Page 96 of At Her Pleasure
He cleared his throat. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yeah. But I don’t just want a Mistress. I want you.”
She didn’t pretend to mistake his meaning. She lost a full shade of color, which could have amused him if the moment hadn’t held such gravity. “Mick, as of a few days ago, I’ve never even been in a formal relationship outside of Progeny. I’m not ready—”
“Yeah, you are. Everything I’ve seen and felt the past few days says you are.”
She narrowed her gaze. “A good submissive doesn’t interrupt his Mistress.”
“I didn’t say I was a good submissive. Just that I am one.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “What does that even mean, a relationship with you? You said you had to leave.”
He saw the brief flare of hope in her eyes, that maybe his declaration had changed that. It was quickly replaced with self-directed horror that he’d made her consider the relationship question at all.
He loved that flare, even as it tore up what was left of his heart to douse its light.
“I do have to leave. Doesn’t change what I’m saying.”
He rose. He was in his own skin, being himself, riding a strength of purpose that for the first time in a long while felt clean. “It isn’t about setting up house, or making you commit to me. It’s me committing to you. The only place I’ve ever felt like was home. You think that sounds stupid as shit, creating a home out of the memories of a girl I spent an hour with a decade ago. But when you live the way I do, having the chance to spend a few more days with a woman who understands me…that’s a lifetime, Cyn. I’ll take that lifetime, if you’ll give it to me.”
She gazed at him a long moment. “I want you,” she said slowly, “to shut up and weed. I mean it.”
His lips curved. “Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
Cyn watched him find a bucket, then move to the bed she’d indicated needed weeding. He knelt on the ground and started fishing among the flowers. The solar lights and night sky didn’t offer much light for that kind of work, so she picked up a flashlight and brought it to him. She dropped it by his side, along with a foam garden mat, printed with cheerful daisies. “Use that for your knees.”
She returned to the bed she’d been breaking up with the hoe. But by the time she arrived, he was at her side, picking up the hoe before she could. “Without seeming too sexist, seems this is a better job for a man with no gardening experience, while the weeding is for delicate, skilled hands. I know some Mistresses look for reasons to punish their subs, but you don’t really want me to mangle your flowers, do you?”
Sensible. Cyn pointed to the ground. She’d marked the bed size she wanted with plastic stakes, a five by three rectangle. “Chop this area up, about six inches down. Go easy. Don’t break open those cuts on your back. I’m not in the mood to dress them again.”
He grunted assent and got to it. She moved to the flower bed, ostensibly to weed, but mostly she watched him. He moved carefully, respecting his body’s need to recuperate, but his strength was evident in how easily he turned the earth. She’d have a new bed in no time. She’d have to think about what to do with him for the rest of the night.
Normally, that would be a no brainer, but a lot had happened. Plus, when he finished the task, she could tell he was flagging. Even though he was too good at covering it, it was difficult for a man to hide his physical or mental state from her. His body had had enough.
“What’s next?” he asked.
She pointed to a hammock strung between two maple oaks. It was tied low on the trunks, far enough off the ground to clear it when weighed down by an occupant, but not much higher. She liked trailing her fingers over the grass, and having the cluster of zinnias behind it nodding over her with their bright colors.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I can keep helping.”
“Go lie down. Don’t argue.”
He made a face, but moved in that direction. Getting into a hammock that low to the ground took obvious effort, but once settled on his side, his arm tucked under his head, she could tell his body gave a sigh of relief, sinking deeper into the cradle of the ropes.
For a while, the quiet was broken only by night creatures and the thumps and rustles as she tossed weeds into the bucket. She assumed he’d drifted off to sleep, but when she sat back on her heels, he spoke through the gloom, his voice a calm stroke along tonight’s overworked nerves.
“I get the house and yard, how they connect to Cissy. But what about the gardening? You really get into it.”
She dumped the bucket in the compost, turning it several times with the crank so the contents would smother the weeds and break them down into nutrients. Then she turned the bucket over and sat on it facing him, bare feet braced, knees spread.
“I don’t sleep much. When I first got the place, I’d stay up, paint walls, walk around the backyard. Then one day Vera brought me a flat of flowers at the office. There’d been a sale at the garden store. I brought them out here. Planted them with the help of a big spoon from my kitchen, using a tea pitcher as a watering can. That night I slept better than I had in a while. Don’t know why. I just did.”
She shrugged. “So I started doing more of it. Got some garden tools. Put up the hammock. Used that mosquito netting tied up over it to keep the bugs away when I slept out here. I’d fall asleep listening to crickets and looking at the flowers.”
Watching them dance and whisper with the wind, like a bunch of giggling girls. Like sisters.
His fingers were curled in the rope above his head, his shirt open at his throat, revealing the gleam of the skeleton against curling dark hair and warm skin. One knee was up, rocking back and forth, denim stretching and creasing.