31. You Were Supposed to Call!
You Were Supposed to Call!
Sam
Q had come home today but so far, he hadn’t called or texted.
Sam was about five minutes away from breaking out the emergency ice cream.
She’d bought it months ago and saved it for when it was desperately needed, so it was probably frostbitten to all hell, but she was feeling the urge.
It would be nice if she felt the urge to eat something cheaper, like saltines, but no, she wanted ice cream.
Grr.
She was sitting around her apartment, doing absolutely nothing, waiting for her phone to go off, like a pathetic caricature of a heartbroken girl. Ice cream was only going to add to that.
That didn’t stop her from wanting it.
A knock on her door made her jump.
Oh, no.
He wouldn’t have… would he?
Sam ran over to the door as quietly as she could and looked through the peephole.
Shit. Shit. Shit. He would. Q was standing outside her door looking absolutely delicious in a forest-green button-down shirt she could see because he’d opened his coat.
She looked down at her stained sweatshirt and yoga pants, her hand flying up to touch the messy bun in her hair.
It wasn’t an artfully messy bun. It was a messy messy bun.
Shit!
She barely dared breathe as she tried to figure out what to do.
He knocked again, and she jumped.
Dammit, he was supposed to have texted! Or called! She was supposed to have had time to get herself together before he saw her!
“Sam, I know you’re standing on the other side of the door. Let me in.” Amusement threaded through his words.
She’d stopped breathing almost as soon as he’d started talking.
Dammit. How did he know she was there?
She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she could run and change fast enough.
“Sam.” He knocked again. “Let me in.”
His voice was shifting, lowering, moving into Dom territory.
Crap.
“Now.”
She groaned inwardly, even as she reached for the lock and flipped it open, her other hand turning the door’s knob.
As she opened the door, her head ducked down. She didn’t want to see his expression when he got his first look at her, especially considering how pathetic she felt. Dammit. She should have at least run to change her shirt before letting him in.
“There you are.” The deep satisfaction in his voice gave no hint of disappointment or judgment. He sounded thrilled to see her, like it didn’t matter about her hair or the stain on her shirt or anything else. Sam’s head jerked up just as he stepped in to wrap his arms around her.
It felt so good to be in his arms again. Tears sprang into her eyes as he hugged her tight, inhaling like he was breathing her in.
Oh God. I hope I don’t smell.
Whatever cologne he was wearing smelled fantastic. It wasn’t fair that he looked and smelled so good. She clung to him. Partly because she didn’t want to lose the sensation of being held so closely and partly because if he was holding her, he couldn’t see her.
Eventually he pulled away. Sort of. Enough to get her turned around and moving into the apartment so they weren’t standing in her doorway. Sam self-consciously rubbed at the spot on her shirt. Maybe if she covered it with her hand, he wouldn’t notice.
“I missed you this week,” he said, leading her over to the couch. Even though it was her home, it felt completely natural to let him take the lead.
Yeah. She was feeling super subby today. Subby and in need of a lot of reassurance. The hug had been a good start, but she needed more. She also needed to explain herself. Even though she understood some of her actions better, she wasn’t looking forward to it.
She had a reason for why she’d interviewed for the job and hadn’t immediately turned them down, but she didn’t have a good reason for not telling Q about any of it.
“I missed you, too.” Honesty was the best policy, right?
Especially since, while she hadn’t actually lied to him, she hadn’t told him everything.
Honestly and transparency. That’s what Morgan, Kincaid, and Amy had all said.
Kincaid had also suggested talking to Angel, which Sam had done, but Angel’s advice had been, ‘just talk to him, then if he’s still cranky let him put it in your butt. ’
Which… not that Sam objected to the idea, she just didn’t see how it would solve anything.
To her surprise, Q didn’t sit down on the couch.
Instead, he came to a halt directly in front of it, then turned to her.
What he thought of her messy hair and sweatshirt she had no idea, because he was looking straight in her eyes instead of anywhere else.
He let go of her hand and grasped the bottom of her sweatshirt.
“Arms up.”
She complied immediately, though confusion bubbled up inside her.
“Why?” She couldn’t help but asking even though she followed his order. He tugged the sweatshirt off and over her head, revealing the utilitarian bra she was wearing underneath. At least it was clean, even if there was nothing inherently sexy about it.
Being stripped naked the moment he walked in the door had not been what she was expecting, and she felt wildly off kilter.
“It has been suggested to me that part of your problem is that you have trouble feeling vulnerable. We’re going to make you vulnerable before we get to talking, so you’re already in the right mindset.” Q flashed a grin at her before crouching down and pulling down her stretchy pants.
“Who suggested that?”
“Law and Freddy.”
Dammit. They would know. Not the same way Morgan or Noelle might, but they’d both worked with her and knew where she struggled. Which made it really hard to argue against Q stripping her down.
