He winced. He hadn’t mentioned that to Chef because it hadn’t meant anything. The culinary world was a small place. Tim was one of DFW’s premiere chefs, but Eric was a loyal man. “It was only a drink, Grace. There was never serious talk about moving.”
“And now there won’t be. Go out and have a nice time. I saw Deena and Tiffany sitting and talking to Charlotte. She was giving them tips on how to handle their Doms.”
If anything was guaranteed to give him the chills it was Deena taking advice from Charlotte Taggart. The woman wasn’t averse to shooting people. “Yes, I should definitely handle that.”
“Is everything going all right with you and Deena?” Grace asked before he’d made it out the door.
The last couple of weeks had been fun. Deena had proven to be every bit as curious as she’d told him she was. They’d played around with some bondage the night before. He had the most experience out of the training Doms so he’d been chosen to demonstrate some of the knots he knew. He’d gotten her down to her bra and wound his jute rope around her torso. He’d watched the way she responded, how she’d shivered, her eyes closing when his hands would caress her. She hadn’t been afraid or wary then. She’d relaxed as he’d worked, and she’d seemed almost disappointed when he’d stopped. “It’s going well. We’re taking it slow.”
He was giving her time. It was precisely why he hadn’t punished her for lying to him about her conversation with Big Tag. He hadn’t forgotten, but he was trying to be patient. If they were going to work, they couldn’t run into the relationship without thought. Deena deserved a courtship. They’d had many classes together and after the last three they’d gone to a late night coffee shop and talked until he had to take her home because she had classes in the morning. She was finally talking to him about her childhood and what she wanted for the future. She’d told him about her father and how once he’d decided he was done with her mom, he’d been done with fatherhood, too. It was hard for Eric to imagine not knowing where his father was, but that was the reality Deena had faced at a young age.
Life had taught her that men couldn’t be counted on. He intended to rewrite that lesson with one of his own.
The night before when he’d dropped her off, he’d walked her to her door and kissed her long and slow. When she offered for him to come in, he’d declined. He wanted it to be special for her. Hell, he wanted it to be special for him.
Grace studied him for a moment. “You’ve been dancing around each other for a year, Eric. How much slower can you possibly take it?”
“We’ve only recently started a relationship though. I think she needs time.”
“And I’m fairly certain what that girl needs is crazy passion that sweeps her away.” Grace looked over the dinner she was about to serve, making sure everything was warm. “Look, I’ve got some experience here. I was determined not to let Sean hook this pretty fish because I didn’t trust that man as far as I could throw him, and that wasn’t far. He was just as muscular back then. He was younger than me. He was hotter than me. I wasn’t about to let that man into my bed much less my life.”
“So what changed?” Deena had her reasons to keep distance between them. All the men in her life had failed her. It was why he’d let the lying thing go. He wouldn’t do it again, but she’d been afraid of him and now he looked at that as a good thing. She would joke and laugh and pal around with most of the other male employees. In the beginning, he’d thought it was because she didn’t like him, and now he realized she liked him too much.
“He walked into my backyard one night, jumped into my pool with his clothes on, and I’ve been his ever since,” Grace said with a wistful smile on her face. “He overwhelmed me. Once he had me in his arms, I couldn’t think about anything but him. All the reasons I couldn’t allow him in kind of fell away and all that mattered was Sean.”
He wasn’t sure Grace and Deena had the same issues. Grace’s husband had died. He hadn’t abandoned her. Still, he understood what Grace was saying. He’d been hesitant to push their relationship past the boundaries of the club because he didn’t want to scare her away. He wanted her trust before he moved them along, but the couples had been encouraged to talk outside of class. And he was different than the other trainees. The only reason he was going through training class was to acquaint himself with the club and how everything worked. If he’d had the money for a membership on his own, he would have applied and given his references and likely been accepted without training. As it was, he was being used more or less as a third instructor. He could start herding her gently toward a relationship outside the club. In a few weeks they would be asked to spend a couple of days under their training Doms’ control as it was.
