Naughty Wishes Part I (8 page)

In short, at this point, he had an anthology of fantasies about her the size of
War and Peace
. He hated that he might have left her last night thinking she was alone in fighting those kinds of feelings. He’d kept his own under wraps, but her drawing Chris and him into Naughty Bits had broken that seal, or at least damaged it enough that he wanted to stop fantasizing and start doing. Badly enough he’d given in and made a move in that direction yesterday.

And what had happened? He’d second-guessed himself and screwed things up. She’d barely been speaking to him this morning, and didn’t waste any time getting out of the house for work, though usually she left after he did. He should have taken control of that situation, made her sit down and talk it out with him, but if he didn’t get it straight in his own head, he was going to take them right back to the place where he’d hurt her and made her angry. He’d rather have cut off his arm than cause her pain, but what was done was done. When things went the wrong way in a trial, he didn’t waste time chasing the mistakes, but instead focused on how to push it back in a winning direction. Though he had an ache like a punch in the gut and wanted to do anything to bring a smile back to her face, he had to figure out how to fix it, the right way.

Christ, he wished Chris was home. He was better at the touchy-feely stuff with Sam.

“Geoff?”

He’d been made. He tried not to jump like a guilty shoplifter as Madison, the owner of Naughty Bits, peered at him through her half-open door. “Are you coming in to see me? Or just window-shopping? We storeowners love it when you come in, though. We can talk you into all sorts of unlikely things.”

“You could have done that on our last visit and you didn’t,” he pointed out.

“Well, maybe I’ve come to my senses and I’m ready to empty your wallet. Run while you can.”

He smiled. Her long brown hair was tied back loosely with a ribbon, and she wore a corset-style lace top over jeans and boots that made the most of her curvy figure. She was an attractive woman, but today she looked . . . prettier. If he had to guess, he’d say something was going on in her life that was making her happy. Maybe she was falling in love.

He’d been in love for a while, and the feelings grew stronger every day. But so did other feelings, and that was what worried him and held him back. How would this impact his friendships with Sam and Chris? He’d always sensed Sam shared some of those reservations, and that had helped him keep things status quo, but it appeared she’d worked past that and was going full steam ahead. Jesus.

When she’d walked into the kitchen in that outfit designed to give him a lifetime hard-on, he hadn’t even known where to start. All the things he’d ever wanted to do to her flooded into his head. Serious, things that went beyond a little spanking. Did she really understand that? Could she? What if that wasn’t what she wanted and he opened that can of worms, making her feel like he couldn’t be happy with less?

He had no idea what the hell he was doing and, for some reason, that had brought him back here. But he wasn’t sure how to broach it with Madison. She had her Dungeon Room and had shown him a few things, but he didn’t necessarily get a Domme vibe off her. Actually, she had more of Sam’s kind of vibe. But she could still be knowledgeable about both sides of the fence. He wasn’t really looking for a discussion of the mechanics, though.

“Geoff?”

Shit, he was still standing there like a statue. Before he could snap out of it, make some lame excuse and hurry onward, Madison hung her clock sign on the door, indicating she’d be back in ten minutes, and stepped out, locking the door. “Come with me next door. I think I can help you with whatever you’re thinking so hard about. Well, in a way.”

She took his arm with a friendly smile. Before he could say anything else, they were headed into the hardware store. Troy, the guy he remembered from the last time they were there, was setting up a pyramid of bug spray. The guy had excellent upper-body definition, the kind that suggested the job he did here required a lot of physical labor. Chris was like
that. He’d never seen the inside of a gym, but he’d never needed to lift weights, not when his job was all about strength and stamina. It was the turtle-versus-hare kind of strength. He and Geoff had run together before, and Chris would get winded long before Geoff, but if they did yard work together, Geoff would hit the exhaustion point days before Chris did. They had different skill sets, different approaches.

Chris being Chris, he hadn’t hesitated to note why Geoff was a good runner, even though Geoff was gratified that he had to make his snarky observation while he was bent over, wheezing from their four-mile run. “You were one of those skinny kids who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, so you had to do a lot of running,” Chris pointed out. “I was easygoing. No one picked fights with me.”

