24

FOURTH HOUR

"What do you want to drink?" He asked, opening the fridge to take out the salad that Anastasia asked him to take out when they were still waiting for another ten minutes until the noodles could be brought out from the oven. Elliot had been kicked out a few minutes ago, and he had retrieved his laptop with the hard drive attached.

"I saw a bottle of Ice Wine in there, can we have that, please?" She asked sweetly, looking up at his expression.

"That's so sweet."

"Just like me." She giggled at her own joke but gave him a serious look telling him that she really wanted to drink that. "Don't worry, if you're worried about getting fat, we can do something about it afterwards."

He still grimaced but took out the wine she asked for.

"I have way better wine than this cheap sickeningly sweet stuff." He lamented while popping it open with the cork screwer and pouring it into the awaiting glasses.

"Well, what can you say, I'm cheap." She commented absentmindedly.

"I didn't mean it like that, Anastasia." He set down the tall, thin transparent bottle down on the table and sat down next to her as she picked up her glass to take a sip. "Don't ever call yourself cheap." He sighed almost pleadingly.

"Okay," she agreed nonchalantly, really not seeing an issue here. "I like this," she nodded in approval of the beverage in her hand.

"I can take you wine tasting and we can buy the ones you liked." He offered, keeping his opinion about the wine to himself.

"What makes you think I will stick around." She taunted him, but then smiled brushing off her earlier comment with an earnest answer. "I'd love to." Then proceeded to plant a kiss to his lips. That seemed to have placated him because he brought her down into his lap and pointed to the screen, telling her to choose a video.

She looked at the file name realizing that they were saved with the name of the submissive and the title of the song.

"I don't like Charlie Puth," she muttered, skipping the mouse over to the next one. "We've listened to this one already," moving on to the next, she pondered for a bit.

"Choose quick, you only have time to watch one more before the Mac and Cheese burns." He said into her ear. She shivered in his lap as his voice had caught her off guard and made her squirm in her spot.

Finally she decided to choose a song that wasn't that easy to be ruined by bad singing and started to watch. She knew she sounded like a judgmental bitch when she criticized other girls' singing ability and the way she half-demanded Christian to drink that bottle of Ice Wine with her, but she wanted to exploit his offers to the fullest extent. It was already hard for him to show her the videos and she wasn't being really reasonable when she kept pressing on him to show her the rest and she wasn't being considerate when she chose that wine, but she just wanted to act that way after three months of her behavior being restrained by the contract that she was too stubborn to terminate.

In the end, she was being a bitch because she wanted to be, there was no excuse, and she only hoped that she wasn't pushing Christian too far, hence the compensations that she hadn't forgotten about.

"She actually has a pretty good voice," Anastasia praised, voicing her own opinion, "I just don't really understand the choice of the song but she was not bad."

"Yeah, not nearly as good as you." He nibbled at the exposed skin of her shoulder blade, letting his tongue trail along her shoulder.

"They'd do so much better if you haven't scare them to death, ya know?" She teased, tilting her head to give him more access to the side of her neck. "Can you please go get the food from the oven while I finish this one?" Her voice was breathy and she knew she was deeply affected by him, again. She hated herself for always being so responsive to him when she didn't want to react to his touch and his little touches, he knew it and he was taking full advantage of it.