Chapter 53 Twenty-Two #2
“You’re welcome. That was a pretty good gift all around,” Rory said with a smirk at Shay, who nodded. Rory dropped on the bed between Kate and Emma. “I probably should’ve just stayed in our bed. If we all fall asleep here, the middle-aged maid will probably have a heart attack.”
Shay chuckled.
“Master Rory, may I ask you a question that’s none of my business?”
Rory smiled. “Is it worth the risk of getting in trouble? You know I won’t punish you, but your master’s lying right there listening.”
Emma nodded. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Go ahead then.”
“This was my second excellent Christmas present,” Emma said, raising her hand so the diamond sparkled in the candlelight.
“You want to know why your friend hasn’t got a diamond yet?”
Emma let her hand drop to her belly. “We were wondering, yes.”
“Both of you, huh? Did you talk about it on the phone?”
“A little.”
“Hmm. I think that’s an understatement,” Rory said, giving her hip a pinch. “She was on the phone with you for over an hour. She missed the kids opening half their presents.”
“The kids?”
“My nieces and nephews.”
“Did she get in trouble for it?”
“Sure,” Rory said.
Emma grimaced. “I’m sorry. We lost track of time. I didn’t realize you were waiting for her.”
“It’s all right,” Rory said, running a finger along the curve of Kate’s ear. “How hard do you think I punished her on Christmas? Not very.”
“So about getting engaged…? You seem to love her a lot,” Emma observed.
“More than life itself,” Rory said softly.
“Then I wonder?”
Rory ran a hand over the stubble on his skull.
“The trouble is that when she stays at my house, I become the whole world for her. If I don’t get up to go to work, she doesn’t leave the bed.
Misses breakfast. Misses class. Misses her study group.
Her answer is, ‘You were here. I couldn’t make myself go. ’”
Emma smiled. “She does love you a little… obsessively. Doesn’t that make her a good sub?”
“She is a great sub. The best. But she’s very Type A.
Some chick online said she scrubbed her Sir’s kitchen floor with a kitchen brush.
You know, one of those dishwashing brushes that’s like two or three inches long?
And this online sub used a toothbrush for the grout between tiles and the corners.
So Katie has to do my kitchen floor that way.
Then, she does the tile in the foyer. Then every one of the bathrooms. Because no one could love their master more than she loves me, so whatever anyone does she has to do more.
Do you know how big my house is? She could spend three days just cleaning a couple rooms if she does it like that, cleaning each tile like it’s a diamond she’s polishing.
I don’t need her to clean at all. I pay a service.
But Kate won’t listen. According to her, it’s never done right.
“Recently, my business partner and I decided to branch out into kids for the new furniture line. Katie had an idea for a website design. I wake up in the middle of the night, and she’s sitting on the floor, working.
I thought she was doing her school work.
In the morning, she showed me her design.
It was fantastic. It had elements of the original site with some additional colors and fonts more appropriate for hip little kids.
“It’s not generic at all. I’d never seen anything like it.
She’d even created a special version of our logo.
I knew everyone would love it. I took her to a meeting to show my partner.
He flipped for it. It’s the kind of work we pay twenty grand for or more.
So I put her on the books as a consultant and wrote her a check.
She wouldn’t cash it. She wanted to give me the design and code as a present.
She actually cried when I threatened to order her to deposit the check.
She can’t afford to buy me expensive gifts, she said.
I have to let her give me something that’s valuable. ”
Rory closed his eyes and shook his head.
“It’s so important to her. So all right.
I let her have her way. But those are the moments when I know I can’t marry her until she finishes school.
Or what will happen? This beautiful, creative girl is going to spend all day scrubbing goddamned floors with a toothbrush to prove how much she loves me? No fucking way.”
“With tiny kitchen and toothbrushes?” Emma echoed, shaking her head. “When she said you told her not to clean the floors, she didn’t mention what kind of brushes she’d used. That’s ridiculous. No wonder you made her stop.”
“Left that part out, did she? I’ll bet she did.
” Rory smiled, showing off strong, white teeth.
“Her next argument was: ‘What if I spill something, Sir?’ So I said, ‘Sure you can clean up the spill.’ Then every day, there’s a spill.
The kitchen floor gleams like it’s got three coats of wax.
It’s shinier than a new car. So I told her, no more.
She’s not even allowed to clean spills. That rule nearly drove her crazy.
She was so paranoid a drop of milk would get on the counter or whatever. ”
“She took the rule literally? Maybe she needs therapy.”
“What she needs is to finish school. What she wants is to be a twenty-four-seven sub. She thinks if she outdoes every submissive who ever lived, I’ll say she can do that all the time. But I know it wouldn’t make her happy.”
“She acts normal in public and at the apartment,” Emma said. “She’s kind of a neat freak, but she would never clean the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.”
“I know. She’d only do that for me, but she’s gotten carried away.
I think this is a phase she’s going through.
Her parents are strange. No one hugs. They’re very formal.
At their place, everything is in perfect order like a creepy Stepford House.
” Rory frowned. “I can’t get used to it.
My parents’ house was a zoo. I’ll tell you one thing.
Kids are much happier living in a zoo where they can climb all over each other and the furniture than in a museum where they can’t smudge anything and no one touches.
I think Katie tries to keep everything spotless because that’s the weird version of love she saw as a kid.
