I trailed off, eyes shifting from my best friend to my shoes and back again.
She looked the same as she always had, but there was still a secret in her expression that I couldn’t make sense of.
“I miss you,” I told her.
“I miss you.” She squinted a little, scrunched her nose. “This is just a phase, Reese. I promise everything will be normal again soon. Better than normal.”
“Is that so?”
She smiled at me, and it was the first sincere emotion she’d shown since unlocking her door.
“That’s most definitely so.”
CHAPTER 5
Cory
I hadn’t beenable to think of anything except our text exchange all through my last meeting of the day. I’d asked Reese if he wanted to go out for dinner tonight, and he’d said he’d rather stay in. That wasn’t the part that tripped me up, though. It was him tacking the wordSironto the text, then telling me that I’d be late for my meeting.
He wasn’t wrong, and I almost called off the whole thing, but I wasn’t irresponsible. The meeting was long, boring, and it had taken all my strength to keep my focus where it belonged.
The minute it was over, I was out the door and in the car on the way home. Speed limits were merely a suggestion once I got through the traffic. Arriving at home, I was tugging my tie loose as I walked in the door. I came to a dead stop; my heart slammed up into my throat and my stomach swooped. My cock throbbed at the sight of Reese on his knees for me. Chin down, palms up, shoulders back.
“Fuck.” The word whooshed out of me, and I continued tugging at my tie as I approached. “What’s this?” I asked, indulging myself by raking my fingers through his hair.
“I have new limits to discuss.” A pause, a glance upward. “Sir.”
I sucked in a breath, making sure it was slow and deep. I had to center myself in spite of the thoughts and questions raging through my mind.
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “Limits?”
The question was something that had been asked many times already, and it would be asked many more. As relationships evolved, so did a lot of things like limits and expectations. Feelings. Desires.
Reese lifted his chin and looked up at me. There was an edge to him that caught me off-guard, and I waited for him to speak as I tried desperately not to jump to conclusions.
“I want you to mark me more often,” Reese said, his voice firm. Determined. Not angry, exactly, but I could tell he’d reached the end of his patience.
“How often?”
“Every time.”
Reese held his pose so beautifully that it made me want to drop to my knees and weep. To cling to him and kiss him and worship him. But he wanted a different kind of worship. A different kind of attention.
“Have I been too soft on you?” I asked, barely able to keep the tremor out of my voice. The idea that I’d failed him was a kick to the chest.
“Permission to speak freely?” Reese asked and then I did let out a sigh at him.
“Always, darling.”
“You’ve been weird since you fisted me on Halloween. It felt like… like I finally, like we finally got through some of the barriers I had to work through only for you to throw up a bunch of new ones. I wanted it,” Reese implored. “I want it again.”
I ran my fingers through his hair again to ground myself. “I was afraid that I’d hurt you.”
“You did, but I liked it.” He glanced down, bringing attention to his hard cock sticking up against his abdomen like a flag pole.
“Do you trust me?” Reese asked, glancing back up at me.
“Of course.”
