Never Have I Ever (8 page)

I just smiled and shook my head.

“How are you feeling after last night, by the way?”

“Amazing,” I said after the first sip of my drink. Then amended, “And sort of like a hurricane just ripped through my life except, oddly, not in a bad way.”

He reached out to me and brushed his fingertips across my cheek where he had slapped me. There were no signs of bruising, which I could be thankful for.

“Good. I’m glad I didn’t hurt you,” he said.

Noah retracted his hand, and I wished he’d leave it.

I laughed and tucked a bit of hair behind my ear.
“Oh no, not even a little bit.
I have a pretty high threshold for pain.
Broke my leg at summer camp when I was thirteen jumping out of a tree and walked a good fifty feet before I realized ‘Hey, I don’t think it should bend that way.’”

He got comfortable, freeing the button on his jacket so that it wouldn’t bunch up and said, “I, my dear Piper, would love to get to know you better. And I’m sure you would love to get to know me.”

“I would. There are about a million things I want to know about you.”

“And I you.”

“All right,” I offered, “How about a question for a question?”

“Fantastic idea.
Start us off then.”

I knew exactly which one I wanted to ask first. “What’s your last name?”

Noah lit a cigarette and waved away the question. “Not up for discussion yet. Try again.”

“Fine.
Why not?”

“I like that you have no clue
who
I am. It’s refreshing. You can get to know me through me and no one else with zero preconceptions.” He took a sip from his drink and added, “My turn. How old are you?”

“Twenty four.
You?”

“Twenty nine,” he said. All right, I didn’t nail his age, but a year off was better than nothing. “Do you have hobbies?”

“Not really, science is pretty much my life,” I replied, then launched into my next question, “You mentioned breaking a rule last night. What rule of yours did you break?”

“I don’t date. A multitude of bad typically follows when I do. Were you born here in California?”

“New York. I’m a transplant here for Caltech, but I think I may stay. I like Pasadena. How do you know Declan?”

“We were in the same fraternity at UCLA. What are you studying?”

“Physics.
You?”

“Should have known.
It was always Business and Finance for me.” He leaned back against the booth and chuckled. “I like this rapid-fire questions game. I should try it more often.”

“Are you going to ask your next question then?”

“All right, eager one.
How many relationships have you been in?”

“Three
that were
serious, fairly long-term. Why did you ask me out if you don’t date as a rule?”

“Would you like the courteous answer or the honest answer?”

“Honest,” I said.
“Always honest.”

“Because I want you.”

That response stopped me cold. Only then did I realize I was leaning into the table a little too far. I sat up straight.

“What do you mean?” I asked at length. “You’ve already had me. You don’t get much more had than last night.”

“Never have I ever been in what most would consider a long-term relationship,” Noah replied with an almost sad twitch of a smile. “Four mon
ths, tops. After all this time,
I think I’d like to try it again.”

I snorted, “Sex and one date hardly make a long-term relationship.”

“Who said it had to stop there?”

I took a long drink from my glass and licked the excess mix from my lips as I thought about that.
The time for rapid-fire was over.
I wanted more in-depth answers after that statement.

“So far I’ve seen three different versions of you, Noah-with-no-last-name. You played the old friend at Anya’s, the brute when you came to my apartment last night and the dashing gentleman after the party slash here. Tell me; which one is the real you?”

He took a drag off his cigarette and then said, “All of them.
And more.”

“Is your fatal flaw that you’ve got a multiple personality disorder? If that’s the case I know a great psychologist I can recommend.” I was referring to Anya, who I just knew would’ve loved to get her hands on this man’s brain for a day to examine the gears at work.

Noah just shrugged. Even that subtle response looked gentlemanly in that suit. “What can I say; I’m a very complicated man.”

I couldn’t help but lean back into the table a little to explain and, to a degree, show off as well. “I’m an Astrophysicist. I wake up with the equations to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle dancing through my head beside theoretical particles like tachyons and computer models of the Andromeda galaxy. I, sir, eat complicated for breakfast.”

“Ooh, this kitten has claws.”

You bet your sweet toned ass I do, I thought. Instead, I said, “You’ve ruined normal sex for me, by the way. You know that, right? Thanks to you, I want sex like last night every night of my life from now on.”

His voice changed then. Suddenly it became more grounded in reality and less in the vein of an attempt to impress me. “What if I told you that you could have that? And all of those Nevers that the both of us still need to experience whether they are mundane or sexual.”

Even when he wasn’t trying to impress me, he managed to do so. “How do you mean?”

“After our conversation last week I had a lot of time to think before I acted,” he said. Then added suggestively, “and a lot of time to watch you.”

“And what did all of that thinking lead to?”

“Full disclosure, then.”
He snuffed his cigarette. “I lied to you when I told you the thought of taking you roughly was not my first choice. It was without a doubt my first choice. In fact, when you asked me to do it, I had to damn near shoot myself to keep from taking you right then and there in my car. I have a taste for submissive women in the bedroom. On the other hand, I hate women who can’t hold their own on an intellectual or creative level.”

“You mean you’re picky,” I interjected flatly.

He pointed to me like I hit the nail on the head. “I’m very picky. It’s difficult to find the right mix of the two. You, dearest Piper, appear to be what I am looking for. Anyone who looks at you can tell you’re the strong, independent type. There’s not a doubt in my mind that you have an IQ to rival mine, either. But there’s
a certain
shyness to you, an untapped oil well of sensuality if you will.”

