Last night, I thought I was going to explode, but Blake still told me I needed to wait until tonight. And now, this…
“Hey, space cadet.” I jumped at the sound of Blake’s voice behind me. He slid a hand around my waist, pressing it against my stomach. “It’s a good thing no one needed a drink. Your head’s in the clouds right now. Care to tell me what you were thinking about?”
I scanned the bar, seeing that no one was close to needing a refill, then followed Blake to his stool at the end of the bar. He pulled me into the space between his legs, stuffing his hands in my back pockets. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on over there. Colin’s working, and he’s new. What if something goes wrong and he needs help? He doesn’t have anyone here to watch over him like the rest of us do.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Blake corrected me. “No one’s going to letanyoneget hurt. That’s why they’re being careful about how they approach the situation.”
“But why are we over here while everyone else is in there?” It was strange to be complaining about not being in the thick of the drama, but that would have been better than in this limbo. There was something Blake hadn’t told me yet, and I wanted to know why he was so insistent on keeping me away from this guy. “Who is he? Why are you spooked by him?”
“He’s not a good guy,” Blake responded. He stared somewhere over my shoulder, but his eyes were unfocused as if he was remembering something that happened long before we met. “Years ago, there was a group that hosted private parties every month. He lives out on a farm, which made it a great location to get together. Over time, he started to let his guard down. That was when some of us started seeing things that made even the most hardcore Dom’s stomach turn.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with me? When you saw me stand up to come and say hi to you, your face looked like you were scared.” It was the first time I’d seen Blake look anything less than in complete control of a situation, and I wanted to find a way to make sure he never looked that way again. I might be the sub in this pairing, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help him, too.
“He somehow caught up with me when I was still right by your place,” Blake admitted. “I don’t think he’d followed me down here, but he knows where I came from. There’s no doubt he’s going to be pissed when we step in to keep him from hurting that guy he’s with, and I couldn’t stand it if he tried to do something to you to get back at me.”
His hands slid up my back and he held me so tight it was hard to breathe. I slipped my hands between our bodies and pushed him back. I needed him looking at me when I said what I had to say. He blinked slowly, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “I don’t want you keeping things from me. I get you couldn’t give me details, but it’s not your job to protect me.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Blake argued. “I willalwaysprotect you. There’s nothing more important to me than knowing you’re both happy and safe. And men like Jag…fuck, Danny. I can’t even imagine what it would do to me if he got his hands on you.”
“You make it sound like he’d take me against my will and abuse me.” Blake was quiet for far too long. I swallowed hard, wondering how many men like this existed in the community. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Does it help if I promise I’ll keep my eyes open?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Blake’s eyes turned cold and steely. If this had been my first impression, I would have run. But knowing him as I did now, that was the look of determination. “It’s going to take me a while before I let you out on your own. I’m not willing to take any chances.”
“I’m sorry, before youletme out on my own?” I parroted. Yes, I was a sub to my very core, and I longed to have someone to take the decisions away from me, but Blake had continuously promised I would always have the freedom to tell him if he’d crossed a line.
He was way too close. I shuddered, hating that I was second guessing things for the first time.
Blake cupped my cheek, holding the side of my face so I couldn’t look away from him. “Yes, I’m feeling possessive right now. But fuck, Danny, you mean the world to me already, and I need to know that you’re not going to get hurt because I refused to play with Jag and his boy tonight, then turned John and William on him.”
“Hold the fuck up.” I pulled his hand away from my face. I stepped back, reeling from his outburst. Not once had he told me this asshole had asked him to play with them. “When did he ask you about that?”
“He called me earlier this week,” Blake admitted. “I told him I wasn’t available because I knew there was only one person I wanted to have my hands on tonight. He wasn’t happy about that, and when we ran into one another tonight, he tried pressing me again, but I wasn’t going to change my mind. Even if I wasn’t with you, I wouldneverplay with him again. I respect boundaries too much to play the way he wants.”
A pit formed in my stomach and my chest tightened. I didn’t want to talk about this. So far, it had been easy to live in our little bubble, but I’d heard rumblings recently about the change in Blake’s willingness to play. He hadn’t been to the back rooms since that night the four of us visited the bunk room. Every once in a while, I noticed him watching people go back there like he wished he was with them.
I hated it, but I knew Blake loved helping other couples, even when he wasn’t getting any sexual gratification out of it. If I pressured him into walking away from that, he’d eventually resent me.
“You know it’s okay if you do the things you used to, right?” His expression remained impassive, and I worried that I’d misread him. “I just mean you don’t owe me anything. I might not like it, but I know you weren’t going back there for orgies or anything like that.”
“Unless you’re there, you mean,” he teased.
“Well, obviously,” I scoffed. “But I’m serious. I might get jealous as hell when you’re playing, but I trust you. I know you won’t do anything that we haven’t agreed is okay. You said yourself that you don’t have sex with everyone you scene with.”
As soon as I said it, I realized this was the type of conversation couples had. I wasn’t doing a great job with the whole doing things in order. I pressed my hands against my cheeks, wondering if they were as hot as they felt to me. It was too much to hope that Blake wouldn’t notice my embarrassment.
Blake removed my hands, holding them against my sides. “You have nothing to be upset about, Danny. I know we haven’t talked about all of this yet, but I was hoping we’d find time to sit down together. What I do with others is something that’s been on my mind, too. I’d miss it, but if it was a dealbreaker for you, I’d stop.”
He hooked his foot around the bottom rung of the stool behind me, pulling it closer until it hit the backs of my legs. I sat, still holding his hands.
“Danny, I want us to keep forging a relationship. I think I’ve made that clear. If I didn’t, we would have had sex the first night I took you home, and then every night after that.” I swallowed hard, hoping like hell we’d make up for lost time very soon. There had to be a happy medium here.
Blake’s phone vibrated and he held up a finger before pulling it out of his pocket. His shoulders slumped forward and the tension he’d been carrying eased.
“Is everything okay?” I wanted to peek at his phone to see what was going on but didn’t want to invade his privacy.
“Yeah, it will be,” Blake told me. “Corey’s on his way back up here so we can get on with our date night. They got Jag out of there.”
“And the guy he came in with?” Part of me still wondered if they were overreacting, but John and Blake weren’t the type to jump into rescue mode without a valid reason.
