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I had abandoned my plan of a hot bath and taken a hot shower instead, having been more than slightly rattled by my unexpected visitor. Lug Nut had not left my side since Adrian’s visit, and I knew it was mostly because he was picking up on my energy. To say it was unsettling to see him on my front porch was an understatement, and I still hadn’t completely recovered.

The man was a fucking enigma. Bea had told me in hushed tones when we were off-site at lunches that he was a “bit quirky bordering on eccentric”, but that he had always been fair with her even when he was especially demanding. A bit quirky was also an understatement. I really wasn’t any closer to learning much more about Adrian Benedict than I’d been when I’d logged on to Olympus for the first time. Unless I could get credit for knowing he liked extra grainy mustard on his corned beef sandwich. And he liked me to use my teeth when I sucked him off.

Bea had also confided in me that she worried about Adrian because she felt he was lonely. “He really doesn’t have any friends, Brynn, and as long as I have worked for the man, he has never had a girlfriend. I’m hoping you can change that.” After I’d nearly choked on my salad that day, she hurriedly explained. “I’m not encouraging you to date him, but I do hope you can perhaps strike up some sort of personal friendship with him. He could use someone to talk to. I think you’d make a very nice someone to talk to. That’s all.”

I’d looked at her skeptically and gently steered the conversation in a different direction, but it had stuck with me. The man did seem to be alone. No personal pictures in his office, no personal phone calls, no personal office visitors, either. Ever. Considering his awkwardness when it came to making an apology, it was obvious the majority of conversations he had were business related.

In a D/S relationship, the expected exchanges were mostly one-sided, or consisted of the submissive responding to directions given by the Dominant. That didn’t involve a lot of free form dialogue, either. Those scenarios could be controlled by Adrian, and control was his comfort zone. I felt a mental puzzle piece slide into place.

Wrapping a towel around my hair, and another around my body, I went in search of my cell phone. Locating it on the bed, I accessed the cloud storage for my doorbell camera and replayed the video from earlier when Adrian had come by. He’d stood there for longer than I’d thought before Lug Nut had alerted me that someone was close to the house.

The expression on Adrian’s face made it clear that he had wrestled with the decision to be there. That actually tugged at my heartstrings just a bit. Well, that, and his shocked surprise that I would be at work the next day. I hadn’t been very nice to him, and while he had deserved my attitude, I could at least thank him again for the apology. Maybe it would reconfirm that he had made the right choice.

Before I changed my mind, I pulled up his number to fire off a text.

Sir, I appreciate you making a trip over here to apologize. Thank you. I will see you in the office tomorrow.

It didn’t matter if he replied or not. I now recognized some of what it had taken for him to say he was sorry. At the very least, I hope he saw the text for the olive branch it was meant to be.

I still wasn’t motivated to unpack, but I did want to wear one of the shirts my father had saved for me along with something else he had returned to me. Digging around in my duffle, I pulled out the old Nirvana concert shirt that had been Blair’s favorite and slid it over my head. The soft material felt like a hug as it fell down around my hips.

She’d left the shirt at Dad’s place the last time we’d been up there together and had pouted about it, lamenting that it would be a while before she would be able to go back and get it. I had talked her out of asking him to mail it, assuring her we’d be able to make a trip up there soon. Obviously, we never got the chance.

She’d scored the shirt at a thrift store six years ago and it had been a favorite to sleep in. I inhaled and swore I could still smell her perfume on it, but figured my imagination was playing tricks on me. Daddy had washed the shirt and it had been in a drawer for months, so it was doubtful I was smelling anything other than laundry detergent.

I rooted around in the bag again and located the flat box he had placed on the dresser and made sure I had seen while I was packing this morning.

When I had turned sixteen, Blair and I celebrated by getting matching necklaces. Each one was a thin gold chain with a dangling ‘B’ and our respective birthstone on it. They weren’t anything overly fancy, but we had picked them out together and it had meant a lot to me that my big sister wanted to match me. Opening the box, my vision blurred a bit as tears gathered while I ran my finger over the thin chain.

We had jokingly called ourselves “the killer Bs” back then, and Blair had said she would kill any boy who dared break my heart. I’d sworn to do the same for her.

“I wish I could have made good on my vow to you, B,” I whispered.

Placing the box on my dresser, I made my rounds for the evening, checking the locks and setting the alarm. Once the dog had done his own check, we both went back to the bedroom where I settled into bed with another diary and he flopped down into his large dog bed, beginning to snore after a few minutes.

This journal contained more stats and notes, along with dates and times. There were physical descriptions of club members right down to what each was wearing, or not wearing when it came to the women. How the fuck was she able to get so much detail while she’d been at the club? We weren’t allowed to have phones and it’s not like there was any place to hide something like a camera or a recording device because we were naked. This put the term photographic memory on a whole different level.

It was like she was tracking but I wasn’t entirely sure what or why. It was more pairings of this submissive going with this Dominant at Lotus. She also noted her own interactions with different Doms, though she really only scened with the other men for appearances sake.

It made me more than a bit uncomfortable to read the entries where she’d been with Adrian, so for the most part, I skipped over those. I didn’t need to read what they had done together or how he had made her feel, and I didn’t want to come across anything that might make me doubt things more than I already did.

Blair had been much more experienced than I was, so I didn’t need any voices in my head driving me crazy. Adrian had told me before that he desired me, and his behavior indicated in certain circumstances that he was acting out of the norm… showing up to watch some of the Halloween party… coming to my house to apologize… hell, the very fact that I knew his identity was the biggest one. No one else on Olympus or at Lotus knew who he was. My own sister didn’t know who he was beyond his server name. That had to mean something.

I saw the name Kyrios again in several places and that she’d spent quite a bit of time chatting with him at the bar. Blair mentioned that he was becoming a good friend and that if she wasn’t so head over heels for EREBUS69, she would have given him a chance.

Sighing, I closed the diary with a firm snap. It would be a good idea for me to just go ahead and turn in for the night. Mondays were normally very busy at BT. I did have one thing I wanted to do before I forgot, though.

Pulling up an online language course, I found the one for Japanese and went ahead and paid for it, knowing I would need to know it sooner or later. The course was self-paced and came with a guarantee that I would be conversational in a matter of weeks. I certainly hoped so. My goal was to make a good impression and to prove to my boss that the risk he had taken on me was worth it.

Once the course had been paid for, I went lights out, smiling as I heard Lug Nut giving soft barks in his sleep.

“My baby must be chasing squirrels again,” I murmured softly so as not to wake him. “You get that squirrel, Lug Nut. You get him!”

A deep, old man sigh came from the direction of the dog bed and that was the last thing I remembered before I was the one chasing things in my dreams.