“Do you want anything to drink?” Deke hadn’t had a thing to drink while they were at Sanctum. He’d made sure she had a glass of wine, but he’d had water. Now he pulled a beer from his fridge. “I’m going to sit on the balcony for a while. You should feel free to go to bed or watch TV or whatever you do to relax. There’s some Pinot on the counter.”
The words were all polite, but there was a sheen of ice to them.
She’d done everything he’d asked her to do. She’d sat on his lap despite the fact that it had been awkward and weird. She’d worn the stupid thong even though she’d been heinously self-conscious. When he’d asked her questions, she’d answered them. She’d asked a few of her own.
Maddie had no idea why Deke was so pissed off at her.
“The wine glasses are in the cabinet over the microwave. Good night.” He strode away, and she heard the door to his balcony open and close.
She stood there feeling way more vulnerable than she had before.
The night had been so tense. Hell, the whole day had. From the minute they stepped into the club, she’d felt awkward, and she wasn’t sure why. She’d studied all the things she’d seen today. None of it was a shock. What had been a shock was how ungainly she’d felt. She was confident. She had a freaking undergraduate degree from Yale and had gotten her master’s in aerospace engineering from Cal Tech while she’d been working for a startup she’d made a ton of money from when it had sold.
She’d felt small in the dungeon. Like she was the nerd back in gym class. Of course back then she’d had Deke, who would deal with anyone who tried to make her feel bad.
She stood in his kitchen, the moonlight filtering through the filmy curtains that covered his living room windows, and she wondered who’d decorated his place. It was well done. It wasn’t overly masculine. It was comfortable.
Why hadn’t she been comfortable in the dungeon? What the hell was she going to do if she couldn’t figure out a way to not be so fucking awkward?
Why was he mad at her?
It shouldn’t matter. This wasn’t her world. It was his. He’d made a conscious decision to belong to the D/s community and she’d stumbled into it for reasons that had nothing to do with her own needs, and now he was pushing her.
When she thought about it, he’d been the jerk. He’d been fine during the day, but after the club had opened, he’d changed. Like the lights going down and music starting up brought about a transformation in him. Like a werewolf on a full moon, he’d gone from mild-mannered, nice guy to a hungry predator who was sure he would get fed.
He’d been bossy and obviously annoyed with her and her questions. He wanted her to simply go along with everything he said, and that wasn’t who she was.
She didn’t belong here but she wasn’t sure what to do, and that was an awful position to be in. This wasn’t who she wanted to be, and perversely, she blamed Deke for putting her in the position. He was the one who pushed her to wear things she wasn’t comfortable in and then got angry with her that she was awkward.
It would be far smarter to go to bed and start over in the morning, but she couldn’t do it. She marched to the balcony doors and walked through.
Deke sat in the shadows, one leg over his knee and a grim look on his face. “Maddie, go to bed.”
He said it in that low growl that made her want to obey him and also to defy him just to show him she could. “I don’t appreciate the way you treated me tonight.”
A brow rose over his eyes, which seemed so much darker in the moonlight. “Then we’re going to have a problem because I was nothing but polite to you this evening.”
When she thought about it, he had been polite, but she’d been able to feel his disappointment. “You were passive aggressive.”
“Well, I would think you would appreciate that I managed to not be aggressive, aggressive.”
He was frustrating her. “You can’t be either. You’re working for me, and I expect some professionalism.”
He stood suddenly, the move so easy and graceful it seemed almost preternatural. It made her take a step back.
“All right. If that’s how you truly feel, then we need another plan. If it helps, I was probably going to suggest another plan anyway. I’ll let you sit down with Ian tomorrow and explain that you need a different approach and definitely a different lead investigator.”
His words felt like a kick to her gut. “What? You’re leaving me because I asked you to be professional?”