Undone Dom (11 page)

“My health insurance isn’t that great, and my copay is crazy. Besides, it’s the flu, there’s nothing they can do.”

Alton wrapped his arms around her waist, carefully resting his head on hers. “I can cover your medical costs.”

“Um, excuse me, we just met. That’s inappropriate.”

Alton raised his eyebrow.

Lulu’s laugh turned into a cough. “Oh. Touché. But still, there’s nothing they can do for the flu.”

“That’s true. Do you have medicine? Or some…food?” Alton rarely got sick, so he was desperately trying to remember the last flu commercial he’d seen.

“Not really, that’s why I was going to order groceries.” She tapped the lens of her glasses. “But these are out of date and I can’t get my contacts in. I can’t really see the computer screen.”

Alton looked around the frilly but cramped apartment.

“I have a better idea.”

“Does it involve illegal narcotic painkillers? I’m all for it, my chest hurts so much.”

He kissed the top of her head. He did
not
like that she was hurting. Which was really fucking ironic, but there would be time to examine that later.

“Illegal drugs can be step two. Step one, I’m taking you to my house.”

“Oh Alton, really I just want to be comfortable, and all that BDSM stuff…”

“Lulu.” He cupped her cheek, a slow smile creeping over his face. “You think I live there?”

“Um…yes?”

“That’s not my house.”

“It’s not? Then whose house is it?”

“I’ll rephrase. It’s my house. My guesthouse. I live in the house in front.”

Her mouth parted slowly. “You own the big
Architectural Digest
house?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do?”

He grinned, sheepish. “That’s classified.”

Lulu dropped her head onto his chest. “Of course it is.”

Lulu curled into the buttery leather seat of his very, very nice car and sighed. Her body couldn’t decide if it was hot or cold. At the moment she was burning up, and the leather felt blessedly cool. When Alton slid into the driver’s seat, his big body taking up a lot of space in the low-slung car, she took a moment to reevaluate him.

As the owner of a clothing store, Lulu was used to assessing people based on their clothing. It was an occupational hazard. Nothing about the way Alton dressed or carried himself indicated that he had the kind of money that equated to this sporty Mercedes or the ridiculous house.

If she hadn’t known about his sexual proclivities, she might have equated his masculine confidence with professional success paired with terrible fashion sense, rather than the ultimate sexual confidence combined with an untamed nature.

He was still untamed, there was no doubt about that. But Lulu really, really wanted to give him a fashion makeover.

She giggled a little as he turned, the slick car hugging the road, seeming almost like a ride. He looked over at her, eyes dark and worried.

“You can’t dress.”

He grunted.

She plucked the sleeve of the boring blue button-down he wore open over a white undershirt with his ubiquitous jeans.

“This is the most boring outfit I’ve ever seen.”

“This is one of my nice outfits.”

“You go to work in this?”

“I don’t go to work. I’m a contractor. I work from home.”

“Ahhh, that’s how you have time to keep a harem of sex slaves.” She drew out the “s”s, leaning into his heavily muscled arm and batting her lashes.

“A harem was full of women who all belonged to the same man. Those other women don’t belong to me.”

Lulu rested one hand on his thigh. “Looks like a harem, has lots of naked women like a harem…”

“My harem has only one woman in it.”

Their gazes met.

Lulu sniffled, tears filling her eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Alton blinked. “It is?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Probably not, but it’s the sweetest thing a guy has said to me today. And I’m sick, so you can’t hold anything I say against me.”

“Right. You need to move your hand, or sick or not we’re having sex when we stop.”

“You think I’m sexy, like this?” Lulu ran her hands backwards through her hair, tangling it over her face, then blowing it away with little puffs of air.

“Exactly like that? No. You look sick. And crazy.”

“You know what?” Lulu sat back, not the least bit insulted. “You’re rude. You insulted my apartment, my furniture and my outfit.”

“You called me self-involved. And you hung up on me. No one hangs up on me.”

“You are a little self-involved. You assumed I wasn’t coming because of something you’d done, or because I was scared of you, or something you’d do. It should have been clear from my voice that I was sick. I even coughed on the phone.”

They’d turned into the same driveway Lulu had used every time she’d come, but rather than head straight back through the gate, they cut to the left, to the circular drive at the front of the house, where Alton stopped the car.

He looked at her, exasperation writ large on his features. “How was I supposed to know you were sick?”