But deep down she’s devoted to me because I love her the way she always needed to be loved.
I kiss her all the time. When she comes into the club, she’s not there for more than a minute before my hands are on her.
At my house, if she’s out of the room for five or ten minutes, I call her back to me. ”
“So, you’re a good match,” Emma said. “Because you’re a little obsessed with her, too.”
“A little?” Shay said.
Rory smirked. “Is it an obsession, do you think?”
“I’m no psychologist, but it seems that way to me,” Emma said. “The only thing is…”
“What?”
“You’ve been together much longer than Shay and I have.
So, Kate feels like if I got a ring for Christmas and she didn’t, it might be because you don’t love her as much as she thought you did.
Or because she’s worn you out lately. That might be why she’s gotten more over the top, trying to be perfect. ”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rory said. “No, wait. You and Shay just got engaged.”
“Yeah, but Kate’s known for six weeks. I told her not to mention it,” Shay said. “I wanted her opinion on the ring.”
Rory’s brows crinkled. “Jesus Christ.”
“It was the advice I got from the guys on my team. If you want to know what style diamond ring your girlfriend wants, ask her best friend. I had no idea Kate would get upset. She seemed fine when we talked about it.”
Rory sighed. “It’s not your fault. I should’ve just let her take a semester off to play the full-time sub.
I know her. She’ll get bored. The problem will be if she senses I like having her with me all the time; it’ll be hard for her to backtrack and return to school.
And I’m sure I will like it. I fucking hate when she leaves. ”
“Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t,” Emma said sympathetically.
“Fuck it,” Rory said, getting out of bed. He stalked into the other room. A minute later he was back. “Hey, baby, wake up.” He jostled Kate.
It took a minute before she struggled awake. “Is it New Year’s Eve? Time to put on my dress?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Oh. Well, what can I do for you, Sir?” Kate asked, sleepy-eyed and adorable.
“You can wear this and marry me,” Rory said, holding up his pinky where a very modern diamond ring only slid as far as his first knuckle.
“Wait, what?” Kate said, sitting bolt upright and almost falling over.
Rory caught her arm and steadied her.
“It’s a ring and exactly… Wait… Really? Am I dreaming? Pinch me.”
Rory pinched her nipple.
“Ouch. Oh, my God, really?” she said in a soft breathy voice. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you!” She held his hand, looking at the ring. “Is it a Dana Renata? How did you know what style I wanted? I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Emma.”
“I saw a bride’s magazine at your place. I flipped through it to see if you’d dog-eared any pages. The binding was broken where it had obviously been propped open a lot of times. The page had rings by this designer.”
“How did you know Emma wasn’t the one looking at the ‘Rings by Renata’ ad?”
“Because I know your style. This is you.”
Kate shot up off the bed. Rory caught her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and legs around his waist. She kissed him hard on the mouth.
“I love it so, so much.”
“It’s a custom design. The only one in the world exactly like it. I flew to San Francisco to pick it up and watched Dana break the mold.”
“Oh, my God! Thank you, Sir. The only one in the world!”
“Go on,” Rory said, “Put it on.”
Kate’s hands shook as she took the ring. She admired it a moment and then started to cry. She wrapped her arms around his neck and wept on his shoulder. “I love you so much. I’ll be the best wife in the world. I promise.”
“I know, baby.” Rory turned to Emma and Shay and gave Shay a smug look. “Ask the best friend? Fucking slacker. Who loves his sub more now?”
Shay laughed. “It’s not a competition.”
“But if it was,” Rory said, walking through the open door to the other suite.
“It’s not a competition,” Shay repeated.
“But if it fucking was,” Rory called over his shoulder.
Emma laughed and shook her head. “He just made her so happy. You don’t think he’s serious about letting her take a semester off school to scrub floors with a toothbrush though, do you?”
“Of course, he’s serious. I don’t know how he held out this long. He won’t take a trip longer than two days anymore unless she’s on break and can go with him. And when he’s out of town, he talks to her for four or five hours a night. What the hell kind of conversation goes on for five hours?”
She smiled. Sometimes Shay was such a guy. She shrugged. “So, our best friends are kind of lunatics.”
“Agreed,” Shay said, leaning over to kiss her. “I should elope with you the first weekend in January just to piss him off.”
“It’s not a competition.”
“But, if it was.”
“I want you to know I will never scrub any floor in your house with a toothbrush.”
“You would if I ordered you to.”
She was quiet for a moment. If she knew he really wanted her to? “Maybe,” she whispered, wincing at herself. “If you ordered me to, and it seemed important to you, I would.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t order you to clean just for the sake of it.
But seeing you in a French Maid’s uniform?
Scrubbing the floor with your ass in the air?
Now, that interests me. I could pour the soapy water on you, so your whites would be see-through, raise your skirt, and take advantage of the help. ”
She shivered, and he rolled on top of her, pinning her arms above her head.
The sounds of Rory making love to Kate bounced in. Emma smiled, glancing toward the doorway. “The post-proposal celebration.”
“I bet I can make you scream louder than Kate.”
“It’s not a competition, Sir!” She gasped when he bit down on her nipple.
Shay raised his head, her nipple still trapped between his teeth, pulling the tip of her breast up. The sensation rocketed through her, and she sucked in a breath through parted lips.
Shay smiled like the darkest of fallen angels and said, “But if it was.”