To Say I Love You (9 page)

“Mm. Good.”

“I love it when you’re incoherent.”

Because I could, I stuck my tongue out and licked his neck.

“Ew,” he complained and went to smack my backside in retaliation, only pulling back at the last second. “I don’t have anything with me to put on that,” he said, gently brushing his fingertips over the red skin instead. “You’re going to have to wait until we get home.”

“I’m sure I’ll survive.”

“I’m not. You’re pretty raw, baby. Those jeans are gonna rub when we’re walking back.”

He was right, of course, although I didn’t find that out until at least twenty minutes later. It was strangely calming, laying there with him with nature all around us, no sounds from the outside world intruding.

Will’s city-boy nature kicked in when a massive bug ran across his leg, and he screamed like a girl. Which was ironic, really, considering how quiet he’d made me be while he was dishing out his beating.

Sitting down in the car was painful, more so when I tried to shift onto a less-sore bit. I let Will drive, knowing in advance it wasn’t going to be a comfortable experience, and he shot me worried glances the whole way back.

“I’m fine,” I said, repeating it too frequently, then turning on the radio so I didn’t have to listen to the sound of his silent concern for the rest of the journey.

A
LTHOUGH
I’
D
loved taking our D/s relationship out of the house into a wilder environment, I guessed Will hadn’t liked it so much. He was used to playing in an area where his emergency kit was close at hand: the bolt cutters and the first aid kit and the cream he used to soothe my bruises.

The lack of a distinct playroom affected us both in different ways. It forced us into being more creative and more spontaneous, but it wasn’t the same as having a secure, designated space to play in. I loved the house, and loved that I’d gotten to spend so much time with my dad fixing it up. And there was no denying that trying to explain to my dad why there was a room he couldn’t go in, or a room decorated with leather furniture and sex toys, would be awkward. To say the least.

In our house in Seattle, Will had transformed the attic space into a perfectly contained room with all our gear in it. Although we could, and did, have sex all over the house, it was reassuring to know there was a place we could go and lock the rest of the world out for a few hours while he did dirty and depraved things to me.

There was a reason why keeping our D/s relationship out of the bedroom was a good idea. More than anything else, it was where we made love. It wasn’t unheard of for a Master and his sub to be lovers too, but our relationship transcended the label of simply “partners.” He was everything to me. Our bed was where we expressed that, whether it was with sex or sleeping next to each other or chilling out or talking. I didn’t have a problem with Master spanking me in the bedroom. Sometimes a good spanking before bed was good for us both, and it was nice to go to sleep with a warm ass.

Anything more than that, though, needed its own space. Space was one of the things we were short of.

Will had started doing his two contractually obliged days in the office on Thursdays and Fridays. He’d come to this decision after a couple of weeks when, on Tuesday afternoon, he’d been asked to say overnight again for a meeting on Wednesday morning. On Friday afternoon, though, everyone was heading out, and no one was going to ask him to stay another day. My baby was sneaky, and I loved him.

The only problem was traffic getting out of the city was horrific during rush hour, so he often worked late and got home around nine in the evening. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and a better situation than him having to stay an extra night.

I’d been doing research on the Internet to try and find a BDSM community in Georgia, somewhere for us to get involved in. I’d always liked the camaraderie and openness with other kinky people. It was nice to be in an environment where there was absolutely no judgment from other members of the group.

I had expected that to be thin on the ground in this part of the country, knowing what attitudes in the deep South could be like. In my experience kinky people congregated in bigger cities, though, where there was enough going on to distract from what people got up to in the privacy of their own homes, so I was hopeful there might be something here for us.

I found a dedicated BDSM club in Atlanta, which I wasn’t expecting, and they had a regular gay-men-only night, which I definitely wasn’t expecting. There was a gay community here, but I hadn’t thought it would be big enough to warrant the club holding a night for kinky guys. There was a small joining fee and photographs on the website which showed a luxuriously appointed building. It looked a little neat and sterile, and I definitely wasn’t opposed to clean, but in general, dark and dirty turned me on more.

I copied the link and sent it to Will’s phone. He texted me back a few moments later with a “do it” message. I couldn’t help but chuckle and started composing a message to the men who ran the club night, telling them about Will and me, hoping they’d just let us show up. I knew I could get references from friends of ours pretty quickly if the organizers wanted them, although at a glance it didn’t look like it was that sort of club.

Will called me straight back.

“I just took a closer look,” he said. “That place looks amazing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder as I fixed a sandwich and spoke to him at the same time. I was great at multitasking.

“The first night we could get to is next weekend. That’s the night they hold for gay men specifically, but if we become members of the club, they’re happy for same-sex couples to go at any time.”

“I know. It’s cool, right? And practically on our doorstep.”

“Good job, baby. This is going to be fun.”

“I’m never sure if that tone of voice is a good thing or not,” I said, teasing him as I grabbed a bag of chips and wandered to his seat in the living room.

“Are you healed up from last time?”

“Pretty much. Yeah.”

“Excellent. Then it’s probably a bad thing as far as your ass is concerned.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes, knowing I was safe since he couldn’t see me.

“I need you to do something for me,” Will said.

“Go on.”

“Can you call Laura, please, and tell her there’s a sealed box just inside the front door of our place? If you give her the address, she’ll ship it to us.”

“Okay. What’s in it?”

