29. #4
Instead, he'd looked at me as though I'd done something embarrassing.
When he wanted sex, whether I wanted it had stopped mattering altogether.
The contradiction was so obvious now that I almost couldn't understand how I'd lived inside it for so long.
I wasn't supposed to ask.
I wasn't allowed to refuse.
My fingers tightened around Grant's.
"No," I said quietly.
His expression didn't change, but his hands stilled.
"I don't think I have."
He waited.
"I tried with Rodney once. Early on." I looked down at our hands. "He told me it was unladylike. That I was supposed to let him come to me."
Grant's jaw shifted.
"He didn't have sex with me for a month afterward." I gave a small, humorless laugh. "Which sounds insane when I say it now."
"It sounds cruel."
I looked back at him.
"He made you ashamed of wanting him."
The accuracy of it made my chest tighten.
"And then eventually he didn't care whether I wanted him at all," I said.
Grant's eyes closed briefly.
I knew that expression too.
Anger.
Not the explosive kind I'd learned to anticipate from Rodney. Grant's anger became quieter when it was serious. His jaw tightened, his shoulders stiffened and he seemed to choose every word before allowing himself to speak.
When his eyes opened again, he didn't ask me anything about Rodney.
Instead, he stood.
"I want to try something with you."
My eyebrows pulled together. "What?"
"Come with me."
He released one of my hands but kept the other, leading me out of the kitchen.
I followed until he passed the stairs leading upward.
Then I slowed.
Grant glanced back at me.
"Where are we going?"
"Downstairs."
I stopped completely.
His mouth curved.
The basement.
I had lived in this house long enough to know there was one. I'd simply never been inside it.
The staircase descended farther than I'd expected, and the temperature changed slightly as we went down. Grant remained one step ahead of me, his hand around mine while the dim light from upstairs stretched behind us. At the bottom was another door.
He opened it.
Darkness waited beyond it.
For the first time, a flicker of nervousness moved through me.
Not fear.
Curiosity sharpened by the knowledge that Grant had deliberately kept this part of himself separate from me until now.
His hand found the switch.
Warm recessed lighting came on gradually instead of flooding the room all at once.
I stopped on the final step.
"Oh."
The room wasn't anything like I had imagined to be down here.
The walls were a deep charcoal gray, darker than the rest of Grant's house but softened by recessed lighting running beneath portions of the built-in cabinetry.
One wall was paneled in vertical strips of dark wood that broke up the gray without making the room feel busy.
Another held low matte-black cabinets with smoked-glass doors, everything behind them arranged with the same irritating precision Grant applied to the rest of his life.
The center of the room was open enough to move around comfortably.
A large bed sat against the paneled wall, lower than a traditional bed and dressed in charcoal bedding so perfectly arranged it looked untouched.
A narrow upholstered bench rested at its foot.
There was another piece of furniture farther away that I couldn't immediately identify and decided I wasn't ready to ask about.
Then my eyes moved toward the wall.
Handcuffs.
I recognized those.
Several other restraints hung beside them in different materials and widths, arranged neatly rather than displayed theatrically. There were a few things I knew were whips only because there was no innocent explanation for them, alongside smaller objects whose purposes were considerably less obvious.
My gaze traveled back across the room.
Nothing about it looked cheap or tacky. There was no red satin, no exposed chains hanging dramatically from the ceiling, no attempt to make the space look dangerous.
That somehow made it more intimidating.
This wasn't a room Grant had thrown together because something looked exciting online.
He knew exactly what everything in here was for.
I looked at him.
Grant was watching me instead of the room.
"Well," I said slowly. "I did not expect down here to look like this."
He laughed.
I stepped farther inside.
My eyes returned to the restraints.
Strangely, they didn't frighten me.
I tried to imagine standing in a room like this with Rodney and immediately knew I wouldn't have made it beyond the doorway. Anything designed to restrict movement in Rodney's hands would've felt like a weapon because Rodney had never needed equipment to make me understand I wasn't in control.
Here, surrounded by things that should've made me feel vulnerable, I was standing barefoot-close to Grant with my hand still resting comfortably inside his.
He released my hand and walked toward the bed, leaving me standing in the middle. He sat on the edge with the ease of someone who wasn't remotely embarrassed by any of this.
