Cherished (Masters and Mercenaries #7.5)(27)

Her heart dropped. “He’s not throwing a fit. That doesn’t seem like Will. He’s figured out that he’s not that interested. Now that I think about it, I guess this whole thing really was kind of a test run. I mean the contract was only for two weeks anyway. I think the sex wasn’t as good for him.”

Chris groaned. “We have got to work on your self-esteem. Can I see your contract?”

“Oh, I think I left it at his place. I was kind of in a hurry to get out. I was lucky it was early in the morning because I didn’t bother to put on my shirt. He rolled over and I ran. I think I left my undies behind, too. Very classy of me.” What had she been so afraid of? Everything. It had been too intimate, too much. She’d felt too much and not knowing how he felt made her anxious. He might have felt nothing at all.

He’d probably had hundreds of women, and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t measure up. Her sex life had been boring for a woman who wrote about crazy bondage sex with up to six guys. It had taken them a while to figure out where to put hottie number six. The first five had been easy. *, ass, mouth, and two hands. But that sixth had been a challenge. About two bottles of wine in, Chris had come up with boobs. Yeah, she’d been lucky her heroine wasn’t claustrophobic.

“And he hasn’t called or texted?” Serena asked.

“Nope.” She’d gotten nothing. She’d heard his door slam at eleven a.m. the day before and nothing from him since. She wasn’t going to admit to sitting and waiting for sounds from the hallway. She definitely wasn’t going to admit that she’d spied out her peephole at every creak of the floor. All she’d gotten to see was Mrs. Hannigan wheeling her groceries in and that girl old man Mussey said was his daughter, but Bridget really knew was a hooker because of her shoes. And the fact that she looked absolutely nothing like Mr. Mussey. And the fact that she’d watched the chick counting her cash one day. Bridget was fairly certain she overcharged since the “visits” never lasted more than twenty or thirty minutes.

She was totally going to end up like Mr. Mussey, hiring call boys so she had some kind of human connection. She wouldn’t even be able to say it was her son since she was never going to get married. She would have to call him her nephew or something. How pathetic. She couldn’t even get her future hooker right.

“Did we lose her?” Chris asked.

“She’s figuring out how dire her situation is.” Serena snapped her fingers. “Come out of the pity party. Here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to write a letter of apology to your Dom for fleeing the scene of the crime. Then you’re going to make him dinner.”

“So you think I should kill him.” It would be an interesting way out of her embarrassment.

Serena huffed. “Brat. You can cook a little. You make a very nice enchilada bake. Do that and bake your chocolate chip cookies. Then you serve it to him naked.”

Chris gave the plan a thumbs-up. “All the easier for him to spank you, my dear. Because that is very likely happening.”

“It won’t save you, but it might—and I say might—put him in a better mood when he gets to the spanking part. So the sex was vanilla?” Serena asked.

There hadn’t been a particular kink to it, but something about the way Will had forced her to look into his eyes, made her talk about the sex, had been…a revelation. “It was intense. No bondage or spanking, but it was intense. It was like I couldn’t breathe without him. That sounds stupid, but for those few moments, I felt connected to him in a way I never have before.”

Serena pointed her way. “And that, my dear, is why you ran.”

Shit. She’d gotten scared and she’d run away so she wouldn’t have to face the fact that the next morning would have been a letdown. Or that he hadn’t felt the same, that it had all been one sided.

“I don’t know that it matters now.” His silence was answer enough. If he’d wanted to talk, even to yell at her, he would have shown up on her doorstep. Hell, she hadn’t even warranted a text telling her it had been nice, but see ya later, baby.

There was a knock on the door. A pounding really.

“Are you expecting someone?” Chris asked, getting to his feet. Despite his status as a big ol’ bottom, he tended to be very take-charge when his Dom wasn’t around and they were all alone. It probably had something to do with him having to watch she and Serena almost die once.

“No.” She let Chris do his thing. The building had a security guard, but it made Chris feel better to answer the door.

He stalked over and looked out the peephole. “Shit. Serena, I believe our afternoon is over. Get Tristan ready and I’ll take you home. Bridget, this one is for you.”

She stood. “Of course, it’s for me. It’s my condo.”

She threw open the door because Chris would have told her if it was someone scary.

Except he hadn’t.

Will stood in the doorway, his eyes red and his normally perfect clothes wrinkled. There was a scowl on his face and he held up her contract. “Did you bother to read this? Or did it mean so little to you that you left it behind along with your underwear. I threw those away since I amended our contract and you are no longer allowed the privilege of wearing them.”

She had to stop her jaw from dropping. “What? You amended our contract? Can you do that?” She looked back at Chris. “Can he do that?”