Worth The Wait: A Nature Of Desire Series Novel (18 page)

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A
t first she
thought he was saying something over-the-top romantic, like he’d die before he’d ever hurt her. But as he kept holding her with his piercing stare, it sank in. Her hands reflexively gripped his. “What?” she said faintly.

He swore under his breath. “I didn’t mean to say it that way. You’re a pushy woman, love. Let me take you out to lunch where we can talk. There’s a Bob Evans about a mile up that way. I’ll meet you there.”

From his closed expression, she supposed he wanted to take separate cars so that she had an escape route. She didn’t know what she’d want. She was torn between his hints of wanting to share pancakes with her, or not having a choice about falling in love, and the implication he was…

No, she wasn’t going to say it in her head. She was too confused. She focused on the other things he’d said that she could process.

He was right. The upfront things, like how he felt with a sub in session, smacked of every lame excuse for infidelity she’d heard. Yet she’d already known about his sessions, had experienced one herself first hand, and she’d been immersed in the BDSM world these past couple months, witnessing the interactions between those who practiced it.

She thought her whole information dump upon him had been too much, too soon. She and he hadn’t come far enough in a relationship where infidelity could be a crime committed against it. They hadn’t even actually had sex yet.

But he’d taken her outpouring in stride, as if he felt strongly enough for her that he’d welcomed hearing every worry she had. Maybe that was also due to the BDSM dynamic. As he’d said, boundaries and structure were set quickly, to keep things safe and protect feelings. Only where was the line between letting love happen spontaneously and trying to control everything? She thought she’d obliterated that line a couple failed relationships ago, and now she was out to sea with him, trying to figure out how this was going to work or if she could walk away. And he’d just thrown a new wrench into it. A pretty damn significant one.

As they were taken to a booth and handed menus, he touched her hand. “Why don’t we keep it casual for a few minutes before we launch into anything?”

From the strained look around his mouth, she figured that was more for him than herself, but she was okay with giving him that breathing space. He’d implied she’d pushed him into a corner, and she guessed she had. But Des didn’t seem the type to let himself be pushed around, so she held onto the hope that he was willingly having this conversation with her.

As she glanced at the menu, he pulled out his monitor and fitted it with a lancet. At her glance, he passed it to her. “Want to try it? Test your blood sugar?”

“Oh, God, I’d pass out. I could never stick myself.”

“Do me then.” He held out his hand. “Just hold it against my finger tip, then press that button.”

She did, a quick click. He captured the tiny drop of blood on a test strip. At a beep from the monitor, he glanced at the resulting number and put it all away. Removing his pump from his pack, he slid it on under his clothes, connecting it to the injection site cannula by feel, his hand moving under the shirt.

“You’ve been doing this a long time.”

“A very long time.” He checked something on the pump screen, made an adjustment, then tucked the device back into the wallet he hooked over his belt. He flipped his shirt back down over it and picked up the menu as the waitress returned.

They ordered, and when the waitress asked if it would be one check, Des nodded. “I’ll be taking it,” he said. “My treat.”

“I should have ordered the Belgian waffles to go.”

“You still have time.” Whatever he saw in her face had him reaching across the table and gripping her hand. “I’m sorry I’ve caused you any sadness or doubts, Julie. I really enjoy being with you.”

“I love being with you.” She gave him a weak smile. “That’s kind of the problem. Sorry. I guess it’s impossible to get someone without baggage once they pass thirty.”

“I bet my baggage outweighs your baggage.”

“Oh really?” She fished in her purse, pulled out a dollar and set it on the table. “I’ll bet a dollar it’s not. You seem totally together.”

“I’m a Dom. We’re all about the illusion of total control.” He winked, but set his own crumpled dollar next to hers. He sipped his unsweetened tea then, as if gathering his thoughts. He’d let go of her hand and she curled both in her lap, feeling adrift until he pressed his foot against hers under the table, connecting them.

“Just tell me, Des. Please. I poured my guts out to you. Quid pro quo.”

