Mutual Release (47 page)

Julie’s eyes widened in shock. He put a hand on her leg but she jerked out from under it. “You don’t get to have a say about that,” she said, her voice low.

“Actually, I do.” He put his hand back on her leg, firm this time. She stayed still. “Because I don’t think it’s healthy for you to keep running from her. Pretending she did not play a part in the horror you experienced. You’ve been running away from her for years. You should face her and purge it, then you can let it go.”

“I’ll think about it,” she mumbled. He considered her response a mild victory. “Next? Because I can tell there is a next.”

“No kids. No surprise pregnancies. I am not interested in any part of that life.”

“Oh, well.” She grabbed a strawberry and ate it. “Glad to hear we agree on something.” He stared, surprised. “What? Just because I have ovaries I want smelly, expensive little ankle-biters all around me? Give me a break.”

“Well, good,” he said, staring out at the ocean.

“Yeah. Good,” she declared. “Now, my turn.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Okay, shoot.”

“This man who raped your sister and who pretends to be a Dom. When are you going to let go of him?” Julie glared at him, her chest pounding with a weird combination of anger and anxiety. How dare he command her to confront her own mother? Him with his holier-than-thou “I know what’s best for Julie” bullshit. She pointed at his chest. “You are no better than me, holding it in, you know. And if I have to purge my demons, you do too.”

He stayed silent and started tossing shells into the surf. She let him have his quiet for a few seconds.

“You are my Dom, Evan. The man who watches over me, takes care of me, teaches me how to let go and put myself into your very capable hands. But the way I see this, it’s a two-way street. I am not the only one who has to learn to trust.”

He kept his back to her but she kept talking. “I will move in with you, eventually. And I agree on the no babies thing. And I may very well call my mother and tell her what I think and how I feel about what she did to me.” He glanced back at her. She put her finger to his lips. “And I love you too,” she whispered, both sure and unsure at the same time. “But you have to give something to me that you’re holding on to – all the guilt about Olivia has got to go.”

He grabbed her hand, his eyes blazing with what she believed was anger. But she didn’t look away. He got on his hands and knees, forcing her back to her elbows. When he spoke, his voice sent tremors down her spine. “I’ll tell you what, I will try. For you. For you, I will do absolutely anything.”

He kissed her so hard she forgot where she was for a minute.

* * * *

The argument started as they were packing in the wee hours.

“I told you we should have done this last night.” Evan sighed, checking his watch. Julie glared at him and set the cat carrier on top of her suitcase. Buddy was scratching at it, making his best effort at sounding pitiful.

“You did no such thing.
You
wanted to play, and I’m pretty sure
I
suggested we hold off, get some sleep, but…” She cursed when she heard the limo driver honk his horn. “Would you just stop complaining and help me.” Her head was pounding from lack of sleep, and she ached all over from the last couple of days’ worth of activity. “I’m not your fucking slave,” she threw at him before dragging her own luggage to the front door, leaving the cat for him to carry.

He didn’t speak to her the entire ride to the airport, during check-in, or while sipping coffee in the Delta Sky Lounge. When the receptionist called their flight for boarding, she stood, shouldering her carry-on. He just sat glaring at her.

She crossed her arms. “Stop pouting. It’s very un-Dom like.”

He got to his feet slowly, grabbed her arm, pulled her close. “Don’t ever use that word—slave. It’s not something I want associated with us. Ever.” He touched the diamond in her collar. “I know it’s one you’ve read or heard about relative to our arrangement. But that is not what you are to me.” She gasped when his teeth grazed her neck, making her body break out in chills.

“Cut it out,” she whispered. “People are watching.”

His hand cupped her ass. “Like you care.” She closed her eyes. “I could tell you to drop to your knees and suck my cock right now and I’d bet you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” He shifted so she could feel the heat of his erection against her hip.

She bit her lip, sensed her thighs shaking. “Probably.” She opened her eyes and met his stare. “If we didn’t have three weeks’ worth of work to do the first week we get back. Because if I did that,” she palmed his zipper, causing a few people to rattle their newspapers, “I’d do it so long and so slow we’d miss our damn plane.”

“I thought so, Daredevil.” He brushed his lips over hers. He put his arm around her shoulders as they walked to the exit of the lounge. “I always wanted to join the mile high club but never found anyone willing to try. Something tells me I may be in love with a woman who will.”

She smiled, raised an eyebrow at him, and led the way to the boarding gate. As they settled into their seats, Evan a little gingerly, she looked around and noted something odd. The flight attendant brought them orange juice, did the safety pantomime, and the plane took off. Julie leaned back, then looked over at him – her man – and put a hand on her new piece of jewelry. “Why are we the only ones in first class, Country Club?”

He smiled, took off his seatbelt, and reached over to yank the curtain between them and the rest of the plane closed. “You have a lot to learn about me, Julie,” he said as he laid his seat back.

“Oh?” she said, her body already clamoring for him, as if she hadn’t gotten enough in the last three days of near-marathon-level sex.

“Yeah.” He unbuckled his belt and slid his zipper down, never taking his eyes from hers. “I never kid around about blow jobs.”

