That made her chuckle, as she was sure he intended. Actually, she was quite happy not to talk about the sex side of her failed relationships. The whole mediocre history was just embarrassing next to the sizzling heat that Logan could evoke in her with barely a glance. "There's honestly not a whole lot to say about them. They made me freakishly gun-shy when it comes to falling in love, because I don't trust my judgment. It is what it is. You're trying to distract me." She pointed a finger at him. "Previous lovers. At least tell me you've been married once."
He broke a chip in half, dipped it in the bowl of salsa between them. "Why?"
"Because you're forty, or nearly there. If you've never been married, that means there's something hinky about you. Dead body in the basement, mommy issues, pick your dysfunction. Maybe you're unwilling to compromise anything about yourself, which is problematic when it comes to meshing two people together in a relationship."
"Wow. All right. I've been married three times, and adapted wonderfully to every wife's quirks and foibles."
She blinked. "Three times? You're lying."
"Absolutely. You just said if I told the truth, that I've never been married, you'd assume I'm a lost cause."
She gave him an exasperated look, but when he caught her hand across the table, linked fingers, she couldn't find it in herself to pull free. "Whether you've had seven failed relationships or never had a single truly committed one," he said, "it all boils down to the same thing, Madison. We didn't find the right match."
"Do you think you and I are?" she asked. "Seriously. I know it's not a fair question, but . . ."
"On the contrary, it's pretty fair at this juncture." He held on to her hand as he picked up his beer, took another swallow from it. "I think we both see the potential. Are you willing to give it a try with me, or are you still pretending this is a fantasy fling you'll walk away from in a year?"
Alice's final letter to her had requested that Madison give running the store a year before deciding whether to keep or sell it. She withdrew her hand. "She told you about that?"
"I had to help her with the will, coordinate with the attorney. I saw the provisions."
She rubbed her forehead. "See, there you go again. Always a step ahead of me, waiting for me to play catch-up. It makes me feel like a child, like I'm being handled. That was how it felt with Alice, and what aggravated me so much. I mean, she fucking waits to tell me she's going to die, three days ahead of time . . ."
She bit back the words as the waiter came back to offer Logan another beer and top off the ice water she'd ordered with her drink. When he departed, she shook her head. "Christ. I'm sorry."
"You know she didn't intend it that way, Madison. I don't either." A look of frustration crossed his face, a rare enough occurrence that it sharpened her attention, drew her out of her resentment. "Here's the truth of it. I've never been able to sustain a relationship that's more than the Dom/sub thing, as you call it. I tend to get to know them first as submissives, inside that environment, and when we get out of it, it doesn't translate well. But it's such an important component to what I want with a woman, it's hard for me to go the opposite way. Imagine me picking up a woman at church. 'Hey, that was a great sermon on loving thy neighbor today. How would you feel about being tied up and spanked?'"
A smile wreathed her face. "You go to church?"
"Certainly. My mother raised me as a good, God-respecting, little-white-church-on-the-corner-of-Fifth-and-Main-whose-denomination-I-don't-know member. The ladies make great cookies for Sunday school," he added, as she choked on a laugh. Then he gave her a speculative look. "I know Alice ranged all the way between fiery Old Testament and New Age Goddess worship."
"Don't forget the Buddhist influence. She shaved her head when she was ten and went around for a week swathed in a harvest orange tablecloth our mother had from the seventies."
"What did you do?"
"Who do you think shaved her head? I made her shave mine, too. Only I didn't want anyone to think I was copycatting, so I wore a brown robe and told everyone I was Gandhi. It's a wonder our mother didn't just throw herself off a cliff, all the things the two of us did."
Logan burst into laughter. The pleasure of the sound, what it did to his handsome face, eased the tension. To hell with it. Enough crazy emotional shit for one night. As if he'd come to the same conclusion, he caught her hand, tugged. "Come over and sit next to me. I want you closer."
