Light Switch (4 page)

“You’re doing well.” His whispered approval sent another rush of relief through me.

“Thank you, Sir.”

He stepped a little closer. “Unbutton my shirt.”

My eyes darted up to meet his. His expression invited neither debate nor resistance, only unquestioning obedience. Dropping my gaze, I reached for his shirt.

I watched my fingers fumble with the buttons. I’d never been so acutely aware of someone’s body heat, my fingers and knuckles registering every fluctuation in temperature as they moved toward and away from him.

After I’d unfastened the button just above his belt, I paused.

“Keep going,” he ordered.

“But it’s—” I hesitated. “May I untuck your shirt, Sir?”

“Yes.”

I gulped. As I tugged his shirt free, I couldn’t decide where to look. Intimidation kept me from meeting his eyes. The mouthwatering grooves beneath his tight undershirt kept me from looking straight ahead. The third option meant being unable to ignore the obvious ridge just below his belt. For the same three reasons, closing my eyes was out of the question.

Somehow, I managed to get his shirt untucked and completely unbuttoned. I let my hands fall to my sides, and waited for his next command.

“Take it off.”

I barely kept myself from shivering again. The more he talked this way, the more I had visions of him throwing me down on the bed and fucking me. Pulling my hair, growling filth into my ear, giving—

“
Kristen
.” The sharpness with which he said my name did nothing to lessen my arousal, but it did get my attention.

“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry.”

“My shirt. Take it off.
Now
.”

I lifted my hands to do as he’d asked, but hesitated again.

“Is there a problem?”

Unable to meet his eyes, I whispered, “No, Sir.” I reached for his shirt.

“Wait.”

My hands stopped in midair.

He gestured over his shoulder. “Go around behind me. Then take it off.”

As ordered, I stepped behind him. Reaching around him, I hooked my fingers under the lapels and drew them back, sliding it over his shoulders and down his arms. The sleeves caught on his forearms, where he’d rolled them earlier, but with a gentle nudge, came loose.

“Put it on the bed.”

“Yes, Sir.” I did as ordered, laying his shirt neatly beside my haphazardly piled clothes.

Still with his back to me, he said, “Now the other shirt.”

My breath caught. There was no way to get that snug T-shirt off without touching his skin. He had to know that, so I whispered my already habitual affirmative and reached for his T-shirt.

I freed it from his belt. He didn’t react when my fingertips grazed his hot skin, but my pulse certainly reacted, rising higher and higher as I pushed up his shirt. His body heat beneath my palms made my head spin. He raised his arms, then took over and pulled his shirt all the way off.

Oh God. Oh my God
. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen Scott without his shirt. I’d never seen just how sculpted and powerful his shoulders were. I’d certainly never seen the four black Chinese characters, each about the size of my palm, tattooed along the length of his spine, nor their slightly smaller counterparts running down his sides. They must have hurt like hell, more so than my nails biting into my hands as I tried to keep myself from touching him.

There were lines on his back, faint red streaks in groups of four. On either side of his back, one set of those red streaks stood out from the rest, the lines darker and more pronounced. They looked raised enough that I’d have been able to feel them if I ran my fingers over them. I wondered which of his subs had left them, if it had been her orgasm that had driven her nails into his back, or if she’d done it to drive him over the edge.

On his left shoulder, several fine scars, each a few inches in length and running parallel to each other, caught the light. I couldn’t quite place—

“
Kristen
.”

The sound of my name startled me.

“What? I mean, I’m sorry, Sir.”

He made a sharp gesture, indicating I was to come around and face him. I did, holding my breath and keeping my eyes down.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” I said again.

“It’s okay, you’re still learning.” His voice was gentle now, enough to coax the held breath out of my lungs. At least until he added a terse, “Don’t let it happen again.”

“I won’t, Sir.”

“Good.” He put his hand on my waist. I pulled in a breath. Just a simple, still touch, and he couldn’t have sent more lightning surging through my veins if he’d run his tongue around my clit.

He drew me to him. “Are you still comfortable with all of this?”

“Yes, Sir.” Those words still came so easily, rolling off my tongue at his command even when coherent speech otherwise eluded me. He was so close now. God, he was close. Heat radiated from his body, taunting me with his delicious, agonizing nearness.

His free hand touched the side of my neck, then drifted up into my hair. “I’m not moving too fast?”

“No, Sir.”
I want you to move faster. I want more. God, I want you
.

The hand on my waist pulled me closer, and that thick, hard ridge that had distracted me earlier now pressed against me. My erect nipples brushed his chest, and I had to bite my lip to keep from whimpering. It took every bit of restraint I had not to put my arms around him, to wait until he specifically allowed me to touch him.
Please order me to touch you, Sir. Please, God, please
.

Second after second ticked by, and still the order didn’t come.

