Chapter Seven

THE SUN WAS high in the sky when the sleek black car pulled up to the curb. Parker struggled up from her doorstep, squinting in the bright light even behind her large, dark glasses.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Kristina looked fine, fresh even, and Parker hated her just a little bit.

“Why are you wearing workout clothes?” Parker asked.

She slid down into the seat, dumping her purse. Her morning run had been forgone in favor of an extra three hours in bed, and too much aspirin.

“Just finished yoga.”

God, she was not ready for those images… Kristina does yoga.

“Here, drink this.”

A metal travel cup was thrust into her hands. Parker eyed her over the console.

“If this is any kind of liquor, I’m going to puke in your fancy car. You know that, right?”

Kristina laughed, and somehow, the sound alone made her feel a little better.

“Just trust me. Try it.”

She took a healthy pull on the straw, scrunching up her face while she swallowed.

“Veggie juice?”

“Fruits, veggies, a few secret ingredients… Drink it all and you’ll be as good as new in half an hour.”

The liquid sloshed against the back of the cup as they pulled away from the curb too fast—how was she going to survive Kristina’s driving?

Grudgingly, she took another long swallow, holding her breath and drinking as much as she could, because really, what did she have to lose?

“You do yoga?”

The wind whipped Parker’s hair back, and the breeze actually felt nice on her face. Leaning back against the headrest, she continued to suck on the straw, watching Kristina, soaking up her presence again after being denied for so long.

“I do. Maybe I’ll show you some time.”

Kristina winked, and caught somewhere between wanting to purge her stomach and wanting to kiss her, Parker closed her eyes and tried to breathe.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought we could go back to my place…”

“Oh no, no…” She glanced at her across the console. “We need to talk, like actual words, somewhere public.”

“Are you saying you can’t control yourself around me in private, Professor?”

Kristina made a scandalized face. All Parker could think was that she was beautiful. She seemed more open now, somehow obtainable in a way she hadn’t been before.

Parker drained the last of the mystery juice, glad to be done with it.

“I’m saying we should talk first.”

They took a hard left into an IHOP, of all places.

“Like you wanted to talk last night?”

God, she was still too fuzzy right now to keep up with Kristina, who was clearly in fine form.

“You’re so full of it this morning, Miss Diaz.” She shot the words back. This new playfulness between them made something in her chest flip. “I demand you cut me some slack, at least until I’ve had breakfast.”

Kristina hopped out of the car while Parker was still fumbling with her seat belt. When she looked up, the door was being held open, and dark eyes were shining down at her.

“As you wish.”

Parker followed her into the restaurant, eyes lingering on her backside. Yoga pants are wonderful.

Kristina stopped at a booth, gesturing politely for her to sit. Parker slid onto the bench, surprised when Kristina sat down beside her instead of across the table. She slipped off her sunglasses and studied the menu, agreeing that water was fine when the server came by.

This was surreal somehow. Just twenty-four hours ago she was moping on her sofa; now she was here, slightly hungover in IHOP, with Kristina.

“So, last night…”

Kristina’s hand settled high up her thigh, and her body snapped to attention under the touch.

“What about it?”

Parker glanced sideways, tucking her hair back behind her ear, noticing Kristina watching her.

“I’m glad I ran into you.”

How did she get so intense, so fast?

A beat passed between them. Parker’s lips got hot under Kristina’s gaze. She licked them without thinking. The fingers on her thigh flexed.

She couldn’t think straight around her. She cleared her throat.

“Did you get your…friend home okay?”

She needed some distance; she needed to eat and feel a little more human and get through some of the questions she had for Kristina, before she let herself be tugged back under her spell. This time, she needed to do things right.

She wanted this. Somewhere between losing it all, and finding Kristina again, she had become sure of that much at least. She just wished she had a little better idea of exactly what this was.

“Yes.” The hand fell away. “Are you still upset that I left?”

Parker shrugged, turning her eyes back to her menu.

“You didn’t leave me with anything I couldn’t take care of myself.”

It was true. She had touched herself last night, at home in her new bed, her body still aching from their time together in the bathroom.

Kristina’s breath caught audibly. Good.

“Are you ladies ready to order?”

Parker smirked to herself at the irritation in Kristina’s voice as she ordered some obnoxious-sounding smoothie and two buttermilk pancakes. Parker took her time, ordering bacon pancakes and a coffee, hoping the grease would soak up the last of the hangover and leave her free to enjoy the afternoon with the woman.

When the server strode away, Kristina reached into her purse and produced a small stack of paper.

“Standard NDAs. We both sign, so we’re both protected. Take all the time you need to read it, but it basically says we both agree not to disclose what we do together in private or the nature of our relationship to anyone outside it.”

Suddenly they were back to all business, any trace of levity gone from her voice.

