Stare Me Down (Stare Down) (5 page)

This wasn’t the plan.

“I’m not going to‌—‌no way. You can’t possibly expect me to say.”

She shifted several times in her chair. Aww, he almost felt bad for her.

“Just tell me.”

Licking her lips, she turned away until she hesitantly looked back with a cringe. God, she was cute.

“Doctor Gavin?”

“What?”

He shook the item in question.

“Oh, all right. It’s an anal plug or a hook thingy.”

He didn’t break eye contact. He did swallow. Hard, but he couldn’t look away from her bright pink face. “A hook thing-e?”

“This is completely inappropriate,” she muttered under her breath, turning her attention to his shoulder.

“I don’t think so. I’m having fun. What kind of hook thingy?”

“You want to know?” Her eyes shifted and her chin went up a notch or two as she smoothed her fingers across her unruffled hair from her temple to bun-top. “It gets inserted up the anus, forcing a vict‌—‌I mean, a sub to stay still for her, um, Master.”

He waited. She was going to say more, he was sure of it. At least he hoped she would as he was speechless at the moment.

“And don’t look so shocked. I know a thing or two about your kind of kink, so you’re not going to trip me up. I knew you’d pull something like this. Not very innovative. Kind of—” she shrugged, “—boring actually.”

Boring? He tossed the item into the trunk and sighed. “Humor me, would you? There might be something in here that surprises you.”

She inclined her head, and he inclined his right back before he jotted down her answer and then searched for another item. When he held it up, she said, “Nipple clamp.”

He took note and held up the next.

“I don’t get it. It’s a clothes peg. A wooden clothes peg. What do you do with that?”

He could spend the next twenty minutes running down the list for her, but that would be counterproductive to his plan to make a fast exit, so he asked, “Is that your final answer?”

She studied him and then her eyes narrowed to slits. “Yes, Regis, I do believe it is.”

He dropped the item back in the trunk, wrote down her answer and bent to get the last out.

All righty. Time for him to drop the last curtain call. Brandish the piece de resistance, as it were. “And what’s this?”

Her eyes locked onto it and she didn’t blink. Her lips parted though, as if she were going to say something, but then her gaze lifted and she glared at him.

He popped his brows.

She glared harder.

He was so close to freedom he could almost taste it.

“It’s a double-ended dildo.”

This time, as he returned the object into the wicker trunk, he worked hard to hide his shock. She was hardcore for a vanilla doll. And how fucking awesome was that? He couldn’t let this end here. Thinking quickly he pointed.

“And this?”

He hadn’t bothered to write down her last response. He’d do it after she gave him this one because there was no way he’d forget that answer.

“The trunk?”

He put the lid on tight and held it up. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” She scooped the papers up off her lap and fanned herself with them. “It’s your dirty basket. The trunk where you keep all your toys?”

He dropped it with a thud. He couldn’t help it. Her pronouncement hit him like a jab to the gut. If the guys at the club knew a woman in his company thought he could keep all his toys in that puny little basket, they’d laugh their asses off. But she really wasn’t a woman in his company, was she? He was more a guy in hers.

“Your turn.”

“How did I do?”

He rolled his shoulders and grinned. “How about we’ll tally up after I go through your test?”

Once Jaxx concluded she had no choice but to participate in his not-so-subtle way of getting out of the session, she threw all her efforts into nailing his test. The devious Dom tried to stump her, but she was wise to that. She knew about the lifestyle and the props within it. Albeit, some of his “props” looked a little retro, but what did she expect? He was trying to get the best of her.

Which was a shame as that wasn’t going to happen if she could help it. She had some pretty awesome images here and could hardly wait to see what he had to say. Even if she was fully prepared for the usual discussion about vaginas, penises and breasts. And as to that, she had a whole slew of relevant “psychobabble”,” as he called it, to introduce that was sure to entertain and impress him.

“I’ll list my answers.”

“That would be fine.” She took a deep breath and flipped up the first image for him to see.

“
Tsk, tsk.
Mask of a fox.” He shook his head.

