AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I wasn’t surrounded by beer in my youth. My father loved wine. He sampled it and appreciated it, and when I was a teenager and couldn’t get my hands on anything good, my best friend and I found a man who would buy us strawberry wine as long as we paid for a pack of cigarettes. We would take it out to the beach and we were the heroes of the high school. When I drink that wine, I’m young again. I’m sitting on the beach looking out over the ocean with my feet in the sand and a whole life ahead of me.”
“I would like to try that wine sometime,” she said wistfully.
He couldn’t help but wince. “It tastes like hell, but it’s important to me. My point is that wine isn’t something to be snobbish about. It’s something to love. It’s something that brings people together and it’s been doing it for thousands of years. What I love about Riesling is it’s a transparent wine.”
She held the glass up again. “Not entirely.”
She’d likely slept through the entire wine for beginners course he’d given for all the servers. She’d probably memorized the pairings list he’d given her and picked up no theory at all. “I wasn’t talking about how it looks. I’m talking about the grapes and how Riesling grapes tend to embody the region they were grown in. It’s why Rieslings vary pretty wildly. An Alsace Riesling is higher in alcohol. It’s got more mineral notes and it’s full bodied while German Rieslings can be quite sweet and fruity. There’s a vineyard in Australia that produces Rieslings that zip with lime and citrus tones. Every Riesling is different and the wine’s taste comes from the earth it was grown in, from the air it breathed and the rainfall that nourished the vines. It’s a little like people. It’s all about where it came from. That is why I love Riesling.”
“Okay.” Tiffany held the glass up to the light. “I like the color. It’s like when sunlight filters in and turns a room bright. I don’t think my sense of smell is anywhere near as good as yours though. I mostly smell wine.”
“It’s all right,” he replied. “I just wanted you to think about it before you drank it.”
“Because it’s meaningful to you.” She took a slow swallow this time, as though truly considering the taste. “It isn’t as sweet as some of the Rieslings I’ve tried. I like it.”
“Good.” He took a sip himself, letting the notes flow. Broad. Dry. Citrus and green apple. “It’s quite a nice wine for the price. It’s why I put it on the menu. It’s going to pair with the pork dishes and some of the fish.”
“I’ll make note of that.” She sat back.
Damn but she was a beautiful woman. She was also something he needed to keep his hands off of. No matter what Big Tag said, he did not date women he worked with.
He didn’t really date anyone. He played with subs. When the need got too great, he found a partner for a brief time. He didn’t sleep with anyone. He fucked, and that was starting to get very old. Empty.
“So you said something about house rules?” Tiffany leaned forward, her elbows on the bar. “Are these housekeeping rules or like big bad Dom rules?”
“I don’t suppose I differentiate.” He couldn’t let those big eyes of hers soften him up. It had almost happened at her apartment. When she’d stood up after he’d spanked her and there had been tears running down her face, his impulse had been to reach for her. He’d wanted to draw her in the way he had that night when she was drunk and she’d cried on his shoulder. He’d wanted to smooth back her hair and promise her everything was going to be all right, that he could fix things for her. It was a path that was sure to lead to discomfort for her and humiliation for him. “I prefer a clean living space. I don’t like for things to be messy. I expect that you will keep your things in their proper place.”
Because no matter how hard he tried, he could still trip. The legs he now walked on were only a year old. He’d spent the first two years in a wheelchair.
The Garden’s Wheelchair Dom.
He still wasn’t completely comfortable in the prosthetics.
“I can try,” she said with a frown. “I’ll be honest, I’m not the world’s biggest neat freak.”
He’d been able to tell that from the state of her apartment. It had been cluttered, a bit dusty. With the exception of her easel. That had been perfectly taken care of. He rather wished he’d taken the time to ask to see her art.
He’d seen one painting that night he’d taken her home. It had been a painting of three laughing girls, the swirling colors so vibrant he could hear them giggling as they splashed in a puddle on a rainy day. The figures had been more impressions than photographic reality, but he’d known what she was trying to convey.
“If you cook I’ll clean, and the other way around.” He’d started a list in his head on the long drive. The drive that would have been considerably shorter had they left at the proper time. As she’d sung along to sugary pop songs after she’d changed his radio, he’d sat and considered how to proceed.
With caution. Lots and lots of caution.
“I’m not the best cook in the world,” he continued, “but I can manage. Most nights, of course, we’ll be eating at Top as our training sessions for the new restaurant will last long hours, but I would prefer to eat breakfast here rather than skipping the meal or picking up fast food. Eric made sure the fridge was stocked with a few items I requested.”
“Breakfast.” She gave him a little salute with her free hand. “I can manage that.”
“In addition to our duties at Top, we will now be taking on the additional task of appearing to be a long-term D/s couple, and we need to talk about what that should look like.” Another thing he’d been thinking about ever since that moment the trap had closed around him. “You know you probably could have gotten us out of this assignment. It’s much more difficult for the Dom to say no. The sub always holds the power. Is there a reason you didn’t use yours today?”
“I didn’t want to,” she replied simply. “I don’t have a full-time Dom and I thought it would be interesting to see what that’s like.”
Was she thinking at all? “You know nothing about how I function as a dominant partner.”
“And now I do,” she replied. “You like rules and schedules and you tend to be very fair.”
“I can be quite exacting in my standards.”
“I can be quite flexible,” she shot back as the sexiest smile crossed her face. “I’m serious about that. I can still do the splits and everything.”
