Chapter 14 #2
“I rather like defiling you,” I confessed, and she made a brittle little tittering sound that I think was supposed to be a laugh but fell woefully short of the mark.
“I didn’t mind the defiling at The Olde Pink House,” she murmured. “But this was… different. I don’t know why or how, but it was and it felt…”
“Gross?” I supplied.
“I was going to say ‘icky’ but that felt childish,” she said. “Gross seems too strong a word, but yeah… gross will do.”
“Hmm.” I was thoughtful.
“What are you thinking?” she asked softly after a time.
“I was thinking that I do so very much enjoy playing with you and your body, and that I would very much like to continue to do so.
I like playing on the dark side. I like to be in control, but there's clearly a fine line between that and being overbearing. That was a line that was crossed with you, tonight.”
She sat with me, long and thoughtful in her pause as she soaked up what I said.
“One of my kinks is very much coercion. I love to coerce the reluctant, but judging by your reaction to round two, I may have missed the mark on consensual non-consent and sailed into much darker territory. A state of being I abhor, and would never want to be.”
I was deeply concerned by this point. That was exactly what had happened.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said finally. “I never expected to want anything like this, but…” she thought for a time. “I’ve never had anyone do to me what you do to me. I like it, but it terrifies me in some ways. I-I just think the being tied up this time was too much too soon?”
“You give me grace that I am wholly undeserving of,” I told her, and it was true. I could hear her in real time trying to diminish or minimize the trauma I’d dealt her, but I wasn’t deserving of a free pass.
On the contrary, I was well aware that there was absolutely no way in which I could even begin to make this kind of faux pas up to her. I said as much without confessing to any criminal culpability, even though I was well aware that, should she want to pursue it, she more than could.
She swallowed hard and rolled her head back along my shoulder to look up at me with those bright and innocent eyes of hers.
I was quickly learning it was just who she was, and wasn’t a ploy at all – which was admittedly hard as hell to fathom with how she swum with the sharks as though she was one of us out in the real estate world.
A sheep in wolf’s clothing, if you will.
I gazed down into those twin blue pools, and she said, “I’m not looking for a relationship. I really, honestly, and truly would rather focus on other, more important things to me right now.”
“I’m not looking for anything close to a relationship, either. Just some debauchery and a good time in my own dark little fantasy world.”
The confession was an easy one to make, and one hundred percent true.
“I have definitely enjoyed more than I haven’t,” she said carefully, and pointedly wouldn’t look at me, a blush creeping up what I could see of her chest.
“Perhaps a different sort of deal is in order,” I suggested.
“Great sex, pushing boundaries, no strings attached?” she asked.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“You don’t get to push me around or pull one over on me during business hours. Business is kept strictly separate from… from whatever this is,” she said.
“One caveat,” I proposed. “You piss me off enough, I get to punish you however I see fit during one of our little dalliances.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” she said uneasily.
“Okay,” I negotiated. “When I say ‘pissed off,’ it’s all lowercase letters.
If you genuinely anger me to the point that it’s all in capital letters, or I see red, we shout it out behind closed doors and nothing happens until you’re comfortable that I’m merely irritated and ready for funishment and not to really hand out any punishment. ”
“Did you just say funishment?” she asked, and she very nearly giggled.
I grinned. “Yeah, you like it?” I asked.
“Yeah, I actually kind of do. I think that’s exactly what it is… round two, as you put it, didn’t come off as funishment for me. It felt too cold, and like you were genuinely wanting to punish me with sex.”
“No, not at all.” I cuddled her close and genuinely felt bad for a flicker of a moment. “Genuinely, I just want what you want – to have fun, and explore – no strings attached.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking the time to clear that up.”
I smiled to myself, and she shifted a bit and said, “I really should go home tonight.”
“Not tonight,” I argued. “I want to make sure you’re alright.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Then I selfishly just want a beautiful woman in my bed tonight,” I countered.
