Chapter 28
When Knife made it down the steps with his jeans on, a gorgeous, curvy, naked woman was pouring herself some orange juice from his fridge.
“I don’t suppose you have a waffle iron?” she asked.
“I do. How about omelets and waffles? You want steak or bacon?” He paused, considering. “Or both?”
“Steak,” she told him. “I’ll handle the waffles. Do you still have maple syrup?”
“I do.”
She made the waffle batter from scratch and by memory, and they were exquisite. His omelets came out great too, thank goodness.
And it’s a given his steaks were perfect.
“So,” he said once they’d both dug into their food. “Two or maybe three weeks?”
She nodded. “At least two Mondays away. Not so sure about the third. Could go either way.”
“I feel like I got gypped out of aftercare. You good? That was an intense scene.”
She sat back and chewed. Thought about how to answer truthfully without diving into the deep shit. “Yeah. I’m good. Two changes healed all the physical stuff, and I’ll need to live with the mental bits to figure them out. You do have ways of taking me down to just… sensation. Tearing me apart.”
“That’s the goal, but part of it is supposed to be putting you back together, and I told you to change, so it’s okay you did, but I still feel…” he shrugged. “The important thing is making sure you’re okay without the aftercare.”
When she didn’t answer, he decided to ask a direct question. A sneaky one. It’d either worked for her, or it hadn’t, and he needed details.
“If you could change something about the night, what would it be? Not the morning. We’ll get to that in a minute. The night.”
She sat back. “That isn’t how I think. It happened, and it’s my job to conform to your needs.
It’s nice you sometimes give me what I think I want, like a blindfold, but that’s up to you.
It was harder in some ways, without one, but the moon was…
” She shrugged. “It was there for me, outside the window.”
“So, you wouldn’t change anything?”
“I didn’t say that!” She seemed frustrated. “If I changed something, the end result would be different. And I’m not the one deciding things. That’s your job.”
He tried another tack.
“Okay. Help me out here. Was the overall scene, last night and this morning, did it work for you? Is there something you needed that you didn’t get?”
She cut another piece of waffle off, sopped it into the melted butter and then the syrup, and chewed slowly. Finally, she shook her head.
“That’s the thing. If I say I wanted to be blindfolded, which I did for a while, I’d immediately change my mind. And I’ll say I hated the damned toothbrush on my clit, but I can’t say I wish you hadn’t used it, even though I really, really hated it.”
And he suddenly knew what to ask. How to get his answer.
“Did the overall scene change anything for you?”
She stopped chewing.
He waited.
She swallowed, set her fork down, and looked at her plate for a long moment before she looked up at him.
“Yes.”
He waited again, because there was more, and she was deciding whether to give it to him.
“It was different. The long day a few weeks ago, it was about ramping things up. But last night was completely different. I hung there and hurt because you put me there. You had plans for me, and that was how it started. Out of my control because I trust you to…”
She blew out a breath. “I’ll be able to articulate this better once I’ve had a few days with it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want the polished answer. I want the raw one.” Time for him to be honest.
“It changed something for me. Made you more mine, and I know that only lasts while you’re here, while we’re in each other’s presence, but I’m not going to shy away from it.”
She nodded. “Thanks for that. Every scene builds trust. Builds shared experiences. We learn more about each other.” She took a sip of her milk and set the glass down. “I surrendered completely, and I’m not sure that was a choice. You broke me apart and pushed me to it, but I let you.”
And finally, she told him her truth. “I wanted you to. I hated it, but I needed it. No one’s ever taken me as far into surrender and submission as the twelve-hours-of-fucking-hell scene, not even long-time Doms.” She looked at him a few seconds.
“And it’s like you learned shortcuts. Like, once you had me there, you know how to get me back — faster, with less intensity. ”
“Good. That’s what I needed from you.” He picked his steak knife up and basked in the glow of knowing he’d taken her farther into submission than anyone else. “We’re good.”
And then, while he cut into his steak, he asked her if he should buy his own shoes and harness, and conversation went to easier places.
- - - ? - - -
Days later, Tuesday was trying a little experiment in her hotel room’s kitchenette when the video call came through, and she smiled when she saw it was Knife.
Her tablet was already propped on its holder, the stylus in front of it, and it worked out that she was in the camera when she accepted the call.
Her little hopefully-masterpiece was almost finished, so he had good timing, and she lifted the pan from the burner, poured the glaze over the main portion.
The idea was to get the taste of an opera cake without the labor cost. Simplify it.
There were only four major flavors — almond, coffee, buttercream, dark chocolate.
The question was ratio — how to keep all four as individual supporting players without one bullying all the others. Also, how to get the textures right.
“I’m glad you called,” she told him while she carefully poured. He was sitting in his living room, wearing a black shirt, looking sexy as fuck.
“I’m glad you answered. What are you making?”
She started to tell him, realized the problem with that, and had to tell him, “It’s a pre-experiment, before I take it to the client during tomorrow’s dessert menu meeting, and there are NDAs. I’d love to share it with you, but…”
He tilted his head and his eyebrows pulled together, but he said, “Yeah. I get that.”
Clearly, he didn’t like it, but he understood.
She searched for a way to change the subject and get them out of awkward territory, and asked, “How was your weekend?”
