51 - SLEEPING BEAUTY
Lacey
I woke up disoriented, the bed too small, somebody pushing against me, and I startled a little before I placed it.
That wasn't my cat. Then the giraffes and the tigers on the wall, the soft lighting, Jessica's breath on my neck, and I remembered where I was.
A wonderful way to wake up, next to a sleeping girl in her own little bedroom.
Except for the crick in my neck.
I cracked the door and went a little way down the hall and heard someone in the kitchen. Thank God, somebody's up. Maybe the party was still going. But the lights were low all throughout the house, and I knew before I got to the stairs that it wasn't.
Halfway down I saw him. Derek, moving things around in the kitchen, unhurried, in the quiet. He looked up and smiled.
"Morning, sleepyhead."
And there it was, the feeling I hadn't been able to set down in the car, sitting in a kitchen at half past midnight smiling at me like it was the easiest thing in the world.
The man who built that place. The man who stopped.
I still didn't understand him and now here he was being kind to me in the dark, which didn't help at all.
"Derek, why did you let me sleep in her bed? I've got a crick in my neck."
He laughed it off. "You looked so comfortable. I almost took a picture of the two of you, but that felt presumptuous."
I tried to do something about my hair and came the rest of the way down. "Can I have some water? My mouth is pasty."
"Sure. Here." He handed me a glass.
I drank half of it, then asked, "Did you really come in and look at me while I was asleep with her?"
"Yep. You looked adorable. Just like she did."
He was smiling, loose, relaxed in a way I'd never seen, and I stood in his kitchen trying to make it fit the man from the car and failed.
I looked around at the spotless rooms. "Did you clean all this up yourself?"
He laughed. "No. I had people for that. I like regular-guy things, but being rich has its perks, and I'm not cleaning up after a party. I was just moving some things around. Thinking."
"You could've woken me."
"And do what, kiss Sleeping Beauty? You were out three hours, not a hundred years."
I blushed, because I wouldn't have minded that, and then jabbed back. "You're not exactly a prince. But you're okay."
"Just okay." He said it like I'd wounded him. "I threw you a party. I brought you here in a carriage. It hasn't turned into a pumpkin, far as I can tell, and I'm pretty sure Aaron's still a man and not a mouse or a bird or whatever. My Cinderella knowledge sort of runs out around there."
I leaned against the bar. "So, I learned something about you a couple days ago, Derek. I'm not sure how to bring it up."
He looked right at me. "Just bring it up. There's a lot of things people think they know about me. And a lot they don't."
So I did. "You and Pamela started the Second Circle."
His eyebrows went up. "Oh," he said, almost amused. "That explains your cafeteria reaction. The bracelet. You didn't know I founded it."
I nodded.
"And I learned something about you, too," he said. "That you came to the club. I'll be honest, Lacey, that one was a shock. If it had been anywhere else, I'd probably have thought harder about what it meant."
He'd been thinking about what it meant. He'd noticed me there and turned it over the way I'd been turning him over, and I hadn't let myself imagine I registered on him like that at all.
"That makes two of us," I said. "It was a shock that you built the place. I had you pegged as sort of a—"
And the second I started the sentence I had no idea where I was taking it, and it petered out in my mouth.
He caught it. Of course he caught it. "You had me pegged as what, exactly, Lacey? I'm the father of your patient. What were you thinking?"
"I thought you were a cold fish," I conceded.
He laughed, from his belly. "A cold fish? Well. In some ways, sure. But not in that way."
Not in that way.
"Are you embarrassed, Lacey?" He wasn't needling now. "You go to the club. Why would you be embarrassed with me, of all people?"
"I don't know. Maybe because I'm always a little embarrassed about it. That's just how I am. And it's—" The safer word came up and I let it. "It's disorienting, that a lot of things changed for me in that place, and it turns out it was because of you."
"Now this is going to be an interesting conversation," he said. "Come sit on the couch by me. Let's talk. We built that place specifically to change people's lives. So, I'd like to hear what it did for yours."
What had I gotten myself into? Did I know Derek well enough to be telling him any of this, at almost one in the morning, in his house, with the rest of it dark and quiet around us?
