“How about you risk me driving to that Walmart over there and grabbing us some snacks for the weekend while you check in with work?”
“You don’t want me to go with you?”
“The cousins would recognize you. Or any other cousins who might be lurking. I can hopefully dodge Jack and Jill and their Humpty-Dumpty herd if they’re in there.”
“Oh. Good point.”
He kissed her temple. “Good girl.”
A warm shiver ran through her. He called her that during their scenes, just like she called him Sir.
But they never called each other that outside of their scenes.
“Thank you, Sir.”
* * * *
Andrew wouldn’t deny hearing her call him that did lots of good things to him. He hated that she seemed…not upset, but she wasn’t sounding as confident as she had earlier.
“Unless you don’t want me to drive the car,” he said. “I can walk that far.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind if you drive it.” She pointed to the dresser. “The key fob is over there.”
“How about we watch TV or pull up Netflix on one of our laptops tonight?”
“That sounds like a great plan. We’ve never really had a TV night together.”
“Okay. Cool.”
“You might want to pick up an extra jacket or sweatshirt for tomorrow night,” she suggested.
“Good idea. Thanks.”
She stood and went to use the bathroom. While she was gone, he heard his phone go off where he’d left it on the dresser. He’d grabbed it and was looking at the screen as he reached for his suitcase and put it up on the bed.
But when he unzipped it and opened it, he immediately realized his mistake when he saw the vibrator tucked inside the pocket.
Whoops.
He quickly rezipped it, set it back on the floor, and grabbed his suitcase just in time before Rachel emerged from the bathroom.
She started to chuckle as she washed her hands.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Are you going to spend the whole weekend wearing all those layers?” she asked.
He realized he was still wearing the hoodie and the jacket. “I just might. How cold is it out there, anyway?”
“Probably midfifties.” She smiled. “I bet I can warm you up.”
“I bet you can.” He retrieved his electric razor from the bag and plugged it in to charge. Then he grabbed the key fob. On his way to the door, he paused. “Need anything from Walmart?”
She grinned. “Condoms and lube?”
He wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. So he leaned in and kissed her. Not a deep, long one, more a friendly one. “It’s not nice to give a Dom blue balls. He’s liable to retaliate the next time you scene.”
“Who says I’m kidding?”
And on that note she smiled and headed for her phone.
Aaahhh.
He headed downstairs, carefully checking for any sign of the cousins before hurrying across the parking lot to the rental car. The wind was ripping, sharply cold by his usual standards. This would be a rare winter day in Florida. A couple of minutes later, he was in Walmart and had a cart. He picked up some Starbucks coffee drinks, bottled water, snacks, microwave popcorn, and then headed over to the men’s clothing section.
He found a touristy sweatshirt with various South Dakota scenes printed on it, a slightly heavier jacket, as well as a pair of plain sweat pants. On his way to the check-out counter, he detoured through the health and beauty section.
He added a box of condoms and a small bottle of lube to his purchases.
He also gave himself brownie points for not detouring through the kitchen and sports sections and picking up things like spatulas, wooden spoons, and table tennis paddles.
By the time he returned to the hotel, he was beginning to second-guess the last-minute purchase of the condoms and lube.
What if she was joking?
Awwwkwaaarrrd.
He opened the condom box, took the strip of three out, and flattened the box. Likewise with the small bottle of lube. He put the condoms and bottle of lube in his jacket pocket and on his way inside the hotel, he dumped the boxes into the garbage.
If she wasn’t joking, great.
If she was, then only he would silently be cringing.
Chapter Nine
Andrew felt like he was in a cheesy spy movie as he glanced around before bolting up the stairs to their floor. As quickly as he could, he hurried down the hallway to their room and let himself in.
Rachel was sitting at the desk with her laptop out and was talking on the phone.
He quietly shut the door behind him instead of letting it swing shut. While she was on the phone and distracted, he slipped the condoms and lube into his suitcase and then turned to put the drinks in the fridge to cool.
Mission accomplished.
If she’d been joking, no harm, no foul.
If she wasn’t joking then he was prepared.
He changed into the sweat pants and a T-shirt and checked his work e-mail while Rachel was on her call. Fortunately, he didn’t have any fires of his own to put out. So when she finished, he was watching TV with the volume still turned down low.
She closed the lid of her laptop, got up, and climbed onto his bed with him, curling next to him.
“Hello.” He bumped up the sound on the TV. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just some aggravation.” He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the way her body felt pressed against him. “Any chance I can have that spanking now?”
He looked down into her face. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
“Not really, no.”
He set the remote aside and rolled to face her. “Talk to me.”
It wasn’t so much talking as it was crying and sobbing, his heart breaking for her.
Whatever lurked in her past and had her upset had really done a number on her. By the time she finished crying, he’d gotten up and brought the box of tissues from the bathroom vanity to her. She pulled several from it, and he set it on the nightstand between the beds, next to her bottle of hand sanitizer and several small bottles of oils, before pulling her back into his arms.
