Page 5 of Sherwood
His jaw worked ever so slightly to the side, but the half-smile remained. “You’d be surprised.”
Maybe I would be.
“Rafe?” I asked. His thumb still ghosted over the back of my hand, a restless, searching kind of touch, like he couldn’t help himself.
“Yes?”
“Should we get started, then?”
He laughed then, a short laugh that huffed through him and ended with another one of those half-smiles. “That was very assertive. I feel like you’re about to scold me for showing up to a meeting unprepared.”
I smiled, although I was careful how much information I surrendered as I responded. “I oversee a lot of operations for the company I work for, which means a lot of meetings. A lot of giving hell.”
“That must be an incredible amount of responsibility,” Rafe said. He let go of my hand and then leaned back in his chair, studying me. “Is that why you came here tonight? You’d like some relief from it?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I also wanted this before I came into my job too. It took me some time to find the courage to seek it out.”
“Because of the time it didn’t end well,” he stated.
“That’s right.”
He regarded me for a moment and then spoke. “I’d like to play with you while I’m here in Sherwood, Marian, if you’re willing, but I believe we should move forward…deliberately.”
In that voice, with that accent,deliberatelysounded ironclad.
Absolute.
Knowing I probably wouldn’t like the answer, I asked, “Deliberatelymeans slowly, doesn’t it?”
“It’s purely selfish on my part,” he said, putting his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaning his head against his thumb and forefinger. His suit jacket stretched across his shoulders and clung to the heavy curves of his biceps. “Your newness excites me. I want to savor it. Taste every moment of it. And I have no interest in denying myself.”
The last sentence came out rougher than the ones before it, and heat pooled low in my belly in response.
“Oh,” I said, on a soft exhale. “I see.”
“I hope you do. Now the first thing I’ll need you to do is draft a list of hard limits—the things you have no interest in trying—and then a list of ‘maybe’ limits. Things that aren’t anever, but they’re also a ‘not right now’. And then”—his free hand flexed again as he said the next part—“I need you to tell me the things you want the most. The things you dream about having done to you, the things you would ask for every night if you had your way.”
“Okay,” I said, fighting not to shift in my seat. “I can—I can do that.”
Rafe pulled a black card from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. His name and phone number were inked there in a small font. A matte, dark gold. “You can text your list to me tomorrow, and then we can meet again tomorrow night.”
“Doyouhave any hard limits?” I asked suddenly. “Do dominants have those?”
“Of course they do, but as it happens, my own hard limits are very few. I only ask that…” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully, and then started again. “If we aren’t a good fit as a dom and sub, that’s perfectly all right, and we will part ways as friends. But I’m no more naturally a submissive or a switch than I am a badger or a lion, and I play best with someone who’s comfortable with that very inescapable reality.”
I looked at him again—this time not as a baby submissive in way over her head, but like I would a client or consultant or wayward COO. Like he was sitting in my Seattle office, staring at me from across my desk, armed to the teeth with his own unknowable corporate agenda. He was not a closed book—the barely suppressed restlessness and the smudges under his eyes betrayed too much for that—but he was also hardly easy to read.
Whether it was work, loneliness, or heartbreak that haunted him, I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it was all of them.
“Are you asking this because it’s happened before?” I asked.
He inclined his head. “You have your time when something didn’t end well, and I have mine.”
Curiosity pricked at my insides, but I’d had long years of practice at hiding it. “I don’t think you have to worry about that with me,” I reassured him. “I’m fairly certain I’m submissive to the core, and you’re only here temporarily as it is. Hardly enough time for more complicated feelings to emerge.”
He made a small noise of assent and then leaned forward, as if to stand. “In that case, darling, I very much look forward to hearing from you tomorrow.”
“Will we fuck?” I blurted inelegantly, needing to know. “When we play?”
