I put off telling the others about my run-in with GK and Kel.
At the next club meeting we talked about moderating the site and reviewed some of the comments that had made it through. On one ongoing discussion about when a DM should intervene in a public scene, for instance, we’d had a comment from someone called “Fucktopus” that was less of a contribution, and more of a personal ad.
“Seriously, who moderated this?” I asked.
No one answered.
I read it aloud.
“‘I am eight kinds of fun. A tentacle furry with a big heart.’” I gasped. “A tentacle furry! Nooooo!”
Kamen looked up from his sandwich. “Tentacles aren’t furry.”
I continued. “‘I have had eight mechanical tentacles built, each of which is robotically controlled and has dildo attachments. So if you are interested in being penetrated multiple places by my tentacles of fun . . .’ Oh my God. Miles!” I called. “Didn’t you use to want to have tentacle sex?”
“What?” he called back from the bathroom. The toilet flushed and the sink went on and then off. He returned to the kitchen, shaking his hands dry. “What’s going on?”
“This guy’s a tentacle furry. He has robotic dildo tentacles.”
“Why on earth you’d think that would interest me . . .” Miles stepped closer and peered at the screen, looking more than a little interested. He shook his head. “Honestly, David.” He was in full British-aunt mode. But if anyone in this room wanted to be penetrated multiple places by tentacles of fun, it was Miles.
“Kamen’s right, though. He wouldn’t be a furry, would he?”
“There are non-furry furries.” Miles took his seat. “There are dragons, which are called scalies. Cetaceans. Avians, or featheries. And lizards, which are herps.”
“Shouldn’t they be called herpes?” Kamen asked. And then he laughed. Oh, how he laughed.
“How do you know all this shit?” I asked Miles. “And an octopus isn’t any of those things, right?”
“It’s a cephalopod,” Miles confirmed. “I’m not aware of a term for cephalopod furries.”
“How about ‘freaks’?” I muttered, and then continued reading Fucktopus’s ad. “‘I am interested in doing a Moby Dick–style role-play, where you would hunt me in the ocean, and I would become your primary maritime nemesis representing all evil and glory in your life.’”
“Wow,” Gould said. “I feel like we have to delete it . . . but I don’t want to.”
“We’re leaving it to see what kind of responses he gets.” I scrolled through some of the messages in the admin box. “Waaaiit. Did you guys see this one?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.” Miles opened his sandwich and began stacking the ingredients neatly.
“‘I have a question for you guys. My friend is in a D/s relationship, she’s a sub. And the guy is like older than her and pretty creepy. One time he locked her in the closet for three days as a punishment. Like he let her have her laptop but she wasn’t allowed to be online and like he’d only open the closet to feed her. Another time he dislocated all her fingers on one hand as a punishment. He popped them back in right away but she said it was the most pain she’s felt in her whole life. And like those were not punishments they’d talked about beforehand, that was just what he did because he was mad at her.
“‘They have like a really screwed-up codependent relationship where they can’t live without each other. She says she wants an intense relationship. But I think it’s abusive. But I don’t know how to tell her, or if I should. Does anyone have any advice?’”
“Oh, shit.” Miles made a face. “That’s fucked up.” You knew it was fucked up when Miles used the phrase “fucked up” instead of something like “highly unpalatable.”
I read it over again, feeling sick. “What the hell are we supposed to tell her?”
“We should tell her to talk to her friend,” Kamen suggested.
I ignored him. “Do we go to the police?”
“No.” Gould’s mouth twisted to the side. “We don’t. I mean, what about that woman who used to play at Riddle who’d pancaked her breast in a scene? What about all the people who have burns or brands or spikes through their lips? Some people do play really rough.”
“Gould, you can’t seriously think this is okay.”
“Of course not! I’m just saying, if she insists this is the relationship she wants, what can the police do?” He paused. “What if we talk to GK and Kel?”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Why not?”
“Let’s see if the girl who wrote this will give us a name for the guy—if he’s on Fet, or just a first name, or whatever—and ask her to rate and review him, using what she just told us.”
“Are you crazy?” Miles demanded. “If he is abusive, and somebody tells him he’s been reviewed here, he’s going to assume she went behind his back. He could seriously hurt her, or kill her.”
“I want to know what’s wrong with talking to GK and Kel.” Gould was still staring at me.
I sighed. “Because they don’t support us, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“They know about the club, they know we’re behind it, and they don’t approve.”
