I immediately went to lay on the sofa. He sat on the seat beside me and lifted my legs to rest on his lap.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, I’m more sorry.”
“Ok, good, because it’s your fault, really,” he chuckled.
I gasped in pretend shock. “Well, I thought it was your friend who told on us, so it’s actually your fault. I was enjoying our time together. He ruined it.”
We stayed like that for ours. He stroked his hand over my body and cuddled me as I slipped in and out of sleep. He eventually forced me to eat something as it would sober me up and get rid of the hangover headache much faster. I felt like a burden on him.
“You know, I meant it about the paper we signed,” he said as we sat across from each other at the dining table. He tapped his foot against mine. “I’d love to continue getting to know you, now that I know you’re a real human and not some robot seeking laughter from a classroom.”
I raised my brows at him. “How do you know I’m not just a robot?”
“If you were, all those things we’d done would’ve hurt,” he said. “But I’ve never had sex with a robot, so I wouldn’t know.”
I gave my best robotic arm and hand inflections, attempting to show him what a robot moved like. It was an awful interpretation, but he laughed anyway, and I appreciated it. “I won’t tell anyone about us.”
“Me either, I think some people are so into each others lives, that if we tell them, they’ll only try and split us up,” he said. “Which sounds incredibly weird since I didn’t think this would be something real.”
He was right about that. I didn’t think it would be anything real either. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want it to be real, but more so because he was the opposite of me, and I knew myself better than anyone else, the opposite of me was boring. But he wasn’t boring, he was just private.
After we ate and I forced another tall glass of water in me, we cuddled up again on the sofa. He played one of the TV shows he’d recorded and we laid there together. It was peaceful and quiet.
“You know, when I graduate, I won’t have anywhere to stay,” I started. “And I know this is soon, like, way too soon, and I don’t want to put this on you as I could totally find somewhere myself, but you’re close to the Manor, and you’re—”
“You can move in,” he said. “Of course. But there are conditions to that.”
I’d been following rules for a long time, at the frat house, at the Manor, but rules were meant to be broken. “What conditions?”
“You don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “That’s it. Oh, you make sure to put your shoes on the rack by the door instead of just kicking them off.”
“Ok, anything el—”
“And you have to think about your future,” he said. “Like, what’s the one thing you want to do with your life. And then you can work toward it.”
He wasn’t asking for much, just forcing me to look into myself and tell him my deepest darkest secrets. I didn’t even know what I wanted from my future. All I knew was that I didn’t want to end up like my parents. I didn’t want to end up forced to live in poverty. “Do I have to decide now?”
“No, no.” He kissed the back of my neck as he continued to spoon me on the sofa. “Now, the kitten stuff is paying well, so you should also think about saving.”
“Has anyone ever told you’re bossy?” I asked, wiggling as I turned around in his arms.
He kissed my nose with a boop. “Has anyone ever told you they think you just need a firm guiding hand?”
Actually, several people had said those exact words to me. “Yes, Sir.”
“Master,” he corrected, pulling me in closer. His mouth on my mouth. “It’s Master.”
“Yes, Master.”