That alone makes me feel very…protected. Like I’ve made the right choices in our negotiations.
“Then if that’s all,” he concludes, “then it’s time for you to remove your clothes.”
CHAPTER14
Oliver
As I strip off, I get that same weird flutter in my belly. I’m usually just as confident naked as I am clothed, but this time it feels…different. I undress slowly, pulling open the laces of my shoes first, sliding them off, along with my socks. Then my black uniform shirt, which I fold gently over the back of a chair. Then the pants, and, when Lord Arden makes no gesture to stop me, my underwear.
When I reach for the mask, he holds up his hand.
“No. The mask remains. House rules.”
I drop my hands, stand tall, and wait. This scenario is familiar enough to me. Most Doms like looking at me. I keep in shape, and hell, I like being looked at, too.
And for a long while, that’s all that happens. Lord Arden looks me over, head to toe, rising again from his seat to walk around me as though I’m an exhibit in a museum somewhere.
It’s hot.
I keep my hands by my side, even when my dick starts filling out, and when he pauses to look at it, I steel myself for some comment. But all he does is take a step closer and say, “I’d like to touch you, Oliver.”
“Please do,” I gasp out, but when he raises his hand, it’s to touch my face, to run the very tip of his forefinger over the bow of my lips.
“This morning, Chef Henriette helped you prepare my tea.”
“I—”
“That wasn’t a question. I askedyouto prepare it. You, yourself.”
“I forgot how you take it,” I admit.
“One infraction for your forgetfulness. Bring me a new dance card.”
I try not to stumble as I head to the nightstand, grab a new card with the tiny pencil attached, and bring it back to him. He marks one tally, ties the card on my wrist, and then he smiles at me. “However, I do think it’s important to allow you a chance to make up for your mistakes, and to show you have learned from them. So go to the kitchen now. Brew a teapot—a proper teapot, mind, don’t just dunk a teabag in a mug and call it good, and if you come back with that abomination that Americans callicedtea, I will take the hide off you. Chef Henriette should keep my preferred tea leaves to hand, but if not, any black loose-leaf blend will do. Not green, andnotherbal. Now listen carefully and remember: I take my tea with milk, no sugar, in a teacup and saucer. Bring the milk separately. Bring a teacup for yourself, and sugar if you take it. And there are usually some biscuits somewhere. Bring a few on a plate.”
The rapid-fire instructions have my head spinning, and I catch on to the last one. “Biscuits?” I see a chance to redeem myself, maybe a little. “Certainly, my lord. Do you want them with jam and butter, or do you prefer them with gravy?”
He gives an almost imperceptible sigh. “I see I misspoke. I meant…cookies.”
“Oh. Uh…should I go naked?”
He casts his eyes over my form, a speculative look in his eye. “That would cause rather a disturbance downstairs, I feel. No. When we are alone, I prefer you unclothed. You will dress when we are spending time downstairs. And when I send you on small errands, like this, you may wear my robe, rather than re-dressing. It is in the bathroom.”
When I wrap his robe around my body, it feels like a sleek, sexy embrace from the man himself, and I find myself snuffling at the collar several times as I make my way down to the kitchens.
It smells like him.
There’s a family crest on the pocket, and I wish again that I’d just given into temptation during the week and Googled the guy to find out more about him. But I’d stayed hard and cold against the idea until Nik had come to beg me to come back—but even during a nervous Friday night as I thought about returning to the household the next day, something stopped me from e-stalking him.
Some sense that it wouldn’t befair.
It’s not like I could talk about him with anyone else, and there’s no gossip while I’m in the household. So no point trying to find stuff to gossipabout.
Daniel and Chef Henriette are there in the kitchen, pressed up against each other. There’s a little scuffle when I burst into the room, and I say airily, “Don’t mind me,” as Daniel scrambles away and Chef Henriette hastily rearranges her apron.
So Lord Arden was right. Chef Henriette and Daniel—how did I not see it before?
“Nice robe,” Daniel murmurs as he passes by on his way out of the kitchen.