"Most of what's in here is about control," he said.
My eyes traveled toward the wall again. "I gathered that."
"And trust."
I looked back at him.
Grant leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms over his thighs. He wasn't performing now. There was nothing exaggerated in his voice, nothing about the way he sat that suddenly transformed him into some version of a man I didn't recognize.
He was still Grant.
Maybe that was what made the room easier to stand in.
"Tonight, I'm not going to decide what happens next."
I stared at him.
"What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what I said." His mouth curved, but he didn't rescue me from the discomfort.
"If you want me to kiss you, tell me. If you want me to touch you, tell me where. If you want something different, say it. If you decide you don't want anything at all, we go upstairs, eat your cake and go on about the night."
I folded my arms over my chest.
"So you want me to be in charge?"
"I want you to stop waiting for me to give you permission to want something."
My arms slowly loosened.
There was something almost unfair about the way he looked sitting there.
He wasn't suddenly passive because he'd handed the decision to me.
If anything, the fact that he could sit several feet away knowing exactly what I wanted and make no attempt to close the distance required a level of restraint I wasn't sure I possessed.
"I don't know how."
"You do know how."
"Grant."
"Naomi."
I narrowed my eyes.
"You usually just know what to do," I said.
"I usually know what I think you want."
"Same thing."
"No." His answer came gently. "It isn't."
I swallowed.
Grant adjusted his position on the bed, and my eyes betrayed me by following the movement. His hand passed briefly over the front of his pants as he settled himself more comfortably.
I looked for approximately one second too long.
When I lifted my gaze, he was watching me.
My attention dropped again before I could stop it.
I knew exactly what I wanted him to do.
Apparently saying it was the difficult part.
Grant waited.
He didn't tease me. He didn't suggest anything. He didn't move.
The silence stretched until my embarrassment slowly transformed into frustration.
"Take your clothes off."
His eyes darkened almost immediately.
That alone sent warmth rushing through my stomach.
But Grant didn't comment.
He stood.
My pulse accelerated as his fingers found the hem of his shirt. He pulled it over his head in one smooth motion, exposing the body I'd seen enough times that it shouldn't still have had the ability to completely derail my thoughts.
It did.
His lounge pants followed.
Then he stopped.
I stared at him.
He stood in front of me wearing only his briefs.
"All of them."
I watched as he complied, and somewhere between giving the first instruction and watching him follow it, some of the nervousness left me.
Not all of it.
Enough.
His eyes stayed on me.
I reached behind myself and found the zipper at the back of my skirt.
Grant didn't move.
The zipper slid downward beneath my fingers, and I let the skirt fall around my ankles before stepping out of it. My blouse followed. I pulled it over my head and dropped it onto the floor beside me, leaving myself standing several feet away from him in my bra and underwear.
His gaze moved slowly over me.
The confidence I'd found wavered.
Three weeks of barely eating properly, sleeping too much, bruises fading through ugly shades before finally disappearing and avoiding mirrors whenever I could had not exactly left me feeling desirable.
Grant looked at me as though none of that had occurred to him.
It should've made me feel better.
Instead, awareness crawled over my skin.
"I think I want the lights off."
Grant nodded once.
No questions, he just walked to the switch.
The room disappeared.
Darkness wrapped around me so completely that for a second I could hear nothing but my own breathing. The recessed lighting had made the room feel intimate; without it, everything changed. I couldn't see the restraints. I couldn't see the bed. More importantly, I couldn't see Grant watching me.
My shoulders loosened.
Somewhere to my right, I heard him move.
"Come closer," I spoke.
Slow footsteps crossed the floor.
Then warmth appeared behind me.
Grant stopped close enough that I could feel him without being touched. His body radiated heat against my back, and the restraint in that tiny distance suddenly felt more intimate than if he'd grabbed me the second he reached me.
I waited.
Nothing happened.
Right.
My choice.
"Take the rest off."
His fingers found the clasp of my bra.
The straps loosened against my shoulders before the fabric disappeared.
His hands moved lower, catching the waistband of my underwear and guiding it carefully down my legs.
There was an eagerness in the speed of the movement that made my stomach tighten, but the moment the fabric reached my ankles, Grant stopped.
He didn't touch anything else.
I stepped free.