I’m a fucking asshole.
No, he really hadn’t had a lot of in-depth conversations about her past with her. Being a young teenager and having to help care for a dying mother while taking care of her little brother was hard enough.
Then to lose their dad the way she did, and not have anyone safe to lean on, to rely on, would be hard on anyone.
He wanted to take her pain away.
That’s when he caught himself.
Shit.
That kind of thinking had gotten him in trouble trying to help Kandy.
As she quieted, at first he thought she might want to start talking now that the tears were out of her system…
But a soft snore escaped her.
He would have laughed if it wouldn’t wake her up.
After he adjusted his position without waking her, and so she wouldn’t cut off the circulation in his arm, he reached behind him to find the TV remote.
This wasn’t the worst position to be in, or the worst person to be in it with.
* * * *
Rachel startled awake to find herself pressed against Andrew, draped over his chest.
The last thing she remembered…
Oh, boy.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
She didn’t dare raise her head yet. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize. Obviously, you needed to vent. That’s what I’m here for.”
She sat up, looking down at him, her hand on his chest. “You must think I’m a wreck.”
When he didn’t immediately answer, she must have telegraphed her fear in her face because he reached over, caught her hand before she could pull away, and laced fingers with her.
“I screwed up before,” he said. “With Kandy. I know better now. I know I can’t ‘fix?
?? you if you’re broken. I can and will walk along beside you if you need me to, or if you even want me to, if you’re willing to do the work. Seriously willing. Maybe it’s time for us to have our talk now.”
She didn’t pull her hand free. She liked having the contact with him. “I don’t really talk about my past a lot. At all. I know I’m lucky. There’s no horrific trauma there.”
“Your parents died.”
“I meant…I wasn’t molested. Emotionally, yeah, I went through the wringer. I admit it.” She risked meeting his gaze. “I’m not looking for someone to fix me. I don’t think another person can magically make me a whole person. I’m already a whole person. I’ll admit I probably shouldn’t have stuffed my feelings for all these years.”
Reading his expression wasn’t going to give her any answers. He also didn’t interrupt her.
“I don’t know what you went through with Kandy that we don’t all know about,” she eventually added. “I’ve got a job, a home, a car. I don’t have an unusual amount of debt. I don’t have any substance abuse problems. I don’t drink in excess. My biggest problem is I don’t know how to open up to someone and trust them.”
He gently squeezed her hand. “You seem to trust me.”
“But you didn’t even know my parents were dead until recently, did you?”
An expression flashed across his face that she couldn’t interpret. “No, not for sure,” he quietly said. “And that’s my fault for not being a better friend and asking.”
“See, that’s kind of my point. Not even Terrie and Lynn really know a lot about me. They know my parents are dead, but beyond that, they don’t know much. I dodge and weave around things so I don’t have to think about them, much less talk about them.”
“Then what are you asking of me?”
“Don’t let me avoid dealing. Make me face things. Melt that icy barrier around my brain.”
That had the intended effect. He smiled.
But he didn’t interrupt her.
“I like how you can turn my brain off and I follow you,” she said. “I like that I can trust you. I want to learn to open up and trust you all the time. That’s on me, not you.”
He sat up and kissed her. A slow, gentle exploration with his hand lightly cupped around the back of her neck. “Then let’s see what happens as we go through this weekend.”
She nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
Stroking her cheek, he smiled again. “You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to. Yet.”
“What if I want to?”
“Then maybe you should get used to it, because I like it. Just keep in mind that you’re not the only one scared to let someone in. Unlike the last time, where I ignored my gut instincts at every turn and did what I thought was the ‘right’ thing to do simply because I’d promised her I’d be there for her. I’ll tell you right now, though, that there won’t be countless chances.”
“Deal.”
This time, she leaned in and kissed him, enjoying how he took over and took control of it.
Until right in the middle of it, when her stomach loudly rumbled, making both of them laugh.
“Wow,” he teased. “Thanks.”
“Sorry. What time is it, anyway?”
“Eight local time. So nine our time.”
“Yikes. No wonder I’m hungry. Sorry I crapped out on you.”
“That’s okay. I napped, too. Can we still find a pizza place that will deliver?”
“Oh, absolutely. This is Sioux Falls, not Nome, Alaska.” She brushed a quick kiss across his lips before getting up in search of her phone. She went to pull the curtains closed. “Yikes.”
“What?”
“It’s raining.”
“Then even better we’re staying in.”
She used her laptop to look up a place close by and call in their order. Out in the hallway, she heard a door open, and then froze as even over the sound of their TV she heard a familiar voice.
“Jack! Why are they still in the pool?” The door slammed shut on the rest of Jill’s comment.
Her gaze locked with Andrew’s, who immediately burst out laughing as he fell over onto the bed.
Shit.
Well, there went her plans for a nice loud spanking.
And she really needed a spanking.
* * * *
Andrew immediately felt horrible about laughing, but the look on Rachel’s face, a mix of sheer horror and terror, set his sadist giggling.
