“Mmm-hmm. Is that a problem?” I hope it’s not, because it’s been one of Jordan’s hottest fantasies. Of course I wouldn’t have offered it if I didn’t know Jordan wanted it.
I might be a sadist and a bad man, but I’m not a fucking monster.
“No, Sir.” He wears a playful smile. “That’s not a problem at all.”
“Don’t be disappointed if it takes him a while to take you up on that. Don’t try to rush or push him.”
“I won’t.”
“Even if it’s a long time, he won’t forget that I made the rule. I wanted him to know the door’s open. Now we wait for him to walk through it.”
Then again, considering Elliot’s track record inthatdepartment, we might be waiting a long damn time.
We return to Blair House and now I’m beyond exhausted. We strip and fall into bed, Jordan draped over me and. My fingers close around his right wrist, around the bracelet there.
My day collar.
My boy.
Mine.
Maybe now Elliot will ask me for more. Maybe he’ll get to know Jordan better.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The psychologist warns me not to get my hopes up, but it’s difficult not to.
At least we’ve finally hit a plateau that’s solid and sustainable for me for as long as it takes. That’s more than I thought I’d ever have even a few months ago.
Chapter Forty-Two
Then — One Year Later
I was raised in Laguna Beach, California, by extremely liberal parents who were dismayed I decided to go into law enforcement instead of following in my father and grandfather’s footsteps to join their brokerage firm.
I had no interest in that.
Like many boys, I fell in love with what I thought was a cool-ass job after I saw a movie about a brave Secret Service agent saving the world. That was my Holy Grail—working at the White House and protecting the president. Back then, I would have settled for a slightly less cool job as an FBI field agent, maybe a criminal profiler catching serial killers or something.
I always had a way with languages and was a polyglot by middle school. In college, I majored in psychology, because I knew it’d be an advantage when I applied to the Secret Service, all while buffing my résumé in the area of languages. A massive love of anime and manga led me to learning Japanese on my own, plus I minored in Russian in college.
All of that gave me a leg up over my competition after I passed the physical tests when I applied to the Secret Service. I think my parents still hoped I’d change my mind and stay in California, go to work for Dad, take over the firm. Or, at the very least, go back to college for my doctorate in psychology and then go into practice for myself. Something…safe and dull.
I had no interest in that.
I thrived in the Secret Service, reveled in every ounce of pain during training, relished every achievement. Once I was sworn in as a field agent, I immediately set my sights on advancing through the ranks and got myself stationed in DC.
That’s where I met Special Agent Christopher Bruunt.
AKA Priest.
That was long before he was known as Priest, of course. Back then, Chris was my boss and soon became my friend. I deduced from discussions we had on long overseas flights during advance team work that we shared some…special interests. Just a few hints I picked up at first, until one evening I made a joke that he laughed at—a subtle double-entendre that only another Dominant would think was funny.
I didn’t delude myself thinking it meant I suddenly had an in with Chris. If anything, he now expected more from me, drove me to work harder.
Damn right I loved it. Because I absorbed a career’s worth of knowledge under his tutelage. He was the one to tell me I’d made it into PPD, and then, later, onto The Shift.
Following the plane crash that nearly killed me, my rat bastard of a father “joked” minutes upon my parents’ arrival at the hospital that maybe it was a sign I shouldn’t have been working for the government. Mostly because the advance trip was for then-candidate Fullmer, before the Republican was elected president.
