Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There wasn’t room for both of us in the shower, really, so I cleaned her off quickly, set her free, then gave myself a fast rinse, before coming back out.

I didn’t know what we were now, but I knew what I wanted, so it was worth asking.

“Can I sleep in here? With you?”

She’d put a set of her black silk pajamas back on, and retied her blindfold’s bow—I hadn’t asked her to, but maybe it made her feel more comfortable.

“That depends,” she began, sounding prim. “Do you snore?”

“No,” I said.

“Would you lie about snoring, to get to sleep beside me?”

“One hundred percent, absolutely, duh.”

That made her snicker. “Okay, fine. But if you keep me up, I reserve the right to kick you out again.”

I would hold my breath to stay in her room, if I had to. “Fair.”

“Next question then,” she said, seemingly looking around her room. “Do you have a nighttime kilt?”

“Uh…no.”

“What do you sleep in, then?”

“At home? Nothing. Usually.”

“Except for that,” she said, waving her hand at my legs, where my cuff was.

“Yeah, except for that. Otherwise my dick rolls me over in my sleep when I get a hard on.”

She gawked again—and then laughed.

“What? You—you think I’m joking?” I said, sounding offended—which only made her laugh more.

“It’s a little BDSM’y, isn’t it?” she asked, her nose wrinkling, before crawling into the bed I’d made.

She got under the sheets—whereas I lay on top of them, as chaste as I could be while also being naked and unchained, beside her. “I dunno. For me, it’s just a fact of life,” I said, as she turned toward me, tucking her arm beneath her pillow. I listened to her breathing, knowing she was still awake.

“You know,” she said eventually, “people fetishize me too. Just in different ways. They think I’m helpless, that I can’t fend for myself—and as satisfying as it is to prove them wrong, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to.”

“Well, those people are stupid. You’re amazing.”

For someone who read books in his spare time, I had probably picked the world’s least inspired adjective.

But if I told her how I really felt, and what I wanted from her—from us —she would have had every right to shove me out the door without a parachute.

And…I was hard.

Again.

Goddammit.

I put my hands behind my head, hopefully cushioning some of her pillows from the worst of my horns, and sighed. “If you feel him in the night, ignore him. He’s just curious.”

Satin gave me a sleepy smile, and rested her free hand on the center of my chest. “Goodnight, Ace.”

“G’night, Satin.”