“I’m fine,” Miles said. But I could see he was shaken up.
“What happened?” When he didn’t answer, I filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove. Pulled out the chair next to his and sat. “Miles?”
Kamen had left work and picked Miles up to bring him here, but he’d had to go back to the restaurant. I hadn’t gotten the whole story, just that Miles had met with some guy and something had gone wrong.
Miles didn’t appear physically hurt, but he was definitely out of it. He wouldn’t look at me while he talked. “The guy seemed normal when we were messaging on Fet. I met him for lunch a few days ago and he seemed fine too. I was gonna do a knife scene with him. I’d heard from other people that he was good with knives. I let him tie me up—nothing too crazy, just my wrists and ankles. Quick release. The scene was going fine, but then . . .” He sighed, burying his face in his hands. “Fuuuuck.”
“It’s okay.”
Miles kept his face buried a moment more, then looked up, his hands still on his cheeks. He gave a nervous laugh. “He had the knife next to my cheek. And he said, ‘You gonna put me on your blog?’ He knew who I was. And he kept saying stuff like, ‘You gonna give me a good review?’ while he was dragging the blade along my cheek. I thought he wasn’t gonna let me up. I thought . . .”
My stomach twisted.
“But then he untied me, and . . . He just let me go.”
“Miles. I’m so, so sorry.” I didn’t know what to say or do to make this better.
He shrugged. “Not your fault.”
It is, though. You told us the review blog was a bad idea. “Who is he? Tell me what he goes by, and we’ll call the police, and . . .”
And what? The guy hadn’t technically threatened Miles. Hadn’t hurt him physically.
Miles shook his head. “I wasn’t like you and Hal.” He stared out the window. “The way you just sort of jumped into it. I had my first bondage fantasy at age six. I learned everything I could about the lifestyle, the theories behind it, the different subsets . . . By the time I actually started looking for partners, I had BDSM built up in my head as some kind of self-regulating, sex-positive paradise.”
“Miles. I’m serious, we can’t let him get away with—”
“I mean, it had rules. Rules that kept people safe. And I thought it was kinky people against the world, you know? Fighting stereotypes and proving we’re mentally stable and—and believing we were somehow even better than our vanilla counterparts. That we were more in touch with our emotions, our bodies. Better at communicating.”
He finally looked at me. Gave me a weak smile. “Then I learned BDSM is just people. And people suck.”
“Not all of them,” I said quietly.
“But a lot of them.”
The kettle started boiling, and I got up and fixed two mugs of tea. Miles was staring at the table when I got back. I put a mug in front of him. “We’ve got to do something.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t want to do anything. I just want to forget about it.”
Forget about it? When we’d created a whole fucking club to fight exactly this kind of thing?
But this was Miles. My friend. And he was telling me what he wanted. I had to listen.
“Are you disappointed in the experiences you’ve had?” I asked.
“No.” He smiled sadly. “I’ve met a lot of good people. Nights like tonight just . . . make me miss being younger and less cautious.”
“I can’t picture you ever being less cautious.”
“I was, though. I filled my head with all that information, and then I still went out and followed my dick. I miss that.”
I laughed. “I still follow my dick.”
He was starting to look and sound more like himself. “But doesn’t your brain hold a little more sway now?”
“Possibly,” I admitted. “A little. It’s crazy; now I see kids like Ricky and I want to protect them. He told me the other day he’s been playing with some guy, and I wanted to know who it was. In, like, a parental way. Not a juicy-gossip way. Even though doing stupid shit is, like, part of the learning process.”
He nodded.
We drank our tea in silence. “I need to tell you something,” he said finally.
“Uh-oh. What?”
He ran his finger along the handle of his mug. “I have to leave the Subs Club.”
My stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“And I’ll probably give up the scene too. For a while, at least.”
“What? You can't let this guy—”
“It’s not because of tonight. Though tonight made the decision easier. I’m making some big changes in my life. Workwise, and . . . personally. I can’t talk about everything that’s going on just yet, but I really do think it’s important that I take a step back from sexual deviance. Trust me.”
“Okay, you can’t just drop a bomb like that and be like, ‘Trust me.’ What changes are you making?”
He gripped his mug. “I’ll tell you soon, I promise. I’ll tell all of you. I just need a little more time to figure things out.”
I tried not to think melodramatically. Just because my friends had secrets, and my club had nearly gotten Miles killed, and I was going to work in a mall forever . . . It was going to be fine. Everything would be fine. I just had to hold everything together. Including myself.
“Okay,” I said numbly.
He seemed like he was drifting again. His eyes were far away, his cardigan hanging off his shoulders, his hands clasped neatly around the mug. “Do you remember back when Riddle was new? They’d just gotten that giant ladder in the middle of Chaos. There was that play party on New Year’s, and everyone kept asking GK and Kel what the ladder was for.”