Did she even want to?
Heck. Maybe they had a point. Maybe it would be easier to talk when she was already feeling vulnerable.
A few minutes later, she was butt naked and draped over Q’s lap, wondering if she’d made a horrible mistake, though his hand caressing her buttocks was nice.
She wasn’t sure the position made her feel more talkative, although not looking at his face seemed to help while she was explaining why she’d done the interview, even though she didn’t plan on taking the job.
“I know it sounds a little weird to want to know if I have an option so I can reject it, but I needed to know if it was an option, so I could weigh it against my other options.” She blew out a breath, wriggling a little as she felt his fingers tapping against her upturned ass cheek, as if he was thinking.
“Especially since I wasn’t exactly being offered any other job options. ”
There was a long silence, and she got the impression he was thinking about what she’d said.
She tried to twist around to see his expression, but it wasn’t exactly the easiest position.
Feeling her movements, he rubbed his hand on her lower back, the other one sweeping over the curve of her ass and down to her thigh, making her body tingle with awareness.
This was the first time she’d ever been over his lap where he didn’t have an erection.
It didn’t feel sexual, it felt intimate.
Also, a little intimidating since she was pretty sure he wouldn’t hesitate to spank her if he thought she’d earned it.
That had the effect of making her very invested in explaining herself.
“I’ll be honest, I can’t say I understand it. It doesn’t particularly make sense to me… but I get that it’s how you feel and how you process things, so I can accept it.” Q patted her bottom gently, as if in encouragement.
She bit back her lip against trying to explain it further, because she knew it wasn’t how he did things, so he might never get it.
That he accepted what she needed was what was important.
She’d probably never understand how he could make a decision without considering every side of every single option.
“The real question is, why didn’t you tell me about the interview and the offer? Why not let me know it happened?”
“I don’t know.” Even as she said the words, she knew they were a mistake, and she shrieked when his hand came down hard on her ass. “Ouch!”
“Try again.”
Q
Rubbing his hand over the spot he’d just spanked on Sam’s ass, Q had to admit he liked this way of talking. He felt a lot calmer. There was a lot to be said for having a serious discussion with a subbie while she was over your lap.
He didn’t entirely understand why Sam felt the need to make her decision the way she had, but he understood it felt necessary to her.
That being said, he wasn’t going to accept ‘I don’t know’ as an answer for why she hadn’t talked to him about it. Even if the answer was that she hadn’t trusted him or she hadn’t wanted him influencing her decision, he wanted to be able to talk about that.
Sam huffed out a breath of air.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d say.”
“So, you didn’t want to know what I’d say.”
There was a moment of silence.
“That’s fair. I didn’t want to know what you’d say,” she confessed. “If you asked me to stay that would have factored hugely into my decision, but I also didn’t want to make an important life-changing decision for a guy. I didn’t want to be that girl.”
Q gave her ass a little squeeze.
“Gorgeous, I don’t think you could ever be that girl.
Though I would also like to point out there is absolutely nothing wrong with including your significant other in life-changing decisions and taking their feelings into account.
I know we haven’t been ‘together’ that long, but I am completely serious about you.
I want a future with you. Whether that future is here or somewhere else. ”
“You can’t just up and move for me!”
“Why not?”
His fingers traced down her crease, brushing over her anus, down to her pussy, making her squirm in a way that had nothing to do with her protest. His cock was starting to harden, whereas before he’d been too focused on trying to understand her. Now he was getting turned on.
“I make my decisions based on what makes me happy. You make me happy.”
“All your friends are here.”
“So are yours. We can make new friends together. The ones we already have could come visit.”
“We haven’t been together long enough for you to be making these kinds of decisions just for me.”
While he kind of agreed on the length of time thing, there was an odd note in her voice, and something bothered him about her words.
“I wouldn’t be making the decision for you. I’d be making it for me. I would want to be with you because you are who I see my future with. I can do what I do from anywhere. I’m lucky that way.”
“But you can’t throw away everything else you have here for me.”
“Sure, I can if I want to. You don’t get to make that decision for me.” He gave her ass a swat for emphasis.
“I’m not worth that!”
As soon as she half-shouted the words, she clapped her hands over her mouth, but it was far too late.
They hung in the air, and Q finally understood why she’d kept him out of the loop.
While part of her had known, deep down, he would want to go with her if she moved, she hadn’t wanted to hear him say it.
Hadn’t wanted to admit it even to herself.
Because for some reason, she was insecure, felt unworthy, and she was anything but.
“Okay good. Now that we’ve identified the problem, we can work on fixing it.
I think the first thing we’re going to do is make sure that you understand that you don’t get to decide what I think you’re worth.
So, what’s going to happen now is you’re going to say, ‘Q thinks I’m worth moving for’ and I’m going to spank you until I think it sounds like you mean it. ”