Looking at myself in the mirror of Noah’s bathroom, I lamented not having my makeup and facial products with me. He’d done his best preparing to have me in his home. Pretty sure the decorative glass jars holding makeup pads, cotton balls, and different colored toothbrushes in a cup on the counter were for my benefit. I hadn’t felt this much like preening since my grandma sent me a princess crown, wand, and jewelry set for my fifth birthday. Oh, to get my hands on the turquoise set again, shiny and gorgeous. And what I’d do to clutch some lip stain and gloss in my greedy fingers. Instead, I made due with Vaseline from the medicine cabinet, and pinched my cheeks before going down to breakfast.
I wanted to tease him.
Noah poked at something inside me, like never before, something playful, naughty and filthy.
If this was what it meant to be a shameless hussy, I was all in. I gargled with mouthwash, making sure I was as kissable as possible, and strutted into the kitchen wearing my shortest shorts.
I didn’t just want him to notice me, I wanted to be irresistible. And by that I meant, irresistible to his penis.
“Whatcha makin’?” I asked, waiting for him to turn arround and latch his eyes onto my daisy dukes.
The effect wasn’t exactly what I was after. “Country hash browns, eggs, coffee porn for you, and bacon. Flipped, not burnt.” He flicked his eyes at me. “Gotta concentrate. You’re going to want to put some long pants on.”
“What if I don’t want to wear pants? I already decided today is National Short Pants Day.”
Finally, I managed to pierce his complacency. “Suit yourself.” He raised a single eyebrow and gave me a menacing stare. Only instead of intimidating me, his contemptuous tone sparked my anger. “So long as you don’t mind freezing your ass off at the beach.”
I responded tersely, “And what if I don’t feel like going to the ocean?” Except that I did, I really, really did.
Maybe he’d take me hard on a picnic blanket, sea gulls screaming their approval overhead. “Did you ever think to ask me my opinion?” I bit out.
The shrill of a hot kettle went off. “Water’s boiling.” I announced the obvious.
Noah returned to the matter of my pants with sudden good humor. “It amuses me that you think you have a choice. Where I go, you go.” He shook his head, regarding me with interest, as if my demands perplexed him. As if my defiance were an oddity he couldn’t quite puzzle out.
How dare I, simple female property that I was, insist on inserting my own will.
“You can’t just force me to do what you want, Noah! You have to let me be myself!” I stomped my foot, and he nonchalantly dropped eggs into hot grease, putting a lid on the pan to stop the splatter.
“Be yourself. There’s nothing more I want in life than to watch what happens when Gigi is free to be her most pure, unadulterated self.” When he came up with this stuff out of the blue, stringing together words like poetry after hours of simple grunts and commands, it left me speechless.
He removed the lid of the fry pan and flipped the two eggs so they were a perfect pair, simmering over-easy, side by side, unbroken.
“That sounds great and all, Noah.”
“Daddy.” He stirred the salty bacon in the pan, and it was a sin how his forearms flexed and bulged with the smallest effort. “Please, call me daddy when we’re alone.”
I growled. “It sounds wonderful except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” The look on his face combined eagerness and tenderness and was more disturbing than his domineering obstinance.
“None of this is real! It’s hot as hell being your captive, but it’s not same as being in an actual relationship.” Steam wafted up from the tea kettle spout while Noah poured it over hot cocoa mix and coffee in my cup.
“Define real.” He weighed me with a critical squint, plated my eggs, bacon and pushed the coffee fix my way, expertly swirling the top with a whipped cream mountain and chocolate syrup. No matter what, I wasn’t letting him bribe me with his breakfast wizardry.
I continued, “Put it to you this way. What makes you think we stand a chance? You and me back in the ‘real’ world.” I stuck my tongue out to make my next point. “I tease. You ignore. We bicker.”
He stepped around the counter, captured my flailing hands, covered them with his steady ones, and I felt safe. “What makes you think that isn’t exactly how it’s supposed to be?” he asked. “We’ll never be bored.”
I answered in a rush of words, “I can’t hand you my heart, go back to work and have you go all silent and broody on me again.” I pretended not to notice his pained look. “That would be even worse than before!”
His voice was firm, final. “All relationships go through hell, little fox. Real ones make it out on the other side.” He took charge with quiet assurance. “I need to keep you in the woods with me a bit longer.”
If this were a movie, and I were watching, I’d know exactly what the heroine’s next move should be. Couple more days next to the forest with her personal, Grade A slab-o-beef and he’d be eating out of the palm of her hand. And spoiler alert, she’d love every minute of it.
So, yes, I put my big girl pants on, and we went to the beach.
It was a wonderful day.
We lived happily ever after.
I wish.
I did love the beach.