“No one picked fights with you because you look like a tank,” Geoff had retorted. Chris’s response to that had been to tackle and pin him in a wrestling hold. Geoff had thrown a few punches against his radial motor points to get him to let go, which Chris claimed verified his theory that he’d had to fight off bullies. Then Sam had broken up the friendly argument by suggesting they get Chinese for dinner.

Geoff remembered something else about that wrestling match. When Chris had pinned him, there’d been a moment when Geoff noticed Chris studying his mouth in a distracted way, his hands flexing on Geoff’s hip and biceps. “Let go of me,” Geoff had said.

Instead of it coming out the way it would if two guys were wrestling one another for fun, there was another note to it that had caused a spark in Chris’s eye. As if he was about to say,
Make me.
Then the moment was gone. He’d sat back on his heels and helped Geoff up with a firm hand clasp, his other hand steadying Geoff briefly against his back. The touch was a near caress, a quick grip of his shirt, but when Geoff turned to look at him, Chris had already released him and was striding to the house.

As complicated as things might be with Sam right now, he and Chris were a quagmire in comparison. They both seemed to prefer to focus on Sam, a mutually unspoken agreement that gave them an indirect way to address what simmered between them. No matter what happened with Sam, they could always leave that part of things right there.

But that thought just left Geoff with another layer of dissatisfaction. He knew where Sam wanted to take them all, but what people wanted wasn’t always the best thing. That was what worried him most. He didn’t trust his own impulses, because they were too damn strong, and Sam was trying her hardest to tear loose any restraint he had. If he let that happen, those impulses could consume him, Sam and Chris, override his judgment and destroy everything he valued.

“I should probably go.” He came to a stop with Madison inside the hardware store. “This maybe isn’t—”

“Is Logan here, Troy?” Madison asked.

“He’s in his workshop,” the young man responded. “It’s been pretty quiet this morning, and he has a customer picking up a piece at the end of the week. He wanted to put one more coat of finish on it.” When Troy’s attention shifted to him, Geoff was surprised to see recognition there. Troy nodded, a friendly greeting.

“Just go on back,” he added to Madison.

“Good. Okay.” Madison glanced up at Geoff. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. What were you saying?”

Geoff shook his head, brushing it off. Giving him a smile, Madison proceeded to the back of the store, passing through a curtained area to bring him into a storage area. As she guided him along the narrow alley flanked by stocked shelves, Geoff heard an eighties radio station playing, the sound filtering through a door at the opposite end of the storeroom. Madison drew him through that door, bringing him into Logan’s workshop.

From the sawdust smell, he’d deduced Logan was doing woodwork, but his current project wasn’t a birdhouse or bookcase. Geoff had visited enough BDSM clubs on his travels and surfed enough websites to know what a spanking bench looked like. This was a custom-made one, with some intriguing additions that, if his mind wasn’t focused on another priority, would have captured his attention far more thoroughly.

Instead, he focused on the man who’d built it. A rugged, powerful-looking forty-something, Logan had thick, long brown hair bound back in a thick tail that fell between his shoulder blades. While most men over forty couldn’t rock that look, Logan did. Geoff didn’t consider himself a romantic, but he could easily see the man in boots, breeches and an unlaced shirt on the bridge of a pirate ship, doing the Tyrone Powers thing. His mother had watched
The Black Swan
a hundred times.

Geoff’s own love of black-and-white movies had come from watching those kinds of flicks at his mother’s side. Hell, he’d received his first guidance about lines between right and wrong in those romantic mediums. Which was painfully ironic, considering his current relationship with his nuclear family.

This was so not the moment for that. Pushing away those thoughts, he planted himself firmly in the present.

The cushions for the bench were propped off to the side while Logan painted a cherrywood finish on the frame. He glanced up, pleased surprise in his warm, brandy-colored eyes as Madison entered. Since he followed that up with a leisurely perusal of her from head to toe, Geoff wondered if the spark in Madison was glowing brighter because of her next-door neighbor. Given that her cheeks pinkened a little under his regard, Geoff expected the answer to that was a resounding yes.