He paused. Not long, maybe a half-second, but she’d been paying attention to this man for months now, and she saw regret in his eyes, but he merely said, “Good.” Then, as if he realized it needed more, he shrugged and added, “Club stuff.”
Ah. Things he wanted to tell her, but couldn’t. It seemed there were secrets going in both directions.
He bridged the awkwardness this time by asking, “How is your grandmother?”
Tuesday couldn’t help her smile. “As nosy and prying as always. Even over the phone, she’s managed to get most of our date out of me. The daytime events, not the rest.” Tuesday grinned. “She’s actually a little miffed I didn’t get a picture of you on the carousel.”
He smiled. “Your grandmother is a character, that’s for sure. I love that the two of you are so close.”
She deemed her creation cool enough to try, and she took a bite.
It needed a little more almond, and about twenty percent less coffee, but she was certain she could make it work.
That gave her five things to suggest the following day.
He wanted three more dessert items. Surely he’d like one of her five proposals.
“She’s always been the one I go to, you know? She never tells me what to do, but her advice is solid. She’s lived a long and interesting life. She was at the original Woodstock, and she saw Elvis at this huge concert in Mississippi back in the fifties. Young Elvis, not fat Elvis.”
She gave him a big grin. “The fun stuff though. Her brother once let it slip that she’d been… Do you know who the Allman Brothers were?”
She waited for him to nod before giving him the tea. “She and Gregg Allman were a thing, back before she settled down with my grandfather.”
He laughed. “I can totally see her just out there living her life before she settled down. I’m not sure my grandparents have ever gone more than about a hundred miles from their mountain. They still have sage advice, but it’s from a different perspective.”
They’d talked about his family a little. Super close-knit, most everyone lives on a mountain the pack owns southwest of Asheville. Their pack is family-based, and you have to either be born into it, or marry into it.
He was still really close to his family, but he’d needed to go out into the world, and he’d had to leave the pack to do so.
She put the pan and other dishes into the sink, double-checked she’d turned the stove off, and went to the bed. She’d brought her wedge so she could read and research in bed, which meant she could comfortably sit up and talk to him.
“How often do you talk to your family?”
“My mom texts me pictures and videos daily. What she made for dinner, the dogs being silly, her basket of eggs when the chickens outdo themselves. Random stuff. I text her pics of what I’m eating when it’s interesting, places we go on road trips, sometimes the cows are doing funny shit when I go up to load them on the truck and bring them down.
We video chat every Tuesday night, and my dad’s usually there for it. Sometimes my grandparents are, too.”
“I like that you’re still close to them even though you needed to leave.”
“I probably know more of your pack than you realize,” he told her.
“I’ve gotten close to Silas. At first, he wanted to choose his beef, but over time, he’s come to trust me to get it right.
I never let anyone else put his orders together, though.
He demands perfection, and I respect that about him.
We have lunch or dinner together at least once a month. Cool guy.”
She worked hard to keep her face neutral while her brain flashed to Silas.
He was more sadist than Dom, though he was absolutely both.
They’d been good together for a while, but he’d been too intense in ways that hadn’t worked for her.
In retrospect, she thought maybe they would now, and she just hadn’t been ready for him all those years ago.
Or, perhaps not. His sadism was in a class all by itself.
All that went through her head in a flash, and the only thing she could think to say was, “I’m really happy he’s found someone. I mean, totally surprised about three wolves sharing a hawk, but it seems to work.”
Knife smiled. “Yeah. To be a fly on the wall, right? None of our business how things go with four people in a bed, but the mind still wonders.”
She laughed. “It does, and Willow doesn’t give anyone details. I think my grandmother might know — she’s good at digging things up — but she doesn’t share. Not even with me.”
“Smart woman.”
“The smartest.”
She had the feeling he hadn’t been home long when he called, but now he looked… settled. A man on his mountain, comfortable in his domain.
And it was a ridge rather than a mountain, so he couldn’t own the whole thing, but his couple of acres was still his in every way. He’d probably spent a small fortune on the tall fence around the whole thing, so he could change without being seen.
And the truth was that she missed him. The distance was a physical ache in her heart.
“You’re all work when you’re out of town, aren’t you?” he asked. “I didn’t expect you to be working at eight o’clock on a Sunday night.”
“Yeah, pretty much. There are still construction people in the restaurant. Finishers, mostly in the restaurant area, making the bar, putting flooring down, putting up the fancy molding and all the other frou-frou details. The kitchen is mostly done – still waiting on some of the stainless work surfaces, that kind of thing, but there’s a big stainless table in the center we can work on, and we have plastic up between their work areas and the kitchen, to keep dust out.
It’s kind of crazy though, and the construction crews aren’t there on the weekends, so we got a whole lot done yesterday and today.
Tonight was just me figuring out if I can make an idea work.
I can, so I’ll propose it tomorrow when we have our big dessert meeting. ”
“It’s supposed to be pretty tomorrow,” he said, with a nonchalance that didn’t quite land as casual. “What time do you finish?”
“We’ve been working until eight,” she said carefully, “but I can get away with leaving at six. I can tell them I’ve scheduled a much-needed massage; you’ll just have to help out so I don’t have to lie about how good it was.”
He chuckled. “Little masochists need to be careful what they ask for, but yeah, I can manage that.”