Chapter 13 Harper
HARPER
When Nate drops me off in front of my apartment the next morning, I’m not quite sure how I feel.
My heart is pounding with a strange mixture of excitement, uncertainty, and barely sated lust. He kisses me goodbye but gives no indication of when I’ll see him again—outside of school the next day, of course.
And God, how awkward is that going to be now?
I find Emma waiting for me at the kitchen table, two mugs of coffee set out. She arches an eyebrow and I know that I have no hope of getting out of this. I’m going to have to tell her about Nate.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I say, sliding into the seat across from her.
She studies my face. “From the look of things, you can use it.”
I bring the mug up to cover my face. “Do I look that bad.”
She waits for me to lower it. “Honestly, Harp? You look freshly fucked.”
I swallow a sip of scalding coffee way too quickly, coughing. She rolls her eyes while leaning over to pound on my back. “The girl picks up some hot stranger at a damn sex club but she can’t handle hearing the word fuck.”
I think about the way Nate had growled that word in my ear, telling me what he was going to do to me, and I flush.
“Shit,” Emma mutters, still watching my face. “This is serious, isn’t it?”
I sigh, pushing away my cup a little bit so I’m not tempted to down it and burn myself again. “I don’t know. It’s…complicated.”
She makes a face at me. “You’ve been saying that about your night at the Club for the past month. Funny how you never mentioned this guy.” I find that I can’t quite meet her eyes and her tone is wounded when she continues. “I take it last night wasn’t the first time you’d met.”
“No,” I practically whisper. “We met that first night.”
“Harper, why in the hell didn’t you tell me?”
She’s definitely hurt, and it makes me feel like shit. We tell each other everything. We always have. I know if the roles were reversed, if she’d kept something like this from me, it would hurt.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you. But it all got so messed up so fast. I told myself I needed to just forget about it, pretend it hadn’t happened.”
She frowns. “What do you mean it got messed up? Did he hurt you or something?”
She looks about ready to jump out of her chair to go defend me and I’m overwhelmed with a flash of affection for her.
“No, Em. He didn’t hurt me.” I blow out a breath, knowing there’s no real way to get out of this conversation. And maybe I don’t want there to be. Maybe talking to Emma will actually help. God knows I’m even more confused this morning than I was before.
So I tell her about meeting him moments after I’d walked into the club. About him taking me behind the steel door to show me the back rooms. About the things we did in those rooms. By the time I’m finished, her mouth is hanging open.
“Holy shit, girl,” she says, eyes bugging out of her head. “First of all, that’s super hot.” She holds out her fist to bump mine and I reciprocate, even as I roll my eyes at her. “Honestly, I never would have thought you had it in you.”
I shrug. “I didn’t either, to tell the truth. But there was something about this guy, Em. He was…I don’t know how to describe it. We just…sparked, you know?”
She sighs, looking a little dreamy. “Those are the best hookups.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I mutter, having no real hook-up experience to compare it too. Then I drop the first of my complication bombs. “Things felt a lot less awesome the next day when he showed up for brunch with Mason.”
Her eyes widen. “So when you said he knew Mason—”
“I was underselling. They were college roommates. They’re still really good friends.”
“Fuck.”
“Oh, it gets better,” I assure her. “The reason Mason invited him along is because he thought it might help me to network a little with one of the professors at the university.”
It only takes a second for what I’m saying to sink in.
She just stares at me, mouth agape, until she finally stands and walks straight to the cupboard that holds our liquor.
She pulls down a bottle of bourbon and brings it back to the table, adding a healthy measure to both of our coffees without saying a word.
“Good call,” I mutter, taking a sip.
“This is nuts, Harper,” she says. “So the morning after you let this stranger finger bang you in a sex club, he shows up at brunch with your brother. And then you find out that he’s a professor at your university.”
“Not just a professor,” I interrupt. “The professor in charge of the research project I wanted to land.”
“The one you got?” she yelps.
“Yup. I’m working with the hot dom teacher. My life is officially insane.”
“Jesus. You’re not kidding.”
I tell her about our first awkward meeting on campus and about the discussion we had about our boundaries when I got the position.
“Obviously we said nothing could ever happen again.” I take a sip of coffee, the bourbon warming my chest. “But then last night he shows up at the club and goes all alpha when he sees me with another guy.”
“Which was totally hot, by the way,” she says. “Even if I was slightly scared for your life.”
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Slightly scared? You tried to forbid me from leaving with him.”
She waves that away. “So what happened when you got to his house?”
I do my damnedest not to blush but I’m not sure I succeed. A grin spreads across her face. “I was right about the freshly fucked part?”
