41. Dominic
41
DOMINIC
Her skin is so soft, so delicate, I don’t want to stop touching her, but I must. I drop my hand and cut away from her gaze. She’s staring at me with sparks of lust in her eyes, chewing her plump bottom lip and basically driving me fucking crazy.
I reach for the wine to top off her glass and distract us both. I’m not even sure she’s aware of what she’s doing to me. First, she asks that poignant question, and then?—
Fuck.
What I really want to do is show her. Lift her onto this counter and ghost over every inch of skin she’s got exposed with my lips. Warm breath flowing on cooler flesh, spreading goosebumps like wildfire over her body. Strip her slowly until she’s only in a pair of panties that’s probably already so wet there’ll be no resistance sliding a finger into her tight pussy.
I want to feel where she’s at. Smell her need. Taste her. I want to wrap her legs around my hips, carry her to the bedroom, tie her up, and slowly explore her body, tearing down her every last defense so gently, she’ll offer herself to me. And then I’ll make her come. Again and again. But softly, with care, and on her terms. Terms she hasn’t even discovered yet.
Bar her experience with Franco Fiore, this woman is all innocence, stymied due to what happened one night long ago. She’s never been a prostitute, otherwise she wouldn’t have any of these questions. I’m starting to suspect the tattoo on her lower belly is a fake, and I don’t like the segue this thought leads me to, so I brush it off.
The question is really when did she step into character, and when did she slip out of it, subconsciously? And what role is she playing?
“I’ll start the sauce,” she murmurs as she turns away to the stove, leaving her wine untouched.
“Yes. The pasta is ready.”
It’s quiet between us as she pan-fries the pancetta. I wrap up the pasta and do a preliminary job of wiping down the counter. The space fills with pancetta’s smokey flavor, and I pad over to watch what she’s doing.
I place the mountain of finely grated Pecorino next to her. As the water is boiling, I lower the pasta bundles into it and shake the pot. “This is going to be quick.”
“I’m ready for you,” she says as she stirs the pancetta.
Are you, sweetheart? I want to taste the slope where her neck glides into her shoulder, squeeze her ass, but I need to distance myself from this woman. From this tug-of-war tension between us. This maddening desire I already have building for her, which she’s only blazed into fire with her questions.
I force my focus on the food. I feel weirdly at home and awkward at the same time. I’ve never cooked like this with or for a woman before. As if it’s a date. As if she’s my girlfriend. Or my wife. If she were any of these things, my hands would’ve been all over her by now.
My life is so compartmentalized that everything is in a box, stacked in such a way I know exactly where what is, contained, ordered, untouchable—safe—until I decide to pull it closer. Women have their own container, and they are never allowed to come out like this.
The pasta hardly takes two minutes to cook al dente , and knowing it will soften more in the sauce, I turn off the heat and drain the water. Ariana steps to the side as I reach over with the dripping colander and slide the pasta into the pancetta mix. She’s prepped the egg yolks and now stirs them in with the cheese.
I’m on standby with the pepper mill, and a minute later, the dish is done.
She smiles up at me. “It’s as if all Italians are born with this recipe programmed into our minds.”
“Probably,” I say, handing her two bowls.
She ladles the pasta into the bowls, and we sit down at the kitchen counter to eat.
I twirl up a first bite on my fork. “Here, taste if it’s good.” I’m playing with her, taking things maybe a bit too far, but I can’t stop myself.
It’s a neat bite, and she opens for me, trusting, her eyes locked with mine, those sparks of lust still trapped in her gaze.
“Hmm,” she moans as she shifts in her seat. “It’s delicious.”
“Good.” I dig in, knowing I should stop. But the whole night stretches out in front of us, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. Someone needs to keep an eye on her, and I don’t trust the guards. Even worse: I don’t trust myself.
After a few minutes of quiet eating, she takes a cautious sip of wine. This one likes her Dutch courage, but she still has to spill the real beans behind her day spent with Portia.
“Do you…” she starts and trails off again, staring down at her food, fork still parked in the fettuccine.
“Do I?” I prompt, watching as she slowly turns the fork, wrapping the ribbons around the prongs like I wrapped my ties around her last night.
“Do you tie women up when you…” She glances up at me, pink blooming on her cheeks. “When you do what you do?”
Fuck. Neither of us is letting go tonight, are we? With a soft groan, I give up.
Submissives usually have a lot of questions when they start out, but training subs isn’t my thing. I’m not in a regular Dom/sub relationship and have never wanted one, whatever the outside world might think. My approach is almost sterile, but it works for me and keeps things clear and simple. All I need are reference lines, guiding me where to go and where to stop.
Everybody is unique, and I’m the outlier with a lot of things, but it’s better for all parties not to get involved in something long-term.
As for Ariana, being restrained is the one thing she’s been objecting to from the start.
“Yes,” I tell her. “They’re tied up, but it isn’t about control for me.”
“No?”
“It’s a different dynamic, Ariana.” I’ve never had to explain this to someone before, but she’s asked, so. “It helps people relax because they don’t need to do anything. They don’t need to perform. They only get to focus on sensation, on desire…and it helps some people learn to trust and let go of fear.”
She’s quiet for a long time as my answer just hangs in the space. Something I said hit a nerve, because she reaches for her cheek where she surreptitiously wipes at a tear she hopes I don’t notice.
“Sweetheart—” Fuck. If she’s going to start crying, I’m going to pull her into my arms, and then every part of her is going to test my already frayed resolve.
“But what about you?” she asks, her voice on edge. “They don’t get to touch you, and that seems to be key to this whole thing you do. You got hurt, too, you know.”
Her question is a punch to the gut, so profound, it almost winds me. Nobody has ever asked me this or even considered me in this equation.
“Yes… But that’s because nobody gets to touch me.” There are rules on both sides.
Except this woman has been bending my rules one by one, scraping through my layers, hitting me hard. I can add that, in fact, they don’t get to see me either, but she hasn’t asked, so I’m not sharing until she does.
“Don’t you like being touched?” she asks, glancing at me.
I can still feel her fingertips exploring every inch of scarred tissue between patches of healthy skin. I’ve longed for more of it the whole day, of this thing I crave to give others but deny myself.
“Of course I like being touched, sweetheart,” I say softly. In fact, I love it, but— “Women’s hands roam, and the first place they go are my sides, my back, and then they feel my scars and—” They get put off, revolted, or worse, they get curious. “They have questions. Questions I can’t answer without dragging them into my world.”
And once they’re in, they want out, and there’s only one out for most of us.
“I get it,” she says, and her tone is defeatist. “Questions are the worst.”
No, they’re not. Not getting answers is ten times worse. But the worst is getting the answer you don’t want. The answer that breaks the world. The answer that’s going to break us. I can sense it hovering around us, waiting to shatter our bubble. I don’t want to know what comes next.
“I’m so scared that it will hurt…like the first time,” she whispers then, shrinking in her chair, curling into herself as if the memory of that night has strings attached to every part of her body, her heart, her soul, and it pulls tight towards where Franco hurt her the most.
How broken are we? I recall her question, and it shreds me afresh.
“I know, sweetheart. And that’s what we work on.” I brush a knuckle along her arm. She isn’t the first woman who has shared these fears with me. And fuck knows what I’m thinking, but it’s as if we’re negotiating already. “I know pain. I know pleasure. I only go where you let me in, sweetheart, and we test those limits slowly.”
“And you’ll never hurt me?”
I push my plate to the side. “There’s no pleasure for me in pain. Least of all yours. You know I’ll never hurt you.”