Just One Taste (Topped #2)(24)

Deena hadn’t had that childhood connection. Her mother had moved a lot. She’d gone to five different elementary schools and two junior highs. They’d settled in a suburb for her high school tenure, but she never quite quit expecting to have to up and leave.

She loved her friends, but had she been this honest with them? As Eric talked she realized she hadn’t told anyone her story. She talked about innocuous things, about the superficial. She listened. Oh, she was a great listener. She would listen to anyone, with the singular exception of the one man who mattered. She’d withheld that from him the same way she withheld herself from everyone.

She was still the new kid in school, unsure of her place and therefore hiding behind superficiality.

“It must have been nice to grow up in one place. Do your parents still live there?” Now that he was talking, she was curious. This was why she hadn’t asked. She’d known she would be interested, that learning about Eric Vail would be a slippery slope. But he seemed so happy that she couldn’t draw back.

And she had kind of signed a contract stating she might just maybe have sex with him. If they both wanted to. If it came up. Which it probably wouldn’t.

He picked up the pen and signed his name before looking up at her again. He smiled, a look of satisfaction on his face. “Come here. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but I believe I mentioned that there are no chairs for you here.”

She was supposed to sit in his lap. She’d signed a contract to obey him and part of that was sitting in his lap. All last night she’d thought about how good it had felt to curl up on his lap and not worry about anything.

He held out a hand and she had to make a decision. The night before it had been easy. She’d been warm from the spanking, her whole body relaxed and oddly sated. Now she realized she had to make the conscious choice to submit to this man, to give over to his will. A scary prospect because she didn’t always make good choices.

But this one was already made. She’d made it when she signed the contract.

Deena got up out of her chair and moved to her new Dom. He wouldn’t be hers for long, and that could be the thing that saved her. This relationship had an end date, a clear and precise one. Six weeks. They would only be together for a month and a half. There was some safety in that. She might be able to get Eric Vail out of her system in six weeks, and then she would be free to move on with her life without regretting him.

She sank onto his lap, his arms going around her. He was so big that it wasn’t hard to get comfortable sitting on his lap. It also wasn’t hard to feel that he liked her there. The hard line of his erection jutted against her thigh, but his arms wound around her and he didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he had a massive boner. He simply leaned back and started talking again.

“My mom and dad moved into town a few years back. They couldn’t keep up so much land. They got a ton of money for it and they’ve been traveling ever since. They went to Iceland this year. Why would anyone go to Iceland?”

“It’s beautiful,” she said. She’d seen it in a movie and it had been stunning. She was a girl who’d rarely been out of Texas. The idea of going somewhere so far away was like a dream to her. For so long, making rent had been her main goal. She’d never even thought about seeing the world. Now she wondered if that might be possible for her. Someday. “They probably wanted to see the northern lights.”

“I think that was one of the items on their itinerary,” he said, but now he was so close to her that he practically whispered the words in her ear, making her shudder, and not in distaste. “I’m sure I’ll get to see pictures the next time I go home.”

Being so close to Eric felt right. His arms were strong and warm around her, and it would be so easy to think for a moment that she was safe.

That would be a mistake.

“Deena, tell me why you went to Taggart today.”

Shit. How the hell did he know about that? Maybe he didn’t actually know anything. Maybe he was fishing. Rumors abounded at Top. The menu might change nightly, but the gossip was a mainstay. “I had to take him his lunch. He wasn’t in the conference room. He’s a weird guy.”

Brazen her way through. It was the only thing to do. Act like nothing was wrong and it wasn’t. She’d learned that a long time ago. As long as she had a smile on her face, people thought there was nothing going on under the surface and she never had to answer those uncomfortable questions.

“Did you read that part in the contract where you’re not supposed to lie to me?” His voice was every bit as quiet as it had been a few moments before, but it had gone an icy cold that sent a chill along her spine. And the slightest bit of heat through her *.

She managed to nod. “I did and I talked to Master Ian about the program. That was all.”

His mouth was right against her ear. “Are you sure that’s all you want to say?”

She kind of wanted to see what he would do. Maybe that made her a brat, maybe it made her a bad submissive, but she was so curious. They were testing each other. That was what they were supposed to do, right? Test each other’s boundaries. Get to know each other. She wanted to know how far Master Eric, the good and true knight to all females in trouble, might take this. “Yes, Sir. That’s all I want to say.”

He sat back. “I reserve the right to come back to this subject at a later date. We’ve only got a few minutes before the class is going to start and quite frankly, I would rather not admit that you need punishment on the second night of class. But don’t think I’ll forget.”