Spying his disappointment, she hoped he wasn’t going to do this the whole way through. After all, it was only fair. She’d been nice and accommodating when he conducted his. “What’s the matter?”

“I told you I studied in college. I got paid to show those images over and over again to other students for course studies. I could ramble off without looking what the most popular non-sexual answers are. I thought you’d surprise me with something new.”

His disgruntled expression was so endearing that it was hard to imagine him being a Dom. The idea of him wielding a whip wasn’t taking. He looked too normal, handsome and completely put-out at the moment. The dominant alphas she read in her books were usually silent and brooding individuals which he wasn’t.

Trying to keep a stern tone and failing miserably, she said, “Okay, hold your horses. I can cut the stack and get rid of the regulars. I do have a few surprises.” And boy, did she ever. She’d collected quite a number of unique and very stump-worthy images that most test studies had rejected. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

“How about this?”

He immediately turned the page over on the clipboard and wrote his answer. When he was done he turned it around and said, “Fat guy sitting on a boulder with legs outstretched and big boots on.”

She nodded, having to give it to him. “It does kind of look like that.” Must have been a lucky guess. She tossed the page on top of the others she’d discarded and snapped the next page up. “How about this one?”

He wrote as he answered, “Two bears climbing a mountain.”

She turned it around, squinted and frowned.

“And this one?”

“Batman kissing a mirror.”

No. Way. She flipped it around and had a look. Dammit. “And this?”

He’d never get this one. No one ever did. It was impossible—

“I’d have to say Fred Flintstone spitting at his reflection in a pond.”

Jaxx whipped it around and studied the image. He was right. The freaking guy was right. The hair, the nose, the pot belly. Jagged caveman ensemble. Even the spitting thing worked. What. The. Hell?

Wasn’t a guy like him supposed to be thinking about other things? Breasts, vaginas or…‌well, maybe not penises, but still. Fred Flintstone and Batman?

“Are you sure that’s all you see?” Now she was the one who was a little disappointed. The rest of what she had planned was fizzling fast.

He turned the clipboard her way and shook it. “I wrote it down.”

It would figure. “What’s the tally?”

He tapped the clipboard against his knee a couple of times before he stopped and asked, “Depends. How many answers did I get right, according to the crazy meter?”

She frowned, because he said it like she hadn’t answered correctly on some of hers, but that couldn’t be.

“All of them.”

“Nice.”

She sat forward in the chair. “Did I get some wrong?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She could feel her eyes bugging out of her head. “I did? Like what?”

“Let’s see.” He pulled out the tape and turned it around in his hands. “You said glow-in-the-dark bondage tape.”

She nodded.

He shook his head. “It’s neon green duct tape.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Came in handy when I helped my buddy’s kid make lizard shapes for his book report. Aaron got five bonus points for creativity.”

“I bet he did. Does it glow in the dark at least?”

“No.” He went to toss it back in the trunk and then hesitated as he eyed her. “And trust me on this. If I go through the trouble of restraining my woman, I won’t be enjoying my handiwork in the dark, that’s for sure. Even if the ropes are glowing.”

“Ropes?”

He dropped the roll in the trunk. “Yeah, or chains, cords, sometimes leather.”

She wasn’t going to be drawn into asking anything about that. Instead she silently waited until he pulled out the vibrator then said, “I was right about that one.”

He frowned and pursed his lips. After a cursory scan of the clipboard only his eyes moved when he looked at her. “Wrong.”

She ignored how handsome he was as a lock of hair fell forward to shade an eye and insisted, “How could I be wrong? You said it came with attachments.”

“I said attachment. And it does.” He angled the item so she could see the hole at the top. “An attachment known as a toothbrush.”

One thing was clear. She’d lost a considerable edge here making assumptions and underestimating a man like him. She needed to forget about his made-up game. Put aside the concepts of winning or losing and start thinking about the motivation that prompted this little time waster. Why did he want out of these last two sessions so badly?

“I’m only going to say you’re half wrong with this one though, because I’ve heard from some pretty reliable sources that when a woman’s desperate enough…‌well—” he sat up and shook his head until that sexy wave of hair shot back off his forehead, “—you’d be right.”

