Cherished (Masters and Mercenaries #7.5)(18)

He had time with her.

“Tonight?”

“Dinner. My place. We have a contract to write.” The minute her signature was on that sucker, he would be all over her. Not that he wasn’t already. He finally put her down, but kept his hands on her waist, unwilling to give up contact.

Her eyes lit up. “I have a hundred questions about contracts. Do you have a standard? Or do you write a new one each time? Will we be going over hard and soft limits? When I joined Sanctum, I had to sign a contract. Will it be like that one?”

Being in a relationship with a writer was going to be different. Bridget was full of an infectious curiosity. Her enthusiasm flowed into him, and something that seemed boring and formal might be fun. Starr hadn’t asked a single question about their contract. She’d signed and then spread her legs and he’d thought that meant she loved him.

He stopped himself because he wasn’t going there. Kai was wrong. He wasn’t trying to take out his anger on Bridget. It was pure lust and she’d said yes. Besides, he had something to give her. He had knowledge. “I’ll answer every question you have. I’m your Dom for the next couple of weeks and I promise I’ll be an open book when it comes to the lifestyle. We’ll play and you’ll get lots of material for your books.”

She blushed, a pretty pink staining her cheeks. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight.”

He watched her walk away, a hunger deep in his gut. He couldn’t remember being so f*cking hungry.

“So, you decided to go a different way.” Kai was looking up at him with judgmental eyes. “I take it that was an argument between your conscience and your penis, and your penis seems to have won.”

“What can I say, Doc? My penis made a logical argument.” He stared at the door and couldn’t stop thinking about the evening to come.





Chapter Four





It was surreal, but she was staring at a contract that had been written for her. A real live D/s contract with her name on it. It was different from the training contract she’d signed when she’d been allowed into Sanctum because there was another name filled in.

William Christopher Daley. Her Dom.

Damn it. She had to stop thinking that way. He wasn’t hers. Except he kind of was for the next few weeks. He was hers and he’d written in a couple of lines about monogamy. For the duration of their relationship, they would only sleep together.

Could she really sleep with him? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She totally wanted to. She simply wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea.

She glanced over to where he stood finishing up the dishes. He’d cooked for her, grilling steaks out by the condo pool before bringing her inside for a very cozy dinner where they talked about innocuous things. He told her about his job. She talked about how she’d met her friends. At the end of the meal, he’d given her the contract and told her to read it while he cleaned up. She’d stared at the pages, the words familiar but meaningless since her brain was on the man who wrote them.

They were so different. He could cook. She could barely heat water. She didn’t even drink coffee because she found the machines irritating to deal with. He was obviously neat and perfectly organized. She was usually a bit of a mess, her walls peppered with sticky post-it notes containing plot ideas and reminders about her schedule. How could this work?

“Do you have a question about the contract?” He closed the dishwasher door and walked back into his super-neat living room.

He sat down across from her on the love seat and she struggled to form a coherent sentence.

“Do you use the same contract every time?” There. That was semi intelligent.

“I’ve only signed three contracts. The two prior to this one came before I joined Sanctum. That is a standard Sanctum contract with revisions specifically for the two of us. When I was allowed my membership, I was also allowed use of the contract and the checklists Ian and Alex developed. I keep it on my computer where I do the revisions, and once you’ve signed it, I’ll scan it in and send it back to Ryan. He runs Sanctum for Ian. He keeps a copy of all the contracts. Should we go over your limits?”

The list of hard and soft limits that would let Will know what he could and couldn’t do to her. Like flogging and spanking and anal play.

She wrote a lot about anal play, but she’d never cared for it. The one time she’d tried it, it hurt. But she had to wonder if it would be different with a Dom. “I already filled it out.”

She’d read the contract. At the end of the day it was simply a document that stated the obvious. She and Will would have sex and she could say no at any time. He could punish her for infractions, but all she had to do to stop it was to use her safe word. He could dominate her but only as long as she let him. It was a consensual relationship but with everything on paper and with a definite time limit.

She picked up the pen and signed the document, handing it back to him.

He took it and laid it aside. “Tell me about your prior relationships.”

She frowned. “What about them?”

His brow arched in a way that let her know he was annoyed. “Polite is going to work so much better with me, sweetness. And I would prefer a ‘Sir’ when you ask me a question or answer one of mine. It’s in the contract.”

Crap. She hadn’t meant to be rude. “Sorry. Sometimes I think my voice comes off as impolite. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I was surprised by the question.”