When she obliged, she liked leaning against that large, warm body, his arm on the booth behind her. She laid her hand on his thigh, looked up at him as he took another draw at his beer, his upper torso turned toward her so he surrounded her in an altogether pleasant way.
"What if I can't be all you need me to be, in the Dom/sub department?" she asked.
"What if I can't be all you need to be happy?" he countered. "That's the risk of every relationship, Madison. That we'll both fall short of the mark. The question is whether we both think there's enough here to give it a serious go. The whole 'I'd-rather-just-keep-you-a-fantasy' thing isn't going to fly this time." He gave her a mildly threatening look over the top of his beer. "If those words come out of your mouth, I will dedicate myself to being the antithesis of your fantasy. I'll stop bathing, belch loudly in your store and make crude comments about women in crotchless panties."
She rolled her eyes, but took a healthy sip of her margarita, thinking. Then she put it down next to his beer bottle, nudged it close enough that they clinked together. "I let you cuff and beat me tonight, and that's still tons less scary than considering us in a serious relationship. Why is that?"
"You already know the answer to that. There's a detachment to pure BDSM play. You can walk away from every session, and keep treating me as the friendly store owner next door. Get involved with me, it becomes harder to do that."
He fell silent, gave her a look. Waiting. His finger slid along the side of his beer bottle and back up, leaving a slick track in the condensation. She hadn't answered his challenge, and he wasn't letting her get away with it. Sighing, she laid a tentative fingertip on top of his hand, staring at it rather than speaking to him directly.
"My mother is dead and my father is pretty much a non-entity in my life. Alice was my family. Even when we had our two-year separation, so to speak, we spoke by phone every week, and she emailed me practically every day. She was my one constant. I can't really describe . . ." She stopped, collected herself, tried again. "I put so much into every one of my relationships. I really believed, every time, that I'd found the right guy. Leroy was the one that . . . he broke something in me."
How could anyone understand unless they'd experienced it? Give someone everything, then have it rejected, like it was a tacky, inappropriate gift? Treating her like she could never imagine treating them.
"I couldn't process his indifference, the sheer cruelty at the end. The same way I can't process ugly divorces. How can you watch a couple's wedding video, see that time when there was nothing that was ever too much to ask of one another, and then, in the end, they can't even give each other basic civility, let alone compassion?"
She sighed. "After Leroy left me, it was like him and all six of my other serious relationships rolled up together into this big, messy ball of string sitting inside my gut. When I'm in a session with you, it's like I can let that go. Who I am, really me, is all there, without all those knots and tangles. As much as it sometimes freaks me out a little, it's the best I've felt about myself in a while. I'm afraid if I take it outside of that . . ."
"The ball of string will take over, and you'll lose sight of that woman again. The one seven idiots never saw, even though she was right in front of them. Though part of it was your fault, wasn't it?"
She drew back a little. "What?"
"You've thought about it yourself." He met her gaze. "Once or twice, it could be them. But seven? There's only one common denominator, right?"
She wanted to move back to her side of the booth, but he merely held on to her, kept her s
till. "I'm not insulting you, Madison. You're an intelligent, fascinating woman. Remember, you're talking to a guy who has repeatedly failed at relationships outside the scene. I've faced the same thing in myself."
He was right. He'd just ruffled her pride, and she'd reacted in that typically perverse human way. It was one thing to say something critical about yourself; another entirely to hear the same thing from a lover. "Yes, I've thought it."
"Did you come up with any explanation?"
"Did you?" she asked defensively. When he gave her a look, she sighed.
"No. That's what's so frustrating. I thought I did everything they wanted, everything to make them happy."
"Were you happy?"
"I didn't . . . I never really thought about it."
"Bingo. You were a chameleon. You became everything they wanted you to be, except it wasn't you. You know why things feel so different between us, Madison? It's not the D/s stuff. It's that you reached the point you've said the hell with it and you're reaching for what you want. Plus, I don't want you to become everything I think I want. We both have the track record that proves we suck at that."
