To Sir by Rachell Nichole Page A

some utensils in ceramic jars, the counters were bare. A bank of bench seating around a corner table on the other side of the kitchen looked out over the rock-and-cactus backyard.
    He smiled at her gaping and shrugged. “I like to cook.”
    “Clearly,” she muttered. No, definitely not what she’d been expecting when she showed up today.
    “Come on,” he said, letting the door swing shut behind them and padding on bare feet to the table. Her heels clacked on the hardwood floors as she followed him. They sat at the table across from each other, and she set her purse on the bench beside her. She opened it and took out a notebook and her purple pen. She was going to make this meeting as professional and nonsexy as she could, no matter what dirty things she asked him or he told her about. She would not blush, comment, feel slick with need, or run screaming from the room.
    She’d promised herself.
    “Well, don’t you look the part, Ms. Clark?”
    “Stop calling me that. I’m not a teacher, and I’m not your boss,” she snapped. Crap. So much for her promises. They obviously meant squat.
    “What shall I call you, then, Ms. Clark?” The glint in his eyes told her he’d known all along the name got under her skin, and he didn’t care. In fact, he seemed to relish making her squirm. She refused to give him the satisfaction.
    “You may call me Liz,” she said in her most authoritative voice.
    “Okay, Liz , let’s start at the beginning. I’m sure you’ve done some kind of book research?”
    “Yes. I’ve done some reading, some trolling of message boards and websites. I know what the DSM-V says in all its psychobabble about sadism and masochism no longer being considered psychological conditions requiring psychiatric intervention and blah, blah, blah.”
    “Don’t put much stock into head doctors, huh?”
    “Not really.”
    Therapy had made her more miserable than ever as a kid. Her father’s insistence that she needed help to control her urges had meant staying locked in a room with some guy or lady in a white coat telling her it was wrong and unhealthy to be sexually active at sixteen. The one and only time she’d tried to talk frankly with any of them about how she felt inside regarding sex had turned into a disaster, ending with her getting put on antidepressants.
    She shuddered, remembering how she’d walked around like a zombie for those first few months, until she’d found a pill that looked the same that she could take in its place. Dumb kid move, she knew, taking the wrong meds, but she couldn’t function in such a haze, and since her father practically crammed them down her throat, there hadn’t been any other way to avoid taking them. As an adult, she’d had some success with one therapist who’d helped her get a handle on her anger. But out of the half dozen shrinks she’d seen over the years, Dr. Reynald had been the exception, not the rule.
    Chase snapped his fingers in front of her face, and she blinked, shaking her head and clearing her mind of the vestiges of those horrid memories. “Sorry. Anyway, I’ve been reading a bit more in the BDSM erotic-romance subgenre. But I can’t seem to re-create the right balance in the book. The scenes either come off sounding rapey or stupid or not sexy at all. And it needs to be sexy.”
    “Rapey?” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s definitely not sexy.”
    “Hence my issues. I need to understand a true, healthy Dominant/submissive relationship before I can write it out, I think. Sarah and Hawke are good people, and I need to do right by them.”
    “You talk as if they’re real people.”
    “To me they are.” She stared straight into his chocolate-brown eyes as she said this. It was nice to be able to look him in the eye without straining her neck for once.
    He shrugged again, one bulging shoulder lifting in an almost delicate gesture. Nothing about this man was delicate. Except maybe his ego. “Okay. Well, at the base of the