Her eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs, but she filled up the glasses again.
I had a feeling it was going to sound even crazier out loud than it did in my head, but there was no turning back now. She’d either grill me for every last juicy detail or drag me to the campus psychologist for an eval. Here goes nothing.
—
Foster looked up from his laptop at the sound of ferocious growling. On the far side of the living room, Monty had his head sticking out from under the blanket in his dog bed, teeth bared, and Pike was standing over him in a bouncer stance, an odd expression on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Projecting calm, dominant energy,” Pike said, his voice even as he looked forward and not at Monty or Foster.
“I don’t think Monty has the mental capacity to enter a Safe, Sane, and Consensual agreement with you. And to be honest, I think he may be a top.”
Pike turned then, his face contorting as he tried not to laugh. “Stop. I’m trying to send a message here.”
“Not sure he’s getting it.”
Monty snarled and snapped at Pike’s boot, and Pike bent over and touched Monty’s side with his fingers in a quick, snake-strike motion. “Tsch!”
Monty ducked his head and backed off.
“Ha!” Pike said, grinning at Foster. “Look at that. Shit actually works.”
Foster laughed. “And what shit would that be exactly?”
“Cela told me about how training dogs is all about teaching them to be calm and submissive so you can be the pack leader. And so I downloaded all these episodes of The Dog Whisperer. That dude could make Cujo turn into Benji. But I think it’s starting to work. That’s the first time Monty hasn’t gone into full attack mode when I corrected him. Your girlfriend’s a genius.”
“Cela’s not my gir—” Foster started, but then his lips clamped shut. He’d been about to correct Pike on the erroneous term. Foster didn’t have girlfriends. Not since the Darcy debacle. But wasn’t that exactly what Cela was going to be? He could dress it up with the D/s terms. She was his submissive. But this was so much more than a play partner at The Ranch. He was inviting her into his life. His throat narrowed a bit, making it hard to breathe for a moment.
“Uh-oh,” Pike said, stepping away from Monty’s bed. “I know that look. Don’t get all freaked out now. You brought this on yourself.”
“Brought it on myself?” He scowled. “You make it sound like I’ve come down with an illness.”
Pike plopped down in a chair and propped his heels on the coffee table. “Look, I’m not judging. I think Cela’s great and hot and smart and hot.”
“I got it,”
Foster said irritably.
He smirked. “But just be careful. She’s young and doesn’t know what she wants right now.”
“She knows. That’s why she’s staying here,” Foster said, the conviction in his tone faltering only slightly.
“For now,” Pike said with a frown. “You’ve dazzled a virgin with your worldly ways. Bravo, boy wonder. Big feat.”
Foster pushed his laptop closed with a loud snap, Pike’s sarcasm digging right under his skin. “Now wait a second—”
Pike held up a hand. “Hear me out. You remember me telling you about, Ms. Briarstone, my junior year math teacher?”
Foster leaned forward and slid his computer onto the table, annoyance pumping through him. “Yeah, you never shut up about her back then. You said she wore skirts that inspired even you to learn quadratic equations.”
Pike gave a wistful sigh and got a far-off look in his eye. “Ah, those pencil skirts. When she’d lean over her desk to grab her notes, you couldn’t see any panty line. Not one. I lost days of my life wondering what was beneath—something sexy or nothing at all?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
He brought his gaze back to Foster. “Because the night of my junior prom, I didn’t fuck the girl I’d taken to the dance. I lost my virginity to Ms. Briarstone at a shitty little motel she drove me to outside of town.”
Foster’s brows dipped. “You told me you did it with Laurel Woods freshman year.”