“Good,” he told her. “Because I wouldn’t put up with that shit.”
She rolled her eyes. She was such a brat.
“Just because you say something, doesn’t mean it will happen.”
Why not? “It would if I put you over my knee every time you talked shit about yourself.”
“Would you . . . would you do that?” she asked.
Fuck. Could she take the truth? Well, he should start as he meant to go on. “Yep.”
“Aren’t we supposed to talk about limits? A safeword? Rules?”
He grunted. “Maybe in a normal Dominant-submissive relationship.”
“Ours isn’t normal?”
“My feelings for you aren’t normal. I’ve felt nothing like this level of protectiveness and possessiveness in my life. I don’t feel things like normal people. Maybe something’s broken in me. Don’t know. Don’t much care. I feel what I feel. I have loyalty to my boss. He’s the closest thing I have to family and yet what I feel for him? Grain of sand in the beach compared to what I feel for you.”
Maeve sucked in a sharp breath.
Whoa. Just whoa.
He was full of all sorts of information today. And she was here for it. But some of it took some processing.
“I know what you mean. Not the . . . I mean I have friends who are my family and I love them. But it’s definitely not the same as what I feel for you. But I’ve never been in a relationship like this. What if I do something wrong?” She couldn’t look at him, scared that he’d be upset with her.
He cupped her chin. “You won’t ever do anything wrong, understand me?”
She wasn’t so sure of that.
“If you need a safeword to start, that’s fine. And rules are a good thing. You definitely need them.”
She did not!
All right, perhaps she did. But still, she wasn’t going to admit that.
“I’m a good girl.” Her bottom lip was doing that thing again, but she was going to ignore it. Because she did not pout.
“Of course you are. Even when you’re naughty, you’ll always be a good girl. My good girl.”
Jeez Louise. The last thing she needed right now was wet panties. It felt so wrong that being called a good girl made her so hot. And yet, at the same time it felt so right.
“You tell me where the line is and I won’t cross it.”
“What if I don’t know where it is? I’ve never been in this sort of relationship? I mean, okay, I know I don’t want you to make me bleed. Nope. No. I do not do blood. And I don’t want to be called names or humiliated. Suffered that enough.”
“What do you mean, you’ve suffered that enough?” he asked in a warning voice.
“But other than that . . . I don’t know where the line is,” she said, ignoring his question. She shouldn’t have said that. “I want to experiment; can I do that?”
“Of course you can. And you can say red at any time if you want to stop.”
“All right . . . okay, I can do that. Yeah, I like to learn new things. It’s good to keep trying new stuff. As long as there isn’t any blood involved. Or spiders. Or hamsters. That’s a hard limit.”
He gave her a shocked look. “I would hope that’s a hard limit for everyone.”
She shuddered. Her too.