The rest…the rest is just exploring what we enjoy together.”
Enjoy… “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not hurting her, right?” I didn’t think he was or would, but she’d been tied to the bed. I hadn’t missed that part.
“Everything we do is consensual,” Bubba said, his tone flat. “Don’t ever suggest otherwise to her. You want to talk to me about it, fine. You’ll leave her alone.”
I cut him a look. “Dude, not accusing you of anything. But I care about Frankie the same way you do, and if I think something is wrong or you do, what are we going to do?”
“What you’re doing right now,” Bubba answered without looking away, and there was a stoniness to his countenance that I’d rarely seen there. “You’re expressing concern, and I’m telling you, we’re fine. Nothing I do with her will ever be anything other than with her informed consent, and I’ll never engage in anything I don’t understand enough to protect her. She’s trusting me to take care of her, and I’m going to be worthy of that trust.”
“Fair enough,” I said slowly. Jake had definitely slapped her ass more than once around me, and I’d done a little of that and she’d never complained. Not once. If anything, there’d been a flare of excitement. Then there were the books she got at the shop… “I have so many questions.”
Bubba chuckled. “Ask.”
I cut him another look. “You sure? I don’t want to intrude.”
The fuck I didn’t and the look he shot me said he knew that, but at the same time, this was Frankie we were talking about.
“You want to know if there’s something she needs that you’re not doing,” Bubba said. Succinct. To the point. “And you’re curious about what all of what we’re doing is.”
“Not going to lie,” I told him as I pulled into the long fucking line at the Starbucks. “I always want to make sure I’m giving her what she needs, and the idea of pinning her down isn’t alien to me.” We didn’t quite talk this bluntly about our sex lives with her. With others? “And it’s weird as fuck to have this conversation.”
“Agreed.” Bubba rolled his head from side to side. “I told her what I needed. What interested me. What…what I wanted to explore with her. I never wanted this with anyone else. Never trusted them with this part of me.”
I could see that. “I trust Frankie with everything.”
“So do I,” he said. “And I think somewhere in the middle of that clusterfuck, when I was listening to Dad and worried about what I wanted to ask from her and seeing all the turmoil she was in because of her mother…I forgot that I trusted her with me and I needed to trust her with her.”
I snorted. “That last part is harder than it sounds.” It shouldn’t be hard at all.
“Agreed.”
We inched forward as one car after another placed their order.
“But one of the things I’ve learned and then nearly fucked up was communication is everything. I need to take care of her. That’s not just something that I want to do, it’s like a physical drive in me. I don’t want to be in charge all the time, but when it’s just us and we’re alone? Yes, I want her to give me that power to be in charge of what makes her feel good. I want to take all those worries and stresses and the crap that life pours on her, and I want to be the wall between that and her for as long as she’ll let me.”
When he put it that way, it was hard to disagree. Hell, I wanted the same thing. But did I need it the same way?
“One of the first things I learned when I went to a class…”
“Hold the fucking phone.” I twisted to look at him. “There’re classes?”
Bubba smirked at me. “Yes, and I’ll give you the information and even take you to one if you shut up and let me finish. This is hard as shit to tell you without the interruptions.”
“Done.”
He laughed at me and then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “Probably easier if I just start at the beginning, but some of that is none of your business.”
“Accepted.” Because yeah, I wasn’t sure I needed to know the whole history of it. “That said, Bubba. I’m not going to judge. I know I sounded like I was…”
“You didn’t,” he assured me. “You