“Am I frustrating you?” His breath warmed my lips.

It was a loaded question. It had to be.

“Answer me truthfully, Kristen.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “Am I frustrating you?”

“Yes, Sir. You are.”

“Good.” And with that, he pulled away, reaching for his shirt. He gestured at my clothes. “You can put that back on.”

“What? But—”

A pointed look stopped me.

I swallowed. “Yes, Sir.” He pulled on his T-shirt as I reached for my bra. When he picked up his shirt and put it on, I wanted desperately to rip it right off. With every button he fastened, my frustration ratcheted up. I pulled my own shirt around my shoulders. The fabric had cooled in the minutes since I’d taken it off, but it was the absence of Scott’s body against mine that made my knees shake. I’d wanted him for a long time, but never this badly. I’d never been so close, close enough I could almost taste the wine on his lips

“This is so we both know who is in control,” he said as he buttoned the last button of his shirt. “But it’s also for me to earn your trust. You can strip half-naked in front of me, at my command, and I’m not going to abuse my power and take advantage of you.”

“Not even if I want you to take advantage of me?”

Momentary panic swept through me as I expected a stern look or sharp admonishment, but he laughed.

“No, not even if you want me to.” He cupped my face in both hands. “Trust me on this. There’s a method to my madness. This is as far as we’re going tonight, but as long as you trust me and submit to me, it’s nowhere near as far as we
will
be going.” He planted a tender kiss on my forehead, that soft contact of his lips making my knees weaker. “We’re done for tonight,” he whispered. “I’m not your Master anymore until the next time.”

With those words, my shoulders dropped and I released my breath. “You’re a merciless tease, you know that?”

He chuckled. “You’ll be calling me worse things in the near future, I think.”

“I can’t wait.” I shot him a playful glare. “So, when’s my next lesson?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“The sooner the better. Busy tomorrow night?”

“Not if it means spending the evening doing this.” He ran the tip of his thumb along the underside of his jaw. “What do you have in the way of a robe?”

“Like a bathrobe?”

“That, or if you have something skimpier.”

I went to my closet and flicked through the hangers before I found the blue satin robe I’d bought ages ago and never worn. I pulled it out and held it up for Scott to see. He picked up one end of the belt and ran his fingers along its surface, brow furrowed as he inspected it.

Letting go of the belt, he nodded once. “Perfect. Wear that tomorrow tonight.”

“Anything under it?”

He shrugged. “Bra and panties, nothing too extravagant.”

“I’m sure I can find something suitable.”

“Good,” he said. “So, same time tomorrow night?”

“I’ll be here.”

“So will I.”

I showed Scott out and, after he was gone, returned to my bedroom. There, I closed the door and leaned against it. Though he’d teased and frustrated me, there was no denying he’d turned me on. I couldn’t get the sound of his voice out of my mind. The sharp commands, the gentle praises, the soft whisper just before he’d
almost
kissed me. I’d physically ached for his touch, and with the denial of a kiss, he’d driven me out of my mind.

The last year or two of my life had been an exercise in sexual frustration, but none of that held a candle to this. I had to have more of him. Whatever he commanded, whatever he wanted, I’d give it to him, because I needed to know what his kiss tasted like.

I moved to my bed, and as I unbuttoned my shirt for the second time tonight, I hoped Matt had been watching since Scott arrived.

I hoped he was still watching.

I didn’t have to ask if Matt had seen everything last night.

Every Sunday morning, almost without fail, we jogged together. We always met on the sidewalk between our buildings, and it never took us long to fall into our usual easy banter. Like Scott, Matt was easy to talk to, more so than most of my female friends.

Lately, though, he sometimes had a hard time looking me in the eye or didn’t seem to know quite what to say. There was a lot of throat-clearing and gaze-dropping before his shyness evaporated. It didn’t take a genius to connect those mornings to the nights before.

So after a night like last night, it was no surprise when I came downstairs and he offered only a glance before returning his attention to using the vacant bike rack to stretch his quads.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning,” he murmured, glancing up again just long enough to make eye contact. He focused on stretching, and neither of us spoke as I joined him. For a few minutes, I replayed everything I’d done within sight of his window last night. I could only imagine what it had looked like to him, especially when Scott and I had redressed and left without exchanging so much as a kiss, and a few minutes later, I’d returned to my bedroom alone. Alone and obviously needing to relieve some tension.

I bit my lip to keep from grinning. Scott had frustrated the hell out of me, but I knew there was plenty to come. Last night was a sample, a hint and nothing more, and I was already coming unglued at the prospect of whatever he had up his sleeve for tonight.

Especially if Matt would be watching again. I cast a surreptitious glance at him, but he kept his attention on his stretches instead of looking right at me.