The others were silent a moment.
“I met with them the other day,” I went on. “First they let Bill back in, and now they’re trying to get us to take down our site because it’s causing too much of a stir in the community or whatever.”
Miles frowned. “How do they know about the site?”
“Not sure.” I shook my head. “But if they know, probably other doms do too.”
Gould looked at me. Hesitated. “Yeah, I played with a woman last night at Cobalt who definitely knew I was involved.”
I opened my mouth, then paused. Woman? I exchanged a glance with Miles. I knew Gould had played with a woman years ago, but I was pretty sure he’d gotten real gay since then.
I decided to ignore it and focus on the important part. “What’d she say?”
“She made a lot of sandwich jokes.”
“Told you.” Kamen seemed unfazed by the idea of Gould with a woman. “Everyone thinks sandwiches.”
Gould scratched the back of his neck. “She asked if she could punch my rewards card.”
“What . . . does that mean?” I asked.
“Apparently it just meant pegging.”
“But she didn’t seem to mind?” I kept thinking about what GK had said about retaliation. Maybe it was more important than I’d thought that we remain anonymous. “That you were part of the club, I mean?”
“No. When we were done she asked how I was gonna rate her. She seemed really excited about it.”
Miles was staring at Gould. “This is not good. This was supposed to be anonymous.”
“Well, it is the internet.” I tried to hide my discomfort. I really, really didn’t want to deal with anything that would prove GK and Kel right. That made the Subs Club seem like a bad idea. “And it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.”
Kamen licked mayo off his hand. “Why don’t we ask this girl if her friend in the abusive relationship would talk to us? And maybe we could find out more and, like, convince her that her relationship’s bad.”
“Buddy, I don’t think that would work.”
Kamen slapped the table. We all jumped.
“Why not?” He glared at us. “I know I don’t phrase my ideas as good as you guys. But you act like everything I say isn’t a realistic possibility.”
“We don’t—” I started.
“You do. If I suggest stuff for the club, you never think it’s good enough.” He cast a particularly dark look at Miles. “And you all think I was fine with what happened to Hal. Like it just rolled off me, but it didn’t. I was as upset as you guys!”
I remembered Kamen at Kink by Candlelight saying he didn’t like Bill. And his mom telling me that Kamen still had nightmares. But with the other two so much more volatile than Kamen, it had been easy for me to assume Kamen was—not okay, but more resilient, maybe?
Gould reached across the table, wiggling his fingers at Kamen. Kamen reluctantly took Gould’s hand. “That’s not what we think,” Gould said. “Your ideas are good. And we know how much you loved Hal. He’d be really proud of you.”
I caught Miles rolling his eyes, and I kicked him under the table.
Kamen still wasn’t looking at Gould.
Gould stood, pulling on Kamen’s hand. “Come with me a minute.”
Slowly, Kamen got up and followed Gould to the living room. I turned to Miles. “What’s your problem?”
Miles adjusted his glasses. “He always does this. Says what Hal would think, like he’s some sort of diviner who speaks to Hal from beyond.”
“You’re the one who told us weeks ago that the review blog isn’t what Hal would have wanted. And who the fuck cares; don’t we all think about Hal and how he’d feel?”
Miles looked at the floor. “I know.”
“And can’t you just let Kamen post what he wants on the blog?”
Miles’s jaw tightened. “My apologies. I’ve just been . . . out of sorts, lately.”
“Well, shape up, okay? Because the four of us have to stick together.” I winced inwardly as I echoed Kel’s words.
He nodded. “I know.”
Gould and Kamen returned a few minutes later. Kamen looked slightly happier. I didn’t ask them what they’d talked about, but I apologized to Kamen for not listening to him, and he waved it off. Miles, however, made some bullshit excuse and left.
Space Camp was a subdued affair. Even Mandy’s assertion to Parker that “Houston, we got a problem, and it’s your bleepin’ attitude,” couldn’t break the tension.
I stood on D’s doorstep, exhilarated and nervous. More than anything, I was ready for a break from this shitty past few days. I didn’t want to think about GK and Kel, or the Subs Club. I just wanted to raise a little hell with D. I was wearing mesh athletic shorts, as per some cryptic instructions he’d sent me, and I had a bunch of flowers my coworker Helen had gotten from a guy she didn’t like and then given to me.
