Home > The Proposal(8)

The Proposal(8)
Author: Kitty Thomas

And I rarely feel anymore that I should inflict my sadism and kinks on them for sport. I like to think I've outgrown some of my darker edges, but deep down I know they're only lurking, lying in wait for the right moment and the right woman they can be unleashed upon.

I know I could specifically seek out kinky women to date, but that's often its own brand of drama. Then I not only get the needy clingy girl but I get the needy clingy girl who needs me to order her around 24/7—which is exhausting—and it becomes rote and boring. Then it's like I'm LARPing my own sex life.

Above and beyond the specifics, I miss sharing a woman. I miss passing her around. I miss the joy of watching her get taken by one of my friends.

Tonight's date was a surprise for Livia, and I am definitely raising the stakes. I'm a bastard, but I'm trying to push her buttons so she feels guilty for all I'm spending on her, so she'll give it up—even as I'm intrigued by the bizarre situation of a woman resisting me and wonder how long she can keep it up because I know she's attracted.

I've seen the way her pupil's dilate, the way her breath catches in my presence. I've seen the hungry look in her eyes when our gazes meet, like I'm the very best filet mignon she's ever sunk her teeth into. Except that she hasn't. She's just sitting there, staring at her plate. Metaphorically, of course. We just got to the restaurant.

Tonight, I took her on the jet to an extremely upscale underwater restaurant. It's like an aquarium, all glassed in with the fish swimming around you, and coral reefs and everything. It's pretty impressive, and I can tell she's impressed, the way she looks around, her light blue eyes widening at every new sight. It's like she can't even believe something like this can exist in our world.

I admit I'm kind of charmed by her reaction, this sense of wonder and appreciation she approaches almost everything with. We are seated in a small private dining room at a romantic candlelit table, while sharks swim over our heads—which seems pretty fitting, all things considered.

She's staring at the menu. “Seafood?” she asks wrinkling her nose.

“What else did you think an undersea restaurant would serve? Do you not like seafood?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. I'll feel judged.”

“By the marine life?” I ask, incredulous. I can't stop the chuckle.

“Yes. It would be like eating a hamburger while wandering through a field of cows. I feel like I need to cover my plate so they can't see what I'm eating.”

Oh Livia, your clothes are coming off when we get back on that jet. The jet has a bedroom, and I have every intention of using it and initiating Livia into the mile-high club—a club I'm somehow convinced she isn't a part of. Fucking thirty-eight thousand feet in the air doesn't seem like her style, which makes me wonder why I'm even pursuing her so hard because I'm sure this girl is just more vanilla suburban hell.

Livia works through her guilt and orders a type of seafood that isn't swimming in her immediate vicinity. When the waiter has taken our menus away, I pull a slim black box out of my suit jacket pocket and slide it across the table.

Those fantastically expressive eyes widen once again. “Soren?” she questions. “What's this?”

“What does it look like? Open it.”

She's suspicious now, and I'm sure she can see through all of this. The trip on the jet, the fancy Little Mermaid date, the jewelry. She knows I'm trying to buy her. And in this moment I'm convinced that I've found her price and her legs will be open to me by midnight. A part of me is disappointed it was this easy. She presented the tiniest glimmer of a challenge. Oh well.

She opens the box. “Oh my god, it's beautiful!”

Inside is a platinum diamond tennis bracelet, which looks lovely against the dark plum-colored dress she's wearing.

“Soren, I can't possibly accept this. It's too much.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can and will accept it.” At first I think she'll fight me on it. Telling her she will accept it was possibly too much. But my mind is stuck in the fantasy of telling her she can and will accept every inch of my cock. These are actual words I plan to say to her in about an hour.

She doesn't fight me on it, and it seems symbolic of her already-sealed surrender on the trip home. She holds out her wrist to me, and I help her put it on, part of me wishing I was locking something more substantial around her delicate wrist.

I mostly zone out during the rest of dinner. I'm listening and responding but as soon as words are spoken on both sides they seem to dissipate entirely into the air around us. I just want to get her back on that jet. I want to rip that dress off her and throw her down on the bed. I want to hold her down and make her scream my name loud enough for the pilot to hear.

“Thank you for dinner,” she says shyly when the check arrives. “This place is amazing.”

“You didn't feel too judged by the fish?” I ask.

“I got over it,” she replies, smiling. She has a beautiful smile. It inches up a little more on one side of her face than the other. It looks like a sweet smirk, a concept I would have found as credible as Santa Claus until I'd seen it for myself.

I pay the bill and guide her out of the restaurant, my hand on the small of her back. My blood is pulsing and throbbing in my cock as I take her back to the jet. Thirty minutes tops, and I'll be inside her.

But that isn't what happens. I've got her all the way to the bedroom at the back of the plane. I'm about to push her down onto the bed, my hand fumbling for her zipper when she says, “Soren, stop.”

I think I may have actually growled. What in the fuck?

This time she leads me back into the main part of the plane as she zips her dress back up. I realize I'd managed to get it halfway down her back. She sits in one of the plush seats, glancing nervously out the window as if she has the option to jump.

I sit in the seat across from her. I'm sure she can see my anger and impatience because she looks genuinely afraid. Good. She's trapped in the air with me with no one to save her, and I'm growing tired of this prude act. It was cute at first, but I'm just about over it.

She looks down at her hands. “I told you I don't have casual sex,” she says quietly.

“Well what the hell does that even mean? Do you want to be exclusive? Do you want to be my girlfriend? Is that what you're angling for?”

She looks up and takes a deep breath. I can see the weight of what she's about to drop on me even before it falls.

“No. I don't do the girlfriend thing. Girlfriend is a fake title for a non-commitment that's just committed enough to fuck but isn't really going anywhere. Trust me, I've gotten that T-shirt. I don't want to sleep with anyone who isn't offering me anything real. And I don't believe in monogamy outside of marriage anymore.”

Now I'm gaping at her like one of the fish we just left. She has got to be kidding. I want to stop this plane and make her get out and walk. Unfortunately that idea only works on the ground, with a car.

“Excuse me?” I ask. Of all the million things I expected to come out of her mouth, this was never even in the top one hundred. “Wait... are you seeing other men?” I feel somehow weirdly betrayed by this even though I'm usually the one seeing multiple women and keeping them all at arm's length.

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