“When I was home last, I put some of our play kit together,” he said. I could hear him moving through the building he worked in, the noise of coworkers and office gossip mingling in the background. He was clearly watching his words. “If we’re going out, it’s got some useful things in there.”

I didn’t dare ask for more, just agreed and hung up. When I’d finished lunch, I phoned Laura, satisfied she wouldn’t mind me calling.

Laura was my old Mistress, the woman who had introduced me to the D/s scene in Seattle when I was still in my early twenties. She was an amazing friend to both Will and I, had been for years, and had hooked us up when she found out she was expecting twins.

We’d grown apart some over the years as her life started to revolve more around her children and ours became about each other. Despite that, I knew we’d always be close.

There was no such thing as a quick catch-up with Laura, and it took an hour of conversation before I finally got round to asking her to ship Will’s secret box.

“Oh, yeah, I’d been wondering when he’d ask for that. Did he tell you what’s in it?”

“No. Just some stuff. We found a BDSM club in Atlanta, and we’re going next weekend. I’m getting the impression it’s got some of his core gear in there.”

“Do you have your collar and cuffs there with you?”

“No. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“Ooh. You must let me know what’s in there when you open it up.”

“I will,” I laughed.

Laura promised to send it express shipping since Will had already left the money to cover the cost, so it would be with us in time for the club night. With Will due home the next day, I wanted to make sure the house was fairly tidy, not because I was anally house-proud, but he would get cranky if he was tired and there were half-empty pots of paint all over the place.

My dad had spent the day with some of his fishing buddies out at the lake, leaving me alone to paint the house. Apparently that was something he trusted me to do without supervision, which was funny, considering it was my fucking house. In between bouts of painting, which was just dull however you jazzed it up, I worked on cleaning up the porch.

Having a front porch was nice. It felt a particularly Southern thing to do, sitting at the front of the house with a pitcher of tea, watching the neighborhood go past. Except it was the middle of summer and steaming hot, so Will moved quickly between the air-conditioned car and the air-conditioned house until the dark moved in and dissipated the humidity. By then we couldn’t see a flea go past, let alone the neighborhood.

When I got around to the backyard, there were still a dozen or so peach trees that needed tending to, and an incredibly overgrown deck which had to be ripped up and replaced. I was very tempted to get someone in to do that for me.

Out back, we had a huge yard with those peach trees at the bottom of it. They’d attract wasps, when the fruit came out if we didn’t take good care of them, and the smell of rotting fruit was disgusting no matter what it was.

It was still light out when Will arrived home with dinner. He said he didn’t mind eating in since I’d been working hard all day and the last thing he wanted to do was get home and cook. I didn’t mind either, especially when he stopped at the barbeque place I loved.

He greeted me with kisses at the front door even though both hands were full of bags. I took the food from him to start serving up while he showered quickly and changed. When he came through to the kitchen, damp from the shower, he backed me up against the fridge and pinned my wrists to my sides.

“I missed you,” he said in a low voice.

“I missed you too.”

“I spent the whole drive home thinking about what I get to do to you next weekend. I know what’s in that box, Jesse, and I can’t fucking wait.”

I tilted my neck to the side for him, and he attached his lips to that space, nipping and licking until I was rocking my hips against his, silently begging for more.

He only released my wrist to pull me away from the fridge, then slapped my ass over my jeans.

“Later,” Will said with a laugh, his dark and sexy mood suddenly gone. “You distract me.”

I started to protest, then saw the glint in his eye that told me he was teasing. That I didn’t mind so much.

We didn’t have a kitchen table yet, just the breakfast bar, which wasn’t that comfortable, so we took the plates into the living room and sat on the sofa with a movie on. I wondered if we were getting old. The idea of staying in on a Friday night, eating good food and chilling out with my partner was far more appealing than anything else I could think of.

I’d bought a six-pack of beer, thinking that getting a little drunk and handsy with each other wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Not that I’d get drunk on a few bottles of beer, but it was enough to take the edge off.

Despite the fact that Will had pounced on me the moment his hands were free, I forced some normalcy back into our time together. There was yet another project Will was heading up at work, this one combining the input of people from all around the country. That was better for him in some ways—it meant conference calls were more regular than big, team meetings, and his role became that of organizer as much as leader. He was good at keeping lots of balls in the air. Telling him that earned me a snort of laughter.

“Have you been keeping yourself busy, then? Out of trouble?”

“Yes, and no,” I said, answering his questions in order.

“Jesse,” he groaned.

“I’m joking. I’ve been helping my dad around the house, actually. Jennifer is doing a lot of the housework and stuff, but she’s working a lot more at the moment, so he needs help. I’m not sure he ever had to do laundry by himself before.”

“That reminds me,” he said, tapping lightly against my wrist absentmindedly. “Can you make sure to change the sheets on the bed, please?”

I clenched my teeth and ignored the temptation to tell him to do it himself. I’d only just got him home—I didn’t want to pick a fight already, especially not about household chores.

“Sure,” I said.

“So, have you got your dad cooking yet?”

“No,” I said with a laugh. “You met my mama. She coddled us. All of us. I only learned how to do anything when I started college.”

“You’re a good cook now,” Will told me with a grin.

I leaned into his side. “Thanks, darlin’.”

M
Y
DAD
let me borrow his truck to drive up to Atlanta for a couple of days since he wouldn’t need it. Will and I had a different plan for our weekend than usual—I’d join him so we could go to the club night, then I would head home while he worked the beginning part of the next week.