Page 61 of The Dom with the Clever Tongue

“For sure.”

They chatted some more and caught up on news until she had to leave for a shift at the jewelry store.

Funny, all he could think of, when he waved goodbye from the gate, was not about her. Ivy’s small kiss had brought back the memory of how Scarlet had met his lips and moaned under him. He’d worked hard at showing her that a man could kiss as good as any woman, used every technique he had – gentle and rough, tongue, lips, and teeth, even at one stage, his hand caressing her nape and her back and a little lower. Another few inches southward and he’d have had her ass under his hand.

Domme or not, lesbian or not, she’d enjoyed that. Fuck, so had he. Maybe she was thinner than the girls he’d always gone for, but her eyes drew him in. And her personality. What other woman would play video games with him late into the night, smack-talking and swearing like a sailor? Reece, of course, was another matter. Even her lectures about keeping his feet off the couch were adorable. The two of them together...he gazed unseeing along the dust-clouded road...together they were a dream.

Maybe he had a chance with them, if Scarlet was bi?

With Ivy it was sex appeal and fun times and kink, and love – he’d been sure it was that too. While with Reece and Scarlet, he seemed to just slide into their life and be friends and the kink wove into it all in some fantastic way, and he didn’t quite understand what the difference was but he felt morealivearound them.

What if that kiss hadn’t been an accident and a one-off like she’d protested after? Damn the woman had gone so beetroot red. She’d kissed him with her eyes shut with Reece doing whatever it was she was doing to her throat. And those sexy, low-pitched sounds Scarlet had made against his mouth.

Then he refocused on the dilapidated timber of the gate in front of him. On the splinters and the peeling paint. Get real.

He smacked himself on the head with his palm. “What the fuck am I thinking?” He was intruding on their lives.

He should give up. The thought fought him tooth and nail, but he had to stop kidding himself. There was no future there, as much as he cared about them.

But could he actually change enough to make Ivy happy?

There were plenty of submissives out there. It was a pity he always liked the unattainable ones or the ones who wanted him to be what he wasn’t.

He leaned his forearm on the gatepost and tried to think past the ache in the middle of his forehead. If it weren’t for Reece and Scarlett already being in love, he’d have asked them if they’d consider going further with him. Risk and gut-wrenching disappointment were as much a part of loving someone as joy. He knew that. He could stand the pain of a no. It wasn’t that.

“I’m better off seeing if I can make it work with Ivy,” he muttered.

Then he turned away and headed for the back of the house where the woodpile lurked. One of the jobs his grandfather had liked giving him was chopping wood for his old stove. He didn’t have a wood stove here but it was the best exercise for getting rid of bad moods.

That thought triggered memories of the welcome his family had always received when they visited Grandpa. The man had so few visitors. To Malachi, his farm had been like a small jewel in the countryside. He recalled the stark beauty, but also the loneliness on his grandfather’s face when they waved goodbye at the end of each visit. That had tugged at his heart, every time.

The woodpile was in front of his feet and he leaned down and levered the axe from the log, breathing in a hint of the fresh timber smell.

He sank the axe in the wood. What was the point of owning a piece of beauty if he was the only one out here?

***

It was early evening when he and Reece arrived back at the girls’ apartment. The walk along the beach in front of the boardwalk had used up a fair bit of time, although Scarlet still wasn’t home. She and Jude had been working on a house inFelix and had to drive back late.

Strolling along the shoreline with Reece by himself had only made him sad, strangely. Despite the differences between tattooing and fashion, they clicked in so many ways. Art was art, he supposed.

The intricate whorls of a shell were something any adult had seen a thousand times. But when he’d shown her a conch shell he’d picked up from the swirling froth of the shallows, she’d smiled, studied it for as long as he might have then tucked it into a pocket. Then she’d kissed him and said thank you. On more than one occasion, he’d spotted her with it out of her pocket simply smoothing her thumb across the shell.

That attitude toward beauty spoke to his soul. Not everyone got that. They looked at his tattoos and figured he rode motorcycles and listened to rock music. Which wasn’t far from the truth but nobody guessed he enjoyed raising chickens and painting with oils.

He stood on one leg to get his shoes off. Tracking sand into the apartment apparently warranted the death penalty. At the other end of the little entranceway, next to the umbrella stand, Reece was bending over brushing sand off her foot with her fingers. The view was enticing. Her red shorts shaped up into her butt, and at the very bottom of the shorts, the white lace of her panties showed.

She looked past her thighs and spotted him looking at her.

“Nice ass.” He grinned. “You don’t seriously expect me to resist that display?”

“I’m not sure whether to be grateful for the compliment or outraged.”

“Both?” He patted his shorts. “Damn.” He’d left his wallet in the car’s glove box. The pocket on these shorts had a rip so he’d stashed the wallet in the car while they walked.

Reece raised an eyebrow then straightened.

“I left my wallet in the glove compartment. I’ll be back in a minute.” Shoes? He frowned. No, he wouldn’t need them.

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