Exposed Exposed (Dom Nation #1) - E. Davies Page 0,13

they could sort through it all. I didn’t elaborate—that felt like talking about our personal lives, and we’d both avoided that so far.

Whatever his reasons, Rex was reticent with details. And I didn’t want to risk going into it and blabbing about Isaac. That elephant in the room could stay right where it was, thanks very much.

“I was thinking,” Rex finally said, spinning on his heel and freeing me abruptly, but trailing a hand along the counter the whole way. “I need to pass out samples. So it might get boring for you.”

He doesn’t want me in the way. I understood instantly. I’d worked at trade shows to make ends meet in university. If you were busy talking to friends, people wouldn’t come and talk to you.

But Rex wasn’t thinking creatively enough.

A slow smile spread over my face, and a shiver ran down my spine straight to the tips of my toes.

Suddenly, I was keenly aware of the tightness of my leather shorts and the supple leather stretching across my chest. Warm metal buckles and rings pressed into my flesh just hard enough to remind me of my station.

“Explain yourself,” Rex told me, the seductive thread of command weaving into his words.

It was fascinating how he could switch it on so naturally. I might hardly notice, if only that aura didn’t almost bring me to my knees. The need to please him. Like a working dog who needed to follow its instincts or a bird on a migratory flight, I knew what to do.

“Do you have a serving tray?”

Still eyeing me until the last moment, Rex slid between the countertops and turned away to dig a tray out from a cupboard.

As he did, I swallowed every ounce of my nerves. It felt like I was straining at the bit, waiting.

When Rex came out from behind the counter, I held a hand out and took the tray as he gave it to me. It was a little larger than a dinner plate, but not by much.

“I could serve for you.”

I articulated the words carefully, even though that one little article didn’t want to slip out. Serve for him. Not serve him.

Right?

Rex held very still, like he’d seen the most rare and precious of birds and he didn’t want to startle it away. “What do you mean?” The flicker of hope on his face was unmistakable.

Slowly, maintaining eye contact the whole time, I sank to my knees. It felt like I wobbled the whole way down. Ten or twenty years ago, I could have bounced down in a split second, but now I had to take more care.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t look so much dignified as creaky and ridiculous. But I was this far in, and I had to keep going, even if I was about to humiliate myself.

Dammit, that’s not supposed to wake you up, I told Slate Junior, but it was a losing battle. I’d known for years that the surest way to get me hard was to make me feel so very small.

A boy, entirely at his master’s whims.

My hands trembling, I bowed my head and bent forward, resting the tray awkwardly across the back of my neck and my shoulders.

From here, I could hardly see Rex. My gaze was fixed firmly on the floor as I bent over, humble and quivering with fear that I was about to hear him laugh, or mock me, or say something cutting.

And worst of all—most fucked-up of all—that I was about to enjoy my own mortification.

But instead, as I struggled to keep my breathing even and my hands steady around the edges of the tray, all I heard was footsteps soft against the shiny, tiled floor.

Rex stopped just in front of me. “Would you enjoy that?” he asked, a hand brushing against my downturned cheek.

Warm and solid, like a silent promise not to rip me apart with his words and his derision. To strengthen me, instead, by allowing me this submission I so desperately craved.

“Yes, sir,” I whimpered, need abruptly slamming into my belly with all the force of a long-silenced confession. The answer left my lips no sooner than it found me.

Until he’d asked, I hadn’t realized how much I needed it. I’d come to the club to be used and then melt into the furniture again, overlooked and safe. Not scrutinized and humiliated by the attention I didn’t deserve.

And finally, a nail ran along the itch deep in my filthy soul with the promise—even just the