Her hand curled into a fist and she drew in a harsh breath. Last night she’d driven me mad with her obedience. If she chose here, what would she let me do? A blowjob in the women’s bathroom? My cock hadn’t been inside her hot mouth yet.
She shook her head subtly. “Later.”
Later would work just as well, but my cock ached with dissatisfaction. I needed to stop thinking about her on her knees, sucking me off. “Were you always a good girl before you met me?”
“You’d probably say so . . . Sir.”
She didn’t have to address me like that when we were out in public. Noemi wasn’t my slave. That kind of arrangement didn’t interest me, and I’m sure it didn’t interest her. Having 24/7 control over someone else was too demanding, and I already had enough fulltime jobs.
No, she was mocking me. “You’re only making it worse on yourself,” I said in a low voice. “Who were you, good girl? Straight A’s and home by curfew every night?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t drink, or smoke, or do drugs. I didn’t have sex.”
Yeah, she gave that honor to some asshole named Ross. A week with me and hopefully she’d forget his name.
“I never skipped school,” she said, “or got in trouble. I never lived a life outside of the rules. I never lived at all.”
“Until now.” I smirked.
“Yeah, well,” her eyes gleamed, “nothing lasts forever.” We were interrupted briefly when the server delivered our food and then flitted off. “What about you? Were you always this . . . bossy?”
“No.” I stared down at my plate as a foreign emotion seized me. A need I couldn’t understand, or stop. “You can thank the cancer for that.”
Her eyes widened. Why the fuck was I bringing this up?
“I spent the better part of a year doing exactly what everyone else told me to do. Doctors, nurses, my parents. All of them saying what drugs to take, when I could eat, or sleep, or piss . . . It got really fucking old.”
“The time in your life when you didn’t have control.”
“Yes. I wound up with pneumonia when my immune system had been obliterated. The doctor told my parents only one out of three survive something like that. Right in front of me, he’s telling them to start preparing themselves.”
It didn’t look like Noemi was breathing. She’d turned into a living statue. Stop talking, Joseph.
“I’d been out of school for months by this point. It was already a fact that I wouldn’t graduate on time. My friends stopped coming by the hospital when my hair was gone and my weight went below a hundred. High school kids can be shallow and self-centered, and I couldn’t blame them. I looked dead already.”
Her hand drifted up to cover her mouth. I sat back in my chair, my appetite starting to wane.
“So I had a, I don’t know, a moment of fucking clarity. I’d make it through the pneumonia, because nothing lasted forever, and afterward, I’d be the one in charge of my life. Just me.” I tore my gaze from hers, staring out the large window where people hurried past, living their lives.
The tension between us was suffocating.
My gaze finally returned to her. She was staring at her hands in her lap. Why did I let the conversation get so fucking heavy?
“Having everything taken away from you teaches you who you really are.” The thought stormed into my mind. “You want that from me? To take away your control so you can find yourself?”
She took an enormous breath and blinked her clear eyes. “Maybe.”
“I think you already know who you are, you’re just afraid to let her out of the cage.”
She gave me a half-smile that said she didn’t believe me.
Conversation moved to lighter topics after that. Her lack of plans for spring break. Her terrible taste in music, and yet excellent taste in movies. My overpriced car was still a sore spot for her.
“You realize you live in Chicago, right?” she asked. “When the roads aren’t under construction or clogged with traffic, they’re covered in potholes and snow. Let me guess—you bought it for the spacious interior so you could make out with random girls you met at your club.”
“Making out with you wasn’t what I had in mind that night.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “There’s even less room for that.”