Page 36 of Dr. Bad Boy

She waits. She’s going to make me use the word. Damn it.

“Date.”

Her eyebrows hit the roof. “Pardon?”

“I’d like to date you—in secret, foryourbenefit, not mine. The arrangements would be to protect you. And nothing like whatever I’ve done in the past.”

“This isn’t a short term problem, Max. You’re my client and I hope to God that doesn’t change because I won’t sleep with you.”

“You have my word that won’t change. Even if we sleep together and it ends catastrophically badly, I will continue to employ your firm.”

She flinches. Bad time to try for black humour.

I try again. “In Vancouver, I saw my intellectual property and contract lawyer once a year at most. I saw my malpractice attorney more often, and that’s not your specialty. So it’ll be fine. And recent evidence to the contrary aside, I’m an experienced Dom. I know a thing or two about negotiating safe boundaries up front.”

Wariness is still rolling off her in waves, but as she shifts back and forth, I can see that it’s the last thing I said that has moved her more than anything else.

My pulse picks up. “Is that what you need, Violet? We don’t need to date. If D/s scenes are all you want, we could negotiate terms.”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me what you want.” A restless need to please her rushes through me. “Anything. Name your terms.”

She thinks on it for a moment, then her chin lifts and she gives me a serious look. “You know what I want, Max? I want a sandwich. And you promised me that you didn’t want sex, so you know what you can do?”

I grin. “Make you a sandwich.”

“Exactly.” She closes her eyes for a minute, drawing in a short, tight breath. “What should I wear to drinks tonight?”

“Whatever you want.” I wave a hand down my body. “Jeans are fine. It will be casual.”

“Jeans look totally different on you than they do on me,” she mutters. “And I need to shower sooner than later so I can do my hair.” She stops and points at me. “Don’t say a word about being high-maintenance. I’m going to meet the prime minister. I don’t care if he’s a frat buddy of yours or what, I’m doing my hair and not cutting any corners.”

I raise my hands. “Go take a shower. I’ll make sandwiches. Then I’m going to peel you a pomegranate while you tell me what’s wrong a secret affair where I give you as many orgasms as you want.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t remember that’s quite how the orgasms worked.”

“No?”

“I’m pretty sure it was as many asyouwanted me to have, and I just had to take them.”

“Right. I knew that didn’t sound quite right.” God, now I’m half hard just thinking about the way she held so still for me.

She gives me a strange look. “Stop trying to be romantic, Max. I don’t expect it from you.”

Clearly she hasn’t picked up on my perverted walk down memory lane. But there’s something else there that I shouldn’t ignore. “What do you expect?”

“Honesty.” She hesitated. “And orgasms. Maybe. We’ll see.”

I resist the urge to punch my fist in the air until she’s disappeared into her bedroom. Fuck, yeah. Now we’re onto something.

But I have some coming clean to do first.

While she’s gone, I slice tomatoes and spread mustard. Pile ham and stack crisp lettuce leaves on top. She’s got already sliced havarti cheese, so I put that on one sandwich and brie on the other. I’m not picky. I like nice food—nice things in general—but I’ll eat whichever she doesn’t want.

When she reappears, she’s wearing jeans and another super-soft looking top, this one pale pink. It makes her lips look extra lush and I have to force myself not to stare. She pours two glasses of water, and we sit at her table.

Sharing a simple meal with her shouldn’t make me this happy, but it’s like the first time I went to the Strong house for dinner. The normalcy of it, without any strings attached…to most people, it would be nothing. To me, it’s everything. And after twenty years of being aware of how different my reaction is, I’m able to keep it on the inside. I’m not able to squash it completely.

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