Page 540 of Deep Pockets

“So you should read the material provided and I’ll test you on it at the end of the week,” Sebastian said, looking at the waitstaff Eric and Deena had hired. Four women and two men. A few of them had real experience, but several were straight out of the military.

He had to teach them wine. Tiffany had to teach them service. He was fairly certain she had the harder job.

But Tiffany’s service was surprisingly close to perfect. He wasn’t thinking about her restaurant service. He knew damn well that was near perfect. Her service as a sub was what had his head slightly spinning. And his dick in knots.

They’d been living together for five days and it had been smooth and peaceful. Not once had she given him trouble. No. She’d given him the warmth of her smile and the quickness of her mind. He’d spent days getting to know her and now he sort of missed her when she walked out of a room.

“Test? Like a multiple choice kind of thing?” one of the men asked. He thought the man was named Austin. He still wore his hair high and tight.

“No.” That Marine needed to understand the way of their world. It could be a difficult transition. “I need you to memorize these facts, not guess at them. I don’t expect that any of you will become experts, but you do need to understand the fundamentals of how food pairs with wine and you must be able to remember the list of featured wines. I’ll always pair the wines myself, but you have to effectively communicate with customers and that means having a rudimentary knowledge.”

“So that means study,” a deep voice said from the back of the room. “I need you to sound like you know what you’re doing. Pair up and help each other. I expect you to know both our menu and our wine list. No one wants to order food from a server who can’t remember what he’s serving. Good night, guys.”

The class stood and started to shuffle out of the dining room and back toward the staff rooms. He could hear them. Some were interested in the subject and others talked about how stuffy the teacher was.

One very creative server mentioned that he might have a wine bottle stuffed up his butt.

Like he’d never heard that before. Eric strode across the floor. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a smile on his face. Eric Vail was obviously a happy man. He smiled even as he yelled at his new staff of chefs. Like his mentor, Eric tended to treat the kitchen like an Army unit he was heading. It worked for him since all his line chefs had come from the military.

“All right, Sebastian,” he began, “you’ve had five days with these guys. What do you think?”

Five days. He’d been training these people for five days, but most of what he remembered about the last five days was how Tiffany managed to occupy his every damn thought. How she smiled as she sat down across from him at breakfast. How she sat a little too close every night when they watched the news and tried to unwind a bit before going to bed.

He’d told himself to go straight to his room when they got home after a long day, to give himself some distance from her sunny smile, her ingratiating manner.

But that wasn’t what Eric was asking about. “I think they’ll be fine once they’ve had some experience. Two of the women are quite good. Emma and Abigail don’t need much wine training.”

“They’ve both worked in five-star restaurants before. It’s the boys and Sally who are going to give you trouble, but I think they can work out if we give them some time and patience.”

He was the very definition of patience. Normally. He was surprisingly antsy about dealing with his submissive. “Don’t worry, Eric. They’ll be ready for opening. It’s all going to go great. You worry about the menu. Tiffany and I will handle front of house.”

Eric leaned against the bar. “Speaking of Tiffany, how is that going? I was surprised to hear you let yourself get wrangled into that clusterfuck. I had dinner with Sean last night. He said you and Tiff were going to train some billionaire tech guru in D/s. Is that why you’ve been topping her all week?”

He’d hoped that had gone unnoticed. He’d tried to be subtle, and Tiffany had been quite good about obeying his dictates since that night she’d gone rogue and doomed them both to pretending to be some kind of lovey-dovey, hearts-and-flowers couple in front of Jaye and his subs. She’d been damn near perfect, and there was a part of him that was waiting for her to break and for the brat to show back up.

Not that he didn’t owe her some punishment. He simply hadn’t felt comfortable enough to give it to her yet. “I got put in a corner. I then got put in another corner by Tiffany’s out of control romanticism.”

Eric’s arms crossed over his chest. “Romanticism?”

“We were only supposed to train Jaye and convince him we were a long-term D/s couple.”

Eric nodded. “Sure. That actually shouldn’t be too hard. You’re both experienced. Try a couple of scenes together and get a feel for what she needs and then explain to Jaye that you top her for disciplinary purposes only. So much easier than pretending to have some form of real romantic…ah, she got to him first.”

At least he wasn’t alone in his logic. “She told him how much we loved each other. How D/s had made our sex lives so much more intimate.”

“Ah, so she totally flanked you,” Eric said with a grin.

“I don’t think we’re at war.” If they were then she was certainly not an aggressive combatant. She’d been lovely for days, making his life easier, being a pleasant companion. The night before, after they’d gotten home from a long day, he’d watched a late edition of the news and she’d sank to her knees beside him and put her head in his lap. She’d explained that she was merely trying to get used to the position since they would be going to Sanctum soon. He’d found himself petting her hair and relaxing, the weight of her head against his thigh soothing. “She panicked. It’s my fault. I should have had the discussion with her earlier so she would have known my plans for us.”

“That’s not like you. You don’t tend to put things off.”

He’d gotten lost in the conversation. “We were discussing other things and it got away from me. By the time I got back around to the topic at hand, she had some crazy scheme where we met in high school and she was the student body president and then I was supposed to spank her when she got a math problem wrong. Or something like that.”

He still wasn’t exactly sure.

Eric laughed, slapping a hand against the bar. “You got the full treatment, my man. You know you’re in trouble, right?”

“With Milo Jaye? Yes, I suspect I am.” He’d thought about it long and hard for days. “He doesn’t seem very dominant to me. His girlfriend seems to have taken control and they’re quite awkward together. I have no idea why the third girl is there. She’s useless.”

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