Page 18 of Fearless
“I… I’m not… n-not hungry.”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked pointblank.
Kitty snapped her eyes to his. She couldn’t open her mouth; she was terrified she’d throw up right then and there. She shook her head.
“Are you running a fever, do you think? Should I take your temperature? Via your mouth,” he specified after a brief pause. “I’ll save the bum for when the situation deserves it.”
Exactly what kind of situation would deserve it, she almost asked, but stopped herself in time. Her face felt hot. Her breathing had quickened, though she tried to slow it down. There was nothing about the way he was looking at her, his body language or the tone of his voice that should make what he was saying sound threatening, and yet her brain kept trying to twist it that way.
“I-I’m fine.” She shivered.
“Going without eating for prolonged periods can make a body feel sick to their stomach. So can stress and anxiety, and heaven knows you’ve had reason enough for both. But it’s time to stop now.” For the first time, a measure of steel wove itself into his voice. “Your body needs to heal, love, and to do that, you need to eat. In this matter, I will not be argued with.”
The temptation to do just that—argue—leapt into the back of her throat so fast she had to lock her teeth to keep it from bursting free. She could hear it, the unspoken, ‘or what’ that reverberated on the back of her tongue, an ill-thought out challenge she never, no matter what the provocation, would have spewed at Ethen.
But Noah wasn’t Ethen. Noah wasn’t anything but a friend of a friend. The guy putting her up in his spare bedroom for a while.
The guy who had made her breakfast.
And cleared her room of spiders.
The one who was right now, sitting to the side of her, one hand in his lap, the other resting lightly beside his plate, idly rubbing his thumb against one finger while he waited for her to either obey or work up the nerve to go ahead and issue that challenge he obviously expected. Maybe he could hear it in the silence now stretching out again between them. Or maybe, he could see it, lurking in the back of her guilt-laden eyes.
She picked up the biggest shred of toast and put it in her mouth. It was still faintly warm, soft from the butter he’d put on it. Ethen considered butter an extravagance and something to be enjoyed only by him, not his Menagerie. Kitty didn’t realize how much she’d missed it until the creamy taste touched her tongue. Her eyes closed of their own accord. Then the Vegemite hit her taste buds and Kitty’s face screwed into a grimace.
“Good, isn’t it?” All of that prior severity melted into his next grin.
She covered her mouth, not sure what to make of the strong, grassy flavor. If she’d had a napkin, she would have discretely spit it out. She didn’t. Reluctantly, she made herself chew.
“Let’s go back to what we were talking about.” Scooping more egg onto his toast, Noah said, “I’m going to do something I don’t like to do and make an assumption, so correct me if I’m wrong: Are you a service submissive?” He gestured to her plate. “Try some of the egg on the toast.”
He’d smeared that Vegemite crap with sadistic evenness over both toast slices. It was on every piece she’d picked apart and the last thing she wanted was to put more of that against her tongue. And yet, she obediently dipped a small shred of crust in her egg and put it in her mouth. Surprisingly, the yolkiness did make the green stuff more palatable.
“Yeah?” Noah said, smiling as if to say, It’s good, right?
She wasn’t quite willing to go that far, but she did manage to swallow.
“So,” he said, getting back to the main topic, seemingly without noticing she hadn’t answered his last question. “Most service submissives that I know personally—admittedly, it’s only been the one. But I did live with her for a couple years and, believe me, that was long enough to know there was no faster way to plummet her into the depths of absolute depression than by stripping her of everything she did to serve.”
The knots in Kitty’s chest were so tight, her heart felt strangled by them. It hurt, but she dared not reveal that. He was seeing too much as it was and it scared her. Frozen in her chair, she chewed her next bite until it lost all its flavor.
“Conversely,” he added, “there was no faster way to bring her back into her element than by allowing her to perform those things she considered to be her set tasks. Your egg is almost gone. You’re doing good. Take another bite, please.”
She wasn’t even tasting the egg anymore. “What are you telling me?”
“I’m saying I have a job here. My job is to work for a living, keep a roof over our heads, put food on the table and make sure you’re safe for as long as it takes you to learn how to trust it. But, what does that leave you right? It’s not like you can walk into Cooktown and find a job. You’re not from here. Legally, you can’t work, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find you something to do.”
He was going to demand sex from her now. Kitty waited, frozen in dread.
“I figure, I can treat you one of two ways,” Noah smiled at her. It was such a handsome smile too. Not that handsome things couldn’t hide monsters. God knew she’d learned that lesson thoroughly. “Either I can treat you like a guest, meaning you won’t be required to do anything but lounge about, relaxing, resting, and recuperating. Or I can treat you like you live here, in which case certain things will be expected of you.”
And here it was. Under the table, her leg started jiggling and wouldn’t stop.
“Like what?” Her lips, numb, hardly moved.
“Coffee,” he said decisively. “We both drink coffee, so that can be one of them. First thing every morning, a fresh pot of coffee needs to be made. Second, meals. Brekkie by eight, lunch between noon and one, and dinner at seven. I don’t mind a spot of tea about four-ish. But if I get called out to work, then that can be iffy, so I’ll take care of me own on that. Your last job, total care of the kitchen. I relinquish all control of it. That means you can do anything you want—rearrange the cupboards, paint the cupboards. So long as you take care of it and treat everything in there with the respect it deserves, then that is your domain. Which doesn’t mean I expect you to pick up after me. I don’t. I’m a grown-ass man; I can pick up after me self. It doesn’t mean you’ll be a sheila stuck in the kitchen all day if you hate it, either. It means, for the next couple of days you’ve got a job. After that, if you want to stick with it, you can keep your job as long as you like. If you want to switch to something else, then all you have to do is say so and we’ll see what we can arrange. What do you think?”
She’d been braced for so much worse, for so long now, that her nerves no longer knew how to settle for anything less than absolute panic. She almost got up and walked away from the table before the full meaning—and sexual lack thereof—of his words finally permeated all that baseless certainty that her brain had built up.