I sat. He took one end of the short couch and I took the other, and even with the length of it between us I was too aware of him, close, and the subject of every thought I'd had for two days. And then I made the mistake of looking at his hands.
They were resting easy on his knee, big and still, and I knew exactly what they could do, because they'd already done it. Now, here they were, a couch-length away, doing nothing at all.
I forced myself to look away. He leaned back. "Go ahead," he said, and lifted his cup, amused but not teasing.
"Well. Until my husband and I split up, I was pretty—innocent, I guess. Protected."
He nodded. "That makes sense."
"What do you mean?"
"When I first met you, I had you pegged as sheltered. Protected. Probably a little naive. And I didn't change that read for a long time." He turned the cup slowly. "But there's been something different about you the last few months."
My face went warm.
"Something different about me," I said. "You mean you could tell I was going to a club?"
He laughed. "No. Nothing like that. You became more confident. More present, whenever you were in a room with me. You used to be sort of mousy, and now you're not." He looked at me over his cup, and the amusement in his face was gone. "I noticed. I've been noticing for a while."
For a second I thought he meant he could tell I'd gone sexual somehow, that it showed on me now, and the idea both thrilled and mortified me. Then I caught up to what he'd said. He'd been noticing. For a while.
"Noticing me. You almost say that like you're flirting, Derek."
Oh my God. I hadn't even had a drink.
He blinked, once, and recovered fast. "Would that be bad, Lacey? To flirt with you?" He turned the cup. "Maybe you're no sleeping princess. But you're definitely more than okay."
He chuckled at himself.
And then I understood the thing that had confused me for weeks.
"Last time I was here, Derek. You held my wrists together."
He nodded, slow.
"You held my wrists," I said again. "And after, I flirted with you. As much as I flirt, which isn't much, I'm not good at it. And you went cold as ice. And I couldn't understand it, and I've been not understanding it ever since."
"It was before I knew you went to the club. I didn't think you knew what was going on, inside yourself, or in the moment." He looked up. "I misread you, maybe. But it was also too fast, too uncontrolled. And that can be dangerous. So, I shut it down."
The room did something. Went smaller, or closer.
Because I did the arithmetic the way I always do, fast and against my will, and it took the floor out from under me.
"I didn't want you to stop. I wasn't afraid."
He cocked his head. "Yes, you were, and you were right to be.
But the intensity of the desire, it's like a drug.
It affects your judgment." Then he leaned forward.
"Nobody understands that better than me, Lacey.
I know exactly what that animal need can lead a woman to do. " His eyes had that gleam again.
"I want to know, Derek. I want to know where I can go." I sat up and leaned toward him, my hands together in front of me. "I know you want it too. I could see it that night. I see it now."
I felt my control let go as I said it. I'd never been this forward in my life. But I wanted that feeling again, the one from last time, and I wanted it from him, and I wanted to know where it went more than I'd ever wanted almost anything.
He set his drink down, then clenched his fists, hard. For a second I thought he would hit me. Then he took a deep breath, relaxed his hands, and gently took both my hands in his.
I braced. This was Brad's face after a bad night. I'd offered myself and he was going to hand me back, kindly.
But that's not what he said. "I do want that. But there are ways of doing this, Lacey. Ways to stay safe, even when you're losing your mind with lust."
"Anything," I said. I wanted this, now.
He shook his head. "Not like that. It's easy to let the dominant do anything they want, and that can be dangerous.
So, listen to me. We'll do it easy. Red, yellow, green.
Green means you're good, enjoying it. Yellow means you're nervous, you want to slow down or need time.
Red means stop. And stop always means stop. Do you understand? Safe words."
I nodded. "Yes. Red means stop. Yellow, I'm scared or need to slow down. Green is how I feel right this second."
He moved closer, breathing deeply. "Good. Now you're going to tell me what you want, and then you're going to beg me for it."
It went through my chest and opened it wide, high, like a window thrown up in a room I'd kept sealed a long time. The unsure, shame-filled Lacey wasn't there to answer. I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew exactly what I wanted right now, from this man, and only from this man.
I looked him in the eyes and said it.
"I want you to take my wrists, hold me helpless, and use your other hand however you want. And then I want you to do whatever you want with the rest of me."