“If you’ve eaten, you can hang out while I do it. If you haven’t, you can eat with me,” she finished.
“I can also come back in an hour,” he said low.
She locked eyes with him.
He needed it played this way?
She’d play it any way he needed.
“No, you cannot,” she replied just as low.
They battled with their eyes.
When he didn’t back down, she asked softly, “Do you want to experience what I’ve decided to do to make my big boy come for me?”
His delay in reply lasted too long, forcing her stomach to twist as panic edged in.
But finally, he answered curtly, “Yes.”
“Then you wait until I eat. Now, Branch, have you eaten?”
His gaze moved back to the stove before returning to her. “Not anything that was as good as that looks and smells.”
He had no idea, but she was about to rock his world.
This being, of course, before she hoped to God she rocked his world.
“Then come in, grab a beer. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”
She wasn’t about to tell him she didn’t drink beer. The five varieties currently in her fridge she’d purchased guessing he did, but not knowing what he liked.
Instead, she got busy finishing the meal, and as she did so, she came to understand the flaw in her plan.
To Branch, what was going on between them was not about getting to know you. She could have no idea what Aryas shared, but her guess was that Branch would need some kind of assertion that the Domme Aryas was setting him up with would know the score. Therefore, he would assume Evangeline knew the score (and she did).
She was just changing the score.
Something he didn’t know and she couldn’t let on.
Therefore, after he got his beer (he was an ale drinker, good to know) he moved (no cargo pants this time, just an olive drab cargo shirt and jeans, both looking awesome on him) to the island and she had no conversational gambit.
And as she carried on sorting out dinner, he didn’t offer one.
Instead, she realized with some disquiet, he stood still at the island with his hand wrapped around the beer bottle and stared out her kitchen window, looking both oddly uncomfortable and like the view to her pool was not fascinating, but a lifeline.
Surreptitiously watching him, suddenly she was questioning the wisdom of forcing even half an hour of domesticity on Branch whatever-his-last-name-was.
At least this early in the game.
Just as suddenly, she had an idea that segued into the idea she’d had earlier that would make all of this possibly easier on him.
So after she pulled out the bread, drained the pasta and turned to him to hand him one of the two plates she got down, she declared, “Usually, I eat in front of the TV. Go ahead and dig in.”
And with that, she piled up her plate, topped up her wineglass and went to the TV.
By the time he joined her (with double the food on his plate—apparently whatever he had for dinner really didn’t cut it), she had a DIY program on that she was hoping they’d both find interesting enough while she wowed him (she hoped) with her cooking and then got him into the zone where he was clearly far more comfortable being.
“You put pepperoni in your tomato sauce?” he asked.
With her feet up on the coffee table, nestled in the corner of her couch opposite Branch, who was sitting both feet on the floor in the corner of his, hunched over his plate like he was going to dine and dash in her home, she looked to him.
“It isn’t tomato sauce, as such. It’s meat sauce,” she answered.
He looked back to the TV, shoveling in spaghetti and muttering, “Now I get why you got that ass.”
For a second, she froze at what sounded like an insult.
“Next time, double it,” he kept muttering.
She grinned at her fork before she pushed it into her mouth.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who liked ass.
“Can you give me the secret to this bread, or if you do, will you have to kill me?”
God, he was being funny.
Which meant he was killing her.
In a good way.
There was nothing better than a man who was funny.
Except a beautiful man with a great ass who liked her ass and her cooking and her playing with him the way she liked to play … who was funny.
“I brush it with olive oil and a little truffle oil before I sprinkle on the cheese,” she answered.
See?
She’d definitely not been home just half an hour.
“Shit’s amazing,” he mumbled.
She felt like doing a cartwheel.
She kept her seat and kept eating.
“My guess is, the answer is a yes,” he went on, still eating, eyes to the TV, “but to confirm. You come lookin’ for me at the Pound last night?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
His gaze slid to her. “Why?”
Her gaze stayed on him. “Because you’re mine.”
He seemed to consider that, but only for a few seconds, before he returned, “Not then.”
“Oh yes you were, handsome,” she replied quietly. “You just didn’t know it yet.”
He adjusted his ass in the seat, the only time he showed physically that he’d come to her as told, and murmured, eyes back to the TV, “Well, I do now.”
“Excellent,” she murmured back and resumed eating and not quite watching the TV.
But as she did, a thought occurred to her and, although it was risky, she decided to go with it.
“I’d been looking for you a long time, Branch,” she admitted.
His attention came back to her but he said nothing.
“You weren’t easy to find.”
“Stunned you managed it. Think you can guess I’m a man who, if he doesn’t want to be found, makes that so.”
“It took me a month and I had to attend a Pound to manage it,” she shared.
“Determined,” he replied.
“I told you I liked what I saw in the red room,” she reminded him. “If you didn’t learn this last night, I get what I want and I don’t mind being creative in doing it.”
There seemed to be humor there and gone before he noted, “Saw you wield that whip, so obviously you can take care of yourself, but before that, would have said you showin’ there wasn’t real smart.”
“There was no threat there,” she returned. “People so zoned out they can barely stand are hardly in a position to bother a sober woman with a baton even if she isn’t exactly a hulk and she’s wearing six-inch platforms.”
“It was a tame night.”
She felt her eyes grow big.
“And it was early,” he continued.
Early?
It’d been after one in the morning.
“What’d I miss?” she asked, curious.
“Catfights. Overdoses. Voyeurs hearing about it, showing, thinking they can watch and getting sucked in, then freaking way the fuck out either because of a bad trip or, say, they’re a chick and it strikes them all of a sudden that they might not have wanted to eat some passed-out junkie’s pussy.”
Her lip curled.
Branch watched it with no expression before he spoke on.
“Yeah, like I said,” he looked back to the TV, “last night was a tame night.”
“Do you go there often?”
“Nope.”
That was good.
“You don’t go there at all now, Branch.”
Still hunched over his plate, facing the TV, his gaze slid to hers.
Before he could respond, she kept at him.
“You have someone else that takes care of you?”
“Evange—”
“She’s gone,” Evangeline stated quietly, but firmly. “Be she one or multiple, Branch. When I said you’re mine, you’re mine, handsome. I do not share.”
He held her gaze
Then he looked away and murmured, “Not a loss. She sucks at it.”
Evangeline carefully and silently let out a long breath of not only relief but exultation because he didn’t fight it and the “She sucks at it” inferred that he felt Evangeline did not.
He finished his food first and she took her time finishing hers, doing this purposefully, regardless of the fact that he seemed uncomfortable again, sitting on the couch with her, still hunched over his now empty plate like he didn’t know what to do with himself.