He nodded to Grace and began to make his way through her spacious home. He’d heard the story about how she and Chef had moved from Fort Worth to be closer to family when Carys was born. He walked through the halls, the walls dotted with pictures of the happy family. Smiling kids and loving couples. It reminded him of his own home in Missouri where his mom and dad had always kept pictures of him and Gwen, every one of their embarrassing school pictures on the wall for all to see.
He wanted that. He wanted the happy home and playful kids, and damn but he wanted that woman as his wife. Smart and sexy. Deena could light up a room when she smiled.
“Hey, did Grace kick you out of the kitchen?” Sean stepped away from the group he’d been talking to and held a hand out to Eric.
He shook Chef’s hand, glancing over where Kyle was looking at his new tablet. “She did, indeed. It looks like he’s happy with his new toy.”
Sean nodded. “I’ve loaded it with every possible way for him to communicate with his mother. I know there will be times when he can’t, but when he can I want him to have every opportunity. Are you looking for your girl?”
“Am I that obvious?”
Sean shrugged. “We’re all that obvious. I saw her in the parlor. Come on. I’ll take you there. I’m afraid she was talking to Charlotte. My sister-in-law loves to think of herself as a good influence on new submissives. She teaches them all the tricks to being a real brat.”
“I was afraid of that.” He followed Sean down the hall and heard Charlotte Taggart talking.
“Oh, I don’t bother to manipulate Ian,” the redhead was saying. “His skull is far too thick. I’ve found direct confrontation is what turns him on.”
Sean stopped before he rounded the corner. From here they could listen but not be seen. “Give it a minute and you’ll understand what you’re up against.”
Yep, eavesdropping wasn’t only for the line chefs. “I don’t know that we should listen in.”
“I have no idea what turns my Dom on,” a familiar voice said. “It doesn’t seem to be me.”
Holy shit. That was Deena’s voice.
Sean leaned in. “So we go in now?”
Bastard. “Not on your life.”
How could she think she didn’t turn him on? He got a hard-on anytime she walked into a room. She sat in his lap most of the time. She had to feel it. He’d worried at first that it might scare her off, but she hadn’t said anything.
“I don’t believe it.” That was Tiffany. He would know her throaty voice anywhere. “That man is into you.”
At least one of them had some sense.
He was very aware that he was standing outside the room like a teenager listening in. It was so far beneath his dignity, but every time he started to go in, Deena said something that stopped him in his tracks.
“If he is, then he has a funny way of showing it.” Deena sounded very offhand, as though she couldn’t care less. “Or maybe that’s simply who he is. I knew it from the moment I met him. He’s one of those guys. You know the type. Upstanding. Moral. Always doing the right thing.”
There was a little laugh and then Charlotte said, “Sounds like a good man. You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
Yeah, he couldn’t see how being upstanding was something to be sneered at.
There was a long sigh and then Deena spoke again. “There’s nothing wrong with it. He’ll make someone a great husband some day. It’s just with that body and that gorgeous face of his, I expected a bad boy. I took one look at that man and thought he could rock my world. Then he opened his mouth and I realized he was a hearts and flowers kind of guy. That would be awesome if I wanted that kind of relationship. I did the hearts and flowers thing. It got me divorced and with a mountain of debt. And zero orgasms. Like none. I’ve gotten better orgasms from a faulty vibrator than I ever got from that man’s dick.”
Sean snorted behind his hand. “Ah, the fairer sex. They’re so genteel when it comes to intimacy. Let me warn you about something, Eric. The subs at Sanctum talk about sex way more than the Doms do.”
He believed it. The Doms would sit around and talk about sports and the best place to find videos of dudes hurting themselves. They would never gossip about their sex lives. They would damn straight not complain that the sub they’d been assigned was too freaking nice to be sexy.