* * * *

Evan watched as Julie settled herself back into the seat next to him. His world had found its orbit, finally. And at its center was this gorgeous, smart, high-strung woman who’d just given him the most epic head as they sat alone in a first class cabin that had cost him a small corner of his growing fortune. She gave him a wicked smile, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then leaned over to kiss him. He cupped her neck, keeping her close as a strange kind of panic took hold of him, the type that makes you grab on to your loved ones and hold tight as the superstitious fear passes.

“That was adequate,” he’d pronounced, pressing his forehead to hers. She’d scoffed and dropped back into her seat.

“Francis, the fact you have anything left after this weekend, much less what you just shot down my throat, is but a mere testament to my magnificence.”

He put his arm around her and she snuggled into his chest, sighing with contentment. His scalp buzzed as his body settled into post-orgasm stupor. Kissing her hair, he let himself have a second of wonder, of sheer happy surprise that he’d wandered into her office that day. Her breathing evened out, and she slept as he stared out the window and watched the sun come up.

After his own brief refractory nap, he eased her over so he could pull out his laptop. He’d just spent nearly a million dollars on an infrastructure expansion which would allow them to continue the swift sales rise they’d been experiencing. He had huge plans for Big House Brewing and was grateful Jack had introduced him to Suzanne. She was a ghost of her old self these days, still hung in and worked hard, but discouraged much discussion or even supportive noises tossed in her direction. The Peyton Place his brewery had been for a while had settled now that Blake, his young brewer, had left and had opened a brew pub downtown with his business partner and lover.

Evan shook his head at how bloody convoluted all the connections were. Jack’s best pal from college was Evan’s former brewer and Suzanne’s one-time-lover’s new man. Rob Freitag was a chef and had worked in a brewery a while before meeting Blake Thornton, the young man who’d fallen hard for Suzanne and been rejected by her in a whirl of drama. Now the two men owned the hottest gastro-pub in the Midwest, located in a building Jack owned. Could the shit get more complex?

He made a few notes to the Tap Room manager, closed the computer content to turn his head, and watch Julie sleep the rest of the way home.

Part IV: The Marriage

Chapter One

Evan sat at his desk, staring at the small turquoise box and second-guessing himself into a headache. Turning the expensive Mont Blanc pen over and over on the leather blotter, he tried to sift through the complex mix of emotions that had gripped him for the last few months.

On the one hand, he’d never been more sexually satisfied in his life. He’d embraced all aspects of his role including teaching Julie about her new position. She was a quick learner but still had a streak of stubborn a mile wide. He smiled, remembering the fairly creative ways he still used to discipline her and how she constantly surprised him with the depths of her responses.

He’d kept trying to convince her to move to Ann Arbor and live with him, using his best “I’m in charge” voice. But she wouldn’t, insisting that he respect her need for some privacy and her own personal space. He’d been more than willing to sell his condo – had Jack showing the place almost daily – so he could upgrade to whatever she wanted. But that had led to one of their loudest arguments yet. So he took the damn thing off the market and spent an entire week ignoring her, using the withdrawal of his direct attention as punishment.

He sat for another half hour continuing to ponder his options. Sighing, he stood, leaving a small jeweler’s box on the desk, and wandered down the hall. He stood just outside the room where Julie lay on the bed, bound and exposed, blindfolded and gagged. He sat, ran his hand down her perfect breasts, admiring for the millionth time their soft curve and pleasing heft in his palm. He passed his thumb over one peaked nipple, still so conflicted about his next move he felt paralyzed.

She shivered as he trailed a soft leather flogger down the underside of her arm, across her breasts and torso, then lower, flicking lightly down her legs and feet. The pink flesh of her sex was already moist, the hard button of her clit exposed. He licked his lips but stood there, teasing her up the other side of her body. She squirmed, fought the restraints, and whimpered around the small leather ball between her teeth.

He ran his hands through her hair, loving the way it slipped between his fingers. She’d been wearing it down, at his insistence, and had ceremoniously tossed out every pair of panties and thongs she owned. There had been days when he could hardly stand the thought of her at her desk, being the boss, but bare for him under her skirt. He loved fucking with her at strange hours of the day, like 10:30 in the morning or right after lunch, texting inappropriate and explicit messages and getting such great responses. Once, she’d stayed quiet, not sending him any messages back at all, in flagrant disregard to his requirement that she do so. By the time he’d worked himself into a stew of fury, she’d appeared at his office door dressed in her long leather coat and nothing else. They’d christened his desk that day in spectacular fashion.

He touched the diamond in the center of her collar, smiling with honest admiration at the way she’d stayed quiet for over an hour now. Then the anger he’d been nursing for a while flared, so he stood, thinking he’d call this whole thing off before he made anything worse. The woman had the most amazing power over him, that much was certain. But the dynamic of their relationship was ever evolving, and he’d had the oddest notion in last few weeks, sensing something new and earthshaking on their horizon – one where something more traditional existed between them.

He’d tried to shake it off, but when the words “I’m going to ask Julie to marry me” dropped from his lips a few weeks ago as he was berating his friend Jack for being a total shithead, he nearly fell out of his own bar chair. But he kept rolling it around in his brain and had even bought a ring which cost a fuckload more than three months’ worth of salary – the ring sitting on his desk right now. But something was wrong. And he had to get her to admit it.