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“Hmm, not sure I like that.” She was also pretty sure she didn’t want to find out what part of yesterday he wanted to discuss. “If we don’t have a problem, I’m pretty busy today. So, if you could just show yourself back out the ‘back door’ in which you came…” She trailed off, setting the gun on the table and waiting for him to take the hint, still hoping he didn’t know about Casey the—crap. He’d opened the bakery box and pulled out her clown wig.
“Really,Casey?” he emphasized. “I think you might want to make time for what I’d like to talk about.”
“Thief!” Her heart jumping, Avery snatched the wig from his hand. “Give me that! Who do you think you are, breaking into my home and stealing my things?”
“I didn’t steal anything. I bypassed your security because I thought I’d give you a chance to explain what the hell you think you’re doing playing slap and tickle with bucking bulls.”
Give her a chance to… Like she owed him… Avery stared up at Thom at a complete loss of what to say or how even to react. On the one hand, if she were anyone else, or if he were, she might be getting mad right now. On the other, she kind of wanted to double-check herself to make sure she wasn’t still standing in the shower, fantasizing all this.
Giving herself a stern shake, she immediately opted for the former. “Not that I owe you an explanation, but I guess I’m doing the same thing as Tom Without-An-H Stiles thinks he’s doing.”
“Drop the attitude, little girl. This will go a whole lot better for you if you take the crullers and we sit down and talk.”
Little girl? Oh, Jesus. His proprietary term kicked her libido into instant overdrive—her nipples beaded, and her pussy began to pulse. Thom had never called her, or anyone else as far as she knew, little girl. But the second those words slipped passed his lips, she realized just how badly she’d longed to hear them. Not from just anyone, either. It was those words, spoken in his scintillating tone, uttered from his smirking mouth that were doing this to her. And yet, Avery stubbornly reminded herself, he had no right to call her that and no way of knowing how fiercely she wished that wasn’t true.
For her own sake, she had to go on the offensive.
“What did you just call me?” Both her throat and her chest felt weirdly tight. “Don’t you ‘little girl’ me like you’ve got theright. So I have an interesting hobby that I may or may not have necessarily shared with the rest of the team, so what? The last I checked, I’m under no obligation to share anything about my life with everybody and their brother, or the company IT guy. In my book, you are barely one step up from being the cable repairman as it is. And before you go getting all holier than thou on me, I don’t recall you informing our fellow co-workers that you’re one of the top rodeo cowboys on the circuit.”
“We’re not talking about me,” he returned. “Also, I don’t play tag with a ton of pissed-off bovine. Don’t think you’re going to turn this around on me. As to what I called you, that’s why I decided to drive all the way out here instead of waiting to confront you at work. Now, I know I’m being a little high-handed about this, but that’s why we need to talk. If you stop freaking out long enough to think about it, I really feel you’re going to like at least some of what I have to say. So please, be a good girl for me, get yourself a cruller, and let’s go inside.” Turning away, he started out of the garage toward the house. Pausing when he reached the open door, the look he shot her over his shoulder set every already tense nerve in her stomach to quivering. “Now, Avery.”
The authoritative timbre of his command sent the most delicious chills dancing down her spine. She wondered if he even had a clue as to what he was doing to her. Could Thom have latent dominant tendencies she’d never recognized? Had she somehow, instinctively, known that given the opportunity, he could provide what she yearned for? She had expended a lot of time and effort trying to repress her submissive side. After all, it was that side of herself that had gotten her into so much trouble once before.
To this day, Avery had no idea what had raised that final red flag that made her, minutes before her final encounter within her last serious relationship, risk calling Noah, but he’d comethrough the door like an avenging angel. Her avenging angel. From the moment he’d cut her down, covering her with his own coat before carrying her out of that place, she’d promised herself that she’d never put him through that again.
It was a promise she’d kept, too. She would by far rather settle for vanilla or nameless sex than to risk another BDSM relationship that might result in anyone having to come running in order to save her. Especially Noah.
But… that didn’t apply to Thom, did it? Surely not. Mac never would have hired him if he’d been anything like her last dom. Not to mention, having survived what she had, she’d come out of the experience with new finely tuned instincts for spotting assholes. She’d worked with Thom a long time now. She was pretty sure she’d have picked up on at least one or two red flags if he’d had them.
Except that she hadn’t picked up on his being a dom, had she? He was throwing out those feelers now, though. That steely look in his eyes when he’d said ‘now’ had the neglected submissive inside her wanting to weep for joy. But the woman who had emerged from her last hellish relationship wasn’t about to be taken in by ‘what ifs’ and ‘surelys.’ Every alarm bell in her head was blaring out in warning. It was as if part of her wanted to fan the small spark of hope his tone had ignited into the hottest of flames, and yet this other part was determined to douse that tiny ember in bucket after bucket of ice-cold reality.
Her back stiffened; her legs locked against that involuntary tickle that itched to make her step back. She refused to retreat from Thom. She faced down charging bulls; she didn’t retreat from anybody.
“You do remember I’ve got a gun, right?” she asked sarcastically.
Somewhere on his person, she was pretty sure he had one too, but he didn’t reach for it. He did, however, come back intoher garage. That tickling need to keep distance between them only grew stronger as he came toward her. He wasn’t sauntering, he was stalking her. Slow and steady, every inch of him the dom she hadn’t realized until now that he was.
“Is that the way you want to play this?” he softly asked.
No, but no way was she going to admit that to him out loud. She couldn’t. Her vocal cords had just become every bit as frozen as her feet, rooting her to the hard cement floor until all she could do was watch him stalking right up to her, the lion facing down one very stupid gazelle.
“I had a conversation with Noah last night after I found out. If what he and Zara both say are correct…”
Her vocal cords became unfrozen much faster than her feet did. “You talked to Noah and Zara? About what?”
“About you and me, and the fact that it’s long past time I stopped carrying this silent torch for you, especially if you’re going to go playing with bulls in the absence of someone ready, willing, and able to lay down a few rules. Daddy’s not very happy with you right now, little girl. This is all part of what I was thinking we might talk about. Are you sure you don’t want to grab a cruller and come with me into the house?”
“Rules?” she echoed, but her mind had completely jumped from that incredulous anomaly and landed instead on the other one. Daddy? Her pussy pulsed hard. A mini convulsion so astoundingly pleasurable that it felt more like a mini orgasm.
“Would you like a sample?” he asked, except it wasn’t asking. It was smooth, like a statement. He was laying down the law, the first of many. “How about we start with—yesterday was Casey the Clown’s final performance.”
That wasn’t a question either, but it did drive home the realization that she needed to spend more time in the shower. Her poor pussy was just neglected enough to want to pulse andthrob all over again, turning that edict of his into yet another flutter of a mini orgasm.
“You think you’re going to make rules and what… I’m going to follow them?” Avery managed a derisive snort, but inside it was all she could do not let him see her shiver. Goosebumps raced over her skin, pebbling her nipples into points eager to be taken in hand—Daddy’s? God help her—and played with. “You’re out of your mind, Thom.”
“Watch your tone, missy,” he shot back. “I freely acknowledge this isn’t the way most doms go about introducing themselves or their romantic intentions to the little they like?—”
Little? She’d have snorted and laughed again, except her throat had already choked up. This wasn’t high school, but… really, he liked her? As in,likeliked? She stared at him, her eyes huge, her face pale, and her belly awash in wave after wave of tingling, fluttering, warm-pulsing, nervous-erotic energy that stubbornly kept trying to interpret all this as arousing as hell.
