“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Are you?” he asked.
“No,” she wrote. “But I want to give this a go. If things go wrong, if you don’t like it, if you get sick of me, will you tell me?”
He frowned. “And what if you don’t like it? What if you want to stop? Will you tell me?”
It was a good question, and one she wasn’t really sure she knew the answer to.
“If either of us want to stop, we can tell the other person. I’m not going to get upset if you don’t like this and don’t want it anymore. If there’s something I’m doing you don’t like, then either use a safeword like red. Or a gesture. How about you tap my cheek three times?” he suggested.
She thought she could probably do that. She nodded.
“Give it a go now.”
Reaching up, she tapped his cheek three times.
“You can do it harder than that.”
She touched him harder.
“Whoa, easy. Not so hard. I’m gonna have a mark there.”
Addie gaped at him in horror. Had she really marked him? She hadn’t meant to. Oh my God, what had she done?
“Sorry, Addie, that was just a joke,” he said. “Obviously, not a very funny one from the look on your face.”
Oh, right.
Yeah, it hadn’t been very funny.
“Just to be clear, you’d rather keep this private? To ourselves?”
“I don’t mind if other people know, so long as no one is laughing at me. But I’m not sure about . . . aboutdoinganything in front of others,” she said through the phone.
Urgh. That sounded so awkward.
He nodded. “Understood. We can ease into that. So now we need to discuss the rules.”
Oh. Eek.
“No more talking until your throat is no longer sore and you’re speaking more easily.”
“I know my voice sounds awful at the moment so I’ll try not to talk but sometimes it’s hard to remember.”
“Your voice does not sound awful. That’s another rule.”
What was? Not saying that her voice sounded awful? But it did. It was all raspy.
“What is?” she asked.
“You are not allowed to put yourself down. Next is honesty. I’m relying on you to be honest with me, Addie. No lying to me or to yourself. and I won’t be pleased if you aren’t honest. Fair warning.”
Sheesh.
“Addie is a good girl.”
Cash raised his eyebrows. “Well, of course Addie is a good girl. Who said differently?”
