Perhaps the most difficult of his rules to get used to had been the no-masturbating-without-asking rule. It wasn’t that he said no a lot—in fact, it was rare for him to say no at all—but it was the asking itself that she found difficult. It was one thing to give him control over her body in a scene or during sex, but to give it to him when she was alone? Her instinctive resistance to the idea had shocked her, but curiously, he hadn’t seemed surprised at all. If she didn’t want to ask permission, he’d informed her in his calm, sure way, that was fine. But the rule was in place, and violations would be punished.

She hadn’t thought it would be a big deal. After all, they were fucking almost every day, anyway—it wasn’t like she was orgasm deprived. But then a two-day work trip to Austin had stretched to more than a week, and on day six with no end in sight, she’d broken down.

She’d asked him over text message early in the morning, before work. The mornings were the worst, because he often woke her with sex, and she’d gotten used to starting her day with him inside her. So she’d forced herself to type the words, feeling anxious and oddly humbled while she waited for his answer.

When the phone had jangled with an incoming call instead of the soft chime of her text alert, she’d answered almost hesitantly. “Hello?”

“Good morning,” he’d rumbled. “Are you missing me, fofa?”

He’d sounded so good, his voice heavy and rough with sleep and arousal. She’d closed her eyes and buried her face in his pillow—it still smelled like him—so she could pretend he was next to her.

“Yes,” she’d whispered, all her needy, desperate want poured into the word.

“Then go ahead and make yourself come for me,” he’d replied, and she had.

Somehow, getting herself off while he listened from his hotel bed several hundred miles away was the most intimate thing they’d done so far.

By the time she’d been living in his house for six weeks, she felt like she’d been there for years, and the thought of leaving made her unbelievably sad.

She said as much to her friends at lunch one day.

“Well, of course you don’t want to leave,” Rebecca told her, sympathy in her wide gray eyes. “Why would you?”

Olivia shrugged. “We’ve never talked about making it permanent, so I assumed at some point, I would.”

“That man thinks the sun rises in your pussy,” Sadie said around a mouthful of tuna melt.

Amanda shoved her glasses up and rolled her eyes. “Nice, Sadie.”

“Am I wrong?” Sadie glanced around the table, nodding triumphantly at the chorus of murmured nos. “Trust me. He’s not going to ask you to leave.”