“That’s a lot of smooth-talk rolled up into one box there, mister.”

“
No
, absolutely not; this isn’t me smooth-talking. This is me telling you what I believe. I only put on a show of flattery for girls I want to fuck once and get rid of. Which, to be fair, is most of them.”

I laughed, unable to resist the jab, “And he’s so modest, too.”

“Hey, you wanted to fuck me. What does that say about you?”

I pressed my lips together in a thin line, trying to hold back an even bigger smile than I’d already been wearing the entire evening. He got me.

“All right, I concede. Ceasefire signed.”

He picked up his glass by the rim and let it dangle precariously between his fingers over the table. “I haven’t had an intelligent submissive woman in my bedroom for a long time. Last night you rekindled my need for it. What I’m proposing to you is this: I want to be your Dom. Maybe, eventually,
your
Master. Give yourself to me again tonight. If you decide you like the experience, and I decide I’m right about you, then we will take it from there. If not, we can go our separate ways. I want to give you the opportunity to see what being my submissive can entail.”

The words Master and sub weren’t foreign to my ears. I was twenty four, almost twenty five. I
surfed
porn sites when the mood hit me. I read trashy bodice-ripper romance every once in a while. I knew the basics. It was part of what spurred on my desire for the fantasy he helped me fulfill the prior night.
But this…
I never expected in a million years to be confronted with such an offer. Somehow, the notion that I’d spend my whole life hopping from one unsatisfying vanilla relationship to another stuck with me. Because things like this didn’t happen in real life; especially not to people like me.

Noah’s eyes were locked on mine. Every time he did that I felt the compulsion to look away. I opened my mouth to speak. At first no words came out.

Finally, I mustered the wherewithal to ask, “And what, exactly, would it entail?”

He killed the drink in his hand and set the glass back on the table.
“Being my lady on my arm and my slut between the sheets.”

An involuntary shiver raced through me. As willing as I was to allow myself to be controlled by the self-assured, handsome and all around irresistible man in front of me, I almost needed somebody to stand out in the middle of this one-way-street-to-
Yesville
with a gigantic fucking caution sign; flashing lights, flag waving and all, telling me to slow the hell down and not seem overzealous.

“Why me though?”

“Why not you?” he countered.

“I’m—I don’t know. I never really pictured myself in that sort of relationship before.”

“Sure you have,” Noah insisted. “Last night you bent to my every whim. You struggled, just as I told you to. And then you gave in, just as I told you to. It thrilled you to feel helpless. And you told me yourself it excited you to be used. I want to use you again, Piper.”

I swallowed hard.
“Just for tonight?”

He shrugged, but held back a laugh as he said, “For now. You’re free to walk away afterwards if you despise me when it’s over.”

Between his words and his confidence suggesting that I would not at all dislike the experience let alone hate him in the morning, it grew increasingly difficult to sound like I still had some semblance of control over myself.

Words finally found a way to arrange themselves in a decent enough order in my head to reply, “Well, you took the time to indulge me in my request last night. It’s only fair that I return the favor and at least give it a good college effort. So, my answer is yes.”

“
Mmm
, you’re sexy when you’re flustered.” He took a deep breath and studied me hard. “The same rule applies tonight as it did last night. If you agree to this then you can’t back out. You belong to me tonight. When I give you a command, you follow it… without hesitation. Understand?”

“Understood,” I said, close to breathless.

“Good.
A test then.
The women’s bathroom is through there,” he pointed at an angle to my four o’clock where a set of double doors stood. “Go in, remove your panties, and bring them to me.”

Suddenly my mouth was dry. The cut of my dress made it utterly impossible to wear a bra, but now he wanted the only thing between my skin and the world to be the fabric of that dress.
And if the wind blew the right way…
No. I had to do this. I
wanted
to do this.

I swallowed down a mouthful of martini, grabbed my clutch purse and, without a word, exited the booth toward the bathroom.

It was silent in there, with carpeted floors leading into a plush sitting area before the stalls. I never understood the need for a sitting area in a bathroom. Who the hell wants to hang out in a bathroom?

The club happened to be exclusive enough that the clientele was sparse, thus the bathroom empty. I stepped up to the sink and took a deep breath. I was doing this. I was really doing this. Not only did I want to, but I wanted him to be the one I did this with. My only fear was that I would fuck it up somehow and ruin the whole thing.

I lifted my dress and hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my black lace panties. They slid down my legs and I stepped out of them. Once collected, I slipped them into the clutch and clasped it shut.

The cool air of the restroom already breathed against my exposed flesh. The excitement of being bare in a public place, especially one as upscale as this, became a tad intoxicating. It was like a dirty little secret kept between us.

I fixed my hair, applied a small amount of lip gloss to replace what was lost to my martini glass, and walked from the bathroom.

Oh yeah, I got this.

When I came back to the table, Noah had ordered another round of drinks. His hungry eyes watched as I closed the distance between us, my dress swinging on my hips with a little more confidence now. I blocked the view of any prying eyes with my body as I stood beside him and retrieved the panties from my clutch.

“Very good girl,” he said as I passed them to him. “I’m impressed.”

By the time I sat back down they were already slipped into his pocket.

“Never have I ever done that before,” I said.

“That list of Nevers will continue to grow shorter the longer you’re with me.”