Shut up, behave, and show him you can be good. No, wait, what the fuck, don’t change for him. Be who you are. Be a mouthy little cockwad. Give it to him. Challenge him. Make him sorry he signed on for six weeks of you.
But we’d bonded further since our impromptu screenwriting session. He’d shared his script with me as a Google Doc—he had changed all the names to the ones I’d suggested—and I’d read the whole thing and pointed out places where he could add more ridiculous exposition. Maybe, just maybe, I ought to let my affection for him carry over to these weekly sessions.
He opened the door.
I grinned. Partly because I was delighted to see him. And partly because I’d just decided there was no way I’d stop on his welcome mat and wait for him to address me.
“David.” He held the door for me. The house smelled like coffee.
“How are you?” I thrust the flowers at him. “These are for you. Actually, they’re for Helen, but she doesn’t want them.” I walked past him, heading toward the kitchen. I didn’t make it more than a few steps before he caught my arm and tugged me around. He set the flowers on the hall table and swatted me back toward the mat.
“Ow.”
That got me another swat.
“Sorry.”
“Stop talking. Wait to be addressed.”
I stood on the mat, put my hands behind my back, and looked at D. He was wearing a casual sweater and khakis, looking like Daniel Boone had discovered a sale at L.L.Bean. He was so handsome. Just so fucking handsome. I didn’t think the pornstache was weird at all anymore. Everybody should have one.
He sighed and stepped beside me just as I remembered I was supposed to bow my head. I started to do it, but he laced his fingers through my hair and forced my head down. Heat and resentment ripped through me simultaneously. He trailed his hand down my back and stopped just before he reached my ass.
“Thank you for the flowers,” he said.
I inhaled sharply as he slid his hand a couple of inches lower and squeezed. I pushed back into his hand. “No probs.”
He leaned close to me. “Are you sucking up?”
“Well, I’d rather suck you, Sir. But I’ll take what I can get.”
“Come on.” He sounded like he was trying not to laugh, and my mood lifted for the first time in days.
He had me follow him into the kitchen, where he got me a glass of water and offered me deer jerky. I stared at it. It was only a step or two away from squirrel gravy, but I accepted it. I had said I wanted him to teach me about venison.
“Did you dry this meat yourself?” I asked. “Wait, did you shoot the deer?”
“I bought it at a gas station.”
“The deer?”
“The jerky.”
I tried it. Nope, nope. Disgusting. I spit it into a napkin.
He pretended not to notice.
I balled up the napkin and pushed it behind his saltshaker. “Did you pay up for the bet you lost?”
“I did. But I hope to win my twenty back next week with the world premiere of Sharkigator.”
“I’ll be rooting for you.”
“You know . . . ” He went to the counter and poured himself a mug of coffee. Held the carafe up inquiringly, but I shook my head, and he replaced it. “It was said, back in the days of yore, that Davy Crockett was half horse, half alligator. I’ve often wondered if that contributed to my love of hybrid monsters.”
“And horses?”
“Possibly.”
“You know Davy Crockett was a total racist, right?” I nodded smugly when he looked at me. “That’s right, I’ve been on Wikipedia.”
He leaned against the counter. “There were two men: David Crockett, the politician, and Davy Crockett, the folk hero. One was a product of his time, the other is a product of ours. People are flawed, multifaceted, and I choose to admire the legend, not the bigot.”
“D?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to be an internet meme.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
We moved on to the reading of the list. Everything I fessed up to made my cock a little harder as I imagined him slapping my ass, his voice low and rough as he scolded me. God, I just wanted to be close to him. If he put me over his lap, I’d spread my legs for him, I’d tell him how sorry I was. I’d do fucking anything he wanted.
The trouble with these lists was, I didn’t really connect with them. We both knew D was going to punish me, and he probably spent the week planning what he was going to do, same as I spent the week wondering what he had in store. It was a fun game, but no matter what I’d done—whether I’d rolled through a stop sign or made fun of Miles’s cardigans or ignored my mother’s calls—the results would be the same. D would use whatever I put on my list as an excuse to do what he’d intended to do all along.
But then were things I felt legitimately guilty about. My utter inability to take responsibility for my future, for instance. I still hadn’t completed a single application to styling school. These were things I wanted to fix, things I wanted someone to get after me for. But I didn’t think tighty-whities and an enema were going to do the trick. I wondered how to talk to him about that.
I took a deep breath, pushing those thoughts aside, and read the last item on my list. “I’m sorry I called you the other day and bothered you outside of a session time.”
