She’s captivating, and I’m a little disgruntled that Matteo and Rafe didn’t invite me here to meet her. It would certainly have been worth the trek.
I watch as Daley makes her way back to the car from the third cottage we’ve stopped at. Each time she emerges with a container or two and tucks them safely into the console between us. This time she grins as she climbs back in. “We’re totally set. Liane had dal and sag paneer.”
Liane is the one who has claimed Matteo. My brain, long used to sorting new people and places, takes notes. “When I asked you out to lunch, I somehow never imagined we were going to raid your neighbors’ kitchens.”
She looks over at me, eyes sparkling. “It’s dangerous to have preconceived notions.”
Especially when someone is clearly very fond of disrupting them. “Where I grew up, there were generally trades involved. Not necessarily food, but I often delivered eggs to the nice lady down the road who made me new wool mittens each winter.”
She glances at me as she backs out of Liane’s driveway, eyebrows raised. “That sounds like farm country, but you don’t look like a farmer.”
I so easily could have been. “I’ve been many things. Tour guide. Electrician. Food-stand operator. Architect.”
She blinks. “That’s an interesting list. Which one of those connected you to Matteo and Rafe?”
It pleases me that she allows for the possibility it could be any of them. “They work to change corporations. Sometimes it helps to adjust the physical environment as well. That’s where I sometimes get involved.”
She grins. “That doesn’t narrow it down much. You re-architect the spaces, you rewire them, or you set up really good food?”
She listens. I would have found her beautiful even if she didn’t, because some people are just meant to be bright orbs in the universe and it’s a privilege to spend a time in their gravity well, but she’s more than one who glistens. She gives. Takes. Lets herself be present, even when a goodly part of who she is didn’t want me in her car. “I mostly assist with redesigns that create safer, more open spaces, but adding good food is never remiss.”
She pats the food containers between us. “Exactly.”
She drives us down a stretch of road that’s nicely curvy and makes my hands itch for the wheel. They also itch to touch her, but I’m treading carefully there. She didn’t seem at all perturbed that I’m a Dom. The discomfort started earlier than that. So for now, I’ll keep my hands to myself and learn in other ways. “Were you born an artist, or did you become one?”
She makes a soft sound that could mean anything. “Interesting question.”
One I think she might answer, so I let my eyes meander over the trees we’re passing to give her some time to percolate. The evergreens of this land are fascinating to me. Tough sentinels of winter, and a closed-in kind of forest that makes the sudden views that appear so much sweeter. It would be hard to ramble through the hills here, though, which is a shame. Hills in winter rain are one of my favorite pleasures.
“I think I was born an artist, but eventually tucked it away along with other childish things. So when I took it out again, I became an artist, too.”
Interesting answer. “Tell me about the taking out.”
She frowns. “Liane’s right. You Doms are pushy creatures.”
The best of us push in the right places, but it’s not my kink she’s curious about. “I was born with the need to push boundaries. Being a Dom is just one way to do that as a grown-up.” I put my hand over hers on the gearshift, just for a moment. This is a woman who very much wants to drive herself. “When did you pick up your pencils again?”
She huffs out a breath. “Thirteen years ago. I dabbled before that. Told myself it was a hobby.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing quite so painful as putting a passion in a box that’s too small.”
She glances over at me. “I dabbled, but mostly my art supplies stayed hidden under the bed. Then my husband voted for a newer-model wife, and a few months into the fallout, I picked up a cheap box of charcoals on a whim. I went back two days later for the good kind I should have bought in the first place.”
“Tools matter.” I murmur the words, quiet backdrop to her story, so that she knows I’m listening.
“They do.” She pats the food beside her. “A year or so later I made my way here. I was on a long road trip, looking for a place where tools and people and connections and dreams matter. I rented a small cabin for a week and never quite managed to leave.”
She slows on the road, turning into a driveway with towering trees up both sides. I can see a house through their trunks, but only dimly. She parks the car in a pullout and looks over at me. “I usually walk in. I like to believe I live in a pristine forest clearing.”
I’m a man who appreciates aesthetics, and one who’s happy to stroll through a winter forest for any reason. I collect up some of the containers of food and open the car door. The rain is only mists now, with hints of fog.
She circles the car and waits for me to follow her, a lead dog not at all sure she wants to be hitched to this particular sled.
Which isn’t something I can ignore, even for lunch. “Daley.”
She turns to face me, caution in her eyes.
“This doesn’t have to happen. This is your space, and there’s an intimacy to inviting me in your door. We can go find a pretty spot to park and have a picnic in the car if you’d rather, or have a nice lunch at the cafe we drove past and you can keep these for your dinner.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “This would be so much easier if you were a jerk.”
I’ve been called that and more, but it’s not a place where I try to live. “In the world I share with Matteo and Rafe, we believe deeply in the idea of enthusiastic consent. Consent with strain, with resistance, with doubt, isn’t really consent at all.”
She takes in a deep breath and sighs it back out. “This isn’t any of those. It’s consent with discomfort. One thing I learned thirteen years ago was that I had shrunk myself down to fit into a comfortable box, and one of the promises I made myself was that I would never do that again. Sometimes it means breathing into the uncomfortable for a while. That’s all this is. Me squirming over something I’d really like to do.”
I look at this woman, standing with the towering trees at her back, and the fascination in me transmutes to something deeper. I step forward and take her elbow, nodding at the house nestled in the trees. “Come, then. Show me the box you’ve built to fit you.”