“Thank you for making my Friday go from being annoying as fuck to hot as hell.”
“Why was it annoying?” she asked, gentle concern in her tone. She ran her fingers through his hair. Softly. Ever so softly, and that small, tender gesture somehow undid him, loosening the remaining tangles of annoyance in his chest. He sighed heavily. He didn’t want to revisit the frustrations now that they’d started to dissipate, but here she was on his lap, and she’d done something that stripped all the tension from his body, and also somehow peeled away another layer from around the steel cage of his heart.
“Remember when I said I hate politics?”
“Yes.”
He scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “I had to have a meeting about some political race today,” he said, then shared more of the details about the race and the clubs.
She arched an eyebrow. “I’ve never been to a BDSM club,” she said.
“Do you want to go?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. It’s not my thing. And don’t say how do you know if you haven’t gone.”
He laughed, leaning back in his chair, holding her tighter. “It’s okay. Even though I like fucking you into submission, we don’t need to play dom-sub games to do that.”
She laughed too. “No, we definitely don’t. You can fuck me pretty much any way you want, but any submission on my part will be in the moment, not because of a need for roles. However,” she said, and he could sense she’d shifted to some sort of professional stance now, “I do think it’s ridiculous that Conroy wants to try to close those clubs and has somehow made that a rallying cry in a campaign.”
“I know, me too.”
“Consenting adults should be free to do what they want in the bedroom. Or the club, as the case may be.”
“Which is only one of the reasons why I’d rather not have to deal with this situation.”
“I take it you didn’t get into this business thinking you’d have to work with politics,” she said.
“I’d rather just run the business. That’s what I like. I like the business side of it. Figuring out what works. How to make different lines more profitable, more successful.” He looked at the stunning view of Manhattan from his window, a reminder of how well Joy Delivered was faring. “Starting this business was my sister’s idea. We went in together because she brings the passion, and I bring the business side.”
“You’re the numbers man. The logic guy. But Jack, that’s what you’re passionate about, right?”
He nodded, liking that she’d understood him so quickly. “Exactly. And with this problem, I get why it’s important, but I wish I didn’t have to bother with it.”
“That could be said about a lot of things though, right?”
He raised an eyebrow in question. “What do you mean?”
“Well, no one wants to have to deal with the problems that get in the way of our everyday lives, but yet it’s part of everyday life, right?”
“True.”
“You just have to think about it as another problem to solve. Because that’s what you like doing. You like finding the clues. Putting them together until you reach the answer, right?”
“Yes,” he said with a small smile. She was getting him.
“Look at this the same way. Don’t look at it as getting involved in something seedy, like politics. Look at it as a—” She stopped, stared at the ceiling as if she were hunting for the right word, then continued, “—as if a new vibrator was stimulating the labia rather than the clitoris, and you have to fix it.”
He laughed so hard he had to grab her hips so she wouldn’t fall off him from the chuckling. “I would never make a vibrator that stimulated the slit, not the clit,” he said, being deliberately crass, and it was her turn to laugh. “But that’s good advice. Just treat it as yet another challenge in the business day.”
“Exactly,” she said with a crisp nod, and it hit him. Like a blast of light blaring through the room at dawn.
“You just gave me advice,” he said, kind of awestruck. “Like a shrink.” He quirked up his lips.
“That’s what I do,” she said playfully.
And it didn’t bother me. And I was able to talk to you.
“Sometimes, I can’t help myself,” she added.
“I liked it,” he said, and he wondered what it would have been like if he hadn’t met her at The Pierson. If he’d simply shown up for his appointment two weeks ago. He was quiet for a moment, drifting off to that notion.
“Are you thinking about what it would be like if we were working together? In therapy?” she asked in a soft, quiet voice.