Parker thumbed through the pages. Was this just standard procedure for Kristina? She hated the thought, an unpleasant reminder that she was one of many, the next in a probably long line of subs.

“And what exactly will be the nature of our relationship?”

She kept her eyes on the printed lines, though she wasn’t really absorbing the words.

“Domination and submission, sex, mutual pleasure…”

Kristina’s eyes were on her, but she didn’t look up.

“So we just meet for sex? We don’t…talk or go out to eat or…date?”

“I don’t do dating, sweetheart.”

The reply sounded rehearsed.

“Like you don’t do jealousy?”

When she glanced up Kristina was frozen, her mouth twisted into a grim line as she watched her.

Parker signed the NDA with a flourish.

“Parker…I’m not looking for a relationship. I like to interact in a very particular way in bed, and in my private life. We have great chemistry, and I believe we’re compatible in that respect, but beyond that…”

She sounded…scared?

“We can talk, and of course we’ll build a connection. Submission is about trust, and I’d like to earn yours. I’d also like to give you a good spanking for your attitude last night, but I need to know you understand. I just don’t date, period.”

Kristina was beautiful, even with her hair pulled back, her makeup lighter than Parker ever remembered seeing it. She had an effortless sort of beauty, the kind that shone even under the harsh restaurant lights.

Parker wondered briefly how she had become this. How someone so young, and clearly bright, so full of potential, had arrived at the point where the only kind of personal relationship they wanted was based around power play.

“I just got out of a fourteen-year marriage. I’m not looking for a relationship right now.” The words felt like a half-truth to her, but she swallowed the feeling down.

“But eventually, you will be, and then our time together will end. You’ll move on to your happily ever after, and I’ll move on to my next sub.”

The thought of Kristina with someone else dug under her skin more than it should.

“Like the girl who was with you last night?”

Parker rearranged her cutlery, not looking at Kristina, trying to process the casualness of all this, the fact it was temporary. Kristina had filled a void for her. Even in her absence, missing her had somehow replaced her previous feeling of not being in control of her life. The thought of removing her from her world entirely was…uncomfortable.

“Now who’s jealous?”

She didn’t dignify that with a response.

“We have something to offer each other right now. Our arrangement stands until either of us decides that’s no longer the case.”

Parker nodded. Her headache started to fade, though she still felt foggy, deflated by the conversation.

“Until then, you’re mine.”

Her head snapped up at that, though Kristina was busy smiling up at the server who was setting down their food.

Parker cut into her pancakes, letting the joy of grease and carbs in her mouth smother the tension still hanging between them. She was aware of Kristina watching her, but they ate in silence.

Kristina pushed her pancakes around her plate, taking a few bites, then set them aside. She settled for sipping her smoothie. Parker watched one hand, with perfectly manicured nails, disappear deliberately under the table. It landed so high on Parker’s bare thigh that it made her jump, her cutlery scraping her plate.

“So…” Heat was already building embarrassingly in her stomach. The pads of Kristina’s fingers pressed between her thighs even though she squeezed them tight, and a flush crept up Parker’s neck.

“Tell me more about your company? You said you’re involved in logistics?”

She needed to think about something, anything, other than the fingers pressing, pushing, closer to her underwear.

“What do you want to know about it?”

Kristina’s smile was lazy, and she looked relaxed, totally at ease with the fact that she was working Parker’s dress up her legs in the middle of a family restaurant.

“Logistics is a pretty broad term… What do you, um…ship?”

Kristina’s fingers pressed against the seam of her panties, and she instantly hated her past self for choosing those stupid, sexy, skimpy little lace ones. The texture of the lace over her increasingly sensitive flesh was torture. She looked up. Kristina’s lip was between her teeth. The sight sent another flash of arousal right down to the spot where she was touching her, and Parker had to look away.

The fingers wiggled, rubbing against her. She almost dropped her fork, but she needed something to do, anything, to distract her from what Kristina was doing.

Has she scooted closer? Parker felt trapped, Kristina on one side keeping her in the booth, the wall on the other.

“The safe word is ‘red.’ You remember that?”

Parker nodded, hacking at her pancakes some more though her appetite had long vanished, replaced by a hunger of an entirely different kind.

“Good girl.”

We’re doing this…here, now… Kristina was so calm, so put together, and so completely in her element. Parker’s heart raced, and she was surprised to find this was thrilling to her as much as it was mortifying.

“Now, you don’t give a shit about my company right now, do you?”

She shook her head, cheeks burning, eyes on her plate.

The fingers between her legs stilled.

“No what?”

She felt her heartbeat in her throat.

“No, Mistress.”

It was a whisper. God, what if the server comes back?

“Open your legs for me, now.”

She inched her thighs apart, the pleather of the bench sticking horribly to her skin. Kristina laughed, rich and dark, and the sound made Parker’s heart skip.

