Before they got into his shower together, they looked over her marks, reminiscing. “I’ve fantasized about beating your ass for so long now,” he said. “And fucking it, obviously. God, Ruby, it was so hot to do it for real.”
While they dried off, she thought about what he’d said to her, about sleeping in the guest room: I think we’ve played together a little too long for that. Did he mean playing together in the quartet, or playing through three salacious acts as a sadist Dom and masochist sub? How would this wild night affect their performing relationship? With Ethan, things had been fine, but her and Jonathan’s relationship as first and second violin was a lot more fraught.
She crawled under his covers not expecting a lot of pillow talk, since he was usually a pretty terse guy. She imagined him saying “Good night, go to sleep now,” in his Dom voice as soon as he joined her, but no, he wanted to talk. He pulled her close and studied her with a thoughtful expression.
“That was good, huh? You and me?”
She nodded. “It was really good. Amazing, even. I feel like I know you a lot better now.”
He half-smiled, half-snorted. “Better than you want to, I bet.”
“No. I know you just enough to want to know more. It’s always been that way with you.”
“I didn’t go too hard, did I? When you started crying, it worried me a little, but it turned me on a lot more.”
She laughed. “You’re a miscreant. God, I’ve never cried like that during sex, or kink, or anything. Why did I cry so much?”
His expression sobered. He reached and touched one of her cheeks, as if remembering the tears that had trailed down it.
“Maybe it was relief. Or release. Whatever it was, it felt special. I felt really close to you.”
“I felt that way too.”
He thought a moment longer. That was Jonathan, always thinking. Always analyzing, working, leading. Out of habit, she waited to hear what he’d say next.
“Men are vile.”
Wow, she hadn’t expected him to say that. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“If you could see inside my head, Ruby, inside any guy’s head, you’d be disgusted.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She glanced away with a grin. “Lately I’m learning that I’m kind of a creep myself.”
“You’re a sweet, sexy creep, though. Guys are predatory creeps, most of them. We have disgusting, sexist, degrading fantasies. I’ve had so many fantasies about you…” He didn’t elaborate on them, but she got the idea there were quite a few in his mental masturbation file. “But I want you to know this, Rube, after everything we did together, after everything I did to you tonight, that I respect you as much as I ever have—”
“Which is not very much,” she joked.
“I’m not kidding.” His imperious, quartet-leader voice was back. “Let me say this, it’s important. No matter how I treat you, no matter what I say to you in practice, you have to know that I respect and admire you, both as a musician and a person. That’s not going to change, even after what went on between us.”
“Same here,” she said, matching his gravity. “You drive me crazy sometimes, but I wouldn’t want to play second violin to anyone else.”
“You’re my first, best, second violin.”
They joined their pinky fingers together, their legs touching, his other arm cushioning her head.
“I do hate you sometimes though,” she said in the afterglow. “Like really hate you. That’s just the truth.”
“I know. I deserve it.”
They both laughed. Truth was truth.
“Are we going to tell the other guys about this?” he asked a moment later.
“We won’t have to. They’re going to know. Ethan will know the second he sees me. Steve will figure it out within a day or two at most, if Ethan doesn’t tell him.”
Poor Steve. He was the only member of their quartet who hadn’t been inside her yet.
Yet?
Her mind had added the yet, but she couldn’t picture her and Steve, not really. Steve was the sweet, cuddly bear, the big brother. Of course, she hadn’t pictured her and Jonathan having wild, kinky sex either.
Well, maybe someday. For now, though, she felt heavy and drowsy in Jonathan’s arms, in his bed. Sex, pain, obedience, and sleepy snuggles, a quartet of pleasures. She felt like a very lucky girl.
And tomorrow, she’d practice the hell out of that Rachmaninoff, just to show Jonathan how much this had meant to her. How much he meant to her. She’d practice it until it was perfect and powerful, just like their relationship.
Perfect and powerful, just like him.
Play With Me
Where Ruby Has Fun With Steve
1.
Ruby cursed the Chicago public transit system as she hurried down the street to Steve’s apartment building. A few snow flurries and everyone in the city lost their shit.
When she got to his place, she knocked the slush off her boots and greeted his elderly doorman, a music lover whom they regularly comped into their concerts, and got on the elevator, juggling her backpack and the freakishly large container of Fletcher’s Cheese Balls she’d picked up at the bulk foods store.