Assumed Master (11 page)

"Hello," Julie greeted the adults,
her voice chipper and non-assuming. "I’m Julie. I don’t believe we’ve met.
Which house did you come from exactly?"

As one man ushered the bevy of children back
down the walk another approached. "So which one are you married to?"
he asked critically.
"The confused one or the fag?"

"Neither," Julie said over a
chuckle. "We’re all living in sin and I’m sleeping with both of them."
With that she slammed the door in his face. "What an ass.
Poor kids.
And they call us maladjusted."

She dialed Pizza King’s number as Dante stood
with his jaw dropped and the candy bowl tilted, the contents spilling out onto
the foyer floor.

"What?" she asked as the young girl
on the other end of the phone put her on hold. "Have you two been putting
up with that long? Or is this a new development since I came?"

"Pretty much since we’ve lived
here.
The kids get along okay at school,
but the neighborhood parents aren’t as forgiving with Blake and me."

"Fuck them," Julie said. "No
telling what dirty laundry they have stuffed in their closets." With that,
Julie turned her attention back to the phone. "Yes, I need an order
delivered, please. I’d like a large, thin crust.
All the
veggies, sausage, and anchovies.
Oh, extra sauce and extra cheese. And
an order of wings, hot with bleu cheese. Oh, and don’t send a dumbass either or
there'll be no tip."

After rattling off the address, she
disconnected.

"Um, Jules?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Are you okay,
love
?"

"Yes.
Fine.
I
just can’t stand narrow-minded ninnies." It appalled her that not only did
they have a lot to overcome in their own relationship, but they apparently had
a lot of outside issues to overcome as well. Bigots sickened her. "I won’t
have them hurting my Dom and his slave or their children with their intent and
words as long as I live here."

For a moment she and Dante stared at each
other. She’d stunned herself as much as she’d stunned him. She’d just made her
first acknowledgement of Dante as more than her fill in Dom. And for the first
time, the thought didn’t scare her so much.

Chapter Eleven

Less than a month later, Dante stood just out
of earshot of Julie. He leaned against the archway between the kitchen and
formal dining area where a ritzy buffet was laid out thanks to her. She was
standing at the stove, one hand on her hip, the other holding a spoon as she
stirred something with vigor that was bubbling away on the burner. A trickle of
sweat beaded on her brow, one drop finding its way down her temple before she
shrugged her shoulder and made it disappear right before exhaling a puff of air
that blew her bangs off her forehead before they fell back down to stick in
place again. A smile graced his lips as Blake made his way under his arm and
wrapped himself around Dante’s middle.

"Can we keep her, Master?" Blake
asked, sounding like a kid that had dragged home a stray cat. Although the
current company only included a select few of their less than vanilla friends
and a few family members, he whispered the last part as if it were taboo to be
saying it without formal protocol being incited.

"If you aren’t, let me know," Layne
said. He leaned on the opposite side of the archway with a beer in his hand
watching Shelby as she worked arranging a fruit platter at the island. Every
few seconds his gaze wandered to Julie.

"Oh, we’re definitely keeping her,"
Dante said over his smile, shooting Layne a warning glance. "Does Shelby
know you’re ogling her friend?" He remembered Allen’s warning about the birds
of prey circling, but never thought he’d have to consider Shelby’s husband one
of the flock.

"She knows my eyes wander. But I never
play without permission."

"Well, just remember it’s not her
permission you need when it comes to Julie. It’s mine," Dante growled with
every ounce of possessiveness he owned.

"Good answer," Layne commended,
bowing his head in defeat, a bit of proud understanding crossing his features.

So, Layne was testing him. Dante supposed it
was to be expected. The community was in a dead center split over what had
become known as the Mason scandal. Julie had no idea about it though. Without
her making the rounds, so far she’d been sheltered from the gossip and talk. Dante,
Blake, and their closest friends never breathed a word of it in around of her. It
seemed half the people in their circle were Mason sympathizers and the other
half despised both him and Dante for what they considered a ludicrous plan.

"Did Shelby put you up to that?"
Dante asked, his initial ire subsiding. He couldn’t blame Shelby for her
concern. She’d known Julie since childhood and now that her life was on track,
she left little room for anyone to take advantage of her savior.

"She would've eventually. You know how
protective she is of her."

"I’m aware. But she should know me better
than that by now."

"One would think, but it’s my humble
opinion neither of them are fully capable of complete and total trust."
Layne took a drink of his beer and ran his free hand through his hair. "I
don’t think Shelby completely trusts me yet and we’ve been married fourteen
years. Good luck with that one." He pointed the end of his bottle toward
Julie who now had her head nearly in the oven checking the rolls she’d worked
on all morning.

What Dante really wanted to do was go over and
include her in his and Blake’s intimate embrace, but he refrained. Although
things were progressing nicely in the trust department behind closed doors, regardless
what Layne believed, Dante was pretty certain his parents might raise the roof
if they thought for a moment anything more was going on between the three of
them than Julie needing someplace to stay and recover. He remembered Julie’s
horror at finding out how his neighbors acted toward his less than conventional
living arrangement. That attitude from strangers was one thing, but to have to
deal with it from family was another matter entirely. Backward movement wasn’t
in his plan where Julie was concerned and if she thought for a moment she was
causing issues with his parents, she might well regress and never come back to
him. Dante had learned long ago Julie cherished family. She’d never had that
growing up and after she lost her sister to a drug dealing pimp, it became her
priority to ensure her friends knew the importance of family.

