So it wasn’t about him wanting her to take them to that place where she made demands of his appearance as her sub.
It was that they were in that place where he was her sub and she his Mistress and he wanted his Mistress to have him as she wanted him.
She liked that.
Not to mention, he was right. His hair was getting pretty long. It looked good on him but she wasn’t a man-bun or man-with-a-ponytail type of girl.
“I, you, well … you can tell them to cut it to the length it was when I met you in Aryas’s red room.”
His deep, rough voice held humor when he replied, “Not sure a barber will understand I say to cut it to when my babe first met me.”
His babe.
Beautiful.
“Just brushing your collar, honey,” she explained.
“That might work,” he mumbled.
“Not too short,” she kept explaining. “Because I’ll want the opportunity to take hold.”
“Gotcha,” he replied and went on, “I’ll be done at a decent hour tonight. If you don’t have to work late, your turn to cook.”
She would have liked him to say neither of them would cook. He’d take her out to dinner. Maybe a movie after. Do things normal couples would do out in public where people could see them, where she could show the world the handsome man who shared her bed.
But he was coming to her place so she’d take that.
For now.
“I’ll need to hit a grocery store so I still might be a little late,” she shared.
“I’ll have time to hit a store sometime today. Text me what you need and I’ll get it in.”
She kept staring at her desktop. “Text you?”
“Yeah.”
Carefully, she noted, “It’d be easier to e-mail you.”
“I don’t have e-mail.”
More staring at her desktop. “You don’t have e-mail?”
“No.”
Evangeline was shocked.
“Who doesn’t have e-mail?”
More humor in his voice when he replied, “Me.”
“Branch, that’s … well, it’s crazy. Everyone has e-mail. How do you function?”
He didn’t respond and this lasted so long, she felt the need to call his name, worried they’d been cut off.
“Branch?”
“Here,” he grunted, no amusement now.
Oh Lord.
He didn’t have e-mail because …
She didn’t know.
But the reason was something that had to do with the fact that he didn’t take her out to restaurants and he demanded she sign an NDA before she’d met him.
It had been so long since she’d been reminded of that last, she felt a chill slide over her skin.
She didn’t know him at all, not really.
She knew him. She knew a lot about him.
But she still didn’t know him at all.
“I sense you get me,” he murmured.
She didn’t.
She also did.
“Kind of,” she replied quietly.
“I’m not everyone,” he stated.
No, he wasn’t.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“My win,” he said the same way, and she couldn’t argue it was. Then he said the words she was experiencing. “And it feels shit.”
Damn.
“If you ever knew, which you won’t,” he continued, “just sayin’, you’d wish you didn’t.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she returned quickly.
“I’m sure for the both of us.”
“Branch—”
“Text me what you need at the store.”
“Honey—”
“Just text me, baby. Yeah?”
She closed her mouth and let the silence linger, but when he didn’t break it, she did.
“I’ll text you.”
“Cool. See you tonight.”
And there was that.
So she’d grab hold.
“Yes, Branch. See you tonight.”
“Later, Angie.”
“Later, honey.”
He disconnected and Evangeline stared at her phone, feeling uneasy regardless of the fact she had the task of writing out a grocery list, texting the damned thing to Branch, meaning he’d be shopping for them and also home for her to cook for him that night.
Still, she had him.
But she didn’t and he was holding huge things back from her.
It was coming clear he could be stubborn too.
She already knew that.
What she was sensing for the first time was that maybe they were evenly matched.
But in any game, someone had to win.
And for the first time since they’d started to play it, Evangeline was worried that she might be the one who would lose.
* * *
That afternoon, Evangeline was walking into the office after she’d been through an inspection with a client, when Mercy, the receptionist/assistant the agents used, greeted her.
“Hey, Evangeline,” she said on a smile, and Evangeline started to smile back and offer her own greeting when Mercy carried on, “a Mr. Lange came in a few minutes ago. Since you were on the board scheduled to return about now, I asked him if he wanted to wait. He said yes so I showed him to your office.”
For a second, she didn’t know who Mr. Lange was.
“Mr. Lange?” she asked.
“Mr. Lange,” Mercy replied, with emphasis, her smile turning huge, her eyes doing the same.
With that, she knew.
Stellan Lange, a Dom at the Honey, actually the Dom at the Honey, since Aryas often traveled the West to oversee all his clubs so he wasn’t in town that much to take that role.
In other words, Amélie was queen, Aryas the king, and Stellan was prince regent, reigning over the club in the king’s absence.
He was also a good guy. She liked him. And if she admitted it, she would have actually liked to have played with him, mostly because he was just that handsome.
In truth, until Branch, she’d actually never met a man as handsome as Stellan. Tall and dark, lean and fierce, Dom of Doms, in some of her fantasies pre- (and in most of them post-) Kevin, she’d imagined having a go at switching him.
And she didn’t mean that in the way she’d use that tool on his ass (though that was part of the fantasy).
She meant convincing him with her awesome Mistress powers to switch sides.
This she didn’t know at the time was foreshadowing of the fact that what she was looking for, but didn’t know it, was an alpha-sub.
As strange as it might seem, however, she’d always thought he’d hook up with Amélie. Why she thought this, since they both were Dominants, she didn’t know. They just suited each other with their mutual sophistication, and any time they spent together, which was often at the club, you could sense the chemistry. And as Evangeline well knew, two Doms could get what they needed, playing together with a sub or subs, ending that play with each other.
Although it was a definite surprise, it wasn’t outlandish that he’d show at her office. When he’d met her, he’d thrown some business her way, friends and associates looking for homes. It was a nice thing to do, considering they all were wealthy so her commissions had been amazing. And he hadn’t stopped doing this.
But she hadn’t found his home for him, though she’d been to it a few of times for parties he’d invited her to, because he was a good guy. They were business networking parties and she’d been able to score some clients.
The other parties were of a different variety.
Stellan liked to play and he took that home with private parties he hosted that he was choosy about who attended.
It was an honor to get the invites, and although she didn’t come to play, she’d definitely gone.
Stellan threw one heck of a party, in a number of ways.
So she’d enjoyed them.
This was mostly watching him work. With his demanding, affectionate style of Domination, she’d gotten a ton of ideas.
But now, smiling at Mercy and mumbling her thanks before heading toward the hall, she thought it would be surprising if he was looking for a new place. His house was close to Amélie’s, though in a basin in Paradise Valley opposite Amélie’s mountain. The streets leading to it were right in the city but they seemed to meander through massive lots that looked more like Southwestern desert ranches and not the veritable mansions they were.