Page 106 of Big Daddy Christmas
“Ah.” Reaching out, he tucked her hair behind her ear, letting his smile turn apologetic. “I’m even more sorry you worried, as I certainly don’t deserve a second of your consideration. Forgive me?”
She rolled her eyes, but when she lifted her wine glass to her lips, he caught the smile she was trying to hide. “Yes. I shouldn’t, but if I don’t then you’ll just flood my office with roses again until I do. So yes, I forgive you. Jerk.”
Delighted by her as he always was, he leaned in to brush a kiss over her cheek. “More generous than I deserve, as always. Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.” Tilting her head, she studied him with those shrewd, too-clever eyes. “Do I want to know where you were?”
“No.” A single syllable, sharper than he’d intended, but he could still smell the blood on his skin even though he’d showered and changed before coming here.
But as always, his irritability didn’t seem to faze her. She simply nodded in return, a slight incline of her head to let him know she heard him loud and clear. “Understood. Well, you’re here now, so the least you could do is give me a tour of your club.”
“Of course.” Offering his elbow, he waited for her to slip her hand in the crook before resuming his trek forward. “How did you get in here without me, anyway?”
“Private event.” Her smile flashed, the dimple on her right cheek winking at him. “Cordelia said she owed me one for taking care of her boy. That’s exactly how she said it, too. She hardly ever calls her subs by their names, you ever notice that? Just ‘my boy’ and ‘my girl’.”
“And this… upsets you?”
Naomi’s nose wrinkled, a look he recognized to mean she was thinking about what he’d asked. “I don’t know if upset is the right word. Confused, maybe. It feels… demeaning, I guess? Like she doesn’t think of them as their own people, but like property. Or pets.”
“You should sit down with Ivy sometime. Ask her if she feels demeaned by Cordelia’s ownership.”
Triumph flashed in the smug smile she sent his way. “So you admit she thinks of them as property!”
“Not property. Just… hers.”
“That sounds very much like a distinction without a difference.”
He couldn’t help but smile. Contrary little thing, and yet… “Why are you here, then, if you have such a distaste for what we are?”
“Curiosity,” she answered with a shrug. “I have several patients who frequent this club, so I want to know what happens here. And I’m not judging anyone?—”
“You are. But go on.”
Another roll of her eyes, and if it hadn’t been for the fact he knew he was absolutely not Dr. Winters’s type, he would have been tempted to satisfy her curiosity in a very hands-on way.
“Fine. I’m judging a little bit. But mostly because I just don’t understand it. Why would anyone want to be… controlled like that? Owned?”
“As I’m not a submissive myself, I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that for you.”
She looked up at him then, that curiosity she’d been talking about shining in her eyes. “Then why do you do it? What’s the appeal to you?”
“I like to be in control.”
That was the simple answer. The cop-out answer. The truth, yes, but only the surface of it. His real reasons for being here, in this club, doing the things he did… That wasn’t the kind of thing a man shared with a casual friend. And despite having placed his life and the lives of his family in her hands more times than he could count, he’d deliberately kept her at a distance.
Both for her safety and his.
“Yes, but you’re in control all the time,” Naomi pushed, her tone shifting, becoming more clinical in a way that made him feel a bit like a rat being observed in a maze. “Aren’t you supposed to want to let go, let someone else take the lead for once? That’s what the books all say.”
“What books?”
“You know. The books. Romance novels. I’ve been reading a lot of kinky ones since you asked if I wanted to come to the club with you after the wedding, to prepare. And that’s a big theme. People who have to be in control in their daily lives, they like giving up that control in the bedroom.”
Leave it to her to want to know the psychology of it all. “That is true for some people. Not me.”
“But why not you?”
“Naomi.” He let a hint of steel infuse his tone, amused when her pupils darkened in response.
