Chapter 13 Daniel
Chapter thirteen
Daniel
Idismissed Cass a while ago and closed up shop.
I check my watch nervously. I hate being in these stuffy suits, but Cass insists it maintains our image as wealthy business owners and is good advertising.
I pull off my tie and shrug off my suit jacket before popping open the top button and rolling up my sleeves.
If I’m going to be cleaning, I at least want to be marginally comfortable.
The lock clicks, and in walks Nell. My Nell.
My beautiful, sweet, tired Nell. I’ve got to convince her to quit this job.
She should be sleeping, not driving or bussing?
Fuck, I need to fix that too. She shouldn’t be commuting halfway across the city to clean my club.
I make a mental note to ask Cass what company we use for this service.
She looks me up and down and curses low under her breath.
I look down to see what she sees. The top three buttons of my shirt are open because I got hot, and one side of my dress shirt is untucked.
“I can’t do this...” she murmurs as she turns around and walks out.
“Wait! Nell!” I rush out the door after her and gently grab her arm. “What happened?”
She won’t meet my eyes, but her cheeks and the tip of her nose are pink. I get lost in the constellation of familiar freckles that I mapped the night she was in my arms. They’re fucking gorgeous on her. But she’s rigid, tight, angry?
I dip my head. “Talk to me, Nell. What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she grumbles through clenched teeth.
“Something’s happened between texting you yesterday and this morning. Please. I want this to work with you, but you have to tell me when I do something wrong.”
Her eyes dart to my left hand. And that’s when I realize what’s on her face. It’s a mixture of hurt and jealousy.
My smug smile returns.
“Go on... ask me.”
Stormy green eyes find mine.
“Ask you what?” She’s vibrating with anger beneath my hands.
I widen my eyes, imploring her to remember.
“Don’t you have a question... you know... for your friend?”
Understanding strikes, and her face softens.
But she stubbornly refuses to ask.
So, I do it instead. Adopting a high-pitched girly voice, trying to imitate her, I ask, “So, Daniel, girlfriend? Fiancé? Wife? Asking for a friend...”
She rolls her eyes at me and huffs.
“Why, thank you for asking, Penelope,” I tease.
“No. You can tell your friend: No girlfriend. No fiancé. No situationship. No one thinking we’re anything, where I keep it intentionally vague.
No friends with benefits. No women in my life whatsoever except for my coworkers.
And I have a strict rule about coworkers.
” I drop my voice and pull her closer to me.
We never got a chance to talk about what we wanted from each other. So, I’m happy that she’s upset about it. That she seems jealous. But she’s not done. She still won’t meet my eyes.
“But there’s more...”
She huffs out another annoyed breath. “I couldn’t sleep last night because I was thinking if the cum-soaked sheets I clean were any of yours,” she admits quietly, her voice strained with pain.
I wrap my arms around her.
“I’ve never used any of the rooms with someone else. I haven’t touched another woman since this one girl in a private lesson stole my damn heart when she left.”
She looks up at me, shocked. “What do you mean, with someone else?”
I wince. Please don’t let this be a deal-breaker. “I’ve put on a couple... solo performances...”
Her eyes get a faraway look in them as she works out what I mean.
“Fuck,” she says on a sigh.
“But I’ll stop them if you want me to. No one gets to see this anymore than you. If that’s what you want.” I pull back to watch her face.
“I think I want to watch,” she confesses, still sounding dazed.
“I’ll put on a show for you right now if you want.”
She shakes her head. “I want to watch people watch you.”
I nod slowly, wrapping my head around my kinkier-than-I-thought Nell.
I escort her inside and set her bag down on the counter. “And you?” I ask.
“Me?”
“Any boyfriend? Fiancé? Husband? Asking for me now, not a friend.”
Her smile is shy, and I know I made the right decision by crashing her work shift. I had debated whether it was too pushy, but if she can’t get time off, I want to spend time with her working.
She shakes her head. “No one else for me, either. I got busy with work and being a mom, and dating never seemed worth it. I was content.”
“Were?”
“I’d had one magical, incredible day with a man, and I just knew no one would be able to top that. So, that memory kept me warm at night.”
I pull her against me again, tracing my thumb down her lower lip. Getting to touch her again feels like a fever dream.
“Can I kiss you?”
She pushes off of me gently. “I have work to do.”
I let her go and clap my hands together. “Great. Kiss after work.”
She laughs, and it loosens a little of the tightness in my chest.
“Oh, I brought this for you. I was going to leave it on your desk because I didn’t know when I’d get to see you again, and I thought you should have it.
” She reaches into her bag and shuffles things for a bit until she finds what she’s looking for and hands it to me.
It’s a worn composition notebook with corners and edges of pages sticking out of it.
I swallow, suddenly dizzy. I know this is the diary she kept for me.
I’m not sure I’m ready for it. So, I place it on the counter.
“Thank you. I’ll read it when I can get home and ugly cry in private.
” I pull her to me again. “But before we get to work, I need you to know what I want. Alright? And then you can tell me what you can give me. You’re it for me, Nell.
You’re endgame for me. I want to date you.
I want to be your boyfriend, fiancé, and husband.
I want the two of you to move in with me.