It was kind of cute, actually, the way he focused so hard on his stretches whenever he’d watched me the night before. I wasn’t sure why he was so coy about it. The open window shade must have told him I not only knew he watched, but had given him my tacit blessing to continue. He knew I knew. He had to, even if we didn’t talk about it.

Maybe, like me, he wasn’t quite sure how to acknowledge our sordid, silent affair without screwing up our close friendship. Physically, we were as platonic as any friends. Visually, we’d stepped into far more intimate territory. There was a balance to be struck, and as long as we didn’t discuss it, we could play stupid until such time as we knew how to address the elephant in the window.

Matt broke the silence and brought me back to the present. “So, up for some hills today?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Can you keep up if we do?” I leaned down and grabbed my toes.

“Oh, shut up, of course I—” He paused. Cleared his throat. “Of course I can.”

“Right, of course you can.” I stood. “As long as it’s just the little hills, right?

“Woman, I’m going to leave you in the dirt on those hills.”

“We’ll see about that, shit talker.”

“I will. Just watch.”

“Pfft.” I turned around and shot him a playful glare. “More like you’ll be watching me.”

Our eyes met and we both froze. Matt quickly dropped his gaze and muffled a cough. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see if you can keep up.”

“Yeah, I guess we will.”

He looked at me again, and we both cracked cautious smiles.

I nodded toward the road. “How about putting your money where your mouth is?”

“Bring it on.”

We headed out onto our customary path toward the park. As soon as we’d fallen into our usual, comfortable cadence, our conversation followed suit. Safe, mundane subjects were easy to hide behind, so hide behind them we did.

“So how’s work?” he asked.

“My job is the reason ‘work’ is a four-letter word.”

He laughed. “Shitty week?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Must be contagious. I’ve been ready to murder about half a dozen of my clients.”

“I know the feeling.” I clicked my tongue. “What kind of idiots were you dealing with this week?”

“All kinds. This one jackass came in on Friday afternoon. Ugh.” Matt groaned. “He wanted this elaborate full-color three-fold brochure. First, all the photos he wanted us to use were copyrighted, so I told him we’d have to go with stock photos. Didn’t compute in his tiny little brain.”

“Sounds like a real winner.”

“Oh, it gets better. They wanted
us
to write the content.”

“He obviously doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, then.” I tried unsuccessfully not to snicker. “I mean, he wants this to attract customers, right?”

“Shut up.” Matt elbowed me playfully. “Anyway, on top of all of that, he insisted that the front of the brochure had to have a metallic hologram on it.”

“A hologram of what?”

“Their logo, which was cheesy enough without being holographic. And it made absolutely no sense with the rest of the layout or the purpose of the brochure, but it was part of the douche bag’s ‘vision’, so no matter what, it had to have this stupid hologram.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “On top of all of
that
, he wants five hundred copies by noon tomorrow. And his budget? Two hundred bucks.”

I released a cough of laughter. I didn’t know the ins and outs of Matt’s pricing matrix, but I’d seen enough to know that was ridiculously low-balled. “So what did you tell him?”

He shrugged, pausing to wipe some sweat from his forehead. “I very diplomatically instructed him to suck my cock.”

“How exactly does one ‘diplomatically instruct’ someone to do that?”

He flashed me a grin. “I have my ways.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Ah, well.” We rounded a corner and started across the park on the asphalt foot path. Matt went on, “At least I get a break pretty soon when I go to Denver for that trade show. A week and a half of letting my business partner deal with all the bullshit.”

“Must be nice.”

“Oh, it is.” He grinned. “So, anyway, what kind of crap has been going on where you work?”

“I’ve got suppliers who suddenly don’t think they need to keep their delivery dates.” I paused as we jogged around a mother pushing a stroller. “One of my biggest vendors called me last Tuesday and can’t fathom why I’m upset that the massive shipment of brass that was due on Friday is going to be delayed almost a month.”

“A month? Jesus, my clients would have my head.”

“Believe me, I’ve got a few people after mine. Customer service, manufacturing, upper management, you name it, they’re all coming down on me right now. If that damned brass doesn’t show up by Friday, I won’t be surprised to hear from the President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister of Iceland.”

Matt laughed. “Does Iceland even have a Prime Minister?”

“I have no idea, but if it does, I’ll probably hear from him.”

He chuckled. “Sounds like we both needed the weekend to show up.”

“And it wasn’t a moment too soon when it finally did.”

“Amen to that.” He paused. “Speaking of not being at work, you coming to poker night this week?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. This had to be a subtle way of bringing up my now defunct relationship with Alec. Alec hated it when I went to the weekly poker games with various other tenants in Matt’s building. Half the time, he persuaded—whined, manipulated, badgered—me into spending those evenings with him.

“I will absolutely be there,” I said. “Think I’d miss an opportunity to screw you out of some money?”

