Chapter Six Negotiations
I woke up to the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen.
It wasn’t loud, not really, but I was still wired from the night before, so it pulled me up out of sleep almost immediately.
For a second I just lay there face pressed to pillow, still foggy and trying to really wake up, and then it hit.
Jonas standing in the kitchen last night, saying it starts tomorrow.
He had said it in that same calm, matter of fact way he seemed to say everything, and now tomorrow had officially turned into today.
I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and checked the time.
I still had two hours before I needed to be at work.
Normally that would have meant rolling over and sleeping until the absolute last minute, but instead I was suddenly wide awake, because two hours was two hours I could spend with Jonas, and apparently that was all it took for me to get moving.
I got out of bed, checked myself in the mirror, and did what I could to make myself look a little more alive. Nothing dramatic, just enough that I didn’t look like I had face-planted into my pillow and lost a fight. Then I stood there for a second and immediately got stuck in my own head.
How was this supposed to go? Was I meant to stroll into the kitchen and say something ridiculous like good morning, Master? Was I supposed to act normal? Was I allowed to touch him? Was there some rulebook I had missed in the twelve hours since he said yes?
I stared at myself for another second, then let out a breath.
Okay. Normal. Or at least whatever my version of normal was going to be now.
By the time I stepped into the kitchen, he was plating breakfast. Not toast. Not cereal.
Not something quick he’d thrown together on autopilot.
Breakfast. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, the kind of full, hot meal that made the whole kitchen smell rich and warm and way too domestic for what we had agreed to the night before.
Jonas looked up when I came in, and if he was affected at all by the fact that today was apparently the day we started whatever this was, he gave none of it away.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
I leaned one shoulder against the doorway and tried for casual even though I was suddenly very aware of my own body and wishing I had thrown on something other than flannel pjs. “I got some sleep. Hard to do much more than that when someone has you a little excited to start the day.”
Meaning him.
Entirely him.
Because I had spent half the night thinking about what exactly starting meant, what he would have me do, what his version of a trial dynamic looked like, and if I was being completely honest with myself, a lot of that had turned into thinking about how sex worked into it.
His mouth shifted just enough to tell me he heard exactly what I meant, but whatever he thought about it stayed locked behind that same calm expression. “I was just finishing up,” he said. “I was going to wake you.”
My eyes followed the shift of his shoulders under his shirt and then dropped to his hands as he dished out eggs, and that was enough to bring back the image of him in the club with a paddle in those same hands, black gloves on.
I moved a little farther into the kitchen and watched him finish plating the food, because apparently even that was hot now. “You know I don’t have work until later, right?”
“I know.” He picked up the plate. “I wanted you to get breakfast in first.”
I let out a soft laugh. “Have you seen me eat any form of breakfast this past week? I’m more of a five more minutes person.”
For the past couple of weeks, mornings had been a blur, and Jonas was usually out the door long before I ever got my ass out of bed.
“That’s going to change,” he said as he carried the plate to the dining table. “Breakfast is important.”
I followed him, half amused and half bracing myself. “Is this one of your rules?”
“Yes.”
He sat down with the plate in front of him, then looked up at me and patted his thigh.
I just stood there staring at him for a second.
“You want me to sit…” I trailed off, then gave him a look. “In your lap?”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked back at me with that same calm, patient expression, like he wasn’t joking, wasn’t flustered, and definitely wasn’t about to explain himself twice just because I was standing there acting shocked.
Wow, he's not kidding. This grown man wants me to sit in his lap for breakfast.
Normal me would have said something smartass or tried to tease my way out of it, but one look at his face told me that wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
He had already decided this was happening, and all I was doing was standing there catching up to it.
I had asked for this, hadn’t I? So I shut my mouth and lowered myself into his lap, still half expecting it to feel ridiculous.
It did not feel ridiculous.
It felt good.
He was big and solid and warm under me, and when his arm came around my waist it happened so naturally it made my stomach flip. Like of course I was here. Like he had already made space for me and all I had done was finally move into it.
Then he picked up the fork, scooped up some eggs, and held it in front of me.
I looked at the fork.
Then at him.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
I hesitated just long enough to feel silly about it, then opened my mouth and took the bite.
I should have felt embarrassed. Or babied. Or at the very least strange about the fact that I was twenty-one years old and sitting in a man’s lap while he fed me breakfast.
Instead it felt… nice.
It felt way too intimate for something as simple as breakfast, with his arm around me, his chest warm against my arm, and all of his attention on me.
I chewed slowly, trying not to let any of that show on my face, and by the time he offered me the next bite I was acutely aware of how quiet the room felt around us.
He could have made this awkward if he wanted to.
He could have made me feel silly about it.
Instead he just kept feeding me like this was the most normal thing in the world, and that somehow made it even harder to ignore what it was doing to me.
Cause breakfast should not feel this sexy.
Between bites, I glanced up at him. “So this is how we’re doing breakfast now?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
I let out a small laugh. “That’s very specific.”
“That’s the point.” He gave me another bite before continuing. “This is how we’ll do everything. You have a choice in it, and I want you to want to follow my rules. Which means I’m going to make sure there’s enough motivation for you to choose obedience.”
I swallowed and looked at him for a second, then at the fork in his hand. “So getting spoon-fed is the motivation?”
