Divine Solace: 8 (6 page)

She should have brought Chloe and Brendan home with her as
well. She could have said the kitchen was a two-man job and Brendan would have
been happy to pitch in. The three of them could have had a slumber party on her
living room floor, with her as a safe fly on the wall, listening and learning.
Rather than being right in the crosshairs of this discussion, expected to
respond intelligently to things she knew nothing about.

“Sorry. I handled this badly.” He was watching her face. “We
can rewind all the way back to you coming into the kitchen and start over if
you like.”

She shook her head. His distress over upsetting her was
enough to bring some balance back. That and his forthrightness about it. She
had no doubt he was telling her the truth. In fact, she suspected when
Marguerite had told her he would answer anything honestly, she’d meant he was
incapable of lying. Pushing away an uneasy feeling about that, she got a grip
on herself.

“Okay, so she’s never given you to anyone else. Why me? Why
this weekend?”

He gave her a searching look, as if ensuring she was okay
with the conversation, not just placating him. “I’m okay,” she told him. “I
want to know. You just took me off guard. You didn’t do anything wrong. But
more wine might be good.”

His eyes twinkled, and that made things feel better. When he
pressed the glass into her hand, she dared herself to follow her feelings on
that. She wrapped her fingers over his, holding them to the glass so he didn’t
draw away. She wanted to know what he would do.

A peculiar stillness took over his expression, a look that
stole some of her breath, such that she had to find it again to sip the wine.
He adjusted his movements to her, so she could raise the glass to her lips with
her fingers still overlapping his. His gaze was on her face as she lowered her
eyes to what she was doing, took a reassuring gulp. When she loosened her
fingers, he took the glass away, set it aside. Reached out and brushed a drop
of the wine from the corner of her mouth.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Why me?”

“Lyda asked me how I felt about you,” he said. “I said I
would be anything she agreed to let me be for you this weekend.” He gave her an
amused look. “It was the Goth discussion. It made me hot.”

She snorted at that, then made herself push him away. His
proximity made it hard to think. She
really
needed to think. “Can we
just…ease back? Please? This isn’t my world, and to say I’m over my head is an
understatement.”

“Sure. Why don’t we eat?” He moved back to the chair, pulled
it out for her. In answer, she pointed him to his chair.

“As much as I appreciate the gentleman routine, I’m safer
getting my own self seated.”

He grinned at that and complied, moving to his chair, though
she noted he waited until she was seated to take his own chair. Her little
dining set was a four-seater, small enough that his foot brushed hers before he
adjusted his legs out of her way.

She was thinking of something else he’d revealed, close up
to her like that. “Do you have a tongue piercing?”

“I do.” Fortunately, he didn’t open his mouth to waggle it
at her, something she found quite non-appealing. When she remarked on that, he
made a face of agreement. “Yeah. Women enjoy what I can do with it more than
the looks of it. Not so different from another part of the male anatomy,
right?”

His comical look toward his lap made her chuckle. “I think
women tend to find it more exciting…aesthetically, when they’re aroused,” she
agreed. “When they’re not, it does look a little odd. But that’s not casting
stones. I’d say the same about female genitalia. Wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely not.” He used the tongs to dish salad into a
smaller bowl for her. “I could stare at close-ups of pussy all day long.”

“Which explains a great deal about cinematography in the
porn industry,” she said dryly.

He winked. “True.”

They worked on the salads. After finishing most of her wine,
she felt ready to dip her toe back into more uncertain waters. It was helpful
that Noah didn’t push, staying with general discussion of her plans for the
kitchen, questions about the neighborhood, her collages. She sat back.

“How did Lyda react to you saying you’d be anything I
wanted?”

“She agreed.” Noah rose to get the plates of lasagna, which
he’d put back in the oven to stay warm. “You might think of me as bait, Gen,
but I’m thinking Lyda was considering me a less intimidating tour guide. She
suspected you’d like to learn more about us.”

“You didn’t call her Mistress that time.”

“She’s not completely hung up on that. She always says I’ll
know exactly when to call her Mistress. She’s right about that.”

The statement was fraught with images Gen could bring into
focus far too easily. As Noah put the plates on the table, her gaze coursed up
his body, back to the base of his throat, the part of his body that seemed to
be her particular obsession. “You know, I really have no idea what to think.
Whether to feel appalled, intrigued, nervous…or send you away.”

“The most important thing to remember is you’re in charge,
Gen. You can do whatever makes you feel best.”

“But I don’t know how to do that, how to ignore your
feelings.”

