“I want to hear it.” Her voice was sad and breathless.
“You wanna come sit on the piano while I play?”
“Really?” She dropped her bag, moving slowly toward me as if it was too much effort to lift her feet.
“Well, I might cry if you say yes, but it was hot when Julia Roberts did it for Richard Gere, inPretty Woman.”
“You’d cry that I might be untuning your baby.”
“Not sure ‘untuning’ is an actual word, Princess. But I know what you mean. How about you come, sit on my lap?”
“You can still play that way?”
“We won’t know if we don’t try.” I patted my knee as she kicked off her heels and peeled off her jacket, leaving her in a knee length teal pencil skirt and a black short sleeve shirt. “You can’t get comfy in that skirt.”
Dropping her head down, almost like she was defeated, her fingers moved behind her to her zip.
“Fern?”
“Shit, sorry, today has been a lot. I want to hear your song.”
“You will, but not right now. What do you need? Don’t think about it, just tell me.”
“I need a hug, a glass of wine, a shower, and I want to try pushing a plug into your ass before I drop to my knees and give you the best head of your life.”
Standing from my seat, I wrapped my fingers in hers, pulling her into my chest as she let out a loud sigh.
“Go shower.”
She ran her hand across my abs, skimming over my sweats, her lips parting on a silent gasp. “Do you have your cage on?”
I nodded. “I told you I loved it and without it, I would have called and messaged you about three hundred times today and you didn’t need that. With it on, I wrote the lyrics and the music for an entire song… that shit used to take me months.”
“I love how much you love wearing it.”
“I love that you gave me as an option. And just in case you need to hear me say it out loud, I’m happy to do and try anything with you. Anything.”
She made a noise that sounded like purring.
“Go shower, Princess. Come back down in one of my shirts, leave your underwear off, and let me take care of you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Take the cage off.”
When she came back down, she was dressed in one of my black shirts, with only two buttons done up, so when she moved I caught a glimpse of the curls between her legs and the curve of her breasts. I’d taken off my cage and my cock was throbbing angrily against my joggers.
Nodding, I pointed to the glass of wine for her, on a coaster on top of my piano. “Don’t spill it on my baby.”
“I promise.”
She placed something on the side and lifted her wine to her lips, groaning loudly as she took a sip. “So, I should probably tell you about today,” she mumbled, her shoulders rounding.
I held out my hand, guiding her to where I sat on the piano stool. “I know. Sean came and told me before he told you. He was worried about you and they wanted to sweep this place to make sure there aren’t any bugs or anything here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m fucking everything up for everyone.”
Fern had fought hard to get back to the confident woman she was before Christmas, but I knew, after her meltdown with Neo and Aaron, that it was a fragile thing, and seeing her like this showed me that it was beginning to fracture again.
I took the glass from her hand and placed it on the floor next to us before I cupped her cheeks in my hands, pressing my forehead to hers. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Princess.”
