“And he hasn’t called or texted?” Serena asked.
“Nope.” She’d gotten nothing. She’d heard his door slam at eleven a.m. the day before and nothing from him since. She wasn’t going to admit to sitting and waiting for sounds from the hallway. She definitely wasn’t going to admit that she’d spied out her peephole at every creak of the floor. All she’d gotten to see was Mrs. Hannigan wheeling her groceries in and that girl old man Mussey said was his daughter, but Bridget really knew was a hooker because of her shoes. And the fact that she looked absolutely nothing like Mr. Mussey. And the fact that she’d watched the chick counting her cash one day. Bridget was fairly certain she overcharged since the “visits” never lasted more than twenty or thirty minutes.
She was totally going to end up like Mr. Mussey, hiring call boys so she had some kind of human connection. She wouldn’t even be able to say it was her son since she was never going to get married. She would have to call him her nephew or something. How pathetic. She couldn’t even get her future hooker right.
“Did we lose her?” Chris asked.
“She’s figuring out how dire her situation is.” Serena snapped her fingers. “Come out of the pity party. Here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to write a letter of apology to your Dom for fleeing the scene of the crime. Then you’re going to make him dinner.”
“So you think I should kill him.” It would be an interesting way out of her embarrassment.
Serena huffed. “Brat. You can cook a little. You make a very nice enchilada bake. Do that and bake your chocolate chip cookies. Then you serve it to him naked.”
Chris gave the plan a thumbs-up. “All the easier for him to spank you, my dear. Because that is very likely happening.”
“It won’t save you, but it might—and I say might—put him in a better mood when he gets to the spanking part. So the sex was vanilla?” Serena asked.
There hadn’t been a particular kink to it, but something about the way Will had forced her to look into his eyes, made her talk about the sex, had been…a revelation. “It was intense. No bondage or spanking, but it was intense. It was like I couldn’t breathe without him. That sounds stupid, but for those few moments, I felt connected to him in a way I never have before.”
Serena pointed her way. “And that, my dear, is why you ran.”
Shit. She’d gotten scared and she’d run away so she wouldn’t have to face the fact that the next morning would have been a letdown. Or that he hadn’t felt the same, that it had all been one sided.
“I don’t know that it matters now.” His silence was answer enough. If he’d wanted to talk, even to yell at her, he would have shown up on her doorstep. Hell, she hadn’t even warranted a text telling her it had been nice, but see ya later, baby.
There was a knock on the door. A pounding really.
“Are you expecting someone?” Chris asked, getting to his feet. Despite his status as a big ol’ bottom, he tended to be very take-charge when his Dom wasn’t around and they were all alone. It probably had something to do with him having to watch she and Serena almost die once.
“No.” She let Chris do his thing. The building had a security guard, but it made Chris feel better to answer the door.
He stalked over and looked out the peephole. “Shit. Serena, I believe our afternoon is over. Get Tristan ready and I’ll take you home. Bridget, this one is for you.”
She stood. “Of course, it’s for me. It’s my condo.”
She threw open the door because Chris would have told her if it was someone scary.
Except he hadn’t.
Will stood in the doorway, his eyes red and his normally perfect clothes wrinkled. There was a scowl on his face and he held up her contract. “Did you bother to read this? Or did it mean so little to you that you left it behind along with your underwear. I threw those away since I amended our contract and you are no longer allowed the privilege of wearing them.”
She had to stop her jaw from dropping. “What? You amended our contract? Can you do that?” She looked back at Chris. “Can he do that?”
Chris shrugged as he picked up Tristan’s baby bag, obviously eager to make his getaway. “He’s the Dom. I think he can do most of what he wants.”
Will walked inside, not bothering to wait for an invitation. “Ah, you’re having a party. Tell me. Did this party start yesterday morning? Is that why I woke up and my sub was nowhere to be found? I amended that part of the contract, too. I thought it would be obvious that when we spend the night fucking like jackrabbits, you’re supposed to be there in the morning.”
“Dude, company.” She could feel herself blush.
“Oh, sweetheart, if you didn’t want to have this argument in public, you shouldn’t have had people over. I am tired. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours so I am incapable of being polite.” He slapped the contract on her breakfast bar. “And don’t you dare dude me again.”
“Will, it was good to see you. Don’t be too hard on her. She’s smart about so many things. This is not one of them.” Serena winked her way as she made her exit.
“Talk to you later.” Chris gave her the universal signal for call me later.
And they were gone. And they called her a coward.
“Why have you been awake for twenty-four hours?”
He glanced down at his watch. “Twenty-nine hours. I had one of those days. And nights. ER got slammed. Big accident on 75. Twenty-car pileup. Lots of head trauma. Then when I thought I could come home, some idiot decided to skateboard without a helmet. You know those flips they like to do? He didn’t quite get it right. Surprisingly enough the concrete was harder than his head.”
So he had a good reason he hadn’t come over. “Whoa. Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I had to remove a portion of his skull. I can’t do anything until the swelling goes down. I’ve probably got a day or two before I have to decide. I intend to spend those days pounding your ass.”
Now that they were alone and she really looked at him, she realized she wasn’t afraid of him in any way except the obvious. He might break her heart, but he wouldn’t hurt her. She relaxed a bit because he was here and that meant it wasn’t over. “In an anal sex way? Or in a spanking way? You’ll have to be more specific because my brain can’t differentiate.”