His lips quirked, but he set down the tea and nodded, crossing his arms on the table. “I don't have any interest in in-depth discussions about this. But I owe you what’s behind the curtain if we’re going any farther. So I’m going to tell you what I need to tell you and, when this meal is over, there’s no need to talk about it further. I’m not a disease.”

The sudden fierceness in his tone, the set of his jaw, alerted her to the maelstrom of emotions going on beneath the surface. She might lose that dollar. He wasn’t as together over this as he’d first appeared.

“Doesn’t matter what you tell me. I could never think of you that way, Des.”

He glanced over the dining room absently, as if he’d rather be anywhere else than talking about this. She shifted her foot so her toe pressed on his and he brought his gaze back to her. He had some kind of glitter on his shoulder, maybe from the shingles he’d been handling. When she reached toward it to brush it off, he caught her hand.

“It’s probably fiberglass. The splinters are nasty.” He held onto her hand, resting it on the table, playing with her fingers and studying them.

“I told you I had a bunch of health issues when I was a kid. I was a preemie, and my mom split as soon as they discharged her. They said I wouldn't survive a week, because she was a prescription drug addict and that affected my development. When I made it to age five, I started having seizures. They said I'd be dead before I was ten. Then the diabetes started. So on and so forth.”

Her heart skipped a beat as he lifted his gaze to her face. “About the time I hit twenty-five, the damn doctor stopped giving me the doom-and-gloom, ‘You won't live past so-n-so.’ Probably because I told him next time he said it, I'd feed him his stethoscope through his anus. But there are a couple things I can’t beat. I'm insulin-resistant and my kidneys are wearing out. I don't need dialysis yet, but it will come sooner than later. Renal failure. That's the track toward the end, love. I’m not a good transplant candidate because of my medical history.”

The waitress brought their food. As she placed the plates on the table and asked them if they needed anything else, Julie watched Des switch gears. His usual genuine charm and humor made the waitress smile and Julie’s chest ache. She’d poured open her heart to him, all her worries about pursuing a relationship, and he was giving her the same. Quid pro quo could be a bitch.

“Hey.” He drew her out of her head. The waitress was gone. “Don’t look like that, love. Nobody knows when it's going to end.”

He took a breath. “But that said, I’m not in denial, either. That’s why I’m telling you. I have no way of explaining to you, other than this, that you’re different to me. I’ve gotten involved with plenty of women in session. None outside of it. Yet when you look at me the way you do…I like it. I want to spend time with you, in every way I can. But I'm not going to let you get any deeper without knowing what might happen. I wouldn't want to do that to you.”

She swallowed and he narrowed his eyes, making a threatening gesture with his fork. “You get teary on me, I'll take your pancakes and eat them myself.”

She blinked the tears back. “That’s just mean.”

“I’m not always nice.” He made a stab at her plate and she fended him off with her fork, making him smile and things unknot a bit in her gut. He sobered though, probably because she couldn’t entirely mask her reaction.

“Will I have a much shorter lifespan than you?” he said. “Pretty likely, unless you die in a car crash, though I'd be severely pissed if you did.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that.” He reached across the table and tapped her hand. "But I’m not going to be gone tomorrow. In the meantime, we can keep going as we're going, figure out where we’ll end up together. Or you decide we're friends from here forward, and that's the end of it. Ball’s back in your court, love."

His tone, his direct look, said he was ready to be done with the subject. She sensed a withdrawal in him, a closing down, the wall coming back up. He’d put himself out there for her, to let her know, but he must be anticipating rejection, pity, sympathy or her withdrawal. Whereas she’d dealt with her build-up of feeling with an outpouring that made her feel drained, he dealt with the same kind of stress by containing it.

He genuinely didn’t like talking about this. But he had, for her. Because he wanted more from her. He wanted to see where this would go.

He’d given her the answer she’d sought, mostly, and now the question was whether she was willing to risk taking this road one more time. Up until the other day, with Pablo, she hadn’t given a lot of thought to her mortality. Des dealt with his on a daily basis. Could she really be so chickenshit as to back away from a relationship with a guy she really liked for fear he might hurt her with his death? If nothing else, it was the first time she’d had
that
risk in a relationship.

