“Yes,” he said.
I should have said something cooler than that. Something casual. Something that made it seem like I wasn’t suddenlyaware of every inch of my body and the way the kitchen felt too warm and the way his eyes had not left me.
Instead I just nodded.
And he nodded back like we had settled something reasonable.
Maybe to him, we had.
To me, it felt like stepping off the edge of something and smiling on the way down.
Chapter Six: Negotiations
I woke up to the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen. It wasn’t loud, not really, but I was still wired from the night before, so it pulled me up out of sleep almost immediately. For a second I just lay there face pressed to pillow, still foggy and trying to really wake up, and then it hit.
Jonas standing in the kitchen last night, saying it starts tomorrow.
He had said it in that same calm, matter of fact way he seemed to say everything, and now tomorrow had officially turned into today. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and checked the time. I still had two hours before I needed to be at work. Normally that would have meant rolling over and sleeping until the absolute last minute, but instead I was suddenly wide awake, because two hours was two hours I could spend with Jonas, and apparently that was all it took for me to get moving.
I got out of bed, checked myself in the mirror, and did what I could to make myself look a little more alive. Nothing dramatic, just enough that I didn’t look like I had face-planted into my pillow and lost a fight. Then I stood there for a second and immediately got stuck in my own head.
How was this supposed to go? Was I meant to stroll into the kitchen and say something ridiculous like good morning,Master? Was I supposed to act normal? Was I allowed to touch him? Was there some rulebook I had missed in the twelve hours since he said yes?
I stared at myself for another second, then let out a breath.
Okay. Normal. Or at least whatever my version of normal was going to be now.
By the time I stepped into the kitchen, he was plating breakfast. Not toast. Not cereal. Not something quick he’d thrown together on autopilot. Breakfast. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, the kind of full, hot meal that made the whole kitchen smell rich and warm and way too domestic for what we had agreed to the night before.
Jonas looked up when I came in, and if he was affected at all by the fact that today was apparently the day we started whatever this was, he gave none of it away.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
I leaned one shoulder against the doorway and tried for casual even though I was suddenly very aware of my own body and wishing I had thrown on something other than flannel pjs. “I got some sleep. Hard to do much more than that when someone has you a little excited to start the day.”
Meaning him.
Entirely him.
Because I had spent half the night thinking about what exactly starting meant, what he would have me do, what his version of a trial dynamic looked like, and if I was being completely honest with myself, a lot of that had turned into thinking about how sex worked into it.
His mouth shifted just enough to tell me he heard exactly what I meant, but whatever he thought about it stayed locked behind that same calm expression. “I was just finishing up,” he said. “I was going to wake you.”
My eyes followed the shift of his shoulders under his shirt and then dropped to his hands as he dished out eggs, and that was enough to bring back the image of him in the club with a paddle in those same hands, black gloves on.
I moved a little farther into the kitchen and watched him finish plating the food, because apparently even that was hot now. “You know I don’t have work until later, right?”
“I know.” He picked up the plate. “I wanted you to get breakfast in first.”
I let out a soft laugh. “Have you seen me eat any form of breakfast this past week? I’m more of a five more minutes person.”
For the past couple of weeks, mornings had been a blur, and Jonas was usually out the door long before I ever got my ass out of bed.
“That’s going to change,” he said as he carried the plate to the dining table. “Breakfast is important.”
I followed him, half amused and half bracing myself. “Is this one of your rules?”
“Yes.”