I want to make you that stay-at-home mom and pop out however many more kids you want.
I want to feed you, and spoil you, and provide for you.
After you, it could never be anyone else.
But I understand if this is too much for you right now, and you want to try on bits and pieces of what I want, or none of it at all. ”
I’ve stunned her into silence. Her eyes dart between mine, searching. But before she can spiral, I release her.
“Okay, boss. Put me to work. Where do you normally start?”
I look around the club. Our servers mostly tidy up the bar area once their shifts are over, so I’m imagining in the rooms.
She clears her throat. “Uh... I usually set the sheets to laundry first.”
“Great. You have a basket or something?”
She laughs. “You have a basket.”
“I do?”
She laughs again before leading me to a utility closet I’m sure I’ve never been in before.
Sure enough, there’s a washing machine, a drying machine, and a large laundry cart on wheels that I think I’ve seen in some hotels.
“Right then,” I say, grabbing the edge of the cart and wheeling it to room one.
She pops on a pair of gloves and removes all the floggers, while I strip the sheets and pillowcases off of the bed.
“You know, I never really wondered how we clean those things.” Guests are encouraged to bring their own toys, or we offer new toys still in their original packages for purchase, but whips and floggers get cleaned and reused since they’re never inserted anywhere.
“No?” she asks, breaking out a spray from a tote she’d grabbed.
“It’s a toy cleaner,” she says, waving the can at me. “Harsh enough to kill any bacteria or virus, but gentle enough not to irritate once it dries.”
“Huh,” is all I can say as I wait for her to spray each item down, flip it over and spray the underside.
“I let them air dry, and by the time we come back around to room one with fresh bedding, I wipe them down and store them. Pretty simple.”
“You are amazing.”
She scoffs. “I’m a janitor at a sex club. Hardly amazing.”
“Speaking of, how long have you worked here? I can’t believe we’ve been under the same roof.”
“Two months. I moved back in with my parents when my dad got sick to help out, but we found out the entire back porch needs to be redone because of termites, so we needed to raise ten thousand dollars. Saw an ad for a cleaning position. Turned out to be here,” she says easily, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
I’m still in awe over the universe putting us together again when she pipes up.
“So, you’re co-owner of a sex club... how did that happen?”
I smile at the memory. “Dec, Harry and I grew up in the same social circles. We were at a polo match, grumbling about the stupidity of paying a hundred K to dress up and be seen by other people paying a hundred K for a charity that probably didn’t even exist, when Dec got into a heated argument with his parents.
His sister is gay, and his parents didn’t approve.
That got us on the conversation of sexual freedom and kinks.
” I lower my voice. “Turns out, after you, I discovered what a pleasure Dom is.”
Her wide green eyes find mine in the mirror. She swallows, so I continue.
“A pleasure Dom is someone who gets off on providing pleasure to their partner,” I continue.
I stare her down, unblinking. I know she’s remembering the sandwich, the massage in the hot tub, and I’m hard again, thinking about all the ways I could bring her pleasure.
“Dec and Harry are different kind of Doms, too, but Dec didn’t have a safe place to play where it wouldn’t get leaked to the papers, and Harry... Harry felt really guilty about what he wanted to do, until he learned about kink and CNC.”
“CNC?”
“Consensual non-consent.”
She spins on me. “Rape?”
I shake my head. “No. There are rules in place, and the partner wants to be taken by force. It can be liberating to have that choice taken from you, but it’s all spoken about beforehand. Rules, expectations, safe words.” can tell this is overwhelming her.
“We provide a place where people can explore their sexuality safely, in a controlled environment with NDAs and written contracts.”
That seems to reassure her, and so we move on to Room Two.
“You said you work from home?”
“I’m an in-home caregiver to my stepmom. She’s been bedridden with anxiety and depression since my dad passed...”
“I am sorry to hear about that. I know you two were close.” She gives me a sad, appreciative smile.
“Thank you. I get a small pension from the state for caring for her, and get to stay home with Danny, so it works out.”
“And is that what you want to do?”
She’s running herself ragged. I want her to quit everything and be my stay-at-home-wife, but I need her to take that path one stone at a time. Or maybe her goals have changed, and this is what she wants.
She shakes her head ‘no’, but says, “Yes. I made a promise to my dad before he passed. And this is how I keep my word.” I know enough body language to know that the head shake was her body saying ‘no’, while her mouth said ‘yes’. There’s more there that I need to unpack.
“What did you promise your dad?”
“To keep the family together. I think he was afraid we’d grow distant and that I would move back in with Cara. That no one would be there to take care of Gen, because Grace and Chastity, my stepsisters, are... finding their own way in life...”
She finishes spraying down the toys while I strip the bed, and we move to the next room.
This is going to be harder than I thought. She’s staying with her stepmom and sisters out of a sense of duty she has to her father. It’s not going to be easy to convince her to break that. So, I leave that subject for another day.
“Tell me about Danny? I’d like to spend time with her someday too.”
She smiles and is instantly more alive. She loves our daughter with all of her heart. And it heals something inside of me. She was born to be a mother. And after mine couldn’t be bothered to notice her own daughter getting sick, it warms my stomach to know without a doubt that Nell would notice.
Nell would notice everything and burn the world down for our daughter.