Chapter 11 #4
I honestly don’t know what else to say. I came into this conversation believing that Mac’s a good man, and a good Dom. Nothing he’s said has changed my mind. He clearly feels a huge amount of remorse for the way he treated his ex when they were teenagers. I won’t hold that against him.
But I also came into the conversation believing that Mac was over his ex, and now I’m not so sure.
Is he trying to recreate their relationship with me?
Did he want someone so much younger than him because he thinks he can mold me, make me the submissive he wanted Amy to be? Because I’m no one’s damn substitute.
It’s something I chew over long after we return to my shop and I sit down to work on the cityscape designs.
I bounce on my toes, once, twice. Loosening up, finding my center. Then I settle back into guard and brace myself. Mac pounds the combination into the pads I’m holding. Left cross, right cross, left body hook, left hook, duck, left cross, right cross.
As he goes to do the kick, he does the same thing he keeps doing: putting his weight on his left foot before he rocks back onto his right.
I sweep his leg.
Mac lands on his ass on the mats for the third time tonight.
“Fuck,” he hisses through the mouth guard.
“Weight on your back leg, Sir,” I remind him, with a grin through the pads I’m still holding up, because Kru likes nothing better than to whap my face with his damn pool noodle as soon as I let my guard down.
Showing Mac consideration, because of his age or because it’s his first time at the gym or because of that mantle of authority Mac always wears, which Kru never shows me, Kru offers Mac a hand up off the mats.
“She’s a smartass,” Kru says with a huge smile splitting his round, brown face. “But she’s right. Weight on your back leg.”
Mac rolls his shoulders and lifts his gloves again. I brace and absorb the impact as Mac hammers the combination into the pads again.
The lesson lasts for ninety minutes: long enough for our Kru to beat us, or have us beat each other, into sweaty, jelly-muscled submission.
Although I like Kru a lot and have taken weekly lessons from him for over three years, I don’t know him outside of his gym, so I don’t know if he’s a Dom in his personal life, but he’s a complete and utter sadist in the gym, so he’d be a fearsome one if he is.
As the class of twelve lines up to bow at the end of the lesson, even Mac is looking fatigued and that man has insane amounts of stamina, as my ass can attest. Once we’ve shown respect, Kru dismisses us and walks toward Mac. He holds out his hand and Mac shakes.
“Happy to have you back any time. Anyone who can get a ‘sir’ out of the smartass over there is good people.”
Kru throws a wolfish grin at me, which Mac echoes. Fuck. I do not need the two of them ganging up on me.
I roll my eyes, and from the thunderous expressions I get back, I’m not sure who the gesture annoys more.
“R-E-P-E-C-T,” I say. “That’s how I spell respect, sirs. Meet you out front in ten.”
Mac unwraps a sweaty towel from around his neck and snaps it at my ass as I scamper off to the women’s locker room as fast as my noodle legs can carry me. I hear Kru’s bass laugh boom out behind me as Mac lets him in on the joke.
As I reach the dubious safety of the locker room, Scary Manda, as everyone calls her under their breath, steps out of one of the two showers.
I don’t think Mac will come in here to teach me a lesson, but I’m not entirely sure and the uncertainty makes my pulse race faster than the previous ninety minutes of kickboxing.
I nod to her as I shed my T-shirt, boxing shorts, and underwear, toss them into my “Fight Like A Girl” bag and step into the stall she’s just vacated.
She leans against the plastic shower door and props her chin on her fist, which she can do because she’s six-two, the tallest biological woman I’ve met.
Her height makes her punch-reach absolutely terrifying and I’ve never sparred with her personally, thank the Benevolence, because I probably wouldn’t be standing here today if I did.
“Is he taken?” she asks without preamble.
Is that a trick question? “Uh, yes?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
The only thing I’m not sure of is what I’m going to do if she decides to take out the competition. “I’m sure. Sorry.”
Why am I apologizing? She’s asking if she can horn in on my damn Dom. I should be angry, but I’m too worn out by the kickboxing and everything that’s happened over the last few days to work up much emotion.
“He’s not exactly a spring chicken,” she says.
She’s right. Mac’s closer to her age, which I’d peg at early forties if I had to guess.
She doesn’t look it. She’s in absolutely tip-top shape, the best female fighter at the gym, and has great bone structure so she has one of those ageless faces, but I vaguely remember a couple of people from the gym going to her fortieth birthday party shortly after I joined, and she has a few gray strands in her short, black hair. “Isn’t he a little old for you?”
Man, she doesn’t pull her punches emotionally, either.
“I’ve always liked older guys,” I tell her with a grin as I lather up. “They know how to find a clit on the first try.”
She laughs and moves off and I step under the spray to rinse off, but her words linger like a bruise long after we return to my apartment.
Mac notices, because he’s a fucking mind-reading Dom and I can’t get away with anything now.
He doesn’t mention it as we scarf down his firecracker chicken, which lives up to its name.
We don’t talk about anything heavy while we eat, just our plans for the weekend, which don’t involve going to see his daughter until Sunday, so I’m fine for my meeting with the club chairman.
Mac tells me not to plan anything for Saturday night, so I figure there’s a date on the horizon, which warms my belly more than the food.