“Ball’s back in my court, hmm? Thought you said once you had the ball back you wouldn’t give it up.”

“I did say Doms were all about the illusion of total control. You have to give me the control, love. Every time.”

She wasn’t sure that was entirely true. When he was exercising his will upon her, she couldn’t find her own with both hands. But this was a different kind of moment.

She picked up her fork. “Can you pass me the maple syrup?”

He obliged. "You're not going to tell me which way you're going to go on this?"

“Not until I eat. I don’t make any decisions on an empty stomach.”

“All right, but just keep this in mind. If I do tear your heart out like those other losers, you’ll get the satisfaction of dancing on my grave while you’re still young enough to do it without a walker. How many guys can offer a girl a perk like that?”

She paused in mid-pour, blinking at him, and then a laugh bubbled out of her, she couldn’t help it. He looked so earnest, only a little twinkle in his eye. She set down the syrup. “I’m sorry. Oh God, it’s awful of me to be laughing at that.”

“Actually, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

She stopped, seeing the truth of it in his gaze. He was looking at her as if he’d like to see her laugh every day of their lives. She cleared her throat, feeling heat in her cheeks.

“So this is why you haven't had many relationships outside of a scene.”

"Yeah. It’s my big skeleton in the closet. So do I get the dollar?”

“I’ll think about it. Not sure if your mortality really measures up to my wretched dating life. Maybe we’ll just leave both dollars as part of our tip.”

His lips curved, and though her stomach tilted at the gesture, she covered it with a noncommittal noise. "Honestly, I feel kind of dumb for unloading all that other stuff on you now. It would be nice to turn back time, to undo every stupid thing I've ever done."

"Then you wouldn't be who those moments taught you to be, right?”

"Why can't we learn lessons from being brilliant and perfect?"

Des smirked. "Because the Powers That Be are sadists." He touched her fork with his, a small tinny noise. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed. I’m very glad you trusted me enough to share all that.”

“If that’s your kind of show, anytime you want a front row seat to my insecurities, I’ll give you a free ticket.”

“Don’t do that, Julie.” He spoke sharply enough her surprised gaze flickered up to his face. “Anything you share with me so honestly is a gift. That’s part of what drew me into rope and working with subs. During a session, if everything goes the way it should, all we feel is so out front, no hidden motives or things unsaid, left to fester and infect the relationship.” He pressed the toe of his work shoe down on her canvas sneaker, enough she felt his weight upon her toes. It was an intentional discomfort that focused her attention and sharpened other things inside of her. He saw it, his expression whetting with a Dom’s interest, but he wasn’t letting it go. “Okay?”

“I’ll try. Okay.” She wet her lips. “Why is that so important to you?”

“Because the world is full of so much crap we tell ourselves and each other that doesn’t really mean anything. That’s one of the things I liked about you from the beginning. You’re clever and funny as hell, but there’s not a dishonest bone in your body.”

“Hmm.” She returned her attention to her food, wanting to conceal how unsettling his words were. To be praised for the things she’d begun to think were flaws…it annoyed her, the clear evidence that she’d let those who tore her down define her. She should know better than that.

He’d ordered a giant vegetable omelet with a side of dry wheat toast, and she stole a sliced grape tomato that fell out the end of the omelet. In turn, he took a bite of her pancake, soaked with syrup. Fair was fair.

“When you tied me up, I noticed you touched my hands a lot. I liked it. Why do you do that?”

“Any blackberry jelly on your side?”

She checked the condiment container, and handed it over, their fingertips brushing. He briefly held onto them, giving her a warm look.

“It connects us emotionally, making sure we’re still taking the journey together. The practical side is I’m testing your circulation. If your hands are cold, I know I need to adjust the form or release you to avoid damage.”

"Hmm.” That was how it had made her feel. Connected to him, not objectified or separate, the subject of an experiment, no matter how sensual. “You know, you’re kind of a hypocrite. You’ll do a dangerous stunt on a steep roof, but you freak out if I have a rope mishap."

"That's different. One's about me being in charge of me, where I can be as much of a dumbass as I want. The other is wanting to take care of you.”