“You were supposed to hear it in my voice.”

“You should have told me.”

“You were being weird.”

His knuckles went white on the steering wheel, his nostrils flared. Lulu smirked in triumph. The world was rolling dizzily, and maybe if she hadn’t been slightly delirious she wouldn’t have kept pushing…but probably not.

Alton got out and Lulu waited for him to open her door. As she stood, her stomach rolled, the spirit of fun fleeing to be replaced by nausea. She grabbed for the door but he was there, supporting her. He scooped her up in his arms. Lulu laid her head in the crook of his neck, giving in to the feelings of sickness she’d been holding off for a day and a half.

She was vaguely aware of being taken in through the front door and going up some steps.

“I’m going to put you down.”

“Okay.”

He set her down, helped her balance, and then stripped her of her sweaty, heavy clothes, which had seemed so perfect when she left the store shivering with cold. She stood there, naked and so sick she didn’t care how awful she looked, meaning very sick, while he clumsily pulled a t-shirt over her head. It was huge on her, the fabric thin and soft from use. It felt cool and comfortable against her, almost as good as the cotton sheets when he helped her into the massive bed.

“Remind me,” she stopped talking as a shiver overtook her. He pulled the comforter over her. “To tell you how ugly this room is.”

“Not as ugly as your apartment.”

“Ha. Your house is nice, that’s what saves it. The interior decorating is crap in here.”

“What interior decorating?”

“Exactly.”

He pressed a hand to his head. “Stay. I’m going to the store.”

“Okay.” Her stomach rolled. “Wait, where’s the bathroom?”

“It’s over there. And here’s a garbage can. I’ll be right back.” He knelt by the bed, fingers on her jaw. “I promise.” He kissed her cheek.

Tears filled her eyes at his tender touch. “Alton?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t feel good.”

He grinned. Lulu would remember the moment for the rest of her life. It was then that she realized that she could fall head over heels in love with this complicated man. She shouldn’t, because love wasn’t what he wanted, she knew that, but it might already be too late. She was half in love with him already.

“I know you don’t, baby. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” Lulu closed her eyes. As the door closed behind him she wondered what she was supposed to do now.

Chapter Eleven

“Hey there, Bruce Wayne.”

Alton quickly saved and closed the airplane schematics he was looking at before turning around.

Lulu stood in his office door, hair falling in tangled ropes of red gold. Her cheeks were pink, maybe too much, but it highlighted her pale skin.

“How do you feel?” He rose, going to her and ushering her from the office. She resisted slightly, trying to look around him at his desk and he gave her a little push, getting her out of the office. She poked out her lower lip.

“What do you do again?”

“Still classified.”

“That’s exactly the kind of thing Bruce Wayne would say.”

“No he wouldn’t, he pretended to be a playboy so no one would suspect he was Batman.”

“I should have known better than to use a boy analogy on a boy. But still, playboy sort of fits.”

Ignoring this, Alton led her back upstairs to his bedroom, wondering idly if she’d gone through the whole house looking for him. The thought didn’t upset him. He liked the idea of Lulu seeing into his life, knowing this part of him.

Taking her by the shoulder, he sat her on the edge of the bed then pulled a new thermometer from the pharmacy bag on the bedside table. Opening it, he popped it into her mouth. She’d slept fitfully, aided by the flu medication he’d given her along with some soup. He’d woken her once, early this morning, to give her more medication when he’d given up on sleeping and gone down to work at six a.m. It was midmorning now.

He hadn’t thought it through when he’d brought her to his room—which had an extra-large mattress, meaning it was the only bed he could sleep on. Lulu had barely made a dent in the vast expanse of mattress, but when he lay down next to her, her flu-fueled turning kept him up worrying, and when she lay still he couldn’t help but react to her presence, remembering what she looked like in chains, on the
crux decussata
and sucking his cock.

The constant cycle of boner-induced sexiness followed by boner-killing worry had rendered sleep impossible.

The thermometer beeped.

“Ninety-nine. You’re still running a temperature.”

“It’s a lot better than it was. Thanks to you.”

“You need to rest.”

“I just have to call and check in on the store. Addie agreed to open yesterday when it looked like I was coming down with something.”

“She will need to run the store for fourteen days.” Alton had spent an hour that morning researching the flu. Assuming Lulu was only on her second or third day, she still had the majority of the two-week cycle to go through.

