Authors: Teresa Noelle Roberts
“I already said I would.” She glanced frantically from side to side, unwilling to meet his eyes. That didn’t help, because her gaze kept focusing on the muscles of his forearms. They reminded her how she’d gotten into this weird situation, how she’d been attracted to his strength and his control.
How she still was, even when he was alternately boggling and bothering her.
“I’ll be starting something as soon as you let me go upstairs. I just got my Crock-Pot back. I’ll throw something together for after I get back from the studio.”
He raised one eyebrow, leaned in closer. Jen flashed to watching the play of his muscles as he lay over her when they fucked, and wished she hadn’t. “Studio? You need to rest.”
“I
am
resting. I slept last night instead of going to work. I took the morning off. I got chauffeured around by my handsome driver instead of biking in the rain, which was pure luxury, and I’ll get home on time to eat dinner and take a nap before going to the bakery.” She smiled, because she couldn’t help it. “Unless it clears up enough you want to grill, in which case call me, and I’ll be home even sooner. Ever since you mentioned steak, my mouth has been watering.”
He dipped down and licked away an imaginary trail of drool from her chin, which made her laugh. Then he looked at the sky. “Look, there’s sun and a little bit of blue. Should clear by afternoon. So I’ll be grilling for us.” Sure enough, a sliver of blue showed on the horizon, and though it was still raining, sun was pouring through the cloud cover.
“Might even be a rainbow later.”
“Which you’ll be seeing from here. You’re not going to the studio today.”
“Yes, I am. I’ve lost enough time already.”
“I’m sure the doctor told you to rest, that you were pushing yourself too hard. Right?”
The little twitch of Jen’s head was involuntary. She suppressed it as fast as she could could—but she was a terrible liar, and Drake was observant.
“Thought so. And you tried to cover it up. Very bad.”
Despite the warm, damp day, a cold shiver of dread ran through Jen’s body at his voice.
“You’re going to stay home today. How much difference will one day make? You bust your ass at the studio. I respect that, but it’s not like you get paid by the hour to be there. You can rest up for the bakery later. ”
“Can’t. Love to, but can’t.”
“Jen, I’m your dom, or that’s what you’ve told me. Obey me. I’m just trying to help.”
And Jen lost it. She shoved at him with all her strength built by biking and carrying heavy trays of bread and working in the studio.
Built from fighting ever since she was a child for the right to be who she was, do the work she was called to do, despite all her obstacles.
Sullen colors of anger and resentment swirled in her mind. Suddenly, Drake was everyone from her parents on, who’d belittled her work or doubted her ability to support herself, who’d hindered her rather than helping—usually, like now, with the best and kindest intentions, as if she needed to be protected from art and from herself. As if she had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the mainstream.
She ducked out from under his arm. “Drake, I’m five days away from a major craft show. People come from all over the Northeast to attend the Solstice Show, and they
buy.
I still have a few pieces to finish, and I have paperwork and inventory and pricing to do. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I fucking make most of my living making and selling art glass, and this show is about a third of my annual income.”
“Don’t swear at me!”
Confusion swirled with the resentment. “I wasn’t swearing at you. I was just swearing. Now I’m swearing at you: Fuck you, you’re not my dad. You’re not my doctor. And you’re not going to be my dom for much longer at the rate you’re going. You said you wouldn’t interfere with my work and now you are. Turnip, turnip, turnip! This is not a game. What the hell is your problem?”
Drake’s hands grasped her shoulders, bruisingly hard, and his voice sounded harsh and angry, but his gray eyes were soft as a spring morning, even while he barked out, “I’m worried about you. I don’t like being worried about you. I’m not trying to control your art, just make sure you get some rest and recover. You work too hard, and for too little return.”
She pulled away again, and this time he made no move to stop her. “So fuck you very much if I don’t live up to some middle-class income standard. I’m poor. Artists often are. I get by, and I’m doing what I love. Deal with it. Fuck you very much if I can’t conform my work schedule to someone else’s notion of how and when I should be working. And if you don’t like worrying about me, don’t fucking do it! I’ve been taking care of myself since I was nineteen.”
“I just want to help.”
“Then leave me alone and let me do my work and keep your rules and regulations away from art, where they don’t belong. This conversation is over! And I have to decide if this relationship is. You broke a promise. You said you’d leave my art alone, and you’re trying…trying to fuck it up. Fuck us up.” She ran for the door to her apartment, making sure to lock it behind her.
She got all the way up the stairs before she realized she’d left the groceries in the driveway. Much as she didn’t want to face Drake again right now, she wasn’t about to leave five pounds of chicken to rot to avoid a confrontation with someone who thought he cared about her and was doing the right thing by trying to boss her around and coddle her.
Correction: who did care about her. That was the worst part of it, that he was being stupid because he cared. Just like her parents.
When she got back downstairs, though, Drake was gone, and her groceries were sitting just by the door where they were somewhat sheltered from the drizzle.
The bag felt heavier than she remembered.
What had that man done now?
When she got upstairs, she found the bag contained, in addition to what she’d bought, a giant bottle of Stress-Buster Multivitamins Plus Iron and five pounds of steak. On top was a scrawled note: “I bought these to share with you. You need them more than I do. Enjoy.”
Jen managed to hold off the tears until she got the perishables into the fridge.
Then she let them flow, feeling gray waves of despair crash over her.
How was it possible to be in love with someone and still want to hit him over the head repeatedly?
Drake was such a good man in some ways. And she was pretty sure she’d gotten hooked on his special brand of sex.
But he just didn’t get it. Didn’t get
her.
