“8891 but I tried it twice. It won’t work.”
He keys in the code and the front door clicks. “Of course, it opens for you,” I murmur.
“You were focused on Josh,” he says, and instead of making a move for the door, he presses one hand on the wall above my head, those blue eyes of his, too intelligent, too probing as he repeats Josh’s words. “An arrogant bastard who will fuck you and leave you,” he says.
“You heard. Obviously.”
“I heard. And obviously, he doesn’t know that the description ‘arrogant bastard who will use you and leave you’ makes me perfect for you. Why is that, I wonder?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“You could,” he agrees, “but right now. We’re talking about you. Should I guess your reasons you like your men here and gone?”
“Should I guess the reasons you like your women here and gone?”
“Go for it, sweetheart,” he says, and the challenge is clear. If I make my guess, he can make his, without my rightful objection. But I do object, deny, and reject, the idea of this man, who sees too much as it is, seeing anything more than my body. The rest is off limits.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to know. Who you have in your bed, or in your life, aside from a wife you’ve said you don’t have, is none of my business. And we’ve already filled this night with too many words. Tonight isn’t about conversation.”
I dart away from him to the door, opening it, but I also know that I do not have to rush. He won’t rush after me. He’s a man of control. A dominant, that will follow at his pace, pursue in his way. And he’ll catch me but it won’t be for conversation, which is exactly why I’m making him pursue me. Entering the house, it hits me that the light is on, when I don’t remember it being on, but then, it was daylight, and I was in a rush. Dismissing the concern as nothing, I walk down the hallway, and I’m almost to the living room, when I hear Nick’s steps in the foyer, the door shutting behind him, locks turning. Adrenaline rushes through me, no longer a slight bump in energy, but a fierce surge, but really, how can it not? Nick Rogers, is nothing, if not an injection of adrenaline. And while I call him a dominant, that isn’t just a personality trait. He is a sexual dominant, and as I expected when I threw out the term “hard limit,” experience in a world where that word has heightened meaning. That knowledge should have been enough for me to decline this encounter, and yet, it wasn’t. I don’t know what that says about who I am, or what I want or need, and I haven’t for two years now. Maybe before, but maybe that’s the gift Nick will give me. I’ll figure it out through him.
Entering the living room, I turn the dial on the wall, that brings the lights to a soft glow, a chill clinging to the room. Nick’s footsteps grow closer, and I move deeper into the room, walking past the kitchen to my right and around the overstuffed chocolate brown couch and chairs, my destination the fireplace directly in front of them. Once I’m there, I flip the switch on to heat the room, and I can feel the moment Nick joins me, feel his energy, his dominance. It crackles and snaps, the way the gas fire does not, charging my skin, and suddenly, I am hyper aware of the tear in my dress that goes nearly to my belly button.
Inhaling, I turn to face him, and I don’t use his jacket to cover myself. I let it gape open, my lower body exposed. He’s leaning one broad shoulder on the wall just inside the archway that encases the hall, and directly in front of me. “I thought you weren’t running from me, Faith?”
“I told you. I’m not running from you, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Then why am I over here and you’re over there?”
“That’s your choice not mine.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” I say, shrugging out of his jacket, and tossing it on a brown stool in front of the fireplace, a fluffy cream colored rug, beneath it. Exposed now for Nick’s viewing, I straighten, a silent command from me to him, that he look at me, but he does exactly what I expect, what any true dominant would do, and that’s not what I’ve bid. His gaze is fixed unwaveringly on my face. His way of telling me that he is in control, that he looks and touches, at his own inclination, as will I. It’s simply his way, a part of who he is, and even a huge portion of what turns me on about him. But my mind flashes back to a time when another dominant was in my life. When I was naked and exposed, tied up. Submitted and it was pleasure, and then it wasn’t anymore. And that has nothing to do with Nick and everything to do with my choices and my own self-discovery. I am not a submissive but I want this man, who will want that of me and I do not understand it, or myself, right now.
Certain Nick is going to read my trepidation, if that is even what I’d call it, I need something to fill the room other than him and my hyped up crazy energy. Ruling out the television behind me above the fireplace, I decide on music, and quickly walk to the artsy, built in, entertainment center in the corner. Once I’m there, facing a portion of the dozen shelves, that gradually get shorter and smaller as they climb the wall, I can feel Nick move again. God. I can feel him just like he said he could me. Even when he’s not touching me, which is exactly why he is nothing like my past. Nothing made me feel this then. No one made me feel this.
I reach for the CD player and hit “power” and then “play” knowing that I have a CD inside that is downloaded, random music, that is about as eccentric as the taste he described in the car. Music fills the air, an Ed Sheeran song, and with another deep breath, I rotate, finding Nick sitting on the ottoman to one of the chairs, angled toward me. And while sitting might seem a submissive position, it’s not. It’s him watching me. It’s him on the throne of power, while I stand in front of him. Which is exactly why I sit down on another stool I keep by the shelf, meant to reach the books on the bottom row now behind me. And I do so with my knees primly pressed together, aware that while my lower belly, legs, and thigh highs are exposed I’ve denied him a view of what’s in between.
Our eyes lock and hold across the small space of several feet, separating us, a challenge in the air, that I’ve created by choice this time. Can he make me submit? But it’s not a real question. We both know he can. And I don’t have to fear that is all there will be between us, that he will think he can bend my will every moment he’s with me. There is only this moment, this night.
The song skips and just when I fear I’ll have to break this spell with Nick and change it, it changes on its own, to an old 90’s hit: Marcy Playground, Sex and Candy and that’s exactly the lyrics that fill the air: I smell sex and candy here. Who’s that lounging in my chair.
Nick arches a brow at the rather appropriate words and says, “Sex and candy?”