A small part of him was glad. As long as she was sick he could make her stay here. With him.

Lulu laughed. Then coughed. He handed her a pack of antibacterial tissues the pharmacist had recommended. As she covered her mouth, he tentatively rubbed her back, scared of doing something wrong.

Lulu took a deep breath. “Fourteen days? I’m a small business owner. I can be gone two days, tops.”

“You need to rest.”

“I need to run my business. I can’t fall behind on orders or bookkeeping, or inventory.”

“What about Lane’s sub? She works for you.”

“You mean my
friend Addie
?”

Alton shrugged.

“She works in the store, but she’s a seamstress first. She repairs the clothes we sell in the vintage section of the shop, and she designs clothes. I can’t expect her to do my job…and why am I explaining this to you? You don’t care.” Her shoulders slumped and she fell back onto the bed.

Alton’s heart clenched. What should he do? How did he make her feel better?

Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her from the bedroom.

“Where are we going?”

“Living room.”

“You don’t have a living room.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh, you mean the room with the ugly couch and giant TV.”

“Yes.”

He carefully put her on the “ugly” couch. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“This couch is a crime against interior design.”

He looked at the huge, leather, U-shaped piece of furniture. “It’s comfortable.”

“The battle cry of the lazy and tasteless.” She sneered at the cup holder in the fold-down armrest.

“No one talks to me like this,” Alton said, half to himself. He couldn’t believe the slight woman sitting on the couch with her bare legs folded beneath her, hair tangled and sticking to her neck was teasing him, insulting him. Acting like he was…a normal guy.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Master.” She fluttered her lashes. “Will you forgive me?”

Alton gave up and grinned. Damn, he loved her. “When you feel better, you’ll pay for this, but until then stay here while I get medicine and some food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You will eat.”

“Okay. Can I have a blanket too?”

“Yes. When I come back you will tell me about your business.”

Lulu frowned in surprise. “About Lulu L’amore’s?”

“You think I don’t care, but I do. I want to know more about your business. About you.”

“Oh.” Her mouth formed a pretty little O of surprise, and then she smiled, dropping her head to rest on the couch. “I’ll tell you more than you’d ever want to know.”

“Good.”

“Veto,” Lulu declared.

“You used up all your vetoes. You only got three.” Alton held the remote out of her reach.

Lulu probably wouldn’t have been able to work it anyway. She was by no means a Luddite, but he had his TV synced to his computer, and she’d never worked a system like it before. When she’d asked why, he said that getting up to put in a DVD was a pain, it was better to copy the DVDs to the computer. She then admitted to not even owning a DVD player connected to her TV—wasn’t that what laptops were for?

“Actually, I changed it so I get infinite vetoes. We are not watching all three Bourne movies.”

“This is my house.”

“You picked the last one.
Resident Evil
? Really?”

He was silent, and Lulu looked up to see he was biting back a smile. “Well, in case this isn’t the flu, in case you’re turning into a zombie. I needed to know what to do.”

Lulu socked him in the arm, which definitely hurt her hand more than him. Alton laughed, so she lunged and tried to bite him, zombie style.

He rolled her onto her back, chuckling. As he came down over her, their faces inches apart, Lulu stilled, looking up at him. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so instantly comfortable with a man, so protected and cared for.

The laughter left his face, to be replaced by a heart-meltingly tender look.

Their lips met, holding in a sweet, perfect kiss. Lulu lost herself in the perfection of the moment. She loved him. She wasn’t almost in love with him, or falling in love with him. She loved him.

When Alton tried to deepen the kiss, her eyes popped open and she pushed him away. “No, I’ll get you sick.”

“I never get sick. And even if I did,” he brushed the hair from her neck, her cheek, “it would be worth it.”

His eyes were dark pools.

“Alton, what are we doing?” she whispered the question she’d been scared to ask. Addie and Lane had said this was exactly the kind of thing she wouldn’t get with Alton, but here they were.

“We are,” he sat up, pulling her up beside him, “watching a movie. After that, I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

“What do you mean,
this
?”

“You said I was a playboy.”

“It was just a joke, I know you’re not really, but I hope you know that most men don’t regularly have two or three women naked and tied up in their guesthouses.”

