Now that I really thought about it, each time I’d growled in his ear, each time I’d given him an order, and each time I’d demanded that he stop squirming around trying to rush to get us where he wanted to be, he’d responded with complete compliance.
Fuck.
It hadn’t even registered for me just how well he’d listened.
Now what Johnny said was starting to make a lot more sense. Had I found myself a sub who’d never truly had the chance to let that part of himself be free? If so, him going into brat mode when I couldn’t meet his needs made a hell of a lot more sense, as did his not replying to the text I’d sent him. If I’d focused on him instead of instantly getting annoyed when he’d started whining at me in the hallway, I could have set up a beautiful scene for us later in the night, simply by ordering him to his hotel room and telling him to have a meal delivered, put on a movie, and get in the bed naked to wait for me.
Instead, I’d told him to fuck off, even if I hadn’t used those specific words, and denied us both the opportunity to see just how wild the night could have been, with him hyped up by need and anticipation.
I had the whole night built up in my head.
And I’d been a damned fool and crushed him.
Chapter 18
(Kit)
“Man, do you remember the night we went wandering around that waterfront carnival in Plymouth and you wound up dancing with that dude in the bear costume?” Knightly said as he refilled their glasses, then waved the bartender over for another bottle because there wasn’t a whole lot left in the first one.
“Hey, you were dancing with the clown,” Rebel replied.
Knightly had given up offering me any after Rebel declared that I was on babysitting duty for the night. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He’d attempted to press the issue, even going so far as to ask what the hell the point of our bodyguards was, but Rebel had shut that shit down hard by telling him that if he kept pressing me to drink with them, we were leaving.
Shocked the hell out of me, but I appreciated it after my last run-in with Tequila.
“Was a fine-ass clown,” Knightly replied.
“Don’t you mean it was a clown with a fine ass?" Rebel shot back.
“One in the same, my friend. I thought I taught you that?”
Something flickered in Rebel’s eyes, enough to make me wonder what else Knightly had taught him and if us coming here tonight was really a good idea. We’d been mobbed when wefirst arrived and spent the first two hours taking pictures with fans and signing t-shirts, bras, jeans, and whatever else they’d wanted us to before we’d been able to slip away to a dimly lit table near the bar, where no one seemed to notice us.
The rest of our bandmates were still surrounded, camera flashes going off in their faces. I felt a little bad about abandoning them, but I’d have felt worse if I’d abandoned Rebel.
“Clowns were never my thing,” Rebel replied as he and Knightly eyed each other before kicking back their drinks.
Knightly raised an eyebrow. “And bears are?”
“The right kind, hell yeah!”
Damn, well, that was a new fact to file away. Drumming had left me cut, with a well-defined upper body, but I was nowhere close to being in bear territory and was suddenly hit with a pang of disappointment.
“So look,” Knightly said, pouring them both another drink. “I didn’t just come here to talk to you about clowns and bears.”
It was like he’d flipped a switch when he said that, changing the mood in an instant. Rebel slid the glass between his hands, an absent-minded gesture as he stared across the table at me.
“Are you paying attention?” Knightly asked.
“What’s that symbol?” Rebel asked, completely ignoring him while pointing to the tattoo that covered the back of my left hand.
“A Dara Knot,” I replied.
“That’s cool, he said, reaching over to trace a few of the lines. “Does it mean something?”
“Rebel!” Knightly snapped.
“In a minute, damn, I wanna know what it means,” Rebel said, removing his fingers from my person so he could pick up the drink and knock it back.