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Her menu was closed once again, and her hands were folded in her lap. “Yes.”

“Good,” I smiled. “You’ll order for yourself when the waiter returns.” I saw her tense and swallow, but she nodded. Good girl.

We didn’t have to wait long for the waiter to appear again to take our orders. I prompted Brianna to go first. She stumbled over a few words, but overall she did well. I squeezed her hand under the table to show my pride in her accomplishment.

After placing my order, Logan ordered for both him and Lily. I noticed she scrunched up her nose when he ordered broccoli for her side dish. She hated broccoli, but she didn’t get any say in what she ate on the weekends. That was part of their arrangement.

When we were left alone again, the conversation turned to Logan’s most recent trip to New York. He loved to travel, which was good since he did a lot of it with his job. I, on the other hand, hated it—plane travel, at least. If I could avoid it, which I normally could, I did. Most of the foundation’s business could be conducted over the phone or through teleconferencing. It was rare that I even had to leave town, let alone fly across the country. The two times it had happened, I had hired a private jet and interviewed the pilots myself.

Logan’s line of work, however, was not only about fundraising for the hospital, it also involved lecturing at colleges around the country. His job was to promote the hospital in any and every way he could. He took Lily with him whenever possible, but given her own job at the foundation, it didn’t happen very often. I had no idea how they could stand being apart so much, but they made it work.

Brianna didn’t contribute to the conversation unless someone asked her a direct question. So when our meals arrived and we all began eating, I decided to change the subject. “Logan, I was telling Brianna how you and Lily became a couple. I thought it might be good for you to share with her why you chose to live the lifestyle with Lily when you hadn’t had any inclinations to do so previously.”

Logan glanced over at Lily and smiled before going back to his steak. “Lily is one of a kind. The moment I met her, I knew there was something about her. There was this connection. I knew I wanted to get to know her better, but to be honest, when she told me what she wanted I was bewildered. I couldn’t understand it. Why anyone would want that. Then...” he paused, taking a bite of his steak. “She dropped the other shoe and told me that my best friend—Stephan here—lived that way, too, and I’d never known.”

I chuckled, remembering the night Logan had showed up at my condo wide-eyed and nearly incoherent. All he kept saying was, “Is it true?”

“Once I calmed down, things started making more sense. I’d rarely seen Stephan out with other girls since he’d been home from college, and the few times I had, he’d always taken the lead. They’d always wait for him to speak first and introduce them, always stayed one step behind him when walking.” Logan took a few more bites of his meal before continuing.

Brianna was intently listening to every word he said. So much so, I had to nudge her to continue to eat.

“In the end, it came down to one thing. I liked her. A lot. I was clueless about it all, but I was willing to give it a try if it meant being with her.”

After Logan’s little speech, no one spoke. We all sat in silence, and I was hoping Brianna would speak up, ask a question, but she didn’t.

“Do you have anything you’d like to ask Logan, Brianna?” She looked up at me, and I could see the panic building. I leaned over, took her hand, and whispered in her ear. “I’m right here. You can ask him anything you want. No one is going to get upset.”

Her gaze met mine and she nodded. She tightened her hold on my hand and without looking at Logan asked, “Was it... hard?”

“To be what she needed me to be, you mean?”

“Yes,” she squeaked.

“At first it was. It still is at times, but I also see the benefits for both of us. There is strength there, a bond that I’ve never had before with another person. The hardest part is when I have to punish her. I love her. Causing her pain, mentally or physically, isn’t my favorite pastime. But I’ve also learned that it’s something she needs. If I slack on handing out discipline, she gets worse until I do something about it. It was a learning curve, but we’ve figured it out,” he said, smiling at Lily. She smiled back. “Is there anything else you wanted to know?”

Brianna shook her head before dropping her head again.

“If you do, you know where to find me,” he said.

We finished our meal with dessert. I decided to order a large slice of chocolate cake for Brianna and me to share. She was timid at first, not wanting to take some for herself, so I took the first piece and fed it to her. “Now eat,” I ordered. She smiled shyly and picked up her fork.

Later on that night, after another memorable shower where I helped her to her second orgasm, I reluctantly sent her to her own bed. As much as I wanted Brianna sleeping beside me, I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I wanted to be able to make love to her, hold her, and touch her the way I wanted. We weren’t there yet, and the last thing she needed was for me to do something in my sleep that I wasn’t aware of until it was too late. How I’d stopped myself the last two times we’d fallen asleep together was beyond me. It had taken all the willpower I had to stop. She was becoming harder and harder to resist.

Chapter Twenty

Stephan

Sunday morning, Logan called to say Lily was asking to go to the mall—there was a big sale apparently—and he wanted to know if we’d like to come along. He thought it might help Brianna, and I had to agree. I knew we still had three months before school started, but she had a lot of ground to cover in that time if she was going to be able to not only drive herself to school, but deal with her teachers and classmates as well.

When I told Brianna we were going to meet Logan and Lily again today, her excitement was obvious. It lessened slightly when she learned we would be meeting them at the mall. As I opened the car door for her, I saw her reach up and touch my metal collar that was still securely around her neck before taking my offered hand and exiting the vehicle.

The mall was busy. Lily hadn’t been exaggerating on there being a big sale. Everywhere I looked there were banners touting anywhere from twenty to fifty percent off. Retailers were doing their best to drive business to their stores, and from what I could see, it was working. Over half the people we passed were carrying a bag of some sort.

Brianna held tight to my hand as we weaved through the crowd to the food court where I’d agreed to meet Logan and Lily. Every time someone would get too close, Brianna would use her other hand to grab onto my upper arm and pull herself closer.

Halfway there, I stepped off to the side, and turned her to face me. “Number?”

“Five.” She kept moving her eyes back and forth, trying to monitor all the people passing us.

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