That made her pause, as if she hadn’t expected such an answer.
“Last woman to really get under my skin, Renee, she was just mine. Shared her sometimes with Connor and Garrison for fun, but she was only with me. Girl took every penny I had after cheating on me, repeatedly. I remember getting over it, when after two weeks not leaving the house, Connor dragged me out of bed and tossed me into the shower like some unruly foal he was dealing with. Yeah, Fox, I know the risks involved.”
Sunny didn’t respond right away, staring, as if trying to determine if his words were true. She curled her shoulders in, then dropped her gaze to her cup. “Even if I wanted to, even if I thought I could…”
“Then what?” He prompted her, letting some of the sharpness of his voice compel her to answer.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
He recalled her at the club, remembered how she’d cringed, how she’d not told off Jordan when she hadn’t been interested. Funny to think that this woman was her, that the one who stood up for so many women at the shelter hadn’t been able to just say, “no thanks,” to a Dom.
Then it hit him. Why hadn’t he put it together before? Spend long enough with an asshole who doesn’t like being told no, and a person would learn that keeping their opinions to themselves was safer.
“You were a sitting duck at the club,” he admitted. “But you aren’t like that normally. Are you like that on dates? With men?”
She shook her head. “I tried to date after, well, you know.”
“And?” He knew the conversation would take ten times longer than it needed to, because he had to prompt her to continue, but luckily, he had no issue sitting there just as long as it took. He enjoyed this—not the topic, not digging at her wounds, but the slow uncovering of her truth, of what she hid.
“And they were nice, but something was always missing. No matter what, it was like soup without any salt. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good.”
“Because you aren’t vanilla, honey, even if you wish you were.”
“So I can’t date regular men, and I can’t date…” She stumbled over the word ‘Dom’, but this time didn’t manage to even try.
“You could date Dominants.” He tried the full term to see if it helped. Her shoulders didn’t bunch, and her breathing didn’t change, so it seemed to have helped. “You just need to understand how it works a little better and know how to find a good one.”
She took another drink of her coffee, and Trent cringed. Black coffee was like eating straight flour to him—pointless and gross. Coffee was supposed to be a part of a drink, not the whole recipe. Still, he got the sense she rarely had people over, so he wasn’t going to make her feel bad about it.
After she swallowed, she nodded, as if conceding to his point. “I could do some research, I guess…”
“Research isn’t always great because there’s too much bad information out there. That’s the negative of the internet—any idiot can put his opinion up and claim it’s fact.”
“So I go back to the club? The owner said I could, if I wanted…”
“What if you let us help?” Garrison asked from the doorway, a cup of coffee in his hands as well, having obviously caught the gist of their conversation.
Which was fine by Trent, because he’d discovered the best way to get a sub to behave was by having more than one Dom on her ass.
And hereallywanted to be on Sunny’s ass…
She jerked her gaze around, eyes wide but no real panic there. That was something—that she seemed to accept their presence, that panic didn’t set in quite so fast. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Garrison said as he walked out, Connor on his heels, no coffee for him since he didn’t care for it. “You want to understand BDSM better, right? But you need someone to guide you. You already know us. We’ve been cleared and background-checked by Sanctuary and we’ve got more than enough experience for you.”
She hesitated, doing that damn chewing-on-her-lip thing that drove Trent crazy. “I’m not interested in dating you.”
The words disappointed Trent, no way around that, but he understood them, too. The girl was terrified of what she wanted, of herself, of everything. She didn’t want to risk any entanglements that could end up tying her down.
And that was something Trent understood.
“Maybe that’s your first lesson,” Connor said as he took a seat beside Trent. “BDSM doesn’t have to lead to people dating. It doesn’t mean they’re a couple. We could top you, but that doesn’t mean anything long term. Plenty of people enjoy casual dynamics.”
She gulped, no coffee in her mouth this time. “And you’d teach me what it really is?”
Garrison nodded from his spot, still standing. “Yeah, we would. By the end, you’d know what it was all about, whether you liked it or not, how to find an appropriate partner, and how to communicate your limits.”
She ran her finger along the rim of her cup, clearly deep in thought, considering their offer.
Trent kept his mouth shut, because nothing he said would help. Begging her to say yes would be stupid and entirely unethical. If she wanted to try this, it had to be one hundred percent her choice.
So he held his breath as he waited, trying to look at ease while feeling anything but.
“Okay,” she said in that sweet voice he wanted to hear as she sighed his name later, once he’d gotten her naked. “But I don’t want to have sex with you.”
Connor made that snorting sound he liked to do to call people on their bullshit, and at her sharp look, Trent answered. “Sure, Fox. That’s the thing, you’ll call the shots and set the limits. You say no sex, then that’s how it is.”
She narrowed her hazel eyes, suspicion in them. “So why are you smirking?”
“Because I have no doubt that you’ll bebeggingus to fuck you before long.”