“Linc.”
He lay down beside me, body half on top of mine, the cool press of his leather pants sending a shiver up my spine. He hooked one leg over mine and pushed my thighs apart, grinding against my hip.
“Let me share you tonight,” he whispered, the proposition licking hot as fire against my ear.
The reality was, I wasn’t his to share. Lincoln and I were friends, and we were roommates, and sometimes we kissed and sometimes we played, and even if he used words likelet me share you tonight, we both understood he only facilitated something for me that I was too scared to search out for myself. There were nights that I asked Lincoln to dominate me, and there were nights he asked me to submit to him, just like there were nights we tangled our bodies together on the couch and fell asleep. More often than not, though, we did none of those things.
Lincoln was my friend, first and foremost.
Above all things.
And it was the closeness of our friendship that helped him understand there were times I needed more than what he could—or would—give to me. Even if I didn’t always have the words to ask, he still knew. And it had been so long since I’d had a boyfriend, even longer since I’d had a boyfriend who was dominant and liked to see me submit.
I’d met a guy on an app right after my last birthday, Joe, and we’d lasted a few months, but our relationship was quick to run its course. I worked too much for his tastes, but I wasn’t in a position to step back from my responsibilities at the firm. And now I had to work even harder because I needed to make sure my father didn’t run his legacy into the ground before passing it on to me.
I wished he would fucking retire.
But before Joe, there was a slew of men whose names I’d be pressed to remember. Men who didn’t last more than a date or two for all kinds of reasons. Some of them weren’t kinky, some of them were too kinky, some were the wrong kind of kinky, some of them weren’t smart, and some of them were jealous of Lincoln. He’d told me once I was being too picky, but I never agreed.
I knew what I wanted, and I wasn’t going to settle for less.
For as horrible as my father was to me about work, I knew it was only because he’d used every ounce of his love and kindness with my mother. They’d been together since college, and he doted on her like I’d never seen anyone else do before or since. It was only after she died that he turned sour to the core, but I still remembered the capacity for kindness that used to live in him, the devotion.
I wanted that.
But until I found it, I’d fuck.
“Share me with who?” I asked.
The leather of Lincoln’s pants was warming up from being exposed to my bare skin, and he rubbed himself against me like a cat.
“Whoever I want,” he whispered. “Let me find a man to take you over his knee and spank all the stress of the week right out of you.”
The idea sounded like heaven, and I lifted my hips off the bed. “Can’t you do it?”
“Not as hard as you need it, and we both know it.”
I sank back down into the sheets. “I don’t want to get dressed,” I complained.
Lincoln snorted and untangled our legs, then he shoved me onto my back.
“What if I get you dressed?”
My cock surged to attention in an embarrassing way that had my hands snaking between my legs to cover the bulge. He didn’t miss it, because he never did. That was another problem, I’d realized months before. Lincoln was so in tune with my moods and my needs, so attentive…everyone else paled in comparison to him. And the worst part was, it had all come naturally. If he’d tried to learn me, he never made it obvious. He just showed up in the ways that would always count the most, and I loved him for it. Lincoln—platonically and physically—was everything I wanted, but I’d never felt romantic attachment for him.
I’d told him that once, early in our friendship over a shared box of cheap wine. I’d cried about it even, wanting to love Lincoln in all the waysIwanted to be loved. He was just as drunk as me, and he’d brushed my hair out of my face, kissed the corner of my downturned mouth, and told me love was shit anyway.
“Hmn?” he prompted, and I covered my face with his pillow, muttering a muffled curse into the case. “You liked that, and you know it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You like being told what to do, and you like being used. There’s no shame in it.” He kissed the shell of my ear, and my lashes fluttered. “Let me dress you up and take you out, find a nice man with big hands to get you off, then I’ll bring you home safe and tuck you into bed.”
All in all, it sounded like a perfect night…but I was so raw from the exchange with my father and with Marshall that I wanted to go back to the office, dig the magazine out of the trash, and papercut myself to death with it. I wanted to bleed all over my father’s desk, all over the proposal bid—which was so fucking lacking—until he understood how much of myself I put into the job and how little of himself he put intoeverything.
“I don’t want to wear leather,” I conceded.
“I know you don’t.” Lincoln ruffled the hair on the back of my head and climbed off the bed, leaving me to stew in my own thoughts for almost too long. I was seconds away from calling out for him when the bed dipped again with his weight.