In all fairness—though being fair was a painful effort at the moment—she wasn’t sure she got him either, not completely. He wasn’t a creeper, and he’d been clear about wanting to control her from the start. But why would he even
want
to control her work schedule, even want to pay for her healthcare and groceries? That wasn’t sexy. That was…weird. Like he thought she wasn’t an adult and couldn’t take care of herself.
Except maybe he didn’t mean it that way at all.
The really annoying part was that she was furious with him, but it didn’t make her want him any less. He probably cared for her as much as he said he did, despite not understanding some major things about her.
Could she make him see? Figure out what made him so compelled to help even when she told him she didn’t need it, even when it went way past useful and into interfering and borderline creeptastic? Or were they doomed to crash and burn when they’d barely gotten started?
She shook herself mentally, splashed cold water on her face and set to work on the beans. Might as well do something useful while she was brooding.
She might be dealing with a lover with issues (and maybe, she had to admit, with a few issues of her own), but she also had meals to cook and a show for which to prepare. And at least she knew how to do those.
And until she figured out how to deal with Drake, and with her own fears, she’d avoid him so they didn’t get a chance to make things worse. Luckily, with all she had on her plate, avoiding him wouldn’t be that much different than what she’d have been doing if everything was going great.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Drake knew where Jen was. That wasn’t hard to figure out. She was holed up in her studio, getting ready for the Solstice Craft Show and avoiding him in the process. Probably had clothes with her, so she could sleep there and shower at a friend’s. He knew when she’d be at the bakery. Knew when she walked the dogs, although he wasn’t sure where. Knew when she’d be at GreenStar in a normal week, though it wouldn’t surprise him if she’d traded shifts with someone, planning to double up next week.
He just wasn’t sure what to do about it.
His first, gut reaction was that she was wrong, dammit, and he was right. By the end of the day, he’d considered that her decisions might very well be right for her, but that would make her wrong for him in some ways. She craved sexual control but not the sort of nurturing and guidance he wanted to give. Which meant they could have a lot of fun—assuming she’d forgive him for overstepping a boundary he hadn’t known about until he crossed it—but it wouldn’t go beyond that.
That realization paralyzed him for a full day. How could he have finally opened himself up to a relationship and be so wrong about the person who’d enchanted him? It wasn’t like she’d been trying to deceive him—Jen didn’t seem like she
did
deception, though she might accidentally leave out something important because she was distracted by shiny objects. He must have been fooling himself into thinking they could have anything serious. She was a bottom, not a sub, kinky, but not lifestyle kinky. A great woman, but not his woman.
Then he did the calculations again and realized he’d reached the wrong answer. Twice.
Once when he decided Jen couldn’t be the one for him. Even if the numbers seemed to add up that way, his gut told him he was making an error somewhere. Maybe he was trying to solve an entirely different equation than the one on which he should be working.
And that was because he’d gotten the data he was working with by…frankly, by being stupid. Getting carried away by his worry and guilt and not thinking things through.
Panicking. That was the word he wanted. Panicking. And that rarely got you anywhere except into more of a jam than you were already in.
Jen might or might not be able to handle what he thought he wanted in a relationship, but he’d never given her a chance to think about it. Just thrown her into it when she was not at her best: half-sick, exhausted, insanely busy and probably worried herself, what with work that only paid when she could actually do it.
That meant there was only one thing Drake could do.
Apologize.
And if she listened, if she’d accept the apology, they’d go from there.
He picked up his phone, full of trepidation, but he couldn’t bring himself to call. Not yet. He had to make sure he wouldn’t be whimpering when he did. That he’d sound strong, calm, reasonable. Right now, he was afraid he might actually cry.
He’d never understood the expression “his heart was in his throat” before, but now it made sense. His heart pounded so hard it reverberated not just in his throat but all over. Despite decades of honing his emotional control, he was gagging on nerves to the point he might actually throw up. No matter how often he reminded himself he was only making a phone call, it didn’t seem to matter. Panic again, and he knew how useless that was.
Drake’s common sense was blaring a warning the whole time: He was getting too upset about Jen, feeling too damn much, getting too loopy. Maybe it was a bad idea to be involved with someone who got under his skin this much.
Only he found himself questioning whether it was common sense speaking. He’d avoided therapy, though his great-aunts had urged him to go. His father was the crazy one, not him. Even as a kid, he’d refused to think of himself as a victim, preferring to learn from his father’s faults rather than dwell on them.
But maybe, just maybe, he had scars. Hell, he knew he had some damage, but he thought it had healed clean. Scar-free.
Perhaps he’d been wrong about that too. Maybe he’d managed to live in a way that let him not notice the scars, but it wasn’t the same as not having any.
He set the phone down again and, using his martial arts training, centered himself. Normally, after years of martial arts, he could return to centered calm just by breathing deeply but this time he found himself going through all the steps he’d use to explain the process to a new student at the dojo, a beginner who wasn’t even sure what the instructor meant by centering.
When he felt calmer—a true calm, he hoped, not something born of shoving issues under the rug—he picked up the phone and hit Jen’s number.
Only to get voice mail, which wasn’t unexpected, but was a sickening letdown after the anxious buildup.
Hi, this is Jen. If you’re the pizza place, yes, we ordered a pizza at ten a.m. Really. If you’re not the pizza place, I’m up to my eyebrows getting ready for a show. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, which may be Monday. If this is urgent, keep trying. If I see a bunch of calls from you, I might figure out it’s important. If I notice them. If I don’t, I apologize. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.
Drake could have left a message. But he had a better idea. A scarier idea in some ways, but as he thought about it, much better.