Chapter 1 #3
“Are they any good?” He winks at me.
Man, he has nice blue eyes, even if he is old enough to be my father.
After a second, I place that piercing blue.
He was at Logan and Emily’s collaring ceremony last month.
He’s one of Logan’s friends from out of town who got him drunk the night before and lost Emily’s collar.
To be fair, he did help Logan find it again.
“Best pancakes you’ll ever have.” I wink back.
“Two, and I’ll hold you to that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Calling him “sir” feels distressingly natural.
A man usually needs to flog me, or at least paddle me, before I’ll give him that.
Unless it’s Theo; I’ve been teasing him by refusing to call him “sir” for months.
It’s driving him bonkers. But I already know Mac’s a Dom from his attendance at the ceremony and Emily’s reminder in calling him Master; I’m guessing from his title that he’s Logan’s friend from the Navy who needs his tattoo fixed, so it can’t hurt to butter him up a little.
Emily’s got the nicest cookware. I like to cook, but she really cooks, and she has all the best toys. On her Le Crueset square grill pan, the two pancakes cook to a perfect, fluffy, golden brown. I pop them on a plate and set it down in front of Mac like a good service submissive.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m Mike McNally. People call me Mac.”
“You’re welcome. I’m Brenna. People call me DirtyGurl. I think we might have met last month. Sorry, I’d had a crown put in and was off my head on painkillers, so I don’t remember all that well.”
He lifts brown eyebrows touched with gray, like his ashy-brown hair and short beard. I’m sure he was clean-shaven at the collaring ceremony, but I really like the beard. Dayum, silver fox.
“Right, I remember. I don’t think we were introduced. It’s nice to meet you.” He offers me his hand, which I shake. Good grip: firm but not crushing. “Are you, a dirty girl?”
My stomach flutters. And my pussy.
No. No-no. Seriously, no. He’s at least twice my age.
He has crow’s feet bracketing those intense, blue eyes.
They make him look rugged, like the cleft in his chin that’s visible through his beard.
That cleft reminds me of what he looked like clean-shaven, and how fine he looked in the suit he wore to the ceremony, which is coming back to me through the Novocain haze.
Okay, so he’s aged well. Really well. Still, he must have a decade on Ten, who’s just about to turn forty and he’s on the outer edge of guys too old for me to screw.
He blinks and I remember his question. “No, sir, I’m an angel.”
Logan and Theo snort in unison.
“Thanks,” I grumble at them as I sink back into my seat and pick up a glass of orange juice to hide the heat in my cheeks.
Logan squeezed about a million oranges in this juicer they have that looks like a torture device for citrus fruit to yield one measly pitcher of juice, but I can’t believe how good it tastes.
I’ve never had fresh-squeezed orange juice before; it’s sunshine in a glass.
“I’m guessing from the name, and the outfit, that you’re part of Logan and Theo’s club,” Mac says as he cuts into his short stack of pancakes.
He pours maple syrup around the edge of his plate, dips the forkful in the puddle, and pops the bite into his mouth.
His smile as he chews sends another flutter through me.
He salutes me with his fork before he takes another hearty bite. Mmm, a man who likes my food.
No, no, no, wrong, wrong, wrong.
When he raises an eyebrow at me, I shake myself out of the hormone tsunami. “Yes, sir. I’m one of the house submissives.”
He probably could have guessed that just from my day-collar, which I’m wearing along with one of Logan’s T-shirts, since Logan really does enforce the no-clothes-in-the-house-for-submissives rule.
Logan’s let me wear a shirt while I’m cooking and eating, but the rest of the time, I’ve been running around naked, except for my collar, Emily’s kangaroo hat on top of my dreads, and a pair of her fuzzy socks.
It’s kind of freeing.
“Do I have to be a member to do a scene with you?”
“No, sir. I do scenes with guests.”
“Could I interest you in a scene tonight?”
“She’s busy,” Theo says.
I am?
“Because we’re watching the X-Men movies tonight,” Emily interjects.
Very sure I didn’t promise that. “We are?”
“You said you’d stay the weekend. Sunday night is X-Men night.”
“You invited me for the weekend. I didn’t say I’d stay.”
Emily turns to Logan and bats her eyes. “Can’t you make her stay, Daddy?”
Logan covers his mouth with his hand and I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s trying not to laugh.
“If DirtyGurl doesn’t have to work, then I’ll encourage her to stay another night. But we don’t force other people to do things they don’t want to do, do we?”
She screws up her face and peers at him. “Don’t we? Even if it’s for their own good?”
“No, baby doll. There has to be consent, always.”
“Boo, Daddy.”
He chuckles. “What are you like, little girl?”
I reach over and take Emily’s hand.
“She’s like a really good friend. Sorry.” I look at both Theo and Mac. “I’m busy tonight.” And then my tongue does something my brain definitely didn’t tell it to do. “But I’ll take a rain check.”
Fuck, I did not just say that.
Mac salutes me with a forkful of pancake. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Me, too,” Theo says.
I stay the whole weekend, and watch X-Men movies, and play with Emily’s cat, and try on her entire collection of animal hats and fuzzy socks and make more cupcakes and mulled cider and a roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings, and stuff my face until I can barely move, and end up curled up in Emily and Logan’s bed with them spooning me while I cry for no reason I can explain.
I go into the shop on Monday and try to lose myself in the ink. Which works just fine, thank you very much, until Mac appears.