Page 11 of His to Explore
Every one of them is brown and shriveled. A few are black and moldy looking. I nearly drop the whole thing when I notice a bug crawling between the disgusting petals.
What the hell? What kind of flower company would send these out in this condition. Could they have been left in a delivery van for too long? Would that even cause this much decay?
My heart is pounding as I reach for the small white envelope, careful not to touch any flowers in case there’s more bugs. I realize my hands are trembling as I start to open it. There’s a sick feeling of dread in my stomach.
I get the card out and turn it over. There’s only one word, and no signature. But I don’t need a name to know exactly who this monstrous gift is from.
The flowers fall out of my hands as I let out a scream.
KENSIE
I’m impatient, sitting in a booth at Club Wyld. I can’t seem to stop my fingers from tapping on the mahogany table, unless I’m glancing at my phone yet again, wondering if Grant has texted.
He’s not even late yet,I tell myself, but it does little to calm me. I’ve felt like this all weekend, unsettled and jumpy. Sick to my stomach, if I’m being honest.
I cancelled my Saturday plans with Gemma, claiming a migraine. I slept in a fucking hotel all weekend, that’s how unsettled and sick and I felt. Today I went to work and somehow managed to make it through the day without Gemma getting the truth out of me—though she’d tried, sensing something was off. I told her that the headache was lingering, so she tried to send me home.
At which point I had promptly freaked the hell out. The last thing I wanted was to be in my apartment all day. And without work to distract me, I was pretty sure I would go insane.
Leaving work I’d given myself a pep talk—I was a grown woman. That asshole didn’t have any control over me anymore. I wasn’t going to let him run me from my home.
I’d barely made it twenty minutes in the apartment before I was texting Grant.
We never meet up on Mondays, but I don’t care. I’d been prepared to beg him to meet me tonight, but he’d agreed right away.
ThankGod.
“Hello, gorgeous,” a deep voice murmurs behind me, then a kiss is being pressed to the side of my head. I go rigid for a moment before I take in the scent radiating from the man. Something spicy and masculine, familiar. Then his voice registers—Grant.
I immediately relax, even managing to fix a smile on my face before he comes around the table, taking the chair across from me. His eyes dart across my face and I wonder what he sees there.
But his grin is all hunger and excitement when he meets my eyes. “I was surprised to hear from you.”
“A good surprise, I hope?”
His grin grows wolfish. “Always, baby.”
I melt a little, just like I always do when he uses that endearment. There’s always an extra rasp to his voice when he says it. That rasp does things to my core.
“I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to do,” I say quickly, trying to ignore the way his eyes tighten.
“Getting right to it, I see,” he mutters, and I feel a momentary pang. It’s probably rude to immediately tell him how I want him to get me off. The least I can do is indulge in some small talk.
No,a desperate voice in my head says.Not tonight.
I manage a saucy grin as I shrug. “What can I say? I’m pretty excited.”
That has the intended effect of making his eyes go hot and dark.
Ever since we started this arrangement, Grant has encouraged me to be open, to communicate what I need and want from him. That, after all, was the whole point of Jane arranging this between us. I need to figure out how to be a confident, unapologetic sexual being. And Grant gets off on guiding me through that.
“Every bit the Dominant,” Jane had told me with a smirk. “That man will be happy to teach you anything you want to know.”
Well, tonight I want him to teach me something a little different.
“I was thinking you could show me the dungeon in the lower level,” I say, my cheeks getting hot. It’s hard to meet his eyes, but I can tell he’s gone tense on the other side of the table.
“You want that?”
