Page 54 of At Her Pleasure
“We got back before high tide.” Neil shrugged. “Ninety minutes. He was stretched out taking a nap in the middle of the sandbar and had written Fuck You in the sand. When we pulled up, he said we could wait another goddamned ten minutes because he was in the middle of a good dream about a mermaid with…”
Neil stopped at Ros’s amused expression, but Lawrence finished it. “High-capacity seashells.”
“Figures,” Cyn said. “A man faces death, and his final thoughts are about big tits.”
“What else has greater cosmic meaning?” Tiger asked, fending off Skye’s elbow with a grin.
“Where do you go after you leave here, Mick?” Vera took a bite of mustard potato salad.
“Texas. Three-day kink fest at a San Antonio club. The event isn’t for a few weeks, but a face-to-face is good for identifying logistics and resources requiring more setup time.”
All of which was true, but he would also be handling some other work in the area. “This is a damn good burger,” he told Tiger. “The whole spread. You forget how much better food is when it’s homemade.”
He'd had a bite of Cyn’s veggie burger too. She’d added traditional burger trappings, and it had been pretty good.
She’d eaten about half and was taking a break, sitting back and listening. Her hand had moved to his side under his untucked shirt, fingers resting just above the waistband of his jeans.
Putting his arm on the top of her chair, he slid his thumb over the point of bone at her nape. His other fingers were long enough to play with the bra strap under her scoop neckline. The contact drew her gaze to his face.
She must not step outside club lines much with her regular subs, because it seemed new to her, doing things he’d do to a woman that attracted him. Like on a date.
She wasn’t shrugging him off, which was good. But she also had a more aggressive idea of what she wanted from a date. As her hand moved back to his thigh, she gripped it pretty high. Her smallest finger nestled against the give of his testicles. It wasn’t a glass table, but he wasn’t sure that would have stopped her.
The blatant hint of her desires had things humming between them. He’d dropped the ice pack beneath the chair. That and the heating pad that had preceded it, plus the continual flood of endorphins, were doing a good job on pain management.
Neil and Abby were across from him, and he noticed Abby looking at him, in that off-to-the-left way she had. “Do the demons talk to you?” she asked.
Other conversations paused. However, though Neil’s gaze became more alert, he seemed relaxed and in sync with his wife. As Abby leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, his long-fingered hand rested lightly on her back. Her attention remained on Mick.
The truth made the most sense. Cyn’s gaze was on him as he responded. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’d do about anything in the world to get them to shut up.”
Abby’s hazel eyes flickered, their attention moving to his ear, his jaw. Slow, before she slid her gaze right onto his. So brief, and yet the piercing regard was effective as a bullet. Bullets only took seconds to hit their target. He thought of the times in history when people with mental illness were thought to be seers. There might be some truth to it.
“He’s honest about his insides,” Abby said to Cyn. “There’s that, at least. Even if the numbers don’t add up yet.” She gave Mick a shrewd appraisal, head to waist. “And he’s pretty, in a rough way. That’s good. You need rough.”
Cyn snorted. “What I need is dessert. Where’s Ros’s famous Snicker pie?”
“It’s someone on the Internet’s famous Snicker pie, modified for the vegan at the table, but I’m happy to copy it, since it only requires a few ingredients and two hours in the freezer,” her boss responded. “Who’s having a piece?”
She and Lawrence rose. While Ros pulled the pie out of the freezer, Lawrence found dessert plates. A few minutes later, nine slices were doled out, since no one was refusing dessert. A container of Cool Whip was passed around for topping. His kind of people.
When Ros put a piece in front of Cyn, Mick noted she rested a hand on his Mistress’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze, before she also gave Mick a slice.
“It was good you could join us tonight, Mick,” the TRA CEO said, but her blue eyes hadn’t lost her earlier watchfulness. His ignominious collapse had raised questions he’d not answered, and there was no doubt, even at a table full of Dommes, that Ros was top of this pyramid.
“It’s one of the nicest nights I’ve had in a while.” He’d learned how to be mostly honest about what he was feeling, around people who led normal lives. Meaning those who didn’t get beat up during business appointments.
She nodded and returned to her chair. Cyn didn’t say anything, just pointed her fork at his pie and had a mouthful of her own.
Dessert and coffee took about an hour, the TRA women and their men relaxed around the table. Pushed back from it, arms stretched over the backs of adjacent chairs, and that wasn’t all a boy-girl thing. Vera sat next to Skye, and often pushed her shoulder against the other woman’s with fondness as the table erupted in laughter or comments over whatever banter or anecdote was being shared.
When Neil rose to grab more beers for him and Tiger—Lawrence and Mick having chosen coffee for their after-dinner beverage—Neil caught Lawrence in an affectionate head lock and planted a smacking kiss on the top of it before Lawrence broke the lock and elbowed him.
“You’re so cute, Munch, I just have to squeeze you sometime.”
“Get your hands off me, Twizzler. Or I’ll ask my woman to beat you up.”
Mick expected the nicknames came from their height differences. Neil was extra tall and lean, and Lawrence brawny but a few inches shorter.