The entire time I’d lived in Briarville I’d never driven out to the black sands seaside. I felt as lucky as that little girl gifted costume jewelry on her birthday many years ago. While skipping along the shore, I stopped to pick up sand dollars, sea urchin shells, and one coveted abalone. The place was covered in treasure and there wasn’t a single other soul on the beach besides Noah and Woof and I.
We’d brought the pooch along for some exercise and he made me throw his stick a million times. By the time we were back at the cabin, bellies full, I was humming to myself, and becoming increasingly touchy-feely towards Noah.
But he had to go and throw his weight around again while we were drying dishes, “Come tomorrow you’ll get started on your garden chores.” His countenance was immobile, as if his word was the law of the land, to be followed without question by his good little slave. Noah thrived on routine. He was reliable, dependable, steady as a boulder. Meanwhile, my upbringing made it necessary for me to be ready to pack up and leave at any moment, and that combined with my natural impulsivity made for the kind of female tailormade to get on his nerves. It was no wonder we were constantly clashing.
“If you needed live in help, you should have just taken out an ad.” I sounded tough, but fought the desire to put his man candy in my mouth for dessert.
It actually watered, but he needn’t know that. I sighed at his sheer, gorgeous perfection.
His was an air of authority. Even while toweling dry the dinner dishes, his appearance demanded instant obedience, and for reasons beyond my limited understanding, that was a fact that made my lady parts eagerly act out his every command
An expression of satisfaction shone in his green eyes. “There is no such thing as coincidence, little fox. I was put in the unique position to make a big difference in your life. That is not a responsibility I’m going to fuck up.”
His words struck me both as a threat, and a promise. I wasn’t going to stick around and find out which. It was all fun and games playing hanky panky, spanky spanky. But living out in the middle of nowhere, in a secluded spot in the woods, as prisoner of a giant who made me thrill to the thought of him moving inside me was definitely not the real world.
I wish it were, I really did.
But life had schooled me on the ins and outs of what happened if you dared to love or cherish anything too hard.
Soon enough there came a day, reliable as rain, when you’d have to let it go.
By breakfast time the next day, I figured the best way to convince him that while it was a stretch to say I lived to obey, worship, and adore him completely, I’d at least play nice and do what he said. Found out, doing so was harder than it looked. But I was determined so when eight a.m. came around, and he started obsessing about chores again, I was agreeable. “Broccoli babies, sprinkle gently. Water the onion starts and the peas. Got it!” I spun around, nearly colliding with his powerful body. “Anything else?”
His fingers trailed down my temple, his eyes flat and as unreadable as stone. I shivered, and took a step back, bumping into the counter. It was almost as if he had a microscope which could peer into my mind. Did he know what I was scheming?
Nerves fluttered in my belly.
Nah. I’d done a great job going along with the whims of domineering daddy all morning.
There was a lethal calmness about him, “Don’t forget to spray the greens with the soap spray we made yesterday. Got to get ahead with the natural pest control or there’ll be no harvest.”
Again, my mind was spinning at his dry response, but I shouldered on. “Soap spray. Got it.”
“As the saying goes, Gigi, with every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see."
Although I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, I held two thumbs up and let myself out the back door.
Noah had built an army of raised garden beds and filled them with rich, black soil. As I walked my way to the end of the hose, an owl brought night time to an official close and hooted from the surrounding trees. Of all the places I’d lived, I had to admit, the Lost Coast was the least boring and the one that most felt like home. Where else could I smell the wet promise of morning dew, gaze up a mountainside into the forest and hear the muffled pounding of the surf behind me?
Following the ogre’s directions, I gently misted the newly planted baby broccoli, and an arch of rainbow spray formed where the sunlight came over the hill and hit the water. I completed the entire job as directed, finishing with a thorough spraying of the new plants with the soap mix Noah and I’d made together. Then I replayed the intimacy of his kisses in bed, and the way he wrapped his arms around me even in a deep sleep, holding me all night long. For some reason, it didn’t make me feel smothered, it made me feel safe.
A knot formed in my throat when the silent, solar four-wheeler came to a halt next to the potato bed.
“I’m going to get a load of wood, Gigi.” I tingled as he said my name. “Be back in time for lunch.”
It was a sign he’d come to trust me. For once he wasn’t questioning me and on constant alert for danger, which included my disobedience.
It made me feel even worse for what I was about to do.
I darted a glance at him, stomach churning. “See you when you get back!” My wave was convincingly enthusiastic. Not giving anything away anything about what I was on the brink of acting out.
I had to get the hell out of here.
Noah made me fall too hard for him.
I cared too much.
If I didn’t leave now, his daddy juju was going to make me surrender control of my heart.
How was I supposed to avoid commitment, when I so loved being tied up, and tied down by him?