“Can I come, please?” she pants.

My palm lands on her ass. “Yes,” I hiss through gritted teeth as my balls tighten with such fire, they ache. “Now,” I shout, pounding into her.

When I release and her body slumps to the bed, I pull out and collapse beside her. I’m fucking spent after such a long day.

“That’s the most basic sex I’ve fuckin had since I was a teenager.” I chuckle. It wasn’t technically straight vanilla, but close enough I’m shocked.

“Yeah, well, I’m stripping down and going to sleep. I’m tired.” She yawns.

Who knew a quick fuck could exhaust a person. I haven’t had sex that fast in a long ass time.

“I’ll be here when you wake,” I say, stripping my clothes off at the same time.

“We’ll see,” she says sleepily. “Night.”

I gaze at her as she strips herself free from her clothes, tucks herself under the sheet, and her eyes close.

“Night, darlin’,” I whisper.

***

Chapter Twenty-Three

Tatiana

The heat of the sun beats down onto my bare back as I wake from my sex-induced coma. My mouth splits into a smile because Shadow is rubbing my thigh. I inwardly squeal. I can’t believe last night happened, and I’m more than happy that he slept in my bed again. This time is a lot different. He made it clear there would be no repeat performance of the morning after our first time.

“Good mornin, darlin’,” he drawls. “I know you’re awake.”

I turn my head to look at him. His deep onyx eyes sparkle, and he rubs my back with a slow torturous pace that lights me ablaze.

“Morning. Did you sleep okay?” I ask him. I hope he did. He appears well rested.

“I did, but I promised myself I would tell you what is going on as soon as we woke up. You deserve to know things, darlin’, and I don’t know if anyone will tell you or not. And after this,” he gestures between us, “I’m obligated to tell you shit. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t.”

Why does this make me queasy? As I sit up, I drag the white sheet with me to cover my chest and then give him my full attention.

“Go ahead, tell me whatever it is.”

He flops onto his back and peers up at the ceiling. He is pensive, that is certain, and it worries me.

“You can’t leave the compound at all today. Promise that you won’t.”

I reach over, grab his cheek, and turn his face towards mine. “Why?” I ask. I have to be able to see into his eyes when he answers me.

“We got business at Euphoria. It’ll get dirty. Stay here. Do. Not. Leave. We don’t want to worry about anybody while we’re there. Let me rephrase that. We don’t need something new to worry about.”

I fling my head back against the headboard, groan, and shout out as the pain shoots through my skull. I shouldn’t have thrown my head so hard. Now I am going to have a splitting damn headache all day, on top of all this other bullshit.

“It is always something, isn’t it?” I whisper more to myself than to him.

“Here lately it’s always something, and it pisses me off as much as it pisses you off.”

I know that I have to promise to stay on the compound. I won’t worry my family or Shadow while they have other business to attend. I want to hear more about him and for him to keep talking to me so openly.

“What’s your name?” I tease him to lighten the mood.

His eyes light up as he sits up to lean on the headboard. “It’s Tavis, Tea.”

My smile tilts to a frown because he didn’t tell me the truth. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me,” I say, disappointed.

Shadow grabs my hand in his and puts our joint clasped hands into his lap. “It is, darlin’, I swear.”

But if his name is Tavis, why does he use it as a scene name? This confuses me. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind doing that. Everything I have read says not to use your real name if you aren’t with a permanent partner. This goes to show me, I should never, ever use the internet as my only source.

“Wipe that nasty face away. I use my real name to scene because, unlike everyone else, I don’t have a life to hide from, or a job that I could lose if it becomes known I’m a Sadist. A lot of others are worried about jail time, losing their jobs, or their family finding out. Look around, baby.” Shadow grins. “Do I have anyone here that doesn’t support me? Do I have a family that would frown at my life choices? Do I have a job that requires my personal life to be kept quiet? No, I don’t have any of those things. Everyone here supports me, and my job is of the flexible variety.” He winks at me. “I have it a lot easier than most kinksters do.”

Well, all this makes sense, and the name, in a fucked up way, fits him, but I could never call him Tavis on a personal level. He is Shadow to me. If he wants me to call him Tavis while we’re in bed together, I’ll do it, but I can’t do it all the time. I don’t care how well that name suits him, he will always be Shadow to me.

“I didn’t expect that, to be honest with you. I thought it would be something horribly awful like Bobby Lou or something funky like that,” I smirk as I play with him.

“Bobby Lou? Really? Is there anyone with that name?” He chuckles, and I grab my phone off the nightstand to Google the name.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” I giggle as I type in the silly name, but as I repeat it, it doesn’t sound all that silly. “Wow! It’s a really common name, believe it or not,” I say as I hand him my phone so he can see. I can’t believe it really is that popular of a name, and the more I sound it out with my lips, the more it grows on me. Go figure.