He came around to stand by my chair. I tensed. He threaded his fingers through my hair, then pulled my head back so that our eyes met. “That,” he said firmly, “you do not have to apologize for.”
I tried not to smile.
He released me. “And I would not be opposed to you coming by on other days that are not Thursdays.”
Now I smiled. “Reeeeeeaaaallllyyyyy?”
He crossed around the table and sat in front of me. Folded his hands. “Are you wearing white underwear?”
I snorted. “Dude, what is your thing about underwear? Seriously, the tighty-whities, the potty-chair, the ‘bad little boy’ stuff . . . Are you allowed within five hundred feet of playgrounds?”
“I just like humiliating adult men in tight white underwear.”
“Fair enough. How do you feel about manties?”
“I do not know what you’re talking about, nor do I care to find out.”
“They’re panties for men. Lingerie.”
He reached for his mug and took a sip of coffee, never breaking eye contact with me. Then he got up, went to the counter and poured himself a whiskey. Knocked it back and stared at me once more. “I have erased your last words from my memory. Let’s go to the den.”
“Uh-uh. I don’t care if you think you’re goddamn John Wayne. You are a modern man, living in the here and now, and you will accept that men sometimes wear panties and it’s awesome.”
“Stop saying ‘panties.’ Please.”
“Women are real, D. And so are men who wear their clothes.”
D grunted. “Are you telling me you want to wear . . . manties?”
“Nope.” I grinned. “Just wanted you to know they exist. Also, kale chips. And participation awards.”
He shut his eyes briefly and spoke in that dry, inflectionless tone. “I would like you to join me in the den for your punishment. If you’re finished with your water.”
“Sure. No problem.” I spread my arms. “Have your way with me, Sir.”
He led me to the Den of Horrors and had me stand by the school desk. I noticed there was an extra chair by the wall, but I didn’t comment. He took a small package out of the cabinet and unwrapped it. Tossed the wrapper onto the desk. I studied it. A cheerful-looking model in baseball pants with a white pad over his torso stared back at me. Body Wellness Disposable Heating Pads.
D snapped his fingers. “Take your underwear off. Then put the shorts back on.”
“Wait. I wore tighty-whities just for you and you want me to—”
“If you don’t take your underwear off right this second, I will beat you with everything on this wall.” He indicated the wall of implements.
I stifled a laugh and stripped my shorts and underwear off. Yanked my shorts back on, a little apprehensive. He got a piece of paper and a pencil out of the big desk, walked over to the school desk and put the heating pad on the chair. “Sit,” he ordered.
I did. He set the paper in front of me.
It was a crossword.
He placed the pencil on top of it.
“I’ll be in the living room. You’ll stay here until you’ve completed this. It is a lesson in silence, stillness, and concentration.”
I started to feel strange, but I wasn’t sure why. I raised my eyebrows. “A crossword. Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Cool. I’ll sit here in my shorts and Shortz it up.”
“Quietly.”
I hated stillness and silence. “Can I come into the living room and do it?”
“No.”
“Do you do this to all your boys?” I asked, hoping to goad him into a punishment that was more my style. “Force them to play pseudo-intellectuals in your schoolroom dungeon?”
He just ruffled my hair and left the room.
The pad got hot fast, but the heat was a lousy substitute for the burn of a spanking. I was surprised by how much I wanted him—wanted his contact, his closeness, wanted him to be irrefutably the cause of my discomfort.
Screw him, if he was gonna leave me here. If he was gonna refuse to talk to me and go do whatever the hell he did when he wasn’t torturing adult men in tight white underwear or eating dried Bambi—watch The Adventures of the Wilderness Family or Sharknado? I didn’t know.
All right, Dave. 1 Down. You got this.
I sat back, fidgeting. My stomach fluttered with nerves, and I wasn’t sure why. All D was asking me to do was sit here, unsupervised, and do a puzzle. Wasn’t like I was tied to a bench with a rope around my neck.
One of Hal’s arms had been free. That was what Cinnamon had said at the trial. Confirmed by the paramedics. Supposedly he could have loosened the cord around his neck. Could have gotten out.
If I hadn’t been outside smoking, would I have noticed what was going on?
Maybe not. Because I’d been angry with him. I could have been right there in the club, and my stupid pride would have kept me from checking in with him.