She laughed and shook her head, saying, “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I asked. I was genuinely confused as to what she was getting at.
“Keep calling me beautiful. It’s sufficient enough to just say you want a woman in your bed tonight. You don’t have to butter me up like that. I’m just fine with… I don’t know if we can even call it ‘friends with benefits’, to be honest. I thought you hated me.”
I laughed then, and I couldn’t help myself. One, she was in fact, gorgeous, and two, hate was a rather strong word.
“You’re beyond beautiful,” I said, and she snorted.
“As for hating you? The only thing I hate about you is – well, there are two things really. That you best me more often than not at the real estate game, and that God-awful, thick-as-fuck, corn-pone, country-bumpkin accent you use. It makes you sound dumb, and you are not dumb.”
She giggled at me and said, “Believe it or not, that is my natural accent. This one is the fake one. I learned to stop using it in college, and then figured out it was one of my greatest assets once I graduated. Go figure.”
“That thick-as-hell accent is not your natural accent. I mean it. Talk normal for me.”
She cleared her throat and said, “Why? What do you want me to say?” Sure enough, the accent was real, but not nearly as souped up as she used on clients.
It was somewhere between her, I didn’t know, customer service voice and the clean, clear American accent she code-switched to when she was just Savannah, and not Savvy Savanna.
“See, now that’s not nearly the same as what you use on a daily. You can talk to me just like that all you want,” I told her, and I meant it. “You don’t need any of that shit. The makeup, the designer clothes… although I do like many of the things you wear. That dress tonight was choice.”
She was silent for a time, cupping her hands and bringing them to her face, scrubbing them.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I just realized I cried most of this off, and I likely look dreadful!” I laughed then and picked up a washcloth from the little side table beside the bath and put it in her hands.
“Thank you,” she said, and worked at getting the makeup off her face, which I had absolutely no problem with.
We stayed in the bath, not really doing much more talking, merely soaking up the warmth of the bath and one another’s company. There came a time when I felt pruned enough that I asked, “Ready to get out?”
She sleepily murmured back, “Yes.”
She got up at my gentle prodding, and I helped myself up by bracing on the edge of the tub. I wrapped her up in one of the lush bath sheets I kept in here, rubbing her briskly through the thick fibers.
“You fuss too much,” she complained.
I chuckled and countered with, “Let me. I certainly owe it to you.”
She got out and handed me a towel, and I stepped out onto the bathmat and dried myself. She went to the mirror and took down her hair, shaking it out and setting the clip aside.
I went to her and asked quietly, “Would you like one of my shirts to sleep in?”
“Would you mind?” she asked, meeting my gaze in the mirror.
“Not at all,” I said, and I went into the bedroom and took up the light blue shirt I’d been wearing earlier at dinner. I held it open to her, and she shrugged into it, letting the towel slip to the floor beneath it as she quickly buttoned it down the front.
I stood behind her and rolled back the sleeves for her while she did, making her laugh and giggle.
She turned around, looked up at me, and asked me gravely, “Why do you want me to stay?”
I answered her truthfully. “I sleep better with someone in my bed. I like the warmth and the softness. Call me a pussy or a weak-ass motherfucker if you want, but it’s true.
” I shrugged. “Still, I don’t let just anyone into my bed.
Usually, if I bring a woman home, I use the apartment above the carriage house and let them think that’s my place. ”
I didn’t know why I told her that. I probably shouldn’t have, but she was an exception to my rules in more than a few ways.
She looked up at me and asked, “No shit?”
I tipped her chin just a little bit more and whispered, “No shit,” against her lips before I brushed mine against them.
“Huh.” She covered one foot with the other and looked positively adorable, fresh-faced, and in my shirt.
“Bedtime,” I told her, and turned her about and marched her back into the bedroom. I pulled back the blankets and let her crawl in first, joining her and tucking her against me. She lay her head on my shoulder in the dark of the room, and it was nice.