Chapter 18 #2
That earned me another dimple-popping smile. I set my drink down, insides incandescent.
Then the appetizers arrived.
Two waiters set down plates and plates of food. It barely fit on the round table. Crisp bread with burrata, balsamic vinegar, and basil. Pears stuffed with cheese and crumbled walnuts. Something golden fried, with cream and greens on top. What appeared to be some kind of beet dish.
It smelled divine.
“Do you like spanking?” he asked, slicing the fried golden thing in half.
I coughed up the sip of water I’d taken. “What?”
He balanced the half on his fork, placing it on my plate.
“If you won’t tell me what you want,” he said, doing the same with one of the pears. “Tell me what you don’t. What are your boundaries?”
“I…okay.” My brain was having a hard time computing as he kept placing pieces of food on my plate. “I…I like spanking.”
He nodded to himself.
“I didn’t order this,” I said.
“Slapping?” he asked, ignoring me and adding the rest of the appetizers to my plate.
I swallowed air, then shook my head. “No. I know my profile said I liked it rough, but I don’t want to be hurt.”
He sat back, eyes on me.
Calder was magnetic. He looked at me in a way I’d never been looked at before. All his attention on me. It was intoxicating.
I didn’t know eye contact could be so fucking hot.
“What part of rough excites you?” he asked.
I chewed my bottom lip.
Fuck it.
If I wanted it, I needed to communicate.
“I like being dominated,” I said. “If you choke me, it’s the threat behind your hand that I like, not actually going breathless.
I like…” I struggled for a way to phrase the next part.
I wanted to be spanked, bitten, and choked while being praised and worshipped.
“I guess I like the dichotomy of rough and gentle.”
His eyes darkened and the air between us stretched taut, wires fraying.
But he only lifted another appetizer to my plate.
“Degradation?” he asked, cutting into the beets.
I made a face.
He laughed. “No, then.”
“Well.” I took a drink. “I don’t get off on being called a slut. But if you called me your slut, because I was doing such a good job—”
I broke off. Calder had stopped picking out appetizers, fork and knife frozen in midair. Had I said something wrong?
“Birth control?” he asked, voice harsh.
I nodded. “IUD.”
An undercurrent of sexual tension throbbed through our conversation. Calder asked me questions that even my ex wouldn’t have known, but his tone was so businesslike. As if asking what color car I preferred.
“You already sent your test results,” he said. “Does that mean you don’t want condoms?”
I shook my head, slowly. That just felt to…intimate. He nodded, accepting my answer with ease.
“Anal?” he asked.
I nearly choked on my water.
“I’ve never been able to do it,” I said. “I’m not saying no; it’s just never felt good.”
Another inscrutable look passed over his features, like the clouds covering the moon. Something in his gaze burned bright, but the meaning was obscured.
Whenever Graham and I had tried anal, it always hurt and there was a level of stress that accompanied it, because I was supposed to like it.
I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten my people-pleasing tendency. My mother and sister would sooner light their hair on fire than place someone’s wants over their needs. All I knew was it felt physically painful when someone was upset with me.
He cleared his throat. “Have you met anyone else?”
You want my cock? Fucking earn it.
I coughed up the sip of water I’d taken. “Um, no, not really.”
“Not really?” he probed.
“There was sort of something, but nothing happened.”
“Did he make you feel uncomfortable?”
There was a quiet authority to him that scrambled my thoughts. My brain was having a hard time computing the question.
“No,” I eventually said. “He did nothing wrong.”
His reaction was curious. The stalwart, innate confidence that hummed from him was replaced by something like uncertainty.
I folded my arms, sitting back in my seat. “Why are you asking this?”
“I need to know what he did wrong, so I don’t make the same mistake.” He sat back, matching my pose, eyes on me. “What did he do that you liked?”
I didn’t think it could get more vulnerable than the conversations I’d had with Void about my kinks. But Calder was digging into them.
My cheeks flushed. “I can’t tell you that. That’s personal. Ask something else.”
A slight smile hooked the right side of his lips, and his eyes glittered like he knew something I didn’t. As if I’d said something deeply amusing.
Or fallen into a trap.
“Okay,” he said. “You said you were into exhibitionism, but it’s a broad spectrum. Do you like being watched? The thrill of doing something wrong? Getting caught?”
“Um, yeah…” I dragged my thumb along my bottom lip.
“So I think that falls under the umbrella of my submissive side. Like, I don’t get off on the idea of doing it in a room of people, but if someone wanted me so badly that I had to break the rules?
And I was being so good for that person?
I like the idea of pleasing someone, no matter where.
And of that person keeping me safe from the consequences. ”
My voice trailed off into silence. This was so deeply vulnerable. When the silence stretched into something uncomfortable, I glanced up.
Calder swallowed, the movement highlighting the jagged edge of his Adam’s apple.
But he only said, “Eat.”