Nickie woke with a pounding headache. She pulled a pillow over her head with a groan, but soon realized blocking the light also meant blocking the air.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

Bud sounded way too happy, and she growled, “Fuck you. Fuck the sunshine. Fuck the… just... fuck.”

“There’s a Coke on ice two feet to your left on your bedside table.”

“I think I might love you. Really?”

“Yes, really, but don’t joke about that until you mean it.”

“I might mean it. I don’t know for sure, but I can’t say I don’t. Besides, you said it when I did the shield thingie to try to keep the vampires out of my head — that you thought you might love me.”

Bud didn’t say anything, and Nickie sighed. “Okay, point taken, but having a cold Coke waiting for me when I wake with a hangover earns you serious brownie points.”

She went up on her left elbow and reached for the Coke with her other hand. She wasn’t sure she was ready to try sitting all the way up yet.

Bud waited until she’d taken a drink and snuggled back into him to ask, “Did getting drunk help?”

“Yeah. I mean, I need to remap reality, you know? Or, my version of it. Getting drunk can make it easier.” She sighed. That wasn’t the only reason she’d needed to get drunk. “It also meant I wasn’t going to walk away from you, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with…” She pulled the pillow over her forehead and eyes, but not over her nose or mouth this time. “We’ve gotten serious really fast. Not walking away means we might keep getting serious this fast.”

“When it’s right, it’s right. Is there a reason we should take things slow?”

“Other than me being scared? No.” This conversation was easier under the pillow so she didn’t have to look at him — and so he couldn’t look at her.

“What are you scared of?”

“So many things. I’ve been single most of my adult life. Even when in a relationship, no one’s ever told me what to do. I’m in control of all my careers, all my travel. Everything. I don’t think you’ll try to control my work, but I can see you thinking you have a say in my travel plans.”

“When Angelica asked me how she’d survive if she gave herself completely to Bash and lost him, like we’d lost her mom, I told her as bad as it hurt to lose her mom, I treasured the time I had with her and I wouldn’t trade it for anything — not even to be saved the pain of losing her. My second biggest fear is loving someone and having them taken from me again, but my biggest fear is not having people in my life I love. I have my daughter and my brothers. My family. No one’s made me want to spend time with them the way you do. I won’t call it love yet either, but it’s something that could grow into it. I hope I get to treasure a lot of days with you.”

Nickie had no idea how to respond. Bud had opened up and she realized she should, too, but for once, her words left her.

“Thank you. I’m speechless. Scared, but happy. Thanks. I look forward to seeing where this takes us.”

Nickie was a little surprised Bud didn’t follow her to the shower, but she was happy to be able to go from cool water to warm as her equilibrium returned. She’d had some aspirin and dry toast, and those along with the Coke worked their magic and her headache faded. She washed her hair and left the conditioner on while she took care to shave everything. Damn, having a steady boyfriend meant a lot of extra shaving. She’d made her slaves do it for her, but she didn’t want to imagine Bud’s reaction if she handed him the electric shaver and expected him to take care of it. She figured there was a decent chance he’d stick the handle in her ass and tell her to blow him.

It was still hard to believe he was nearly sixty, but he’d laughed and shown her his driver’s license when she’d doubted him.

The clock showed it was nearly eleven when she stepped back into her bedroom, and her heart flip-flopped when she remembered their next two days were supposed to have started at ten o’clock that morning.

“I’m not backing out of the last two days. I just remembered.”

“Not a problem. I’m here, we’re good. It’ll happen. I want you at a hundred percent, and you need the day to recover.”

“Don’t you have things to do?”

“I’d planned on taking a few days off — there are people who can fill in for me. No one should be irreplaceable.” He gave her his cockiest grin. “Besides, I kinda like knowin’ you owe me.”

“I know I told you I was sorry last night, but I owe you a sober apology, and probably an explanation. I’m sorry for thinking the worst of you. I’d found out about your working girls before you told me. I figure your people took a few days to figure out who drove through the parking lot, so you opened up and told me the truth because I already knew, but I’m glad you did.” She shrugged and looked down, but forced herself to meet his gaze because she wasn’t a chicken shit and she owned up to her mistakes. “I’m sorry. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt next time. Even if things are stacked against you from every direction, I’ll let you explain before I make a judgement.”

“I appreciate that. I don’t intend to talk to you too much about club business, so if you want to know something you’ll need to ask, and even then I won’t promise I’ll tell you. We’ll have to figure that out as we go. I promised you plausible deniability and I’ll do my best to keep to the promise unless you tell me otherwise, as you did with our girls.”

“I have a curiosity question. Not a jealousy thing, or something I’ll throw in your face, just something I kinda need to understand.”

Bud crossed his arms. “Ask.”

“How many of the girls have you fucked? Or been given a blow job by?”

“When I worked at the B&B, I handled interviews for a while, which means I had the complete tour of most of them at least once — blow job and both holes. I’d occasionally pay one of them if it was a slow night and I wanted to get off, but I don’t generally pay for sex. None of the ones I interviewed still work for us, so I haven’t fucked any of the current girls.”

“You paid them?”

“Their portion, yeah. Club rules — we don’t take advantage of them.”

She thought it through. “Ya’ll have sweetbutts at the clubhouse. No one pays them.”

“Right. I’ve been in all of them more times than I can count, but not a single time since we returned from Mexico.”

“They aren’t being exploited?”