He got up and went over to her, pulling her into his arms.
“Fucking seriously?” she whispered. “Right fucking next door? The same hotel wasn’t bad enough?”
Great. I’m going to be cock-blocked all weekend by the cousins. “We’ll just have to avoid them,” he said.
“What about breakfast?”
“We’ll go out to eat somewhere else. My treat.” He made her look up at him and kissed her. “I’ll worry about keeping us from getting ambushed by the cousins. Do you trust me?”
She nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good girl.”
After going to wash her face and clean up, she grabbed one of her bottles of oils and dabbed a little on her forehead, rubbing it around.
“What’s that? Oh, peppermint. Never mind, I can smell it.”
“It’s good for headaches.” She picked up another bottle and dabbed some on her wrists before rubbing it in, and along her neck. “Lavender. Helps relax me.”
“I take it you’re not big on medicine?”
He wished he hadn’t said it when the frown filled her face. “Not after what Mom went through, no. I mean, I’m not a nut. I do use stuff for headaches if I need to, or if I get sick or something. But I try to manage as much as I can like this.”
Well, it was a refreshing change from Kandy, who seemed to bounce around from medication to medication once she’d started seeing doctors.
None of it had helped, of course, because no one was treating the source of her issues or insuring she followed through. That he had been more deeply vested in her outcome than she had was telling.
Wait, stop. You’re done with that and her. Idiot. You have Rachel right here with you.
There was that.
The pizza arrived within twenty minutes, much to his surprise. They sat on his bed and ate it right out of the box, with it between them.
“So tell me more about Rachel Rede,” he said. “I know you’re thirty-three and what you do for a living. What are you looking for out of life?”
She nearly choked on her slice as she started laughing. “Wow. No subtlety there, huh?”
“Might as well rip the bandage off and do this right.”
For a moment, she stared off into space. “I’d like a nice, boring, happy life.”
“Boring?”
“I don’t mean vanilla boring. I mean uneventful in the ugly ways. I don’t like drama.” Her smile faded. “Maybe that’s another reason I’ve sort of isolated myself.”
“Are you close to your brother?”
“Not as close as I’d like to be geographically. I wish he’d move to Florida. We talk a lot. Several times a week. But tomorrow will be the first time I’ve seen him in three years.” She took a bite of her slice. “What about you?”
“I want a woman who won’t try to set my shit on fire.”
“I solemnly swear I am not a pyromaniac.”
“Thank god for that.” Time to nut up and put on my Dom panties. “So what are we talking about, here? Are we going to put sex on the table?”
She froze, then nodded before her gaze locked with his. Those gorgeous green eyes of hers. Sometimes they looked more hazel, sometimes a lush fern green. “Yeah,” she softly said. “If you’d like to, I’d like to.”
“How about we give this a trial run for a few weeks and we can adjust as necessary.”
Another nod.
“If the term boyfriend and girlfriend wigs you out,” he said, “we can call each other fuck buddies, if you prefer.”
She finally smiled. “Okay.”
“And we’ll be exclusive. For play and sex. I mean, play we can negotiate. I know you enjoy Nate’s fire cupping and stuff, and I don’t do that.”
“No sexy play. No orgasm play.”
“With me?”
She smiled, reassuring him. “With other people besides each other.”
“Gotcha. Sorry. I’m a slow Dom, sometimes.”
“That’s okay. I prefer you like this.”
“Why?”
“Because you aren’t afraid to admit you aren’t perfect. And I’m not afraid to point out to you when you aren’t. That makes me feel safer.”
“Oh, I can safe the hell out of you, girl. I’m horrible at remembering dates, I sometimes get distracted by the TV, and—”
“Point made, Sir.” She giggled.
He reached over and touched his finger to the tip of her nose. “And I love making you laugh. You have a beautiful smile.”
“You’re the first person who’s really made me smile like this before.”
Chapter Ten
After dinner, they cleaned up and Andrew pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “How about I fire up my laptop with some dope tunes and we go take a nice shower to relax us before the next step?”
She snorted. “Dope tunes?”
“I did mention I’m not exactly hip, right?”
She draped her arms around his neck, pressing her body along his. “That sounds great.”
He lightly smacked her ass. “Then get those clothes off, pet.”
She tossed him a sexy smile that finished hardening his cock. While she stripped and headed for the shower, he retrieved the condoms and lube—making sure the lube was ready to actually use and the safety seal removed from the inside of the bottle—and set them on the nightstand next to her oils and hand sanitizer.
He heard the water running in the shower and got his laptop playing an XM Radio channel through his account. Nice jazz to soothe and set the mood. He hit mute on the TV so they could use it as light and turned off the other lights in the room before stripping and following her into the bathroom.
Yes, he’d seen her naked before. Plenty of times. And during the course of their play he had permission to touch and torment her breasts, but other than spanking her ass, or using implements on her, they had kept orgasm play off the menu.