It took her a moment to realize that maybe he wasn’t so much wasting time as he was trying to scare her away. She was going to press him about it, but then he dropped the electric toothbrush in the basket and lifted out the—

“You called this a hook-e-thing for anal play.”

She swallowed and just as she was attempting a casual nod, she caught sight of her diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and it hit her. She was treating him like a man she was attracted to and not the patient he was. She’d allowed him to put her on the defensive while he tackled her over and over again. Just like Maggie. The idea got her back up. “I did.”

“You’d be wrong again.”

“No.”

He nodded and then turned the thing upside-down, which now that she looked at it was right-side up.

“This is an oiled bronze single robe hanger.”

She met his challenging stare. He’d learn soon enough that she didn’t scare easily. “A what-a-what?”

“A robe hanger. You put it on the back of a door like so—” he held it up, “—and you hang your bathrobe on it.”

How convenient that before he’d held it upside-down and had covered the holes where the screws went to attach it. “You purposely misled me. Isn’t that cheating?”

His eyes sparkled and lips twitched. “This isn’t a game. It’s a test. I did say it’s all a matter of interpretation. If your mind weren’t trolling in the red-light district, you might have seen this for what it was.” She went to speak, but he held up his free hand. “Look, I don’t want to argue about this. It’s your office, after all, and you are the doctor, so we should just carry on. If you think you deserve a point for that one, then fine. You are now the owner of one spanking-new point.”

Unbelievable. He bent and placed the hook in the basket before pulling out the clamps. Clearly he expected her to ignore the fact that he’d just used the brush-off tactic with an additional pile of bullshit.

“You said these were nipple clamps?”

“I…‌ah…”

“They’re grips for computer parts.”

How the hell was she supposed to have known that? She waited until he took out his next item before saying, “There is no way I got that wrong.”

He tossed the clothes peg up in the air and caught it without taking his eyes off her. “If you’d gotten this one wrong, I’d be questioning the court’s judgment in making me come here.”

That observation was so off-the-cuff and deadpan she almost laughed. But then he ditched the peg and pulled out the dildo. Seeing it, her amusement fled.

“You said this was a double-ended dildo.”

She tried to turn away. To not look, but it was like passing by a car wreck. No matter how hard she told herself she wasn’t going to, she wound up staring.

“It’s a dowel.”

She blinked. She’d heard his words, but they weren’t computing. Dowel? At the moment she had no idea what that meant. She was too caught up watching as he seductively massaged the glossy ball on one end of the thing. So distracted in fact that it took her a moment to realize he’d bent forward and tilted his head down to her line of vision. Her eyes colliding with his brought her to her senses.

“A what?”

“It’s a dow-wel,” he pronounced succinctly. “I use it to hang my hand towels on in the guest bath.”

That got her attention. “That? You use that?” She pointed.

“Yeah.” He held it up and turned it around while he closed one eye, examining it. “I know it looks kind of feminine, but my designer insisted, and when that guy insists—” he stopped eyeing it and turned his attention back to her, “—you have to agree, because he doesn’t take any prisoners, if you know what I mean.”

No, she didn’t know what he meant. Designer? Prisoners? “Seriously? It’s not a…‌you know.”

He shook his head.

“It sure looks like one.”

He let it roll down his thigh and when it got nearly to his knee, he jerked his leg and the object fell into the basket. “So, you’ve seen a lot of those, have you?”

She really hadn’t. The truth was she never had, but he wasn’t going to know it. “Sure.”

Now he smiled. A big, you-are-so-f-of-shit smile she wanted to die. “Liar.”

“It’s true.” She didn’t know why she wanted to press this. Why she wanted to do something she never did and lie, but here she was, lying right through her teeth. “Just last week.”

“You don’t say.” He crossed his arms over his chest as his head dropped to the right and then left. “What did you do with it?”

“I’m not telling you.” She was thankful she didn’t sputter. “I’m sure you know all about how two women make use of that.” Her cheeks burned and she knew for sure they were the color of the red marker she’d been using earlier to outline her strategy with him. A strategy that had gone full steam ahead in the handcart to hell the second he’d carried in that trunk.