Page 14 of Magnum, Volume 2

“Thanks. I’m working through how to convince her to sell and move in with me, and it helps, understanding the logistics.”

“Good luck. McGyver’s Blueberry has been keeping us up on the gossip. Sounds like your girl didn’t kick your ass back home, so that’s a good thing.”

I smiled. No one’s private life can be kept secret in an MC. Somehow, Knife had kept his Tuesday secret, but he’d also kept her far from the clubhouse — and only used a burner to contact her.

“Only time will tell. The Realtor you sent me to was a big help; I just didn’t think to ask her about how selling a home might go.”

I sat by the creek and considered my options for an hour before I went inside to bake the tilapia I’d moved from the freezer to the fridge that morning.

Chapter 7

Storm

I really wished I wasn’t so swamped, trying to keep all the balls I had going up in the air, but it couldn’t be helped.

Our evenings and nights were great, though. He let me think during breakfast, but we talked a whole lot at our other meals, and if I’m honest — the morning fuck kind of tied everything together and reminded me our power exchange is as real as it gets when it’s consensual.

But he was cleaning my house for me, and that was… wrong. And yet, it also meant we had longer together in the evenings.

I loved being so damned sore I remembered him throughout the day, but I wasn’t spending time in the shoes, so the sore feet were missing — just my asshole from the plugs, and my pussy from his dick. Also, some bruising around my torso, from the cincher.

No way in hell was I going to bring up maintenance, and yet, it was like this huge thing left flapping in the wind and never talked about. We weren’t officially an item, though, so there was no need in bringing it up. He wasn’t wrong to leave it, for now, but it still bugged me.

One evening, I saw something odd in his open suitcase. He hadn’t ordered me to grab the bar yet, so I could still speak freely.

“What is that?” I asked, and then stepped closer and touched the hard silicone.

“I didn’t know if I was going to use it or not,” he said, pulling it out. He was wearing jeans without a shirt, and he placed the device over the root of his cock, covered by the denim, but the placement was impossible to understand.

“Felt like I should bring it, just in case.” He met my gaze. “It acts like the donuts men with too-long cocks wear when they fuck their short partners, but none of those are big enough, so I had this custom-made years ago. Comes almost up to the rough part of my dick, so I can fuck women without hurting them, but…” He shrugged. “I like hurting you when I fuck you, and you seem to get off on it, so…”

He put it back into the suitcase. “I may change my mind, but as of now, I don’t think I’m ever going to put the damned thing on again.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He had a way to fuck me without hurting me, and he’d told me once that there was a way, but then he’d never shown me how.

Did I want him using this? Yes. No.

Fuck, I wasn’t sure. I was absolutely positive of his meaning, though, when he said he may never put it on again — he was implying that he never intended to fuck anyone else besides me, and that was way too heavy of a discussion for us to have yet.

But he ordered me to jump up and grab the bar, so the conversation was thankfully over without me having to say a word.

The beauty of the whole slave-thing is in giving up those kinds of decisions.

He waited until his fourth day to bring up the near-future over grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and he’d made the bread from scratch along with the soup. He’d also fixed a leaky faucet in a guest bedroom, trimmed my outside bushes so they didn’t encroach on the sidewalk, and cleaned the inside and outside of every window in my house, along with another half-dozen small handyman-type jobs I just hadn’t gotten around to.

“I can come up again three or four weeks after I leave,” he said, to start. “We can plan it better next time, if you’re open to another visit.” He set his sandwich down and met my gaze a few seconds before asking, “Are you open to coming back to my place again, once it’s safe? Work it when you aren’t likely to need to go into DC or New York?”

“I’d love to come for a visit once I’m not busier than a tax accountant in April. I really am sorry I can’t just stop working, but there are so many different things going on at once, and I can’t just disappear from so many people counting on me to follow through.”

“I’d never ask you to do that,” he said, and I believed him. “If there’s anything I can do to help, feel free to put me to work, but I have a feeling it’s stuff only you can do, or you’d have paid for someone to come assist by now.”

“I have four assistants, actually. People who specialize in the various platforms. No way could I do all of this completely without help, but they can’t create anything, they just compile stuff for me so I don’t have to trudge through every comment. Some of the info left that way is important, so every single one has to be read, and they have a good handle on the things I need to see. They also help me stay on top of the rules and algorithm changes at each site, advising me of new trends and things to avoid.”

We were talking around the actual 800-pound gorilla sitting between us, so I just fucking named it. “We can’t talk about more than visits right now. It isn’t like I’m going to sell my house and move in with you anytime soon. It isn’t off the table, but it isn’t exactly on the table, either.”

I took a sip of the peach tea he’d made us and shook my head. “Fuck, Magnum. I love having you here, but it isn’t enough, but it has to be. I should be the one forced into heels and cleaning the windows, instead of sitting on my ass and talking to police all over the country, and to the FBI agents I’ve worked with in the past who aren’t complete assholes, giving victims and their families a voice, dealing with attorneys, collabing with other reporters.” I sighed. “And now also dealing with a book publisher trying to convince me not to self-publish the book I’m writing about the whole damned thing.”

Wow, I hadn’t planned for that tangent, so I brought us back on topic. “It’s my house, and it’d be wrong even without our history. I should be cleaning up and being the host.”