Chapter Three #3
“Okay, fair point. I’m just saying, baggage and history can bite you in the ass, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
The hair even now, Bailey switched the scissors for the comb. “Well, you don’t have to worry, because I’m not going to.”
“Famous last words.”
Bailey laughed and, satisfied with the cut, laid down her scissors and comb and reached for a bottle on the shelf next to the mirror. “Come on, Chlo, it’s just sex.”
“If it was just sex, you could do it with anybody,” Chloe pointed out.
“Fair point,” Bailey conceded. Rubbing her hands together to warm the product she’d poured into her palm, she smoothed it through Chloe’s short cap of blonde hair, using her fingers to fluff and separate so the thick, shining strands lay artfully tousled and spiky over Chloe’s forehead. “You can open your eyes now.”
Chloe’s lashes fluttered up, the dread in her eyes replaced by pleasure. “It looks great, Bails.”
“Told you.” Pulling the towel out of her apron pocket, she wiped her hands, then began brushing hair off the protective cape. “You’d think you’d trust me by now.”
“I do trust you. I just have haircut trauma.”
“You hate change.”
“That, too.” Chloe waited for Bailey to unsnap the cape from around her neck and whisk it away, then slid out of the chair. “You know, you talk about sex a lot.”
Bailey pulled the broom from the corner and began to sweep. “Talking about it is the next best thing to doing it.”
“But you’re not talking about this.”
“Sure, I am.” Bailey swept the hair into a neat pile quickly and efficiently, scooped it into the dustpan, and set both aside. “I’m talking about it now.”
Chloe shook her head, her newly shorn tresses shifting, then falling neatly back into place. “You’re talking about Nash, not the sex. Not the fantasy. There’s more to it than just a simple gang bang, isn’t there?”
Bailey glanced around the salon. She knew they were alone—she’d locked the door behind the last of her employees half an hour ago—but it was automatic.
She was no shrinking violet, and normally she wouldn’t care who heard her talking about her sex life.
But this was different. It was personal, and it was private.
And it was important.
“It is a gang bang,” Bailey said. “But it’s also a little more.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Chloe began, and Bailey shook her head.
“It’s not that.” Bailey reached back to untie her apron. “I’ve just never told anybody about it, not the details. Except Nash.”
“Is that the reason you want him for this?” Chloe guessed. “Because you don’t have to explain it to him?”
Bailey let out a short laugh. “Yeah, I guess it is. Partly, anyway.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Bailey glanced at the clock. It was a quarter after six, and she’d told Nash she’d be home by seven. “I have to close down. Mop the floors, clean the sinks, close out the payment system.”
“I’ll mop and clean, you deal with the payments,” Chloe declared. “Then we’ll hash it out.”
“You never want to hear about my sex life,” Bailey said, amused.
“And I still don’t, but this is important to you.” Hands on her hips, Chloe looked around. “Where’s the mop?”
“Supply closet in the bathroom,” Bailey told her. “It’s one of those automatic deals that squirts the cleaning solution on the floor.”
“Aces,” Chloe decided and headed for the bathroom. “Do the payments,” she called back over her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am,” Bailey murmured and, shaking her head in bemusement, walked to front desk computer to close out the day’s sales.
It didn’t take long—there weren’t any cash transactions to deal with, just electronic, and by the time she was finished reconciling everything, Chloe had done the floors and moved on to the shampoo bowls. To make things go faster, Bailey joined her, and explained.
“Is it a BDSM thing?” Chloe wanted to know once she’d explained.
“Kind of, I guess?” Bailey rinsed out the sink she was cleaning, then wiped it dry with a clean towel before moving down the line to the next.
There were only four sinks, so Chloe had shifted to wiping down the bottles of shampoo and conditioner on the shelves.
“Not in a beat me, whip me kind of way, but the giving up control, being used, that’s pretty Fifty Shades. ”
Finished scrubbing the second bowl, she turned on the water to rinse. “And come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind being tied up. But I guess it’s more of a free-use fantasy than BDSM.”
“Do I want to know what that is?”
Bailey searched for the right words. “It’s kind of like, ‘you can use me anytime you want, any way you want, and I won’t object or say no because I like it’.”
Chloe looked thoughtful. “Okay, that’s kind of hot.”
“I know.”
“And I can see why you need someone you trust.” Chloe replaced the bottle of shampoo she’d just wiped down on the shelf, nudging it so it lined up with the others. “But there has to be somebody besides Nash.”
Bailey shrugged, pulling the hose out to aim the spray at the front of the bowl she was rinsing. “If there is, I can’t think of him.”
“Okay, then,” Chloe said with a decisive nod.
“Okay, what?”
“You can have Jesse.”