“Eye contact.”
She met my gaze, and I told her, “There are a few things that go beyond this power exchange. Things I won’t punish you for because it’s outside the scope of our relationship. Things that mean maybe we don’t have a relationship worth putting effort into anymore. Dishonesty is one of those things.”
She opened her mouth to speak. Closed it. Nodded agreement.
“Good girl. You have something to say?”
“It’s a two-way street, Sir. I need you to be honest with me, too.”
“How about I promise to be honest with everything not club related. We can have this conversation again a month from now, and you can make a decision about what you do and do not want to know when it comes to the club.” Because if I couldn’t trust her with club stuff a month into a serious power exchange relationship, that’d be a problem.
“You’re the Sergeant-at-Arms. You hurt people for the club. If I’m going to accept you, I have to accept all of you. In a perfect world, you’d only hurt bad people, but we both know this world is far from perfect, Sir. I’m fine with having the conversation now, but if you need a month before having it, I can wait.”
I sat back and took a breath. She’d surprised me with that.
“How do you know I’m the Sergeant-at-Arms?”
“I listen, Sir. I don’t remember who said it. I’m sorry. Maybe Mad Dog, maybe Bobcat? I don’t know, Sir. I went home and looked it up. It means you’re the one who carries out whatever the club votes to do. It means you step in if club members are fighting.” She grinned, but kept her eyes focused on my mouth. “It means you’re the club’s bad-ass, Sir. My tiger appreciates this. She respects the wolf, and that doesn’t happen often.”
Good to know. It was time for me to get to the outline of how our relationship was going to work. These were the things I’d long-ago decided that any woman I shared space with would have to agree to.
“You’ll get spankings just for the hell of it, because I want to spank you. Sometimes I’ll grab you and spank you, other times it will seem formal. I don’t expect you will ever confuse one of those sessions with an actual punishment. Once you’ve experienced both, we’ll have a conversation about the differences. No one in my life has ever had problems differentiating the two. It’s unfortunate that you’ll experience the punishment side first, but I can’t let the conversation with Mad Dog go, so we’ll get to that when we finish here. Eyes back on my cock, Kitten.”
Her gaze shifted immediately, and I continued.
“You’ll move in with me. At the end of a month, if we agree this is working, you’ll give up your lease. If there’s a problem getting out of it, I’ll speak with your landlord. I will not involve myself with your finances during the first month, but you need to know that if we move forward, I will control everything. You’ll pay your expenses out of your income — gas, car insurance, makeup, clothes. Everything else goes into a savings account, and you’ll agree not to touch it. I will allow you to keep dancing and going next door until you have a set amount of money saved up. Enough you can leave me and support yourself until you can begin to bring in an income again. You’ll tell me that amount, since the goal is that you won’t stay with me because you have no other choice.”
If I’d fallen in love with someone who had no way to support herself, I’d have put twenty-grand into a safe, given her the combination, and told her if she wanted to leave me, the money was hers, but once she took it, we were over forever. It was important to me that a woman didn’t stay with me because I was supporting her.
Since Kitty would never let me just give her money, I planned to match her funds so it wouldn’t take as long for her to reach whatever goal she set. The wolf was not going to be okay with her stripping for long, and he’d be less okay with her taking johns next door. Once she told me the amount, I’d tell her I intended to match the funds she put in. She already had thirty grand in a savings account. How much more would she want? But I wasn’t going to focus too much on finances today. Time to hit the other high spots.
“You’ll wake me with a blow job, and we’ll figure out a morning routine that works. My guess is you’ll need the shower first since it takes girls longer to get ready. We’ll go about our day. Punishment for things done at home will happen immediately, at least to start. Punishment for things that happen away from the apartment will be dealt with before we go to bed.”
“My safeword is Eugene.”
Her dad’s name. Subtle. I’d researched her when I realized my wolf had a thing for her. She’d been home schooled, and her life was mostly a mystery. I knew her parents’ names, and I had the address where she’d grown up. Google street maps told me there was a heavy-duty security gate to get onto the property, and the satellite view told me jack shit. It was just forest. I couldn’t see houses. She’d left home after the big battle, got a cheap apartment, and started stripping.
She wasn’t going to like this next part. The biggest chance of her standing up and getting dressed was about to happen, but I can smell true distress, so if another shapeshifter doesn’t trust me to know when to stop based on smell, they have no business playing with me. I’m either trustworthy or I’m not, and if I’m not, why are we bothering to pretend?
I met her gaze and gave it to her without apology or justification.
“I don’t honor safewords. You either trust me to know what you can take, or you don’t. Which is it going to be?”
I parsed the scents rolling off her. Fear. Anger. Arousal.
No. Not anger. Exasperation? Aggravation? I couldn’t put a finger on it, but it wasn’t full-blown anger.
The most important thing though, was that I didn’t scent rejection.
She sat for nearly five minutes before I scented acceptance. She’d looked down, focused on my shoes, while she worked through it. Finally, she looked back at my dick and said, “I trust you, Sir.”
Warm emotions rolled through me, and I nearly had to catch my breath. She trusted me.
“Thank you. I hope to never give you a reason not to. Communication is key. Feel free to use the safeword, just know I get to decide whether to honor it. Personally, I’d prefer you tell me the problem, rather than using your safeword, but I understand sometimes it’s easier to use it and then explain the problem. However you need to communicate, the important part is that you do.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“I didn’t ask a question. You aren’t to speak right now. Consider that one demerit. You have fifteen demerits already, because you went to Mad Dog without talking to me first. This makes sixteen.”
She gave a tiny nod and I once again scented acceptance. So submissive. So ready to hand over her power, but only because she trusted me.
“Outside of work, you’ll only orgasm with permission. You’ll only touch yourself with permission.”
Another nod.
I stood and took my belt off. I scented fear and arousal. She’d soon learn punishments were all about fear. Again, I regretted we were having to start this way, but it couldn’t be helped.
“There are no orgasms for a minimum of six hours after a punishment. Stand and walk to the door of my bedroom. There’s a chin-up bar. Grab it and hold on.”