But he doesn’t let it go, either. He waits until we’re curled together on my bed, with him reading his thick hardback—which turns out to be Michelle Obama’s autobiography, much to my surprise, because I’d kind of pegged him for a Republican—in his ridiculously hot glasses and me sketching cityscapes, which are coming together better than I deserve for how distracted I got during our walk.
He turns a page, kisses my temple, and murmurs, “Are you quiet because you’re caught up in that design, or because of what I told you this afternoon, or because I’m horning in on your relationship with Lewis?”
It takes me a moment to figure out who Lewis is. Oh, Kru. I don’t ever think of him by his name, but it figures that he’d introduce himself to Mac that way.
“It’s nothing,” I say, sketching with more determination.
“Real talk, Bren.”
Oh, fuck. Now I’m in for it.
“We don’t need real talk, Sir. It’s not what you told me this afternoon.
I’m grateful you told me why your marriage ended because if your ex had blindsided me with it, it would have fucking hurt.
Now I’m prepared. So, I appreciate that.
And it really is nothing. If you must know, it’s something someone said to me after class.
It’s not a big deal. I’ll be more perky.
See?” I give him a huge, fake grin over my shoulder. “Perky.”
He snorts and takes off his glasses to look closely at me. “Who was it and what did they say?”
I sigh. He’s not going to let it go. Of course, he’s not. He’s a Dom. Why did I want one of my own again?
“The really tall lady at the gym? We call her Scary Manda because she has this utterly terrifying reach. She asked me if we were together and when I said we were, she said you were kind of old for me.”
“I see. What’d you say?” He shifts so I have to look at him or make it really obvious that I’m avoiding his gaze.
“That I like older guys because they’re better in bed.”
Mac chuckles and thumbs my chin gently, keeping my eyes on him.
“I’m staying out of the experience versus enthusiasm debate, but I want to say one thing, girl.
No one gets a vote in what’s between us other than you and me.
If I’m too old and boring for you, tell me.
Otherwise, I’m not interested in what anyone else has to say about us. ”
His words spread over me like T-Relief on a bruise. “You’re definitely not too old or too boring for me, Sir. I’m really . . . comfortable with you.”
And that’s the truth, despite whatever doubts are chewing on me.
He shifts me back around and puts his glasses back on. Heat shoots straight up through my belly. He looks like a stern professor in those glasses. Why is that so hot?
“Makes me sound like an old pair of shoes,” he says, nuzzling my temple.
“I’ve had a pair of Docs since I was seventeen that are my favorite thing in the world, Sir. I’d kill for those boots.”
He chuckles. “Do I rank above or below your old shit-kickers, girl?”
I balance my stylus between my fingers as I hold them up to pinch the air. “Little bit below. I mean, it’s close. They’ve never given me multiple orgasms. But they are my favorite thing in the world.”
Mac’s chest rumbles with laughter against my back. “Guess I’ll have to work a little harder on those orgasms. I don’t know if my ego can handle ranking below ten-year-old leather.”
I twist my neck until I can nip his firm, bristly jaw. “You don’t seem to have a lot of ego, Sir. Particularly for a guy. And a Dom.”
He shrugs against my back and adjusts his arm around me. “Navy taught me humility the hard way. Egotistical assholes don’t last long in the service.” He snorts. “Unless they’re officers. Then they just get promoted quickly.”
“Weren’t you an officer?”
With that cloak of authority, he must have been. And I’m sure Emily said Logan worked for him.
“Nope, I never went to college or officer training school. Officers need a degree. I enlisted as soon as I finished high school and worked my way up as a gunner’s mate.”
“Is that what it sounds like? Making things go boom?” I ask.
“Yes, girl. Just what it sounds like.”
“Emily said Logan worked on submarines. Did you?”
“Mm-hmm. Subs when I was stationed in the Atlantic and a cruiser when I was stationed in the Gulf of Aden.”
“Where’s that, Sir?”
“Off Africa.”
I mull that over.
“Why did you move from the Atlantic to Africa? Seems like a long way.”
Mac grumbles. “I was tapped for the Gulf because I had previous experience with pirates.”
“Pirates? Like Jack Sparrow-pirates?”
“Definitely not like Jack Sparrow. The pirates I tangled with in the Caribbean were hijacking passenger ships, ransoming the men back to their families and selling the women and children to human traffickers. Not at all fun pirates.”
I twist around in his lap so I can look into his eyes, because his voice has gone low and hollow. When he was talking about his ex, he sounded sad and remorseful, but not like this. His marriage may have broken his heart, but losing his men ripped up Mac’s soul.
“Is that how you lost your men, fighting pirates?”
“Nine of them, yes.”
“But you stopped them, the pirates?”
“We did.”
“That seems pretty heroic to me, Sir.”
“Ah.” Mac reels me in and kisses me on the forehead. “Is that what you’re thinking, girl? That your Dom’s a hero? I’m not. I was just doing my job. Following orders.”
“Pretty sure that’s ninety percent of being a hero.” I say, pushing my tablet aside so I can curl into him and slide my arms around his neck.
“Yeah? What’s the other ten percent?”
“Giving a shit.”
Mac takes off his glasses and folds them into his book to mark his place. Then he crushes me to his chest and drowns me in kisses.