“Logan, I’m sorry to bother you, but do you remember Geoff? He was in your store not too long ago.”

“His face is familiar.” Logan set the can and brush aside and extended a hand. “Geoff.”

He had a strong grip, strong as Chris’s. During their earlier visit, Sam had come into the hardware store with Geoff and
Chris briefly before going next door to Madison’s shop. When Logan had asked her if she was looking for anything in particular, she’d gotten a little tongue-tied. Chris had teased her later about getting all flustered by a handsome older man, but based on the events of the past few days, and what Geoff read from the guy pretty clearly now, he thought there was another reason Logan’s steady regard had flustered her. The same reason Geoff could fluster her. The way Geoff could fluster her when he looked at her a certain way.

If she was even now berating herself for reacting like that, he’d feel even more like shit. He’d tried to make sure she’d feel no shame about it, but she’d shot down his comment about her being beautiful and perfect as the lame bullshit it was. If she could only see and feel what happened inside him—heart, head, cock and soul—when she looked at him as her Dom, she wouldn’t feel any dismay. Hell, she’d probably have a valid reason to gloat, because he’d never reacted so strongly to a sub. But he hadn’t shown her that, had he?

Some, but not enough. He had to figure this out. Either be all in or all out, but not this limbo state, which confused her and made him want to tear his heart out and hand it to her.

“Geoff, I apologize if I’m being presumptuous,” Madison said, “but I think maybe you have some questions that Logan can answer better than I can. He mentors other Doms. I’m going to leave you two to talk. If that’s okay with you?”

She looked toward Logan then, with an expression that said she hoped she hadn’t been presumptuous toward him, either. Geoff knew a lot of people in the lifestyle were pretty careful about their identities. Either Logan didn’t need to do that, or Madison and he already had enough of a rapport that she’d known he’d be okay with this.

“I’m here to help you with whatever you need, Madison,” Logan said. “You know that.”

That resulted in a deeper flush. Geoff had no interest in any woman other than Sam, but as a man and a Dom, he could definitely appreciate that lovely reaction. Geoff deduced that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her responses to Logan yet, because she made a noncommittal noise and then hurried out, leaving Geoff with a cordial nod and warm smile. “Come by before you leave and get a cookie,” she said. “I made peanut butter blossoms. You can take a couple home for Sam and Chris. Maybe a half dozen for Chris.”

Geoff turned back to Logan as the man bumped a Van Halen tune on his radio down a few notches. “She took me by surprise,” Geoff admitted. “I’m not sure if I should be talking about this, or what I should be saying.”

Logan picked up the finish and brush again, squatting on his heels next to the bench. “Don’t have to say anything, son,” he said comfortably. “Not if you don’t want to. But if she thought you looked like you had questions I could answer, she’s probably right. She’s starting to get a good sense of what her customers need. Are you new to exploring the Dom side?”

He didn’t sound derogatory, just matter-of-fact. “Seems like I’ve always felt like that’s what I wanted . . . what I am,” Geoff said slowly. “But I’ve never really pursued it too much. School and work haven’t left a lot of time until recently. I’ve
gone to a few clubs and parties and hooked up with one or two subs there for sessions, to get a feel for it, but nothing turned into an ongoing thing.” Nothing that resulted in even a tenth of the response he had when Sam merely called him
sir
.

“So tell me what the questions are and we’ll figure it out from there.” When Logan gestured at a stool, Geoff slid a hip onto it. What the hell. He found himself explaining in fits and starts, where it had begun and where it was now. Logan asked a few directed questions that helped him focus. Once he felt more comfortable, Geoff laid it out like he did a case, with all the necessary information. Only since he was far more personally connected to this, he found himself correcting himself, backtracking and figuring out things as he went along, in a way he usually didn’t have to do for work.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ve always known she’s a sub. God, it’s like living with the biggest temptation in the world. But as long as she didn’t hit on it directly, I thought it was better to keep it under wraps, so as not to force it with her. She brought us to Naughty Bits, though, and since then . . . she’s starting to get pretty direct about it.”