, his narrow waist, the bunching and flexing of muscle across his shoulders beneath the gorgeous Celtic artwork. She watched quietly as he pulled his clothes on, then his big black boots.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “Come here and give me a kiss, woman,” he ordered.
She moved toward him and lifted her chin, expecting a small peck, but he wrapped her up in his arms, and her stomach knotted as he held her tight, then kissed her hard and thoroughly. Her body wanted to melt with heat and desire, but something inside her was warning her to hold back.
Duff pulled back a few inches and looked down at her, and she was struck once more by the utterly masculine beauty of his face, the metallic gleam of his hazel eyes.
“We’ll talk later about whatever is going on with you, princess.”
“I kind of hate that I can’t hide anything from you,” she grumbled, glancing down at the bedcover.
“Just doing my job,” he joked.
But his words went through her like a punch in the gut and she looked back up at him.
“Shit. Sorry, lovely. You don’t think that’s what all this is, do you?”
“I really have no idea what this is, Duff,” she admitted. “And I hate that I’m being such a damn girl about it. Maybe I am crashing. Because this is not me.”
He stroked her hair with a gentle hand and said quietly, “I like you being a girl. Wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t think you’re being weak or needy or any of that other crap we men spew at women to keep our distance. I . . .” He paused, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Somehow I don’t want to keep my distance from you.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
He grabbed her chin and forced her gaze to his. “No. I don’t, in fact.”
Leaning in, he kissed her, then kissed her again, and again and again until she finally gave in and opened her lips for him. Opened herself. She was still afraid this would end disastrously. But she didn’t seem to be able to resist Duff Stewart. And as he turned to leave, she breathed him in as he stepped away from her and out of her house, wondering if she’d ever be able to.
? ? ?
THE DAY HAD dragged, despite Layla doing her best to keep busy. She’d done her grocery shopping, lingering over the produce, catching herself daydreaming about the way Duff kissed her. She’d gone to her gallery appointment, but had found herself distracted by images flitting through her mind—images of the huge phallus she’d sculpted after that first meeting with him, and by images of Duff himself: his eminently kissable mouth, the muscles running through his forearms, his boots. She had a major crush on those boots, but only because of the man who wore them.
She’d dropped by Midnight Ink to see if Rosie was available for lunch, forgetting the tattoo shop was usually closed on Mondays, and when she tried calling her cell, Rosie hadn’t picked up. Then she’d taken a long drive, but even that was no help. She swore she could still smell him all over her car, and had finally turned around and headed home. Now she stood in front of her bathroom mirror, searching her face for some sign of the strangeness she was feeling.
I am a mess.
But she felt damn good for being a mess—sore in all the best places, inside and out, and the tiny ripples of pain only made her smile. Had it simply been too long since she’d had a chance to remember what it felt like to be a well-played bottom? Or was it something more?
Oh, yes, there was a glimmer in her green eyes, and her damn cheeks were glowing, despite her lack of sleep—Duff Stewart knew how to keep a girl up. But in between, hadn’t she slept like a baby in his big, strong arms?
She scowled at her too-giddy reflection in the mirror. “You’re talking like you’ve never seen a man before in your life. Like some schoolgirl who’s just lost her virginity to the hottest guy in school.”
But she had lost her virginity to the hottest guy in school when she was seventeen, and he hadn’t made her feel like this. Not even close. Neither had her long string of poor choices—Adrien, her first musician, whom she’d met the year after she’d graduated from high school. He’d been so damn pretty for a bad boy, and insanely charming—and he was her first kink experience. It had been relatively mild—a little spanking, rough sex, some biting—but it had been a sexual epiphany for her. Then there had been Marcel, who was a star New Orleans chef. It had taken her eight months to realize his “dominance” was nothing more than bossiness, a bad attitude and an inflated sense of entitlement. Then it was Vincent, the race car driver, who had expanded her BDSM realm with wax play and nipple clamps and her first flogging, which had really gone to her head. But she’d been a bit wiser that time—six months in she’d caught him cheating and been too pissed to pretend it wasn’t happening. Then there was Jimmy. She’d been single for a while, bottoming at the clubs, and had thought somehow that she’d learned better. She should have known better than to date another musician, especially a friend of Adrien’s, especially a lead guitarist. But she’d met him at a kink club, and he was known there as a Dom. He was seven years older than her, and she’d made the mistaken assumption that with age came wisdom. She’d thought he was the real thing—real enough that she’d wasted two years of her life with him. Oh, yeah, she’d paid her dues with men—with cheating men—and she didn’t quite trust her own judgment any longer.