He tapped the remote against a muscled, bare knee, exposed by the ugly shorts he wore. “I know that. I know
normals
have a different kind of life. I knew that wasn’t for me since I was in high school. My parents divorced and it was bad. I think that people are so desperate for connection that they rush into relationships that do more damage than good.”

“I’m sorry about your parents. How did you know you were into BDSM in
high school
?”

“I didn’t know specifically that’s what I wanted, but I knew I wanted a relationship with rules, so that it wouldn’t end up like my parents. I found BDSM in the navy, when I was stationed in Japan.”

“Wait, you were in the navy?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

Alton frowned. “I am.”

“No, I mean start with ‘I was born’.”

He gave a slight sad smile. “Maybe. I want to tell you why I’m not a playboy first.”

“Okay.” Lulu scooted so she was right against his side, sensing he needed her. She laid her head on his shoulder and watched as he continued to flip through screens on the TV, his fingers moving restlessly on the remote.

“When I do things I want to do them all the way, be perfect at them. I learned a lot in Japan, and realized that’s what I wanted. A woman who was submissive. Once I was a civilian, I devoted my spare time to learning about BDSM culture in the U.S. I wanted to be the perfect Master.”

“And you did that.”

His lips pressed against her head, and for a moment there was silence, enough that Lulu sensed the sadness coming from him.

“Maybe. I thought if I were the perfect Master I would find a perfect submissive, the perfect slave.”

“Wait, just for sex, or for both sex and the other parts of your life?” The way he was talking made it almost sound as if he’d been looking for a life partner who shared his kink, rather than just a sex playmate.

“I wanted a life companion, at first. But then other Masters started sending their slaves to me for training, and I saw that slaves who were also wives and girlfriends were usually the most damaged. It was hard to be both, and Master and slave were suffering. First, I thought it was the Masters, that they didn’t have the discipline.

“Then I met Sheila.”

Lulu sucked in a breath. They were talking about their past relationships. Shit just got
real
.

“It was at a party I hosted almost four years ago. A Dom from San Francisco brought her, along with a few other slaves. I thought she was perfect. She was totally obedient, perfectly trained, and she lived the lifestyle full-time.”

He set the remote down, picked it up again.

“I took her, for the party, and then for the rest of the time she was in L.A., she stayed with me, in the guesthouse. She never spoke unless asked a question, she accepted anything I did to her. When I tested her to see what she enjoyed, her response to everything was ‘Whatever pleases you, Master’.”

Lulu bit the inside of her lip, feeling jealous and a little stupid as she thought of all the ways she
hadn’t
behaved like this Shelia.

“She moved to L.A. and moved into the guesthouse. She was the perfect slave, but I felt like I didn’t really know her yet, so at least I got that right, and didn’t move her in here.”

“What are you talking about? What happened?” Lulu couldn’t stand not looking at his face anymore. She swung over his legs, straddling them to sit on his lap.

“What happened? Nothing. What Sheila wanted was to be a servant, an abused servant.” Alton pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead in the way Lulu was starting to recognize as stressed. “She wasn’t a sexual submissive, or a sex slave. She wanted nothing to do with sex, at all. The only times she ever showed a real reaction were when a scene ended in sex. Her whole body would get tense, she’d look away. Her pussy would get dry halfway through the sex.

“She wanted the scenes I planned, wanted me to treat her as a slave, to use her as one, but with no intimacy between us. My touch disgusted her.”

Lulu’s mouth had slowly dropped open as he spoke. “That
bitch
.”

Alton jerked back at her outburst. “What?”

“She sounds like a grade-A selfish bitch. And a dumb bitch. You’re gorgeous and so sexy that if I could breathe through my nose I’d give you a blowjob right now.”

She’d hoped he would smile, but he didn’t.

He shook his head, “No, she was a submissive with very specific tastes, ones that did not include me.”

“She had no right to make you feel bad about yourself while making you do all the stuff to her she wanted.”

“It…wasn’t like that.” Alton shifted uncomfortably, hands on her legs as if he might push her away.

Lulu grabbed the back of the couch on either side of his head. “It was exactly like that. She was using you, like the selfish bitch she was.”

“I disagree.”

Of course he did, because if he agreed he’d be admitting he was in an abusive relationship with a level-seven black belt manipulator. For a man who prided himself on control, that would be worse than death.

“She simply needed a different Master. Luckily at another party she met a Master and sub from Chicago who were looking for a live-in lifestyle slave, she left with them.”