Page 31 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

We’d done this part at his kitchen counter two nights ago, the negotiation. Green, yellow, red. What I wanted, what I’d wondered about, what was off the table entirely, written down, his actual pen on actual paper.

I’d expected to feel clinical about it and instead found it was the hottest conversation of my life. This man takes my desiresas seriously as money. Somewhere around item six, he’d asked a follow-up so calm and so filthy that I’d had to put my tea down, and he’d waited, pen ready, while I recovered the power of speech.

“Green,” I say, and mean it down to my shoes. “Aggressively green.”

The private room is small and warm, a leather bench, a low bed, an iron stand of those candles. A tall cabinet stands looming in the corner opposite a St. Andrew’s Cross. He opens it to show me before he touches anything else, every item presented for inspection, transparency as seduction.

“Anything in here spark your interest?”

“You, mostly.”

That near smirk again. “The cabinet, Luna.”

“Right.” It’s a lot to take in, all the different things. Some I know from porn and the internet and books. As for the others, I’m not sure what they are. “Maybe some light bondage to get things rolling?”

“And then?”

Why is my heart racing? “Um… you pick something.”

That earns his patient glance. “I’m not the one having things done to her. I’m the doer. My tastes are less relevant.”

“I hear what you’re saying, Ivan, and I appreciate the consideration, but I want you to be satisfied, too.”

He thinks for a moment. “You liked it when I used the gag. Was it because it was your own underwear or because it slowed your breathing?”

I swallow. I haven’t really thought about that night at the restaurant too closely. But I know the answer in my throat. “Both.”

“Very good.” He takes his watch off and sets it on the cabinet, deliberate, both of us watching the gesture mean something. “Hold out your wrists.”

I do, and then he binds my wrists behind me with charcoal silk, wrapping with a care that’s almost ceremonial, two fingers sliding under every loop to check the give.

The restraint hits my bloodstream warm, the first sip of wine, heat moving outward from the center. My heart thrills at the prospect of danger, but my mind sinks into murkiness. Something quieter.

Something…safe?

In that moment, I understand something about myself with clean clarity. I’ve spent my whole life being the one who holds everything. The shop, the books, the schedule, the fish, my own unruly heart.

Being held is new. Held is a sabbatical. Ivan is in charge now. I don’t have to think. I’m not running the show here. He is. Even with just this silk, he’s holding me.

“Color,” he says, against my ear.

“Green. Very green. Forest, emerald, the whole arboretum.”

I feel him smile against my earlobe. “Very good.” Then he sits atop the bench. “Come to me, pet.”

I swallow and then I join him there, and he stares in my eyes as he lifts my dress up, up, and up over my hips.

“Now, lie over my lap.”

I bend forward to follow the order, my brain going gooey at the thought of what I’m about to do.

He arranges me until I’m comfortable there, my ass exposed fully to him. “Tonight, in this place, you will call me ‘Sir.’”

I take a quick breath. “Yes, sir.”

His hand comes down on my ass gently at first. I don’t make a sound. It doesn’t hurt.

But then there’s a bit more firmness on the next few hits. My breaths come faster.