Three Hard Lessons (Blindfold Club 2)

Dominic took two steps into the apartment and paused.

“I got a Christmas tree,” I said.

“I can see that.”

His gaze was fixed on the cheap bonsai tree I’d bought at one of tourist shops nearby, and had decorated with white Christmas lights. It was sort of a joke, but sort of not. I could deal with Dominic needing to work on Christmas day since it wasn’t a holiday here, but I couldn’t pretend Christmas didn’t exist at all.

“I like it.” His lips curled back in a smile. “If I stick your presents under there, are you going to peek?”

“Presents? Plural?” I’d only gotten him one thing. “Maybe you should give me some ideas of what you want so you can have plural gifts, too.”

“Payton,” he laughed. “You already gave me what I wanted, you don’t need to get me anything.”

“Bullshit. Ideas, now.”

He smirked. “Another week?”

“No. What else?”

He pulled off his suit jacket and slipped it on the back of one of the dining chairs, leaning forward with his hands on it, as if deep in thought. “Sorry, I got nothing.” He snapped upright abruptly. “And I can prove it.” A hand disappeared into his interior pocket and pulled out an envelope, extending it to me.

“What’s this?” The letter inside was all in Japanese, except for the handwritten word in the bottom corner. “Negative.” There was a signature beneath it.

Warm color rose in Dominic’s cheeks. “I had a physical the other day. I know you can’t read that, so I had the doctor write my test results in English.”

“Clean bill of health?” I played dumb. “Good for you.”

“Don’t pretend like you have no idea where I’m going with this.”

I grinned. One night after he’d fucked my brains out, the condom had broken and I’d calmed him by telling him I got the birth control shot once every three months, so we were safe. And he knew I was clean because the club posted the date of our last monthly STD test on the bottom of our willing list.

I set the letter down and my hands worked the knot of his tie loose. “You want to be inside this pussy with nothing between us?”

He exhaled loudly. “God, yes. Are you cool with that?”

A shiver flashed down my spine. “Oh, yeah.”

Lips traced over my neck while one of his hands cupped my ass. “And the green light on that is when?”

I’d gotten my period a few days ago, and wasn’t into that kind of messy sex. It’d been blow jobs and above the waist stuff for us since. “We should be fine tomorrow. Christmas Eve.”

“That reminds me. You want to do presents before I go to work on Christmas day or are you okay to wait until after?”

“I think we’ll be rushed in the morning. Let’s just do it after.”

His hands held me to his hard, firm body, where I was beginning to feel like I fit perfectly.

“Works for me. Do you have a job that day?”

I’d gotten called up for another photo shoot. The second time it had been bras. The third was thigh-high stockings. I had been paid in cash each time, which was nice since I didn’t have a work visa, and I’d used the money to buy Dominic’s Christmas present.

The nicest, most elegant watch I could afford. I’d found his watch with a broken link soon after I arrived and offered to drop it off for repair, but he said it was too cheap to fix. So I’d spent every last bit of yen I’d made. If honest, I was excited about this. Every time he looked at this watch, hopefully he’d think of me and our time together.

We sat on the floor of his living room with the overhead light off, so only the twinkling bonsai tree lit the room. Our opened presents were spread around us, along with the ripped Japanese newspaper we’d both used to wrap each other’s gifts.

My first gift I opened had been Airplane on DVD. The second gift was a 1:16 replica toy car. My Jaguar F-Type.

“I know you’ve been missing it,” he said.