Page 26 of After Dark
Tonight she jolted a little when she heard it.
Just like always, she felt a rolling, glorious fire wash over her, starting in her greedy little clit and finding her everywhere.
When the door opened, she was smiling.
Arlo stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and gazed down at her.
“Very pretty,” he said. He studied her for a moment. He’d clearly had meetings today, because he was in a suit and he loosened his tie, those gray eyes taking in every detail of the picture she presented.
Arlo in suits was a whole vibe.
He looked like a boxer. Or some kind of assassin, she often thought—happily. In a suit, all of that violence was leashed. If she hadn’t already been soft and damp, simplylooking at him would have done it. She was flooded immediately.
“You’ve returned to all of these rituals so easily,” he said, taking a moment to walk around her, observing the way she knelt from all sides. “How are you finding them?”
“Perfect, sir,” she said. By rote.
But then his fingers were on her chin, and he was jerking her head around until her gaze met his. “Not perfect,” he said in a low voice, something stark in his gaze. “I’ve lost my taste for that word. You don’t have to talk to me formally until I make it clear you should, Josette. Try again.”
He let go of her chin and stepped back, and she found that her breath took on a shakiness she couldn’t seem to push away.
“Not perfect,” she amended quietly, though it felt like an earthquake inside of her to admit it. She cleared her throat as if she thought it might shut down of its own accord. Maybe she only wished it would. “The hardwood hurts my knees and my feet too, if I’m honest. But I like that. I used to do my hair for you, but today I decided not to, I don’t know why. I used to hate this, you know.” He didn’t reply to that, but the intensity in his eyes seemed to grow so that she felt enveloped by it. “Now it feels… peaceful. I like it.”
“Thank you,” he said. He considered. “That was perilously close to a lie, before. Don’t you think?”
She would never have dared before, but there was too much riding on what happened now, wasn’t there? And he’d told her that she didn’t have to be formal, so she wasn’t.
“I don’t agree.” When his head tilted in that way he had, that warning sign, she didn’t back down. “It wasn’t a lie. That’s what feels perfect to me. This feels perfect.”
“We’re going to find a different word,” Arlo told her, his voice low. His gaze intent.
“I didn’t lie,” she said fiercely. And she wondered if her gaze was intense too, because he blinked.
“No,” Arlo said quietly. “I apologize. I can see that you didn’t.”
That meant something too. Thathewould apologize toher.For anything.
Josette felt something like a sob, heavy in her chest, and breathed through it.
Then he moved his finger through the air, wordlessly ordering her to turn around and crawl, so she did, feeling… jostled up inside. There was that ever-present greed in her clit. But her stomach felt uncertain. She was afraid that she really might burst into tears. She wanted todosomething. Shout at him, maybe. Defend herself.
She didn’t care that his friends didn’t like her anymore. She couldn’t blame them, really. She was the evil ex and she alone could prove otherwise, but that would take time, and she wasn’t too worried about that. It was Arlo thinking that she would bother to lie to him about something so simple as kneeling in the hall —
That was the part she couldn’t get past.
In the living room, she knelt again when she reached that rug before his chair, but he didn’t sit down. He moved around, flipping through his mail, fixing himself a drink. Acting like Josette was part of the furniture.
She knew perfectly well that this was part of the game they played. It was deliberate. Most of the time she enjoyed the anticipation. The excitement of what was to come.
Tonight, for some reason, she was seething.
“You look like you have something to say.” She hadn’t even heard Arlo come up behind her. Now he was there,crouching down next to her with one hand on her jaw, once again forcing her to look at him. “Is it your temper, Josette? I’ve seen you upset. I’ve seen you wordless with emotion you refuse to share. But I’ve never seen you give in to your anger. Is tonight the night?”
He hadn’t told her it was time to switch into formality—or given one of his usual responses when he wanted her to do it anyway—and she decided to take him at his word.
“You’re not the one walking on eggshells this time,” she told him, and she could see that her words landed when his eyes widened slightly. “I imagine that’s the purpose of this. You keep acting like everything’s fine, that nothing’s changed, all the while what you’re really doing is waiting to see when I do something wrong.”
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t point out that it had only been ten days — after all, when had they ever taken it slow? “Can you blame me?”