“You’re not.” That emphatic note entered his voice again,
commanding her attention. He met her gaze. “When you touched me at the chair,
why did you do that? Only because you felt like it?”

“No. The way you looked at me, I thought…”

“I wanted you to touch me. I did. I do. You may not think of
yourself as a Domme, Gen, but here’s the thing about them. They only do what
the submissive truly wants or needs, even though sometimes they have to help us
understand what that is, because we bury it under a lot of other crap. My
crap’s been excavated for quite a while.” His gaze flickered, making her wonder
what that meant for him. “I’m not confused about how I feel, and I don’t want
you to think my reaction to you is some kind of generic program that happens
for every woman who crosses my radar.”

“I didn’t mean to be cruel,” she said hastily. “I—”

He shook his head, covered her hand. “I wasn’t criticizing
you. Just making it clear because, like you said, you don’t know much about it.
Sometimes even Doms and subs get it fucked up. So maybe we should talk about it
some, answer those questions you’ve wanted to ask Chloe and Marguerite but
haven’t. Okay? Kind of like I’m a live search engine.”

While she appreciated the encouragement and understood he
was obviously at ease being grilled about it, they both already knew that
wasn’t the problem.

“Yes. But maybe later. I need to breathe. And eat.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “Fair enough. Will you tell me
more about the craft room? It looks like a major studio in there, a little bit
of everything. Do you do more than collages?”

“Yes. I do beading, scrapbooking…”

After the earlier intensity, dinner was surprisingly low
key. He got her talking about her collage projects, how she started doing them,
the local craft and bookclub groups she socialized with. She and a dozen other
women rotated responsibility for hosting crafting parties the first Thursday of
every month. Everyone brought a current project and they chatted, ate a potluck
dinner. She tried to take one course from the community college every semester.
She also volunteered for an animal shelter, walking the dogs and cleaning out
the cat cages a couple Sundays each month. She told him about a lean,
black-and-white, seven-year-old tomcat who had come in recently, with scarred
face and a bad attitude.

“I’m thinking I may adopt him. He’s starting to like me. But
I wanted to get the kitchen done first. I figured he wouldn’t appreciate all
the noise and dust.”

In turn, she found out Noah had an eclectic employment
history. In New Orleans, he’d worked multiple jobs, sometimes holding as many
as three at a time. Stocking at grocery stores, park cleanup, mowing right of
ways, construction. But his last job had been as a waiter in an upscale New
Orleans restaurant. The tips he’d earned there were substantial enough he’d
dropped to one job. He’d done that for about a year before coming to Florida to
be near his grandmother.

“Dot’s still pretty spry and determined to live alone. She’s
far more likely to offer help to a neighbor than ask for it in return, but she
has to use a motorized chair to get around. She and I have always been close,
so now that I’m nearby, if she’s not feeling well or needs something done at
the house, she’ll call me. I’ve built her ramps and helped fix things in the
house so it’s easier for her to navigate and get things done in the chair.”

His fondness for her was obvious. On the flipside, when he
asked Gen about her job at Tea Leaves, she could tell he registered how much
she loved working with Marguerite and Chloe.

“It’s funny about Chloe,” he said. “We all know she’s not a
Domme, even Brendan, but she’s adapted herself to him in so many right ways,
even Lyda’s come around about it. At first she was sure they were going to
crash and burn.”

“Has she seen the two of them together?” Gen was offended
for her friend. “Who could possibly think that?”

“That’s part of why she’s come around,” Noah explained.
“Seeing them together more often. But Lyda’s witnessed relationships where
someone without a true Dom/sub orientation hooks up with someone who has a
strong one, and Brendan is a down-to-the-bone sub. Those relationships have a
hard go of it, long term. But the way he and Chloe feel about each other, it’s
obvious there’s something there, above, beyond and below the Dom/sub thing.
That gives it a far better chance of survival.”

He smiled. “Beyond that, it’s impossible not to love Chloe.
Brendan would ride a bicycle to the moon for her.”

Gen thought about how Chloe had thrown herself in Noah’s
lap, his easy affection with her. She wondered if Noah defined himself as a
down-to-the-bone submissive.

At this point she’d moved into the living room and was
curled up on the couch, watching him clean up the kitchen. He’d shooed her out,
refused to let her help.

He’d left the shirt off. When he made motions to put it back
on for dinner, she’d asked him not to do so. He hadn’t said anything about
that, but the flicker of his gaze as he complied had made her focus on her
lasagna intently for the first few minutes of their dinner. Now she studied the
smooth expanse of his back. As she expected, he did have tattoos. Between his
shoulder blades was a blood-colored heart with a Celtic triquetra overlay done
in black. Below it was the infinity sign, the sideways figure eight,
intertwined with a rendering of handcuffs. Below that was script.