“Fork-fed,” he corrected mildly, and when I laughed he tightened his arm around me just enough to pull me a little closer. “And yes. I’ve found that if I make obedience feel good enough, you’ll want it.”
I looked up at him. “That sounds like you’ve done this a lot.”
“I have.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, suddenly a little less smug than I had been a second ago. “And what if I can’t keep up?”
His expression didn’t change, but something in the way his arm stayed settled around me made the answer feel steadier before he even gave it. “You don’t have to keep up with anything. This goes at your pace.”
That should have relaxed me more than it did.
I had spent half the night thinking this would mean rules and punishments and trying not to screw up too badly right out of the gate. I hadn’t expected breakfast in his lap and a conversation about making obedience feel good. I definitely hadn’t expected him to say it would go at my pace.
I glanced down at the fork in his hand, then back at him. “So what happens if I break one of your rules?”
He was quiet for a second, like he was deciding how much to say before he lifted the fork to my mouth again. I took the bite, chewed, and waited.
“We’ll talk about punishment together,” he said. “What it means to you. What you want from it. What would actually be useful.”
I swallowed. “So I do get punished.”
“Only if you want to.”
That made me frown. “That doesn’t sound very scary.”
“It isn’t supposed to be scary.” He gave me another bite, unhurried as ever. “Punishment isn’t something I use because I’m annoyed. It isn’t payback. If it happens, it should serve a purpose, and if it doesn’t serve one, I’m not interested in wasting either of our time.”
My pulse skipped.
That should not have made my stomach flip the way it did.
He held up another bite. I took it, slower this time, and tried to ignore how much I liked being this close to him.
After a full week of picking at scraps of his attention and acting like every small correction didn’t matter when it absolutely did, being here in his lap with his arm around me felt almost unfairly good.
That for now landed somewhere low in me and stayed there.
He fed me the rest in the same calm, matter of fact way, like none of this was strange, like I was supposed to be here and he had already decided that meant I’d settle into it eventually. By the time the plate was empty, I was almost disappointed it was over.
He set the fork down, and I was still trying to figure out how to stand up without making it obvious I wanted to stay right where I was when he spoke again.
“I packed you a lunch for work.”
I turned just enough to look at him properly. “You what?”
“It’s in the fridge.”
For a second all I could do was stare at him.
Nobody had packed me a lunch in years. Not since I was little, back when that kind of thing happened because adults were in charge of making sure I had what I needed.
Somewhere between middle school and now, food had turned into something I grabbed on the run or forgot about completely, and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time anyone had thought far enough ahead about me to do something like that.
“This…” I trailed off, because I wasn’t even sure what word I wanted. Sweet felt too small. Weird wasn’t right either. “This feels kind of backwards.”
He watched me for a second. “How so?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be the one doing that kind of thing. You know. Being helpful. Taking care of stuff. Since I’m the sub and all.”
Something about the way I said it made his expression shift just slightly, not displeased, just more focused.
“Submission and servitude aren’t the same thing,” he said.
I frowned a little. “They aren’t?”
“No.” He stood then, and the loss of his body under mine made me miss the contact immediately, which was embarrassing enough that I had to look away for a second.
“Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they don’t.
Caring for you doesn’t put you in charge of me, and submitting to me doesn’t mean your role is to anticipate my needs like staff. ”
That shut me up.
Not because I disagreed, but because no one had ever put it that way before, and something about hearing it from him made the whole thing feel less like a sexy fantasy and more like a structure I had walked into without understanding.
“I’ll teach you the difference,” he said.
Then he moved to the counter, picked up a thin packet of papers, and handed it to me.
I took it automatically, still catching up, and looked down.
At the top, in clean, neat print, it read:
BDSM Checklist.
I bit my lip before I could stop myself.
“This is yours?”
“It’s the one I use with potential subs.”
Well that got me warm and fuzzy, because it meant this wasn’t some little one-off thing he was trying out on me just because I had asked.
He had done this before. There had been other women.
Other subs. Other people he had looked at and decided were worth bringing into that part of his life, and now he was standing there looking at me like I might belong there too.
Potential subs.
The phrase made this feel suddenly, alarmingly real.
He nodded toward the packet. “When you get home from work, fill it out. We’ll go over it tonight.”
I flipped through the first couple of pages, already catching words that made my stomach jump, and before I could stop myself I looked up and said, “Maybe I should just call out sick.”
One of his brow went up.
I smiled quickly. “Kidding.”
Mostly.
He kept watching me for one extra second, like he was deciding whether he believed that, and I had the sudden, ridiculous urge to tell him I absolutely could be persuaded if he wanted to do the persuading.
Probably a thought best kept to myself.
So I hugged the packet to my chest instead and backed toward the hallway. “I should get ready.”
“Yes,” he said. “You should.”
I turned and headed back to my room before he could see too much on my face.
Once the door shut behind me, I just stood there for a second with the packet still in my hands, staring down at it like it might disappear if I looked away.
This was real.
Not flirting. Not me making something out of the way he said my name or the way he looked at me when I pushed him. Not a fantasy I had built in my head because I was bored and horny and stuck in his apartment.
Real.
I had wanted this.
And now I had it.
That thought hit me all over again, hot and thrilling and just a little terrifying.
Then I looked back down at the checklist, smiled despite myself, and thought, well, shit.
I really did get what I wanted.