"Nice try." He grinned at that. "But I'll still give you an edge up. First one to knock over three consecutive blocks. Doesn't matter if it comes up X or O. I'll even let you go first, so if you win straight off, you win the bet."
"Pretty fair. Also insultingly confident, thank you very much." She sniffed, joining him at his spot on the grass. "It seems only fair I do it on the same mark as you, since you're giving me such an advantage."
At his shrug, she studied the board. Tossing the beanbag up a couple times like a pitcher on the mound won a grin from him. Then she did it in quick succession, no hesitation.
One O, two O, three O. Straight across the center.
She burst out laughing at the look on his face, the closest she'd ever come to seeing Logan Scott taken off guard. "Sorry. I couldn't resist. You were playing the big, strong man to the hilt. It was just too easy a mark."
He eyed her. "How many years did you and Alice play this game to make you a world champion hustler?"
"Quite a few. I was also good at baseball. The boys on the street always had me pitch for their team, because I was that good. Until my mother told me I was too old to play with boys anymore." She grimaced.
"Alice never told me that."
"Good. I was feeling like there was no mystery left to me."
"She could have told me everything she ever knew about you, Madison, and you'd still be a chest of wonders to me." He snagged her around the waist, then, hiking her up his body so she curled her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders. "You are really tall," she observed, as he walked her up her back steps. "And really strong."
"Trying to salve my male ego?"
"How am I doing?"
"Keep going. I'll let you know."
She curled her arms around his shoulders, rested her head against the side of his, gratified when he increased the strength of his embrace. "I won't hold you to the bet. It was kind of cheating. But it would be really nice to see you vacuum my house in your jeans. Or nothing at all."
"I might just do it for you. The jeans idea. I have an aversion to being around loud, sucking appliances with my tender parts dangling."
When she chuckled at that, his arms tightened around her again. "I like making you happy, Madison. There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you smile, and to hear you laugh the way you do when you're playing and not worrying, or being sad about things." As he took them into the kitchen and let her feet down, he held on to her waist. She looked up at him, putting her hand on his face.
"I'm bad at this part. It scares me."
"I know. But you don't have to be scared of anything. As long as you're being honest with yourself and with me, there's nothing you can do wrong."
"I didn't admit to it, but you're right. The one common denominator was me." She shook her head before he could say anything. "I'm not fishing for reassurance. I thought a lot about it, about the things I did do wrong, but I guess I didn't put it together until you said the thing about choice. And not just tonight. You've been hitting that point in different ways, intentional or not. I tried the sub thing with some of them, but I ended up feeling like a freak, or they took advantage of it in the wrong ways. For the last few relationships, I just kept it inside. I figured I could be submissive in ways that fed my need and didn't ask for anything active from them in that way."
"Anything where you had to trust them to care for you," he said, with that shrewdness that was both one of his most appealing qualities and one of the most difficult, when it came to facing this part of herself.
"I thought if I did all the right things, tried to figure out how to make them happy, that's all it would take," she said softly. "Like paint by numbers, just fill in the colors. I never really thought about what I wanted, if I loved them, if I would have picked them out of a crowd and said, 'That's the one I want.'"
She offered him a painful smile. "Alice tried to tell me once. She said, 'Madison, when you go to buy a pair of shoes, do you buy the first one the sales clerk thrusts at you? No, you don't. You shop. You look at the colors and styles, and wait to see which one tickles your fancy. You choose. You pick them out.' I ignored her, the way I tuned out so many things she said."
"She was your older sister. It's a given that we ignore family advice."
She nodded, but then she drew in a deep breath. Even so, the words still came out quiet, so quiet he had to bend his head and she had to repeat them.
"I pick you, Logan. Whatever happens, for however long we get . . . I pick you. You're my choice."
He raised his head, but not far, so their eyes were very close. Mouths, bodies, that aura that Alice said vibrated around everything close enough to merge. "Okay," he said. "And I get no choice in this at all?"
Trust him to know the right thing to say, to help her not feel so terrified, so exposed. "None at all," she said staunchly. "I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. Do you think . . ."
When she trailed off, he touched her jaw, that way he had of making her say whatever foolish thing that came to mind. "Can you be just Logan tonight, and make love to me? Does it always have to be the Dom/sub thing? Is there an off switch?"
She really was an idiot. It came out so wrong, she expected him to step back and close down. She'd just told him she didn't want him to be something he was 120% of the time. "I'm sorry," she added hastily, "I didn't mean it quite like that. It's just--"
"Madison, look at me."