“They come of their own accord and can leave anytime they want. Some are hoping to find a boyfriend or husband, others just wanna be part of the lifestyle. A few like rough sex and they show up when they’re horny. Occasionally, a brother will claim one and she becomes off limits. When one starts causing problems because she’s too attached or thinks she has rights she doesn’t, sometimes we’ll send them to another chapter.”

“What if they don’t want to move?”

“Then they stay in Atlanta but lose clubhouse privileges.” Bud ran his hand through his hair and crossed his arms again. “Look, I won’t lie to you — you aren’t going to like this part of our lifestyle. Most are girls in a woman’s body. Petty, gossipy, low self-esteem, and they’ll stab each other in the back and walk all over each other to get close to us. The ones who aren’t those things usually land a brother, eventually — if not from our chapter then from another when we travel. We keep them around because the rules are we get to do whatever we want, whenever we want. Telling us no means they face consequences or leave. So yeah, we take advantage of them, but they come of their own free will. We might spank them or put them in a corner to punish them, but we don’t knock them around. If they didn’t have us to come to, they may very well end up in an abusive situation.”

“You’re right. I don’t like that part of it.”

“If you’re gonna be in the clubhouse much then you’ll see them, and they’ll freak if you try to talk to them. Ol’ladies don’t talk to sweetbutts. It’s like they aren’t even there, for you. There’s a hierarchy and, like it or not, you’ll be coming in as the Prez’s ol’lady. You can’t fuck with the hierarchy right away. A year into it, maybe six months — once you understand the rules, energy, and pecking order — if you want to change things up then we’ll talk about how best to go about it, but you need to settle into it first.”

“I can’t just not acknowledge someone who speaks to me.”

“They won’t speak to you. They’ll do their best to stay out of your line of sight.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“I told you, you aren’t going to like that part of it.” He uncrossed his arms, walked to her, and pulled her into his embrace. “It isn’t going to change. Duke’s the president in Chattanooga, and his wife leaves the room before one of the sweetbutts is punished. She told me once she’d come to terms with it when she’d realized many of them are emotionally stunted and need the rules and structure, but she still couldn’t watch. To be honest, I’d never looked at it that way before, but I think she’s probably right.”

“How do you avoid lawsuits? I mean, if they’re emotionally immature, it wouldn’t take much for a friend to convince them to sue for being spanked, especially if there are marks.”

She pulled out of his arms and stepped away. She needed some space for this conversation.

“Didn’t use to be a problem.” He ran his hand through his hair again, scrubbed his palms against the scruff on his face. “When the first one tried it, our attorney talked us through how to protect ourselves in the future. We video them in the bar in front of one of the televisions, with a program on behind them that’ll show when the video took place. One of the news channels, usually. We have them tell us their understanding of how the safeword works — no matter what’s happening if they say that word, everything stops. If they can’t speak for some reason, tapping the person in beats of three will do the same thing.”

Bud looked to Nickie for feedback, but she didn’t have any to give. He shrugged and kept going. “She has to tell the video camera she knows she’ll have sex with the whole club. She has to mention loving oral, vaginal, and anal sex and say no part of her body will be off limits, and she has to convince the camera she’s looking forward to being used by the whole club for her initiation. She has to say she isn’t being coerced or paid in any way to make the video. We have a legal guy we bring in to validate that she’s there of her own free will and can leave if she wants, and he has her sign some stuff, too.” He shrugged again. “Some of them really are looking forward to that, others dread it, but they all go through it at least once. All brothers not in a monogamous relationship use them, and many come back for seconds and thirds. It’s a bonding thing for the brothers. I won’t partake anymore, but I’ll watch and high five some of ’em.”

“I’m not the jealous type. Under most circumstances I’ll want to be there to share it with you if you want to do someone else, but something like that — where it’s more about bonding with the men than fucking the girl — I’d be okay with you using her as long as you tell me and don’t keep it a secret. I mean, the werewolf thing, where you can’t get diseases makes it a lot easier for me to say that, but still — just be careful you don’t get anyone pregnant, which I’m sure you are and don’t need me to remind you.”

“That’s generous, but my wolf won’t be okay with it. He won’t understand. Wolves are monogamous. He barely managed to deal with Nathan doing you.”

Time to let him know why that wasn’t going to work if they were in this for the long haul. “I’m a switch, Bud. I’ll need to exercise the other parts of my psyche. It doesn’t have to be a relationship, but you’re going to have to be okay with me topping slaves every once in a while.”

Bud turned away to look out the window. “Where would you find these slaves?”

“My reputation precedes me at several BDSM clubs. I never have problems finding men who want to submit.”

Bud shook his head and turned to face her again, his arms crossed. “I could probably be okay co-topping a female submissive, but I’m never going to Top a man, and I’m not sure I want to watch you do it, either.” He sighed. “No way I could let you do it without me around to supervise though.”

“I’ve topped women before, but it isn’t really my thing. What if we topped a submissive man and woman at the same time? You with the woman and me with the man? There are submissive couples who love each other but need someone to top them both for them to really get off.”

“Yeah, we had a couple like that on the payroll years ago. Only male who’s ever worked at the B&B, and we were clear they were a matched set. They worked with us about a year and a half before they split up. He met a Domme who could flip his switch. The wife stayed with us as a pro-sub another year or so before she found someone and married him.”

“Would that work? For the two of us to play with a couple?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. My wolf is… wolves don’t share their mates. He’s territorial. I’m willing to give it a try if we find a couple we both like.”

Nickie breathed out in relief. “Okay. We’ll shelve it for a little while, but I’ll let you know before I start itching to be in control.”