“So right.”
She reaches across the table to grab my hands. “Okay, we obviously need to talk about the heavy stuff and all the complications, but first you have to tell me—how was it?”
I close my eyes, letting images from the night before wash over me. The way he had pounced on me in the entryway. The command in his voice when he told me to suck him off, to touch myself. The way he had touched me. The way he had spanked me.
“Shit, Em,” I finally say, opening my eyes. “It was amazing.”
To my surprise, she looks a little teary. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you describe sex that way.”
“Because it’s never felt that way. Seriously. I didn’t know it even could.”
“And was it…you know.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “All kinky and stuff?”
I think about the way it had felt to be over his knee. “Uh, yeah. You could say that.”
She squeals a little and claps her hands. “So you liked it as much as you thought you would! That’s great, Harp!”
I’m not sure if I agree with that. There’s a part of me, a large part, that still feels like this whole thing is wrong. That I’m getting in over my head, going farther down a path I’m not sure I’m ready to be on. A path that is already getting harder to find my way off of.
Emma drags me from these confusing thoughts in her typical, straightforward way. “So are you like, his sub now?
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “He said he only does that stuff at the club.”
“But he did it with you last night. At his house.”
I swallow, confused. I can’t help but think that it means something, his breaking that pattern with me. And from the way Emma is looking at me, she’s thinking the same thing.
“He’s not like, my boyfriend, or anything,” I tell her quickly, knowing I won’t be able to handle it if she insinuates that this is more than it is. It would be too disappointing if that turned out to be wrong. “He just offered to introduce me to this lifestyle.”
“So it’s just about the whips and chains.”
I snort. “There haven’t been any whips or chains.”
“Yeah, because he doesn’t keep that stuff at his house. But he uses it, right? At the club, with his subs? And wouldn’t that mean he’s going to use it on you?”
I shiver a little at the thought. Do I want him to use chains on me, to restrain me?
Do I want him to use a whip? I think back to what I witnessed that first night, the way it had made me feel.
I certainly liked the feel of him spanking me last night, but that was just his hand.
Could I handle something more intense? Do I want to?
Watching my face carefully, Emma reaches out to cover my hand with hers. “You know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, right? I don’t give a shit if you’re into this domination stuff—you still have control of your own body.”
“I know that,” I assure her. “And he knows it too. He told me that about ten times. That I can stop it any time I want. He wants me to be comfortable.”
Her eyebrows go up. “So he cares about your feelings,” she says. “Sounds more like a boyfriend than a fuck buddy.”
“He’s not either,” I tell her. “He’s…I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Because of the lifestyle,” she says, using air quotes on the word.
“Yes. He’s just the person who’s going to help me explore this stuff.”
“Does that mean you’ll only be spending time together at the club?”
I frown at that, wondering if that’s his plan.
I enjoyed being in his home last night, enjoyed falling asleep next to him, eating at his kitchen island.
The closeness I felt there, the glimpse into this private part of his life.
Am I ever going to see it again? He had probably only taken me home to get me away from Aden.
Then again, he could have taken me to one of the back rooms, instead.
“I have no idea.”
She doesn’t look very impressed. “Don’t you think that’s something you should talk about? I mean, you’re going to be working with him still, right?”
I shift in my chair, uncomfortable. “Yeah. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
“So you’re going to talk before school Monday?”
“Um.”
She narrows her eyes at me, obviously concerned. “Harper…this isn’t like you. School is everything to you and—”
I don’t bother to hide my disbelief. “Are you even kidding me right now? You’re lecturing me about school?”
“I’m not lecturing you,” she says quickly, but I don’t let her continue.
“You’re the one who’s constantly telling me to live a little. To not put all my focus on studying. To have a life. And now you’re telling me to worry more about school?”
She holds up her hands. “Harper, I think it’s awesome that you’re letting yourself be more open to this stuff.
I really do. And I am so happy you got laid last night.
” I snort out a laugh in spite of my annoyance.
She grins back. “You totally needed it.” Then her face grows more serious.
“I just don’t want you to let this guy eclipse everything else you have going in your life.
It’s totally easy to let that happen when we’re talking about blow-your-mind sex. ”
I nod. If I’m honest with myself, she isn’t saying anything that I wasn’t already worrying about this morning.
“I’m going to talk to him,” I tell her, trying to make my voice sound more confident than I feel. “I promise.”
She watches me for a long time before she finally smiles, leaning back in her chair. “I know you will, Harp. You’re the girl who always has her shit together.”
I manage to smile at that, even if it’s a little weak. The girl who always has her shit together. Sure.