Yours, unconditionally.

When she’d indicated he was merely a tool for his Mistress,
not genuinely interested in Gen for her own sake, his negative reaction had
been emphatic. And yet it niggled at Gen, his level of compliance
to…everything.
Yours, unconditionally
. For herself, it was a highly
alien concept, agreeing to give oneself to a complete stranger, just because
someone else ordered it.

“What if I wanted to tie you up and drown you in my
bathtub?”

“You have a shower.”

She made a face at him. “You know what I mean. Smartass.”

He grinned, pulling ice cream from the freezer. “I draw the
line at being murdered. Unless my Mistress convinced me I’d done something that
really deserved that. I hope that won’t be the case this weekend.”

She couldn’t tell when he was joking. Holding off on further
questions for the moment, she indulged herself in a study of the taper of his
waist, how his jeans rode his hips, the shift of his buttocks. He’d shed shoes
and socks, so he was barefoot. He’d taken off the silver-and-black
double-wrapped choker before dinner, though he still wore one of the bracelets.

He brought her a small dish of sherbet, decorated with a
couple vanilla wafers. Taking a seat on the floor next to the couch, he braced
his back against the foot of her easy chair and drew his knees up into a bent
position, his body angled so he could see her. She was willing to make room for
him next to her, but he indicated he was good where he was.

“Is sitting on the floor a sub thing? Or you just like the
floor?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Habit is part of it. At home or in a
club setting, my Mistress often requires me to kneel or sit on the floor, so my
head isn’t higher than hers.”

“That seems really egotistical.”

“Not in that context. She’s honoring what I am by letting me
act as her submissive in every way. When she makes me act like her equal, often
she’s punishing me.”

She digested that. “You don’t strike me as a cringing slave
type.”

“It’s not like that, either.” He gestured with the spoon.
“It’s hard to explain. You sort of have to feel it, or have a sense of it.”

“So you could explain all night long and I wouldn’t get it.”
That gave her in inexplicable sinking feeling, but Noah touched her foot.

“No, not necessarily. You don’t have to be as deep in it as
Brendan or Lyda to figure it out. All of us have Dom and sub tendencies. Think
about your job. Who would you say is the alpha dog there?”

“Marguerite,” she said without hesitation.

“Yeah, no brainer. Okay, how about between you and Chloe?
When push comes to shove, who defers to who? And why?”

She was about to say neither, but then she gave it some
thought. “I guess…me. I don’t know if that’s an age thing, since I’m older than
she is, and I’m not saying she does everything I say—I’d fall over dead in
shock if that happened—but…”

“But you have an intuitive sense of authority over her that
you both accept.” He shrugged. “We’re animals, and we organize ourselves in a
pack mentality, whether it’s in a family setting, work setting, even in social
groups.”

She shifted. This was starting to feel like an academic
discussion, where the verbiage might get above her head, but he defused her
tension about that by bringing it back to specifics. “That’s the day-to-day,
vanilla side of it. High level and general. If you want to understand the way
it happens specifically between people like Lyda and me, or Chloe and Brendan,
you do kind of have to see it in action. But I’m not pushing you to go to a
club or anything.”

“It’s like being in the ocean versus standing on shore,
looking at it,” she guessed.

“Exactly.” He looked relieved that she understood, hadn’t
become defensive. “But there are different grades to us. Like Lyda. She’s
pretty much all Domme. Even when she’s interacting in the vanilla world, you
see it, feel it.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Gen said dryly.

He grinned. “Other Dommes are only that way at the club or
in their own bedrooms. In the real world, they might hold what you’d consider
more subservient roles. Secretaries, convenience store clerks, things like
that. Being a Domme in the bedroom balances that with a power shift. You see
that with men as well. It’s why the stereotype exists about the CEOs wanting to
be tied up and spanked. There’s a lot of truth to the idea of powerful men
wanting to be subs in the bedroom. Whereas the guy who picks up your trash
might be a hell of a Dom.

“But you can’t paint everyone with the same brush,” he
added. “Sometimes what you see on the outside reflects the inside as well. A
powerful CEO might be a powerful Dom, and the garbage guy might like being tied
up.” His lips twisted wryly. “And I obviously fall in the latter category. I
have been a garbage man once or twice.”

“I bet that can get confusing. Or cause conflict. People
like being able to classify things, keep them neat.”