Dante shook off the feeling of loss for her
that swamped him every time he remembered coming into the kitchen of that
rundown house in the slums and finding her on the floor with her dead sister in
her arms. Not today. Today was about thanks and blessings. And he was blessed
to have her in his life, even if the way she came to him was another sad
situation.

"Do I have something on my face
? "
Julie asked, turning toward them, finally realizing
she was being watched. "I really need to freshen up before we eat."

"You look beautiful, love," Dante
told her, stepping away from Blake and going to her. "What can we do to
help finish?"

"Stop hovering," she said, setting a
big pan of buns on the top of the stove.

The warm, heady odor of yeast and butter
wafted off them and Dante’s stomach barked its need for food and soon. "Yes,
love." He turned on his heel and motioned for the others to follow.

If there was one thing he’d learned in the
past few months, it was to give Julie free reign in her kitchen when she wanted
and worry about the leftovers later. He could say with certainty he’d never
missed lunch since she’d moved in. Whereas before he managed lunch out at least
twice a week and the other three he barely stopped to eat at all, Julie made
sure he never left the house without a meal. What she didn’t know was he had to
renew his gym membership last month to keep his girth at bay from all her
nurturing. Another way he intended to be a better man for them, by making sure
he was in shape. He not only wanted a long life with Blake and Julie, he wanted
to be able to give them physically what they needed from him for years to come
as well.

A half-hour later, people milled about the
house with plates brimming over with turkey, dressing, potatoes, salad,
vegetables of all sorts, and all the accoutrements. The twins were entertaining
Drake’s neighbor girls in a corner and Dante’s parents were busy chatting with
Allen and some girl he may have rented for the day for all Dante knew. Dante’s
mother would probably die of embarrassment if she knew what he could see Allen
was thinking about the young blond hanging on his arm.

Smirking, Dante turned the corner into the
family room and found Julie sitting alone at the window seat looking out over
the yard which was filled with the last of the fall leaves. He reminded himself
to remember to rake them tomorrow while Julie and Blake were fighting over
bargains at the Black Friday sales then squeezed into the bay window beside
her.

"Why are you not eating, love?" he
asked, setting his plate between them then brushing a lock of her gleaming hair
behind her ear.

"I’m not really hungry to be honest with
you," she said, pulling her knees up and resting her chin on them.
"Probably tasted too much while I was cooking it."

That was a lie. Julie liked to eat. She didn’t
really look sad, just reflective, and he wondered how much she was hiding
behind the glossy exterior she could put up in a heartbeat when she refused to
share her thoughts.

"You know, if you wanted we could've had
dinner on the river."

Dante had asked her repeatedly how she wanted
to proceed with her first holiday without Mason. Every year for the past
several years, she and Mason hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas at their house.
It was an enormous family-style affair, although the only blood family in attendance
was Mason's children, who came every other year, alternating between Mason and
their mother.
So many changes in such a short time.
It
had to be hard on her, yet Dante was clueless as to what to do to make it
easier and felt powerless as a result. What he wished for her was the peace of
mind he knew would only come once he could breach her defenses and take her
completely, making her his own. There was no rule book. No Dear Abby advice to
be had. There was no etiquette in place to dictate to him how long was long
enough to wait to cross that line with her.

"I know." She sighed, turning her
head and laying her cheek where her chin had rested. "Is everything good?"

"Of course.
Could we expect anything less from our little
Holly Homemaker?"

"I suppose not."

This was the worst he’d seen her in weeks. He
thought she was fine this morning, she’d been smiling and laughing. Of course
she’d been cooking all day, too. Now that she had nothing to keep her busy, it
seemed she’d sequestered herself and clicked off.

"Jules?
Love?" he asked, a bit of authority
lacing his voice. He might have known the holidays would be the worst. Perhaps
he should have called it all off and taken the family on vacation to the
tropics for a few days.

"Yes, Sir?"

He mentally blew out a breath he’d been
holding at her answer, knowing she wasn’t so far removed that she didn’t
recognize he was drawing her back, even if it was by instinct only.

"Come on," he said, standing. He set
his plate on the cocktail table between the wing back chairs along the wall
then took her hands. "I think a bit of quiet might be good for you. No?"

"But what will everyone think?" she
protested, looking around at the empty room. It was then Dante realized she had
been alone. "Maybe no one cares after all."

"Wasn’t it you that said something along
the lines of you didn’t give a damn what people thought? Wasn't that just a few
weeks ago? And I believe you tossed in another line something the likes of fuck
them?" Dante tugged her hands and she unfurled and stood beside him. "Come,
love. Everyone is too busy stuffing themselves to miss us."

"Where are we going?" she whispered
as they made their way through the living area and around the buffet to slip
down the hall.

"Bedroom.
I don’t care if they’re vanilla or dark, swirl
or something in between. I’m pretty sure they all know if the door is shut to
either go away or knock. Besides, we don’t have locks for no reason."

"Dante?"
Julie stopped moving, her voice quivering
with uncertainty.

"What did you say?" He turned and
raised one eyebrow. Although he had no intention of doing a thing with her, he
thought it imperative to keep her in his end of the pool. She was obviously floundering
and needed tethered. If voice did it, voice it would be.

"I mean, Sir." Her eyes darted to
the floor and she again followed him as he finished their trek and pulled her
though the bedroom door, closing it behind them and turning the lock.