I grinned. “And Kel said, ‘For anything you want.’”
“Uh-huh. That couple—I can’t remember the guy’s name, but the woman was Ava—did that scene where he attached dildos to different points on the ladder, and she had to climb the ladder and fuck herself to orgasm on all of them.”
“Yes! And then all the tops started having their bottoms do it, and they were timing them, like American Gladiators . . .”
“And GK was standing by with a tub of disinfectant, making everyone take the dildos off and sterilize them and put new condoms on them between contestants . . .”
I shook my head. “Kel told me later that’s when she knew everything would be all right. She said she’d been so nervous about opening the club, but that night, she saw that she and GK weren’t alone. That this really was a community, and lots of people were going to contribute their creativity and energy to it.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I miss,” I said after a moment. “The newness. That feeling that everything I did and every person I met was exciting and intimidating and awesome. I miss being Ricky.”
I stared at my Fetmatch feed in horror.
New Group Invitation: Rate the Subs of the Subs Club.
I clicked the invite and visited the group. Someone had created a list of a fair number of Subs Club members. And people in the group were commenting on the names.
My name was at the top of the list.
Dave43221 cries like a girl when he’s spanked. he’s a awful fuck. Thinks he is hot but he’s nothin special if you play with him, you should beat him hard then shove your cock deep down his throat so he can’t talk. Choke the little bitch or he’ll never shut up.
I read it over three more times, too shocked to feel much of anything. I clicked on the poster’s name. The profile was brand-new, had no photos, and obviously had been created just for the purpose of posting in this group. This person was also the one who’d sent me the invitation. They’d wanted me to see this.
Stay calm. Don’t panic.
I sent a message to the administrators flagging the entire group as abusive, and then refreshed every couple of minutes as I waited for a reply. While I waited, I checked to see who else was on the list. Kamen and Gould weren’t, but Miles was. He had a couple of comments. One was This guy’s hot. The other was I like hot chocolate.
I logged on to the Subs Club site. People had started posting comments on the review blog about the Rate the Subs of the Subs Club Fet group. A lot of Subs Club members had seen their names in the Fet group and were freaking out. I commented on as many of the freak-outs as I could find, assuring everyone that I’d written to Fet’s admin and that the group would be taken down shortly.
But as I scrolled through the reviews, I noticed something. The Disciplinarian’s name had been posted a few days ago, and he had four ratings totaling an average of three floggers.
Shit. Who had put his name up? My friends would have known better. Then I remembered Miles had given a couple of other members administrator access so they could help moderate comments.
I hovered over the link for a moment, then decided I didn’t want to read the reviews. Underlying my guilt and fear about D’s name being up here was a righteous anger. Three floggers? These people didn’t know what they were talking about. D was five million floggers, all the way. I waved my admin wand and deleted his name, feeling even guiltier. I knew I shouldn’t be using my power to give D special treatment. But . . . shit, it was my club. My rules. And nobody was gonna rate my dom.
I went back to Fet. Still no response from the higher-ups.
Gould came home, and I quickly put my laptop aside and pretended to be reading a hair magazine. I was hoping he’d go right to his room. I really didn’t feel like talking.
But he came over to the couch, moved my laptop, and sat. “I met with Kel today.”
Great. Just great. I wanted to shake my fist at the heavens and demand a fucking break from all this. Once upon a time, I had actually maintained a life outside of thinking about kink and talking about kink and doing kink. “What? Why?”
“To talk about the tensions between our club and the rest of the community. She might have an idea for a compromise. A way we can work together.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” My panic rose. I wondered if Kel and GK had seen the new Fet group. God, they were probably members. “She’s overbearing. And GK annoys the shit out of me. And neither of them cares what we’re trying to do.”
“Dave?” Gould was looking at me nervously.
“What?”
“I’m going to try a scene with them.”
I stared at him, confused. “A scene with who?”
“Kel and GK.”
What. The. Fuck? “You’re gonna play with them?”
“Yeah.”
I closed the magazine. “Gould, you can’t do that. They’re the enemy.”
“They’re not the enemy. They’re offering us—well, you—an opportunity. If you’ll meet with them this Saturday, and—”
“Why the hell would I meet with them this Saturday?” I threw the magazine on the table. “What do they have to do with my life?”
“They want—”
“I don’t need them to offer me anything.”
“Stop interrupting me,” Gould snapped.
I fell silent.
“Seriously, Dave, I get that you’re upset, but I’m trying to have a rational conversation about something that matters to both of us. You need to grow up.”
The sting of the words cut deep, and I was left with this instant of blankness where I didn’t know what to do or say. I stood.
“Dave . . .” he started.
I could tell he was going to apologize, and I didn’t need that. “Whatever. You wanna play with two people who’ve as good as admitted they’d rather cover up abuse than deal with it? You’re gonna end up just like Hal.”
I turned and stalked to my room.