Page 73 of Feel Free to Scream

I slowly nod, because I think I understand him a little better. He does take that…commitment?…he made to me seriously.

“Your kitchen,” I say. “It’s pretty well equipped, but it doesn’t have a good mixer. There’s one downstairs, but I’m guessing Claudio needs it. I would…like one.” I swallow. “To bake. Try Dez’s tricks.”

I’m biting my lower lip. I don’t need a mixer, by my definition. But by his? I think I might.

He smiles at me. “If you plan on making more things like what you brought today, you definitely should get whatever you need.”

Keller takes another one of the towels from under the sink—I make a mental note that they’re kept there—and dries his hair. “You know what kind you want?”

“Dez has a Thermomix. It heats things up as well as mixing them. But it looks fancy and complicated. Maybe something like a KitchenAid?”

He nods. “You should look around the kitchen before you place the order. See if there’s anything else you’d like.”

“Will do.”

This is…strange. We had an argument. Over the fact that he wants to buy me whatever I want—although he uses the word “need.”

Half out of curiosity, half to fill the silence, I ask, “Is your dad seeing your sister?”

“No.” He’s not bothered by the question. “I’m not saying they don’t fuck occasionally. I’m sure they do. But they’re both doms, so they wouldn’t fit well together. They know that.”

“That’s crazy.” I shake my head.

“Why? They don’t have any familial link; she’s my mother’s first daughter. If anything, Lisa’s of a more logical age for dad than Laura. Our mother is fourteen years dad’s senior.”

I decide not to calculate Arlo’s age when he encountered Darius’s mother. Hopefully, he was at least eighteen. “A cougar.”

“You can say that again. Her current boyfriend’s twenty-three.”

I chuckle. “You have to admit this is weird. How do you even know what sort of kinks your family members have? I don’t know what my grandma likes, intimately. Or my mother, for that matter.”

“Not really. I haven’t watched my dad or my sister fuck, if that’s what you mean. I can just tell that their characters are like mine. Demanding, exacting, possessive.”

I mark those three words, because they seem to explain so much about this guy.

“As for your grandma—and other people as a general rule. I guess most people don’t notice anything because they’re all various shades of vanilla. Boring as fuck. I knew you were the kind of girl who’d get wet at being told what to do when you’d avoid my gaze, sneaking little looks. Like prey hiding. I knew you’d be perfect for me that very first day.”

Perfect.

I’m bright red down to my tiptoes. And yes, avoiding his gaze, which apparently makes his point.

29

CLAIRE

Ihave half an hour before dinner, so I finally make myself face the inevitable.

My initial instinct to remain alone in my room for it causes my stomach to churn, so instead, I walk into the lounge. Like this morning, Keller’s reading on one of the sofas. There’s plenty of room elsewhere, but when I walk in, he straightens to free up some space, so I join him. The low, soft, dark four-seater is incredibly comfortable. I imagine getting up from here could become a struggle after a while.

“Studying still?” I ask.

“They don’t let people become surgeons unless they get the grades,” Keller retorts dryly. “No matter your last name.”

Surgeon. That makes me look at his long, strong, skilled fingers.

“What made you want to do that?”

“My cousin,” he says with a shrug. “He explained all the reasons why that was a sound career path, and they made sense to me. I don’t have a vocation as such. My only goal is to not deplete the amount of money my father made.”

---