I disengaged the lock, but stopped short of pushing the door open.
“That’s…not a good reason,” I said.
He huffed out an amused breath and smiled softly at me. “I’m sure.”
Well, that made one of us.
It wasn’t that I was unsure about my want to be with him; it was everything else. There was something about Smith thatslipped under my skin in a way no one had since Ev, and if I wasn’t careful, I would get hurt. It was the inevitable outcome, and I didn’t know enough about Smith to tell if he was worth the risk or not. I knew he was attractive, I knew he was very sweet, and now I knew what he sounded like when he came. That wasn’t enough to build anything on, not really.
He locked the door to the shop behind him and followed me up the stairs to the apartment, staying close without being on top of me. Once inside, he took off his shoes and kicked them into the corner, the familiar nerves finally settling back into place on his back.
That, I could work with.
“Don’t be nervous.” I held out my hand for him, and he took it, both of us staring down at the way our palms fit together. “You can still call this off at any time.”
“Just say red,” he repeated.
“Exactly.”
I licked my lips and pulled them together between my teeth, trying to decide what to do with Smith now that we were alone. Back at Rapture, I’d wanted to spread him out and make him come until he forgot his name, so that felt like a reasonable place to start.
“Is this just sex?” he asked.
“As opposed to?”
“Like, the other stuff from the club.”
“The BDSM parts?” I clarified.
He nodded.
“What do you want it to be?” I asked him.
He swallowed hard, chewed his cheek, a dozen emotions flashing across his face at the question. “I thought…watching…what I’ve seen before, one person makes the decisions and the other one just does what they’re told.”
The newness of Smith Covington was not lost on me.
The gift of it.
Of him.
“You make a series of choices,” I corrected, “and then I make the rest within the limits of what you already agreed to.”
“And that’s what you like?”
“Very much.”
“Is there always pain?”
“Not always, but…” I trailed off and took a step backward. He followed, obedient like a puppy. “I think you like when there is.”
“In theory,” he muttered, turning his attention to his socked feet and my wood floor.
“Smith.”
He glanced up at me from beneath the chocolate-colored fan of his eyelashes.
“It’s okay to be inexperienced,” I said. “This is always a learning process, even for people who have experience.”
