That sounded perfect. But everything faded away before I could tell him that.
* * *
“I thoughtwhen you said we would curl up and talk, you meant sitting on the couch or maybe the bed next to each other.” I grinned as Shane snorted.
“I don’t know what gave you that impression.” He kissed my head and then held up a dumpling for me. “You’re my omega, so I get to do whatever I want and I want to hold you.”
And feed me.
Wrapping my lips around the chopsticks he held out, I took the dumpling into my mouth. By the time I’d gotten up from my nap, he’d ordered dinner and had gotten everything I would’ve picked out for myself. It was another little way of showing me that he’d been paying attention to what I liked.
Curling into him, I relaxed and soaked up the wonderful way he made me feel. When I’d woken up, for the first few seconds I’d worried about how he would feel about what we’d done. I knew that wasn’t rational and I chased the thought away as soon as my brain cleared, but I just couldn’t get over how lucky I was.
“Do you want another?” He pointed the chopsticks toward the last dumpling.
“No.” I was beyond full. “I’m done. It was great.”
Shane liked feeding me, so I might have eaten a bit too much just to make him happy. It was something we’d both have to work on or I’d never fit into my suits. As Shane swallowed the last of the dumplings, he leaned back and tugged me closer.
“So I think we need to make sure you have safewords.” His idea wasn’t out of the blue, but it was startling enough that I was glad I hadn’t been swallowing something at that moment.
“Might be a good idea.” Was it ridiculous that a little part of me was screaming up and down, doing a happy dance?
Probably.
“I want you to have one too, though, just to make sure you know you can stop things if they get too intense.” I sat up enough to look him in the eyes. “I know it sounds like it would just be for me, but I don’t want to have to worry you’re going along with something just because I like it. You need a way to stop things too.”
He was take-charge and confident, but he was also sweet and wanted to give me everything.
Shane smiled but nodded. “Deal. What do you want to use?”
My first response was to pick something cool, but then logic took over. “Stoplight colors.”
Shane lifted one eyebrow. I wasn’t sure what his question was, but I kept going anyway. “I don’t want to count on my ability to think when we’re in that kind of situation. I want to keep it simple.”
Nodding, Shane kissed me quickly. “That makes sense. So if I’m remembering that website correctly, red stops things, yellow makes us pause, and green is everything is fine?”
“Yes.”
“Why is it that only betas have websites about BDSM? I understand people don’t want to repeat history, but this just seems ridiculous.” Before I could figure out an answer, he kept going. “Did you know that an unmarried omega can’t go shopping in that sex toy store? A married but unaccompanied omega can’t go in either. You’re smart enough to decide for yourself what you want to buy. That’s just insane.”
“I guess that’s why Austin always orders his stuff from overseas. He’s got some connection that helps him go around customs. I remember him complaining about how hard it was to find stuff, but I always thought he was insane. I never stopped to consider why he was going to all that trouble.” It had just been easier to assume he was nuts rather than consider he had a reason for the madness.
I might owe him an apology.
“I never stopped to think that the laws that were supposed to protect omegas might actually be preventing them from living their own lives.” Shane ran his hand over my head tenderly, but his expression was serious. “Is there anything we can do?”
My focus had always been on work and maintaining my privacy. I’d never stopped to really look into things like the laws around sex toy stores. Was that just because I’d always had enough money to ignore them? Or had my focus on keeping my desires private built up a wall between me and the reality of what was going on in the world?
“I don’t know.” I relaxed back against Shane and shrugged. “We’d have to decide if it would be worth losing our privacy over.”
And we’d come to the point where it would beourprivacy. Shane was quickly becoming the only alpha I could imagine having in my life.
18
Shane
Tanner kept sayingit was like a baptism by fire. The fact that I kept pointing out it was just a family barbecue didn’t seem to be helping. He was looking at it like he was preparing to go up against the CEO of a rival company and not just my mother.