“Yeah. Sometimes people have trouble accepting something as
truth, when it’s different from what they expect…or want it to be.” A shadow
crossed his countenance.

“Like Lyda about Brendan and Chloe.” Gen ventured the
comment when he didn’t say anything else. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged it off and addressed her comment
instead. “Lyda can be pretty black and white on certain things. She knew
Brendan was a hardcore sub, and couldn’t see how Chloe, who’s basically vanilla
adventurous, could make that work. The answer was she couldn’t. Not by herself,
and not under the terms Lyda defines being a Domme. But Brendan and Chloe bring
a lot of things to one another that enhance and define the Dom/sub side, and
that makes it work. Sorry. I’m probably going too deep here.”

“No. I’m following.” This was really what she’d been
seeking. An in-depth exploration without the self-consciousness of the
spotlight. “It’s like Chloe and me. She loves me and she’s afraid my life is
boring, humdrum. She thinks she needs to save me from it. Her life is so
vibrant, it’s hard for her to realize most of the time I’m happy with mine not
being that way. My experiences…have made me value quietness.”

She told herself to be honest, despite the worry she was
coming off as colorless as her beige carpet. “I don’t need to travel the world
or jump out of a plane. To me, working in my craft room, listening to music and
knowing, for the next few hours, nothing’s going to disturb that, that’s a
gift.”

He’d set aside his empty ice cream dish, had his fingers
linked over his knees as he listened to her. “I need to take you sailing
sometime. Have you ever been?”

“I went on a big boat one time. One of those tall sailing
ships.”

“Those are cool, but there’s a quiet on a smaller craft I
think you’d like. Will you go with me sometime?”

He’d understood, and made her viewpoint, who she was, feel
right. “If you don’t do something that makes Lyda murder you this weekend,” she
managed.

He chuckled at that, dipped his finger into her dish and
stole some of her ice cream. “Lesser miracles.”

“Hey.” She fenced him away with her spoon, making that grin
wreath his face once more as he licked his finger clean. When she was done with
her dish, he took it and returned to the kitchen to finish cleanup. Since he’d
encouraged her to do her usual things, she went to her craft room. Once there,
though, she quickly realized she wanted to hang out with him. So she called
out, encouraged him to join her after he finished, if he still wanted to see
how she did the collages. To her great pleasure, he did.

She showed him how she collected paper and employed
different mediums to give the collages textures. She particularly liked using
colors and patterns to create smaller pictures and patterns inside larger ones,
like the cat in the hallway.

“I went through a religious phase. One of my first collages
was of Jesus’ face. I had this great idea of putting together a bunch of faces.
Young, old, different races, sexes, species, and that would become the shape of
his head, the crown of thorns.”

“So how did it turn out?” His brow arched, eyes fixed on her
face.

“Close up, it was interesting enough. But unfortunately, two
steps away it turned into a man with a lot of tumors on his face. Not the
effect I was seeking.” She laughed at herself. “I’m babbling, I’m sorry. I’m
sure this isn’t anywhere near as fascinating to you as it is to me.”

“On the contrary. Your face lights up when you talk about
the things that interest you. It’s like watching a garden bloom in moonlight.”
He nodded to the corner, where she had a guitar propped. “You play.”

When his gaze slid back to her, expecting her answer, she
was still trying to untie her tongue. “What was your major at college?” she
asked at last.

“Horticulture, poetry. Philosophy. Mechanical engineering
for a semester or two.” He gave her a wry look. “I only had the money for the
first couple years, and then I shifted to auditing classes or paying for them
one at a time. I like reading just about anything, learning anything new.”

“Okay.” That explained how he’d been able to deliver such a
beautiful line as if it was commonplace talk. “As far as the guitar, no, I
don’t play. I bought that for five dollars at a yard sale and then took a
couple lessons, but it didn’t grab me. I should probably sell it, but I haven’t
given up on the idea of starting my own bluegrass band yet.”

He chuckled. He was on the floor again, his back against her
chair, shoulder blades comfortably pressed against her thigh and hip, the
position he’d assumed when she started handing him different papers to examine.
She’d also given him a pair of scissors to assemble his own ideas. It was an
experience she’d never thought she’d share with a date. Though Noah wasn’t
really a date. Not one like she’d ever experienced.

Under normal circumstances, she would have been flustered,
having a handsome man in her home whose intentions were so…undefined. Instead,
he was proving to be a relaxing and attentive companion on every level,
anticipating things that might make her uncomfortable or self-conscious and
putting her at ease before they could take too firm a grip on her psyche.