Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
AUSTIN
“What’s this from?” he asks later, finger trailing over a scar that runs through my damp eyebrow. I don’t care for this game, but he made me come three times in a row during our shower, so I’m especially amenable right now.
It’s from Dad knocking me into the table when I was twelve, but I can’t exactly tell him that.
“Fist fight with Greg Anderson in seventh grade.” I think it’s the same lie I told Kenny back then.
Or at least close enough that it wouldn’t make them suspicious if it ever came up. Not that it would, but just in case.
“Always knew I hated him for a reason,” Maddox claims and I snort. His fingers keep trailing down my body, but I do my best to ignore them. Maybe I can change the subject.
“You hated him because he made fun of Kenny’s braces,” I remind him.
“That, too. When’d you get these done?”
He circles my nipple and it tightens, which makes him grin. I catch him by his forehead before he can duck down and wrap his lips around it and he pouts like a little boy. “When I was sixteen,” I tell him, pushing his head away.
“They let you pierce your nipples at sixteen?” he asks incredulously.
“You can get anything pierced at sixteen if you know a guy who pierces things and wants to fuck you. Two-out-of-ten, don’t recommend. The guy or the piercing experience.”
My joke doesn’t land. Or at the very least, Maddox doesn’t laugh. I tip my chin to look up at him, but his mouth is tight. The playfulness of the moment is gone, and I can’t quite figure out why. He never cared about me bringing up prior partners before—other than his brother. He clears his throat.
“Were you with him for long?” he asks, overly casual.
“I wasn’t with him at all. It was a one-time thing. Just, like… an exchange, I guess.”
He nods and his fingers return to their journey across my skin, but the atmosphere is different and it has me feeling a bit insecure.
“How old was he?”
Ah, okay. There it is. I shrug, even though I’m very aware of how old he was and why Maddox would have an issue with it. He lets me lie.
“Did he do this one, too?” he plays with the star dangling from my navel. It tickles.
“No, did that one myself.”
Maddox snorts, burying his face in my wet hair and splaying his palm across my stomach. He’s hidden there a lot since we got out of the shower. I think he appreciates that I smell like his shampoo.
“Of course you did,” he says after a second. “I don’t know how Kenny managed to get through her life unpierced with you as her best friend.”
“Who said Kenny’s unpierced? Just cause you can’t see em, doesn’t mean–”
“Nope,” he cuts me off, his other hand reaching around to cover my mouth. “No talking about my sister like that, and especially not while we’re in bed.”
I nip his palm and he hisses, pulling it back. “That’s two of your siblings you’ve forbidden me from speaking of in your bed now.”
“I mean, I’d prefer you didn’t bring up any of them while we’re in bed.”
“Well, now you’re just being domineering.”
He pinches my stomach. Before I can retaliate, his finger is brushing over another scar much lower. “What’s this one?”
I suck in a breath. I didn’t really care for this game to begin with, but I really, really hate it now. This isn’t a casual fuck buddy type of conversation. “It’s from a surgery I had.”
Maddox stiffens beneath me, his finger finding the twin scar about ten inches from the first. I don’t give his mind time to wander, not sure what it’d come up with.
“I had a procedure done when I was nineteen. A bilateral salpingectomy.”
“Should I know what that is?” he asks, and it would sound dismissive if not for his genuine tone.
“It means I’m infertile. I had a procedure done to ensure I couldn’t have kids.”
The air is heavy. I’m glad I can’t see his face. He’ll probably ask why. Probably tell me I’m so young. Or maybe he’ll make it about him, since he doesn’t really seem to get the concept of casual. Maybe he’ll mourn the loss of the three kids he’d envisioned for us.
“Was it…” He clears his throat. “Was it a choice you made for personal reasons or was there something… wrong?”
“A personal choice.” I can’t tell him the real reason I made the decision, so I stick to one of the many, smaller reasons. “I just don’t want kids. I’m not very good with them and, if I’m being honest, I don’t see any positives of having them.”
He snorts and it takes me by surprise. I roll so that I can see his face and he adjusts me how he wants me from there.
“Stop trying to pull me on top of you,” I argue, pushing his arms away.
He huffs and pouts and I’m taken aback by his cavalier response to the bombshell I just dropped on him.
“You don’t care that I can’t have kids?”
“Not if it was something you chose for yourself rather than something you had to get done for health reasons, no,” he says, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.
“We’re casual, Tex. Remember?” His voice is playful, but there’s a bit of resentment there.
I act on the playfulness, rolling my eyes and tugging the hair on his chest. I won’t touch the resentment with a ten-foot pole.
“I know that, but I also know you probably still have this little fantasy in your head that one day we won’t be casual anymore, and if that fantasy includes children, you should get rid of it. The procedure’s irreversible.”
He hums, hand slipping down to rest on the small of my back. “So I can fantasize you’ll be mine one day and that’s fine, but I can’t fantasize about our little redheaded gremlins running around because that’s too unrealistic? What I’m hearing is that I have a shot at the first part.”
“You don’t have a shot at either part,” I tell him through gritted teeth and with narrowed eyes, but he still grins.
“At risk of scaring you off when you’ve already got one foot out the door, I don’t care that you can’t have kids, Austin. I’ve never really imagined myself as a dad, either. I’m too impatient.”
I don’t think that’s the truth at all. I’ve seen him at Sunday dinners with Callie, and I know how he treats his sisters.
He’s as patient as they come, he just expects competence comparable to their skill set.
He wouldn’t expect Callie to know how to saddle a horse, but he damn sure expects his ranch hands to.
If she walked up to him, looking clueless, he’d help her through it the best he could.
But if someone working for him did the same thing, he’d probably fire them on the spot.
“Your poor mama’s never gonna get grandkids,” I tell him, turning back over to settle against his side again, resting my head on his shoulder. He’s very comfortable, which is annoying.
His fingers thread through my hair as he laughs quietly. “We keep telling her Tyler and Tate are her best bet. You gotta work today?”
I shake my head. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone play with my hair before. At least not since Mom was alive. It’s really soothing.
“Good,” I barely hear him say. I don’t register that I’m falling asleep until I hear him speak again. “Tex?”
“Hmm?”
“This is submission, baby. It’s not me taking your power away from you. It’s you willingly handing me the reins and telling me how hard you want me to pull them. You have every bit of the power in a dynamic like this and there’s no shame in finding peace in it.”
I consider it through that lens. I’m not sure everyone thinks that way, but I believe Maddox does and I believe most dominants probably do.
I had just twisted it into something wicked because I was feeling vulnerable.
More often than not lately, he makes me feel that way through no fault of his own.
We’re getting too close, but I can’t make myself pull away from him again.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He bends down to kiss the top of my head but it’s the only acknowledgment I get that he heard me. His fingers continue their journey through my hair and I shiver, curling closer to him.
Later, I’ll tell myself I only fell back asleep to force him into getting more rest himself. It was entirely unrelated to the hair thing he was doing.
Entirely.
Unrelated.