At her startled laugh, he nodded, a wry acknowledgment. But the whole conversation was making her antsy. This time when she slid away, really needing to retreat to her side of the booth, he let her. She stared moodily at the basket of chips. "Knowing what we did wrong doesn't really change much, does it?"
"It can. It can keep us from going down the same path."
"And then, yay, we kiss against a magical sunset and say happily-ever-after. It's not right," she snapped abruptly. "To go through all that heartache and pain, every horrible moment, then say, 'Oh gee, it was always as simple as taking Path B instead of Path A. Be yourself, and all will be well.' People in relationships don't want you to be yourself."
"The wrong people don't." His gaze sharpened. "A lot of people assume a Dom is a misogynist who wants a woman who says "Yes sir" and "No sir," no mind of her own. I'm a strong Master, I don't deny it. I demand absolute obedience as part of the charge for us both, when the time is right, but you've already proven you have the intuition to know when I don't want that. There's a lot of room inside that circle between us. I don't want a brainless robot."
When she said nothing, a note of impatience entered his voice. "Do you want me to be any different? You might say 'Put down the toilet lid' or 'I wish you'd watch a chick flick instead of football,' but would you really want me to be that all the time? Don't the edges make the shape more interesting?"
She heard him, but it was a murmur behind her memories, playing out on the reflection of her margarita glass. Her fingers played with the damp coaster. When she heard him sigh, she looked up in time to see the ironic twist of his lips. "It's funny, isn't it?" he said. "My problem was finding a woman I wanted to be with outside of the scene as much as in it, and here you are; a woman who only wants me inside the scene because you're afraid of being hurt again. It would be perfect, except it isn't. We were both meant to reach for more."
"But you just said it. You really don't know anything about me, except what Alice told you."
"Bullshit," he said mildly. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. What if I said you don't know anything about me? How would you feel about that?"
"Do I know much about you?"
"Yeah, I think you do, in an intuitive sort of way. We play off each other's sense of humor pretty well, and you've already taken a lot of steps toward trusting me. You don't do that if you don't feel like you know someone."
"Unless I'm just one of those people with crappy judgment. Didn't I mention that?"
He smiled. "Come on back over here. Let me tell you what I know about you."
When she balked, he put his foot over hers under the table. She slid it away, he followed, then trapped one foot between both of his. She tried to pull free, grimaced at him. "Let go, bully. Fine. I'll come over there."
She didn't want to fight. She really didn't. She just wished . . . she just wished she was back in that session, where everything was clear and still in her head. Where it was all much simpler.
This time when she came back to his side of the booth, he pulled her close. With a sigh, she wrapped her arms around him, put her head down on his chest, closing her eyes briefly when he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "I didn't intend to hurt you," he said.
"I know. I didn't mean to be bitchy. This is just hard stuff. Tell me all this great knowledge you have about me, so I can tell you you're full of it."
He chuckled, a soothing vibration through his chest. She forced herself to sit up, sip at her margarita, give him a reserved look. Pulling it together.
"You've grown into a really good shopkeeper in an astonishingly short period of time," he said, considering her. "Which tells me everything you needed for that was already there, and Alice knew it. You just needed the venue and the confidence. I also know you like playing dress-up. You like baking for Troy. When his eyes light up over it, you feel better about your day. You like doing nice things for people, you like making them happy. It makes you genuinely happy, the sign of a good person, and a good shopkeeper. I know you watch me a lot, a puzzle you're trying to solve for yourself."
His expression was the one that called forth emotions she couldn't control, but when she looked back down at her glass, he put his hand over hers.
"You're a woman who had a heart big enough to give all of it seven times. There are people out there who get burned once, Madison, and who never try again. I have to believe a woman who believes in true love enough to go for it seven times might just have an eighth inside of her." He slid the beer bottle in a circle around her margarita, bemusing her. "As for me, even when you're not on your knees to me, I want more."
