Selena Kitt - Katie and the Dom

“Drive carefully.” He pulled her coat closer around her neck. Her hair was still damp and she was shivery.

“Liam, are we… are you…?” She didn’t know how to ask the question, wasn’t even sure what she wanted to ask.

“Shh.” He gathered her up and kissed her-their first kiss, after everything that had happened since they met just a week ago, with Katie naked and shackled on her knees in his basement. She couldn’t believe this was their first real kiss, but it was, and she was thinking about that when he slipped his arms around her waist, his mouth slanting across hers, tongue soft and exploring.

She stood on her tiptoes in her heels, arms around his broad neck, giving as good as she got, wanting more, trying to tell him so with her body, and when they parted, both of them breathless, she thought he’d gotten her message.

“I’ve got a busy week.” Liam closed his eyes, touching his forehead to hers. “I’ll call you on Friday.”

A week! A whole week? Her body protested, pressing into his, and Liam groaned as she kissed him again, all greedy, hungry mouth, sliding her slim thigh between his thickly muscled ones.

“Easy,” he murmured, and she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. “Take a week. Read the book. We’ll talk.”

The book. She’d almost forgotten. But she was tired of reading about it-she wanted to do it!

“Goodnight, Katie.”

He waited for her to get into her Honda, making sure she was buckled, before he got into his little red sports car. She gave him a wave as she started the engine, putting the car into “drive” and wondering how in the hell she was supposed to get through the next week.

Lori said she wouldn’t make to Monday, but she was wrong. Katie made it to Wednesday, sitting at her desk, wasting time and playing on Facebook in between check-outs. She flipped through all the “Hump Day” references, which only made it worse. She couldn’t think of anything but Liam. She’d devoured his book, reading until four in the morning that first night, finishing it the next day, unshowered and still in her pajamas, the following afternoon.

Now she understood. She understood everything, why Patrick was a top and Liam was a dominant, why she was a submissive-at least on paper.

At lunch time, she grabbed her brown-bag lunch and sat in her little office in the back. Two more days. Just two more days. She flipped through a magazine, not seeing the half-starved models and actresses pretending they were happy in fancy dresses or half-naked on beaches. None of it made sense anyway. Since Liam had left her in the parking lot, her world had turned from color back to black and white.

Katie opened her lunch, looking at her turkey sandwich on whole wheat and thought she’d never seen anything more boring in her life. Then she remembered the crab, the tiramisu. She took a bite and it tasted like cardboard. No, this wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all. Flipping the page, she sighed, and then saw a tear-out card in the middle, the name on it catching her attention.

She got up, tossing her lunch into the trash, grabbing her purse and coat.

She wasn’t hungry after all. At least not for food.

“Chris, I’m going home.” Katie spoke to her co-worker at the desk as she shrugged on her coat. “I’m not feeling right.”

That was true enough.

“Sick?” He looked up at her, frowning. Dependable Katie didn’t take days off. She’d even come to work once with the flu.

Lovesick, she thought, but just nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Feel better!” he called.

It was crazy but there was only one thing that was going to cure whatever was ailing her. It only took her half an hour to go home and change. When she pulled her car into the health club parking lot and cut the engine, she was muttering to herself about crazy stalker women, but she grabbed her bag and purse and went in anyway.

A librarian’s salary was enough for her to live on with only a few luxuries like Netflix and DVR for her cable. It certainly wasn’t enough for a gym membership. But the little tear-out card offered her a one-day free pass, and she was going to take advantage of that. More than most, she hoped, looking around the busy lobby. The place was packed with people dressed just as she was, in yoga pants and tank-tees and trainers, carrying water bottles and hand towels.

“Can I help you?” A blonde at the counter smiled and waved her over and Katie gave her the free membership pass, which turned into a sales pitch the likes of she hadn’t heard since a Kirby salesman had shown up at her door wanting to sell her a fifteen-hundred dollar vacuum. She didn’t buy that and she wasn’t going to buy this either-but she didn’t tell Jenna that.

Jenna was very bright and bubbly and knowledgeable about things like Kettle Bells and core training and aqua-aerobics. She took her on a tour of the facility and Katie smiled and nodded as they went through the women’s locker room. It was already quite familiar to her-although she didn’t tell Jenna so as she put her purse and bag in the locker, pinning the key to the waistband of her yoga pants.

Finally, Katie couldn’t stand it anymore. “So, is Mr. Quinn around?”

“He’s upstairs.” Jenna pointed upward and Katie saw a row of mirrored glass all around the gym. “That’s where the offices are. Do you… do you know him?”

“Oh, sort of.” Katie shrugged, trying to keep the heat from her cheeks, but she couldn’t help wondering if he could see her right now, staring up at him. “So what were you saying about yoga classes?”

Finding her place in her sales pitch, Jenna went on, showing Katie their large, open classroom. It was right under the mirrored glass windows and Katie imagined Liam would have quite a view from up there. Smirking, Katie suddenly had an idea.

Turning to Jenna, she said, “I think I want to stay and do yoga. Is that okay?”

“Sure!” Jenna smiled that dazzling smile. “Just come talk to me when it’s over, okay?”

Katie took a mat and spread it out, starting to stretch. Others were doing the same. According to Jenna, the class didn’t start for another five or ten minutes. Katie made sure her oh-so-casual stretches were done in a very slow, sexy sort of way, bending over quite a lot-especially with her back to the mirror. The truth was, she didn’t know if he was watching-but it was fun to imagine that he was-and she didn’t really expect to see him today. She just felt strangely comforted by the idea that she was in the same place, at the same time.

Yep, you’re a stalker, this confirms it.

The class started, the instructor a very flexible redhead who made the poses look easy, while Katie, who hadn’t done yoga in ten years, struggled to maintain her balance. So much for looking sexy, she thought, but she didn’t have much time to think about Liam or the titillating fact that he might be watching from somewhere. She had to concentrate on not falling down.

She was right in the middle of a Downward Dog pose-although she couldn’t see any resemblance between her butt-in-the-air posture to any dog she’d ever known-when Jenna appeared at her side, breaking her concentration and making Katie fall straight down to the mat in a sweaty heap.

“Um, you’re Katie Nelson, right?” Jenna inquired. She looked a little scared and it made Katie alarmed.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Quinn wants to see you.”

Katie blinked at her. “He does?”

She smiled all the way up the back stairs, down a long hallway until it came to a dead-end. Jenna knocked, smiling at Katie, but it wasn’t that dazzling salesgirl smile anymore, it was the polite, uncomfortable sort.

“Come in.” Liam was at his desk in a tall leather chair, a phone to his ear, feet up, his view exactly as Katie had pictured it, of the yoga class below.