“Coasting?”
“He’s bored.” Lamé sounds more serious than I’ve ever seen them. “Zion’s been bored for ages. Years.”
“That’s almost insulting. I work my ass off to get where I am and he’s just coasting? Great. I might as well—”
“I meant here. He’s boredhere, Twyla.” They shake their head. “Work is work. As long as he’s challenged, he’s happy.”
I sit back, mollified. That does sound like him. Although, bored? Here?
“The way he looked at you out there today…” Lamé’s eyes narrow on me.
I watch them, waiting for more.
“Not bored?” Gigi prompts.
“Most assuredly not.”
“I knew it!” says Gigi. “Oh, crap. I’ve got a zoom in a few minutes. Will you call me, Lamé?” My best friend ignores me entirely. “When something happens?”
Lamé stands, turns the computer to face them and wanders toward the kitchen, the two sharing contact info.
When something happens? It alreadyhashappened. Done and done. I’ve gotten as intimate with Zion as I’ll ever get.
Which is fine.
It was… God, it was so good.
I zone out, my gaze caught up in the glass lighting fixture, my brain back at that tent. The spanking. Pulling my suit aside and giving every single person there a look. It felt dirty and uncomfortable and also perfect.
How was it that the fifteen minutes I spent getting strung up by the extremely handsome Burn had been like torture, while that spanking and everything that ensued was so painfully good?
I lie back and hide my face in the cushion, the way I’d hidden during that session. The mortified pleasure of all that attention on me—his, the others’—and Zion’s single-minded focus. He’d been soangry. As if I’d done something to hurt him just by being there. Or being me. Or wearing that swimsuit. Or getting it wet.
My legs cross, my thighs tight, trying to squeeze every ounce of pleasure from the memory. And the blow job was beyond good. It was transcendental. Like last night, only…well, I knew it was him. The taste of him, the smell, the sounds he made.
And he knew it was me.
So, he wants me, right?
I mean, I could argue that he volunteered to spank me to keep me safe, like out of some random person’s clutches or something, but pulling my bathing suit aside and baring me to literally everyone’s gaze was not about keeping me safe and out of trouble.
And what we did against that tree? Why’d he do that? Is Lamé right? Am I somehow messing with him? Is my very existence throwing him into such turmoil that… Hang on.
Abruptly, I stand and head into the kitchen, where Gigi and Lamé are still talking over Facetime.
“That’s a kink,” Lamé says, pulling a huge container of flour from a high cupboard.
“Seriously? How?”
“It sounds like you’re a service bottom.”
Gigi scoffs. “I amnota bottom. Nobody tells me what to do.”
I watch their easy back and forth, totally unsurprised that they’ve hit it off.
“Okay, then. Not a bottom. I’m a Dominant, myself, so I get it. You know what you are, then?”
“What?” Gigi sounds half-scared, half-excited.
