“But my control would set you free, Noemi.”
“This . . . is the job you’re offering?”
I curled my fingers around hers. “You’re in a hard spot. You want things, but you’re too shy to ask, or too scared of what will happen. I’m offering you pleasure like you wouldn’t fucking believe, and you’ll be safe from regret or judgement. If you say yes, your desires become my responsibility.”
Her breath caught. “Have you done this before?”
“I have.” My arrangement a long time ago with Tara had been pleasurable for both of us. She’d discovered a side of herself during that month that had changed her life forever. I had enormous pride as her former partner, watching her shed the shackles of conformity. But since then, I hadn’t found anyone else who captured my interest.
Noemi stared down at my hand encasing hers. As the silence grew, I wanted to know what she was thinking, but now was not the time to push. This decision needed to be hers, no matter how much I wanted it.
And it was scary how badly I wanted her to say yes. I’d planned out the evening with a best-case scenario in mind, and those thoughts were the ones that got me hard. They left me with a fist full of cum this morning.
“I don’t really understand what that means,” she said finally. “You’d be my . . .?”
“Dominant. I control the scene, you control the limits.”
She took a breath. “And we’d be exclusive?”
I nodded. “During the time of our arrangement.”
Alarm flashed through her expression. “Arrangement? How long?”
“I was thinking a month. We can change that whenever, if it doesn’t work, or if we both want to keep going.” We neared the trio of restaurants that made up the Italian Village, and I drove up to the valet stand. “You don’t have to answer tonight, we’ll talk about it—”
“No need,” she blurted out. “Yes.”
Her abrupt answer surprised me, but I didn’t get a chance to respond, because the valet opened her door and cold flooded the car. I grabbed my ticket and ignored the possessive feeling I usually had when handing my beauty of a car over to a stranger, focusing instead on the beauty of my brand-spanking new submissive. Yeah, there was definitely going to be spanking in our future. But as much as I wanted her to say yes, I didn’t like how quickly she’d agreed. Something for us to work on.
We were seated in a quiet two-top in the upper level of the high-end restaurant, probably a far cry from her grad school dinners of ramen noodles. Although her apartment building was nice. She probably had roommates. Fuck, I’d let my cock do all the thinking. I still didn’t even know her last name. I’d Googled her that first night after I’d driven her home, but my search had yielded nothing. Did her name end
with two E’s? Or a Y?
Her hazel eyes stared at me like I was a new person. “I have more questions,” she said. “I probably should have asked them before saying yes, but I don’t think your answers are going to change my mind.” She pushed back the sleeves of her deep-red sweater dress and set her elbows on the table. “Questions about the details of the arrangement.”
“So professional,” I said.
I ordered a bottle of wine, and shot a smirk when she got carded. But the smirk drained from my face at the thought the waiter now knew her name and I didn’t.
“I have questions, too,” I said. “And I get to go first. Tell me about yourself, really. Who are you?”
“Is this because of my sister?” Her face fell. “She’s having a hard time with my stepmom moving out. That’s why she was in the papers.”
Her sister was in the news? “You said the other day your mother moved out, not your stepmom.”
“My real mom and I don’t talk. She never had the mothering gene.” Her expression changed to one of indifference. “My stepmom’s always done the mothering things for me. For a while my parents had shared custody, but things . . . got complicated, and it was easier for everyone when I chose to stay with my father full-time.”
“You had to choose?”
She blinked, and her face hardened. “It wasn’t much of a choice. I was a pawn to my real mom, just another way for her to get money out of my dad. I didn’t lose a lot of sleep over it.”
“But you said your parents are controlling.”
She made a face. “Maybe that’s too strong of a word. They have high expectations.”
Already my dominant side kicked into gear. “I don’t like backtracking. Be confident enough to say what you mean.”
Her eyes were sharp and intense. Noemi didn’t like critique. “Fine. They have the money and the power, so they usually get their way. Some people would say that’s controlling.” My girl took a sip of her wine and seemed to shrug off the tension the comment had given her. “But my dad’s very smart, and I know it sounds cheesy, but he’s a great man. He loves me. He only wants the best for me.”