I felt the same wash of guilt I’d been torturing myself with for a year and a half. I hadn’t followed the trial. I’d let people give me updates, and I hadn’t stopped thinking about it the entire time it was going on. But I hadn’t sought out information. I wasn’t even called as a witness, since I’d been outside when Hal had died. I’d had to give a statement right afterward, because I was the one he’d come to the club with, but other than that the law wasn’t much interested in me.
I knew jack shit about legal matters, so all I really took away from the whole disaster was the bottom line: Bill Henson had been found innocent of second-degree murder. I’d listened to Miles rant afterward about how they should have tried him for manslaughter instead, how that would have increased the chance of conviction. But I’d barely paid attention. I’d thought about going to Bill’s house, had fantasized about killing him. But I knew I wasn’t any kind of avenger.
The only one of us who’d had that in him was Gould. I’d been so confused when I’d gotten the call from the police to come pick Gould up. I thought there’d been a mix-up—Gould? Assault someone? Never. Bill hadn’t pressed charges, but a few days later he’d taken out the restraining order. I’d kept Gould at my place for a few days, even though he’d insisted he was fine, that he’d just temporarily lost control. But he hadn’t wanted to talk about the incident, and even once I’d stopped keeping such a close eye on him, he’d wanted to stick around. Cara was getting ready to move out, so I’d asked Gould if he wanted to move in.
Maybe there’d been just a tiny, selfish part of me that had wondered if now—now that Hal was completely out of the picture, Gould and I would . . .
The memory hurt too much to finish.
I stood up, making the school desk creak. I walked across the room and started playing around in the headmaster desk, opening and closing drawers. Nothing inside but an empty notebook and a heavy wooden ruler. I went to the wall of implements, took down the nightstick, and tried to twirl it. It fell to the floor with a thud. I took a bunch of stuff off the wall and started arranging the implements in a sort of kinky Stonehenge.
D still didn’t come in.
I started to feel shitty. I wanted to show him the real me—the guy who’d taken control after Hal’s death. Who was there for his friends and showed up for work every day on time and actually could conceive of a world beyond I want. Instead I was showing him a child. A spoiled brat. And it was his own goddamn fault, for making me feel like it was safe to show him that.
I strode back to the school desk and sat down, grinding my ass against the heating pad until I was good and sore. I took off my shoe and threw it against the wall.
He did come in then, and my relief at seeing him was short-lived.
“What is going on in here?” he asked.
Big manly man. No kale chips, no crying, no manties. I tried to imagine him when he was a baby, sucking stones in his crib when his stomach was empty rather than bother his mother with a basic human need like hunger. But that wasn’t him at all, was it? He wrote terrible screenplays and wanted to have friends and liked spending time with me. He’d started to drop the act. Why hadn’t I?
Because I couldn’t tell right now whether I was acting.
He glanced across the room at what I’d done with his implements. Then he turned to me. “Do not get up again.” His voice was brusque but steady. “Are we clear?”
I glared at him.
He smacked the desk and leaned down in my face. “Do you understand me?” he demanded. I flinched and opened my mouth, shocked. I suddenly fucking hated him. No, I didn’t. I wanted more of this, more of the man who forced me to obey. It was what I needed, what I couldn’t ask for. I just—resented him. So much.
“Yes, Sir,” I spat.
He pointed at the crossword. “Sit there. And finish that. You have fifteen minutes.”
He left.
I started filling in all the crossword spaces with FUCK OFF—even if it didn’t fit. 13 Down: FUCK OFF. 5 Across FUCK OFF. FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF . . .
I looked at the paper when I was done. Shit. It was like those movies where a kid gets possessed and writes stuff on the windows like HE’S COMING and the next day has no memory of doing it. I was seriously gross with sweat.
My hand started to shake. I crumpled the paper, and, not sure how to dispose of it without disobeying my order not to get up, sat on it.
It crinkled under my ass. The whole situation was ridiculous.
I’d let Hal get hurt. Because of this part of me. The part that was childish and spiteful and needed to push back when someone pushed me. Hal had wanted to annoy me by playing with Bill, and he had, so I’d left him.
I’d left him, and he’d died alone, and maybe he’d been scared. I’d never fucking know.
I grabbed the paper out from under me, un-balled it, and wrote at the bottom I’M SORRY.
The most pathetic bit of emotional manipulation ever, except I meant it. It wasn’t that I wanted D to go easy on me, exactly. I just didn’t want him to be angry. I’d never felt more deserving of a punishment than I did right now, and yet I wasn’t sure I could handle anything tonight.