“Wider.”

Parker’s breath was coming hard, and she didn’t dare to look up, to look around, too scared of what she might see, of what the rest of the restaurant might see on her face. She parted her legs just a fraction more. Her body jerked when her panties were pulled to the side.

“Do you like this, Parker?”

She had to close her eyes when a finger slid over her soaking flesh, her body already betraying her answer.

“Yes… Mistress…” Her answer was breathless, the cutlery digging into her palms painfully in her vise grip.

A finger bumped against her clit and her body jumped.

“Look at me.”

The fingers in her panties were rubbing her softly, and she was biting the inside of her mouth, hard. She wanted to throw her head back, close her eyes, and give in, yet the presence of the few other patrons, the staff in the restaurant, kept her on edge, alert, ashamed, and excited.

When she looked up, Kristina was watching her hungrily. The temperature between them felt nuclear, and she risked a glance around, convinced someone, somewhere must have noticed. It seemed nobody had.

“Put down your knife and fork.”

Her hands shook as she placed them on the table and moved instead to grip its edge. Her nipples strained against the soft silk of her bra. Wetness soaked her tiny panties, the inside of her thighs.

“Eyes on me, sweetheart.” Kristina licked her lips, long and slow, and Parker wished for her to kiss her.

“Do you want to come, right here, like this? Dress hiked up, legs open for me in the middle of this restaurant?”

Yes, no… Her mind warred. The fingers between her legs rubbed her harder, and she whined softly. She was caught, not permitted to look away, and the hunger in Kristina’s dark eyes was undoing her. She was embarrassed, mortified at herself that she was getting off on this, yet it was so good. She was already closing in on the release she’d craved for weeks in Kristina’s absence. She didn’t have it in her to ask Kristina to stop.

“I don’t know…” Tears pricked the back of her eyes, too many feelings, too much to process, trapped as she was between pleasure and desire and her own sense of propriety, of shame.

“Soon you won’t have to worry about what people think; the answer will be easy for you. If it pleases me then yes, because you’ll trust me enough to know what pleases me is always for your pleasure too.”

Kristina’s hand slipped away from her, and Parker swallowed a whine, eyes back on the tabletop as wet fingers slid down the inside of her thigh, leaving a slick trail in their wake.

“Now, take off your panties and put them in my hand.”

Her eyes shot up to Kristina’s face and then down to her hand, open, waiting on the bench between them.

“Right now, sweetheart. Discreetly.”

With her heart beating in her throat, Parker began the process of wiggling out of them, lifting her hips slightly and working them down her legs through the fabric of her dress. Her cheeks burned crimson as she disappeared under the table, taking a deep breath in the dark, hardly able to believe her own actions as she bent and tugged the material from around her ankles and pressed it onto Kristina’s waiting hand.

When she emerged, their server was smiling down at her.

Adrenaline shot again into her blood, and she offered her a watery smile in return as Kristina handed over her card, seemingly unfazed.

Parker walked to the car behind the younger woman, trying to keep her gait natural while pressing together her thighs, her excitement from earlier coating them messily.

“So you never told me what happened when you disappeared for two weeks?”

Kristina pressed a button and the car roared to life. They were back to normal conversation, acting like Kristina hadn’t just shoved her damp panties into her purse, like Parker wasn’t sitting there, tugging down her dress and feeling utterly exposed and completely naughty without them.

“When you dropped me off, my ex-wife was in my house having sex with the woman she cheated on me for years with, in my bed.”

Somehow, still caught in the haze of what they’d been doing, Parker found it was easier simply to lay out the facts.

Kristina’s reaction was the mildest she’d experienced from anyone after telling them that particular news.

“And how did that make you feel?”

Really?

“Honestly… Angry, used, like it wasn’t enough that she cheated on me the whole time but she had to come back and rub it in my face. Not good enough I guess…”

“And why’s that?”

They were weaving in and out of traffic, and all this was strange, the wind whipping her hair, her arousal drying sticky between her legs while they discussed Amanda.

“I don’t know.”

Kristina just nodded.

They didn’t speak again until they pulled up to the curb at Parker’s house, only this time, Kristina pulled the car into her driveway.

“Are you coming in?”

Her heart jumped at the thought.

“If it’s okay with you.”

Parker nodded shyly, holding down the hem of her dress with one hand as she struggled to get out of the car without exposing herself. When she looked back, Kristina was still in the driver’s seat, laughing.

Parker stormed to the front door. She opened it and tossed her purse and keys on the side table, waiting for Kristina to join her.

“So just…make yourself at home. Do you want something to drink or…?”

Kristina stepped close to her, and the mood shifted in a breath.

“I want you to show me where your bedroom is.”

Dutifully, she led the way up the stairs.