“Well, I didn’t figure you would,” he said, laughing softly. “I just figured…” He glanced at me.

“Figured Alec might throw a shit fit like he always does?”

Matt nodded.

I made a dismissive gesture. “He’s out of the picture now.”

“Really? I hadn’t realized the two of you split up.”

“Yeah, a few days ago.”
As you already know, but you deserve an Oscar for pretending you don’t
. “About damned time, too.”

Matt snorted as we continued down the footpath toward the hillier end of the park. He hadn’t liked Alec any more than Scott had. In hindsight, the fact that my two best friends couldn’t stand my boyfriend should have given me a big fat clue. Live and learn.

“So, I take it you’re not terribly broken up over it?” Matt said.

“No, not at all.” I hesitated to mention Scott, but since Matt already knew, there was no sense pretending I’d been alone since Alec left. “Hell, I started seeing one of my friends before the week was out.”

Matt stumbled. His head snapped toward me as he regained his footing. Then he quickly said, “Oh. Really?” That wasn’t an act. His surprise was genuine. Maybe he hadn’t seen me with Scott last night after all. Maybe he’d only watched me while I was alone.

Clearing his throat again and casually wiping sweat from his brow, he added, “That’s good, that’s good. I mean, I’m glad to hear you’re not holing up in your apartment being miserable.”

“I spent enough time doing that while I was with Alec, thank you.”

He laughed, but it was half-hearted. “Well, everyone will be thrilled to see he’s not keeping our favorite player away from us anymore.”

“Favorite player?” I eyed him. “I didn’t think you all liked losing that much.”

“Oh, whatever.”

We went on chatting as we continued around the park a few blocks from our apartments. As the conversation wandered, I couldn’t help thinking I’d truly caught him off guard. From the moment I mentioned Scott, Matt seemed…off balance. Longer and longer pauses punctuated our half-hearted banter. Every smile was forced and every laugh was tentative. When we raced up a couple of hills, his usual competitiveness was tepid at best, even when he beat me to the top of one particular place where I usually won.

He’d known about Alec’s and my split, that much I could tell, but Scott had come out of left field and thrown Matt off somehow. My revelation had caught him off guard, and his reaction had done the same to me. Were there lines here that I needed to read between?

On the way back to our buildings, he released a breath. “Man, it’s good to get out of the house. My apartment’s been closing in on me all weekend.”

“You’ve been sitting at home?” I said. “No hot dates this weekend?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Haven’t been out on too many since Elaine left.” He paused. “To be honest, it’s been such a relief to have her gone, I’ve just been enjoying the peace and quiet in my apartment.”

“Oh,
there’s
a shock.” I didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm. There was less love lost between Elaine and me than there was between Matt or Scott and Alec. It might have been a tiny bit of jealousy on my part, since she’d snagged Matt. Or maybe it was because she was a territorial, screeching harpy who deserved to spend her life alone in a house full of cats instead of making my gorgeous, good-natured neighbor miserable.

Maybe just a
little
bit of jealousy.

“Anyway, I’ve been out a bit,” he said. “Just, you know, a one nighter here and there.”

Lucky bitches
. “Can’t blame you there. I’m starting to think relationships are entirely too much bullshit.” We slowed to a walk as our apartment buildings came into view.

“I thought you said you were seeing someone, though.”

“I am, but it’s just…”
How candid should I be here? The man has seen me naked. He’s watched me masturbate, for God’s sake
. I swallowed hard. “It’s nothing serious, let’s put it that way.”

He chuckled. “I’ve heard that line before.”

“No, I mean it,” I said. “Really. He’s, well, he’s into some things that I’m not, so I don’t think we’d be compatible for anything more than what we’re doing now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Polyamoury, mostly.”

“Oh really?”

I nodded. “Yeah. He’s got a girlfriend and a couple of submissives—”

“
Submissives
?”

“Yeah.” I grinned. “He’s into BDSM.”

“Oh. So I assume that’s something else you’re not into?”

“It’s something I’m curious about. That’s why we started seeing each other. He’s showing me the ropes.”

Matt grinned. “Showing you the ropes? How apropos.”

I laughed. “Yeah, something like that. So, anyway, the kinky stuff is fine, but I don’t think I could be poly.”

“I’m with you on that,” he said. “To each theirs, but I just don’t think I’m built for that kind of thing.” He was quiet for a moment. “I never realized you were into kinky stuff.”

My heart skipped. We’d never discussed our sex lives, let alone any kinks we might have had. I swallowed. “You never asked.”

He glanced at me, a smile tugging at his lips beneath cheeks that may have been flushed from more than just our recently concluded run. I half-expected a smartass comment, but it didn’t come. Matt had always been a little on the shy side, especially compared to one shameless Scott Moore, but not like this. Not with me, at least not since we’d gotten to know each other.