I crumpled the paper again and held it in my hand.
And waited.
By the time D came into the room, I’d swallowed the lump in my throat and forced my expression defiantly blank.
“How’s it coming?” He pulled up the other chair and sat beside me.
“Fine,” I muttered. A muscle was twitching in my right temple.
“Where’s the puzzle?”
Numbly, I held out the ball of paper. Listened to him uncrumple it. He was quiet as he looked it over. I felt the tightness in my throat again.
Fuck this. I just wanted to go home. Watch a stupid movie with Gould. Go to sleep.
He asked, without concern or accusation, as though he were only mildly interested in the answer: “Do you really want me to fuck off?”
I shook my head. The room was blurry. I stared straight in front of me.
He crumpled the paper and tossed it on the floor. “I don’t know what to do when you act like this.”
I shrugged.
“What is this, David? A game?”
Fuck if I knew.
He shifted, and his chair creaked. “Tell me what’s going on.”
What was going on was that I wanted comfort from a man whose only interest was in punishing me. He wasn’t my friend, wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t going to stay with me forever. I was scared of how much I felt. What if Bill really was sorry? What if he’d screwed up because of some impulsive decision, like I did every fucking day, except there was no forgiveness for him? He just had to live with what he’d done forever.
I don’t care. I don’t fucking care.
A dark, savage fear broke over me and slipped down my body. “I—” My voice cracked.
“David.” He seemed wary. “Come on into the kitchen. We’ll get some water.”
I shook my head. “What if I could have stopped it?”
“Stopped what?” His voice was soft and sounded close, but I felt disoriented, like I wasn’t sure where in the room he was.
“That night, with Hal; I was there. I let him play with Bill. I was pissed at him, and I didn’t—didn’t keep an eye on him.”
“That is not your fault.” He said it so firmly I almost believed him.
“I could have. I could definitely have stopped it.”
“You—”
I leaned out from the desk and kissed him. He kissed me back, just for a second. Hungrily enough that I didn’t think he was just being nice. He pulled gently away. He looked at me, and for once he didn’t seem to know what to do or say.
I wanted more. I wanted my tongue deep in his mouth, I wanted to feel that pull in my body from throat to groin, wanted him to slide a hand between my legs, strip me down. Open me up and shove his cock inside me. Sex would help. More than punishment. It would get me out of my head, make me feel good again.
I reached for him, but he didn’t move.
“This isn’t a good idea right now,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you’re feeling well.”
“I’m the one who knows how I’m feeling. And I’m fine.”
He stood. “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”
“God, you’re so . . .” I stood and followed him as he headed out of the room. “You obviously feel something for me. So why not just fuck me?”
He turned back to me. “Because we do things on my terms, not yours.”
“I’m not talking about fucking as part of our Sir/boy game or whatever! I mean as two human beings who are attracted to each other.”
“You’re welcome to stay here. But we’re not having sex tonight. And you will respect my wishes.”
“I am respecting your wishes. You wish to fuck me. So just do it.”
He kept walking.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Was all that stuff in your profile bullshit? You said you could transform me! You said you’d make me obedient.” He stopped, and a rush of satisfaction spurred me on. “You’re in such high demand; I want to see what you can do. Make me! Make me fucking listen to you!”
He turned, his shoulders rigid. Then he said, very clearly, “Red.”
I froze. “What?”
“Red. I’m safewording. Session over. Now are you staying or going?”
I continued to gape. It hadn’t really occurred to me that he—or any dom—could safeword. That they’d ever need to. D was the one doing things in our sessions. If he wanted to stop, he could stop anytime.
Numbly I gathered my things. I wasn’t coming back here. No way. I couldn’t.
I’d fucked up so badly. And I couldn’t use Hal as an excuse. This was all me.
He offered me a ride home, and I pretended I hadn’t heard him. I didn’t think I could manage an apology or a good-bye. But once I had my shoes back on and my underwear balled in my pocket and was standing by the door, he said, “I’ll see you next week.”
“You can’t mean that.” I didn’t look at him.
“I do. And I expect to see you here at seven thirty.”
“I’m a shithead,” I muttered.
“Seven thirty,” he repeated.
“No.”
He leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. The kiss was brief and chaste and left me flushed, confused. “Seven thirty.”
I nodded slowly. “I don’t . . . Maybe.”
I left before he could say anything else.