A couple of days into this, Jonas was already driving me out of my mind.
Not because he was doing anything wrong. That was the worst part. He was being patient, methodical, and maddeningly consistent about all of it, like he had all the time in the world to drag me through the process one careful step at a time while I felt like I was vibrating out of my skin.
He had made me redo the checklist twice.
The first time because I had marked interested on almost everything, which had felt fair to me at the time because I had been excited and curious and in no mood to play picky when the man I wanted was finally taking me seriously. He had looked at it for about thirty seconds before calmly sliding it back across the table and telling me to do it again because it was obvious I had not read half of it.
The second time had gone even worse, because according to Jonas it was also obvious I was choosing things I thought he would like instead of being honest about what actually interested me.
That had earned me a long look and a quiet, “Try again, baby girl.”
“Baby girl?” I repeated, like I was only teasing and not trying to throw him off from making me redo the whole thing again.
His eyes lifted to mine. “Yes.”
I looked at him. “So if you get to call me baby girl, what do I call you?”
“I prefer Daddy.”
I thought maybe he was joking at first, but he sat there with a look serious enough to dare me to laugh.
Daddy.
The word just sat there between us, and I lost my nerve so fast it almost pissed me off. I dropped my eyes back to the checklist like that had been my plan all along, but my brain was still stuck on it. Not because I didn’t want to call him that. That was the problem. I did. It just felt too big, too real, like if I said it out loud I would not be teasing him anymore. I would be giving him something. Claiming him right back.
Eventually he had sat me down and gone through it with me himself, line by line, making me talk through what I was actually curious about and what experience I had with any of it. That part had been humiliating in a way I had not expected. Not because I had no sex life, because I definitely had, but because once I had to say it all out loud, there was no dressing it up. Compared to him, compared to the world he clearly knew inside and out, my experience looked exactly like what it was.
Vanilla.
He had not made me feel stupid about it. If anything, he had done the opposite. He had told me more than once that if I was going to trust him with this, then he needed the truth so he could do better by me.
Which was sweet.
And helpful.
And still somehow managed to feel like one giant yellow highlighter dragged across every difference between us.
Still, it had narrowed things down. He had made me actually pick out what I wanted to try first instead of just circling everything that sounded remotely filthy and hoping for the best. Some of it had been easy. I already knew I liked the idea of being lectured for misbehavior, of being corrected when I was acting up, and I had wanted to try paddling badly enough that just saying it out loud made me warm all over.
Other things had surprised me once we got into them. Like the thought of verbal degradation and there were whole pages of role play options I had not expected to even pause on, and getting down to different types of bondage. Going through all of it had forced me to stop acting like I wanted everything and admit what actually interested me, what I was curious about, what I thought I could handle, and what made my stomach turn over in a way that felt more like nerves than fear. It had also shown me the places where what I wanted overlapped with what he liked.
That should have made me feel better. .
Instead, by Monday afternoon, I was wound so tight I could barely think.
Because the weekend had passed, and the most physical attention I had gotten out of him was breakfast in his lap and the occasional brush of his hand at my back when he moved me somewhere. He had been careful. Deliberate. Too deliberate, if you asked me.
Everything was moving too slowly.
By the time I got home from class, I was already irritated enough to do something stupid, and the second I walked past his office and saw him at his desk with his phone pressed to his ear, I decided that today was probably as good a day as any.
I went straight into his office, dropped my bag by the couch, and sat down with my textbook. Then I stretched out and propped my feet up on the cushion like I knew damn well I was not supposed to.
His gaze cut over to me immediately.
I ignored it.
This was the fun part.