She lifted her head, surprised by the fervor injected into the last sentence. His lips hovered just above hers, giving her the flavor of hops and salsa on his breath, the heat of it on her cheek. He'd left his arm curved around her, his hand resting possessively on her hip, fingers stroking the top of her thigh, keeping her body on a low hum, a separate reaction from her spiraling thoughts.
"That means I want both the day-to-day and the Dom/sub moments," he added. "When two people in a relationship are Master and submissive, there are a lot of possibilities for overlap in both settings. For instance, I love watching you talk about anything, but seeing you get pensive, knowing you're getting tangled up in your head, I want to distract you, make you feel better. So I'm going to put my hand up your skirt and play with your pussy."
She started underneath his hands. He was entirely serious. What was crazier was her body responded as if a switch was flipped, registering the serious set to his mouth, the glint in his gaze. He lowered his voice, sending a shiver up her spine.
"Spread your legs, Madison."
The hum in her body shot straight into a higher gear. Even as she held his gaze for another bated breath, her mind uncertain, her thighs were already loosening. Perhaps because, in the few sessions they'd had, he was already conditioning her to respond to his Master side, regardless of setting. Or maybe that was her own strong craving, unable to be denied.
He'd made the shift from casual date to Master in a heartbeat, certifiable proof he could merge the two. As he removed his arm from around her, brought it down between them, she slowly parted her legs. Casual as picking up his fork, he slid his hand beneath the mid-thigh skirt she'd worn to play Miss Fine, pushing it up enough he could reach the crotch of her thong. They were in a shadowed corner booth, and now she suspected that had been a deliberate choice. They faced a mirrored wall, so though their backs were to the other diners, he'd know if the waiter was coming.
"I should have told you to leave this off," he grumbled about the underwear. "I'll remember next time."
She bit down on a sound as his fingers stroked the damp cotton crotch. "Still wet from earlier," he mused. "What if I got you so wet your honey was trickling down your legs, and you'd have to walk out like that?"
"How would you feel about it?" she asked, breathless.
His brown eyes ignited with mesmerizing fire. "I'd fucking love it. Especially if people noticed. I want them to know I made you cream for me, right here out in public."
He pushed a finger inside of her as she bit back another whimper. "Logan . . ."
"Be still. Just feel," he ordered. "You asked what's next on the agenda. You're going to be that slave you fantasized about, sold at auction."
He'd made her tell him about that fantasy during their movie night. He'd not only refused to let her feel shameful about it, but had coaxed all the vivid details from her. It was a fantasy that had been built over countless lonely nights before she met him, when she'd had only her imagination and her vibrator to help her construct the story in her head.
"A soldier is going to buy you and share you with his friends," he added, confirming he had far too good of a memory. Her cheeks were burning, but that wasn't the only heated part of her. Her pussy contracted on his hand, and he brushed parted lips over hers. "Just the thought is making you hot, isn't it, Madison?"
She couldn't deny it, her voice rasping with desire. "It won't . . . really involve other men?"
"Lucky for you, I can tell you're asking because you don't really want that." He pushed in deeper and she gasped. "It will be a guided fantasy. That means I'm going to make you believe your fantasy is happening, using different props and sensations. Like hypnosis, it helps a sub lose herself in it in a safe way. I might have an assistant or two, but the only cock you're ever going to feel in that eager pussy of yours, now and going forward, is mine. Got it?"
"Oh . . ." She gripped the table as he pushed in a second finger. He started moving them in a coital rhythm, his thumb teasing her clit. "Logan, please don't . . ."
"Hearing you beg me not to do something your body is begging for is like waving fresh meat in front of a shark." Leaning down, he nuzzled her ear, took a sharp nip that made her shudder. "I can be ruthless when circumstances call for it, so if you don't want me to make you come right here, make you scream in this nice restaurant in front of these families, you're going to tell me you're willing to have a real relationship with me. Starting with taking me home with you tonight."