Chapter 36
RULES
ELOISE
After a wild bout of whatever that was—sex but not intercourse, fucking around, foreplay—Duncan and I sat down to the beautiful meal I’d made. Duncan opened the first of two champagne bottles and we chatted about mundane things.
“Is this normal?” I asked, confused.
“What? Duck?” Duncan asked in response.
“No. Just sitting here after having done what we did? Do we just… coexist?”
Duncan leaned, putting his silverware down. He crossed his arms and stared in a way that made me amorous. He could be downright sexy. I am sure he knew this, so I gave him nothing but resting bitch face back.
“So, whatever we do,” Duncan said. “It’s up to you to. Because I’m a lot bigger than you and, regardless of all I delegate, it is still a massive power imbalance. However, I love the idea that I give you all the control. You invoked a safe word, which… that’s good. Have you done this before?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know what this is?”
“You being a handler.” He chuckled. “In more way than one, Ella, that is what you are. It’s BDSM, if we’re not going to beat around the bush. I like to be subordinated—something you have just discovered—and I know it makes many women uneasy. You don’t—”
I cut him off. “I don’t mind it.”
I wasn’t about to say I liked it yet. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that. It still seemed so overwhelming.
I asked, “This is what gets you off?”
“It can be. Right now, you are everything and then some. But if you don’t like it—”
“No, no,” I said. “I just don’t want to take advantage of you. I feel bad for biting you—and smacking you.”
He gave the biggest grin. “Oh, darling, you don’t need to apologize. I lived for it.”
I flushed bright red.
“What? Don’t be embarrassed! You are brilliant at it.”
“I just… you’re so… you throw your weight around out here—in the normal world. Duncan, what is that about?”
“I like to lose control. I love it, in fact.” Duncan sighed. “I spend all day being in control or assuming I should learn to be. But now, I get to have you tell me what to do. It’s a high. I cannot explain it.”
“So you’ve done this before?”
“In a rare case when someone let me play, sure. Mostly, it’s been a fantasy. One you have granted me. If you continue to let me worship you properly, I will stay quite loyal.”
Worship me. I fought a smile. “You are devilish, Duncan.”
“I know. But you love it, Eloise.”
I smirked. “How does it work when you’re… in love with someone? Is it just something you wall off or?”
“Well, ideally, I’d manage to find a partner kinky enough to tolerate it,” Duncan said. “But I have yet to find someone who could scratch both those itches. In fact, it was one of two reasons my ex probably left.”
“Vanessa?”
Duncan moved uneasily in his chair. He sat his silverware down and dabbed his mouth, as if formulating what he would say.
“Yes. Nessa. She hated it and said it felt demoralizing. I loved her, so I set it aside. I don’t want it to take up my entire life, but it is fun playing. I dunno.”
“What was the other reason?”
Duncan hopped up. “I’m going to pop the other bottle of champs!”
“Duncan, what was the other reason?” I called, worried he wouldn’t return.
He answered, “The press. She saw marrying it as a dangerous proposition. The press tortured her every step of the way. She is a quiet person—a deeply private one. She used to get so wound up. She’s very sensitive—too sensitive for the job.”
“I could see that. You loved her very much? And she broke your heart?”
“Uh, she smashed it into bits a number of times, Ella.”
“Oh?”
“She fucked someone else. It destroyed me.” He topped our glasses, then sipped. “And it was difficult for me to even touch her for about a year after that. Our relationship was a mess. We saw a therapist, believe it or not. I loved her so much that I was willing to try.”
“But that is why you said in the texts about moving past it? It was about you moving past her cheating rather than the inverse?”
He nodded.
“But why not say that, Duncan?”
“Because I loved her—I still do in a way. I’d never take her back. And I’m about to have a front row seat via the media to watch her marry some rich, boring prick. But… I’d never throw her under the bus like that. I know you think I’m a wanker, Miss Mills, but I do have some moral integrity.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that, Duncan. I have respect for you even if sometimes I want to shake you.”
He chortled. “Shake me?”
“Indeed. But… as frustrating as your righteous indignation is for me professionally, it’s also why I like you as a person. I get it. Standing for something can be hard to project to an audience. And a big guy like you? It always comes off angry.”
“I promise you I’m not an angry person. At least, I don’t think of myself that way.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sensitive,” I said. “And it makes you overprotective of those you love. Like, I am pretty sure you would kill anyone who laid a hand on that baby of your cousin’s.”
“Any of Leah’s kids, yes.”
I smiled. “And that is admirable, but it doesn’t translate well. Give me something to work with.”
He let out a long sigh. “I will try.”