Grayson Chapter
GRAYSON
He watched her narrow her eyes and take a small bite. His phone vibrated, alerting him that her cheesecake delivery was downstairs. Seconds later he received another text message from Kris, saying he had a delivery. He responded to neither; it could wait.
Alessandra however, deserved an answer.
“I think that perhaps you casually lumping yourself in with my submissives made me angry,” he said. It was the best he could come up with. Her question was innocent - and logical - enough, but it pissed him off. How dare she refer to herself as just one of the herd? As if she meant nothing?
The expression on her face was, if not for the subject at hand, comical. She was trying desperately to reason out something that didn’t make sense even to him.
“O-kayyy,” she said finally, drawing out the word, “at the risk of you, you know, throwing furniture and all, ahm… aren’t I?” She paused. “Your sub?”
Grayson sighed, and set his plate back on the table.
She was stomping on every nerve he possessed.
For weeks now, his thoughts had never been far from her.
She challenged him, and his intellect. His patience was in tatters, and if he didn’t know, at a visceral level, how badly she needed tending, he would have continued with her from earlier and finally been able to get inside her.
As he was trying to organize his thoughts, Alessandra’s eyes went wide.
“Is this like Fight Club?” she almost whispered.
He blinked. Her brain was fascinating.
“Excuse me?”
“You know - Fight Club. The first rule is you don’t talk about it.
Am I not supposed to talk about the Dom/submissive thing?
Like it’s some legit unspoken rule?” She screwed up her face.
“Or I guess rules? Because the rule about it being unspoken would also have to go unspoken? Well how would that work-”
“This is not Fight Club, and yes, we talk about it,” he interrupted.
Grayson paused; he didn’t want to accidentally include the entire sub population of alternative lifestyles.
“You and I,” he stressed, “can and should talk about it. Communication is very important in this relationship.”
That left her thinking, and he was pleased to see she’d eaten almost everything on her plate.
“So other Doms-”
“I don’t know what other Doms do or don’t do, and I generally prefer not to think about it,” he said, and replied to Kris to have someone send up the dessert. He didn’t want to leave her in the middle of this discussion.
“The people that I run this club with feel similarly as I do. That Dominants are only in charge by the grace and choice of their submissives. It’s not something that should be presumed, or taken, or treated as a power trip.”
“Like Byron,” she murmured, and he dipped his head in agreement.
The knock at the door surprised her, and he rose to get it. He thanked the barback that brought up the box, and set it down in front of Lexi.
From inside the ribboned box, notes of chocolate, peanut butter, and sugary bliss made their way to the couch.
He noticed she didn’t reach for the box, but stared at it curiously for a moment before looking back at him.
She didn’t expect anything to be for her, he realized.
He didn’t even think she was going to ask what it was.
Instead, she was focused back on him and their conversation. He felt a thrill at her undivided attention. This was more like it.
“Those are for you, Miss Alessandra,” he said. He watched her face carefully. How she responded to gifts would tell him a lot moving forward. Lexi’s brow scrunched and she glanced at the box.
“What’s for me?”
Grayson smiled.
“Open the box and find out.”
“Why?”
He paused. Maybe she didn’t like gifts. If she was financially strained, he could make her uncomfortable with too many gifts, or very expensive ones.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if you don’t open it, you won’t find out what it is.”
“Can I open it later?” she asked, eyeing the box again. “We were talking.”
While he was happy she was invested in their conversation - and his answer, he was sure, he wanted her to get used to him taking care of her. Or receiving gifts just because he thought she’d like them. His voice lowered and strengthened to become his Dom voice.
“Open your present, Miss Alessandra.”
She blinked at him, and he saw goosebumps run down her arms. Good. She gave him a side-eye look.
“And then you’ll answer my questions?”
He smiled. She was trying to make this a negotiation.
“Or I’ll make you get off again if I feel like it.”