D answered the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt.
I stared for a moment. “Sweatpants?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, it’s great. Sweatpants are what everyone should wear at home. Just never in public.”
“Good to know.” He closed the door behind me.
I followed him into the living room. The TV was on, and whatever he was watching involved terrible special effects and a young woman in a very tight and artfully sullied tank top aiming a flamethrower at two battling monsters.
He settled on the couch. Patted the seat next to him.
“What are you watching?”
“A Syfy channel original movie. Come over here.”
I didn’t move. “Who are you, and where is D?”
His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “A friend and I often watch these movies and bet on the outcome. In humans versus creature movies, we bet on which humans get killed. In creature versus creature movies, we bet on which creature will emerge victorious.” He picked up his phone. “Today it’s Pteranosquid vs. Pegasaurus. It looks like . . .” He typed into the phone. “I’m set to win twenty dollars. Pteranosquid appears to be a sure thing.”
Of course. Bacon, whiskey, silence, Friesians, and Syfy original movies. Why not?
I cautiously slunk over and sat beside him. “Is a pteranosquid . . .?”
“A pteranodon with gills and tentacles that terrorizes both air and sea, yes.” He didn’t look up from his phone.
“And a pegasaurus is . . .”
“A Pegasus that is part dinosaur. These things, David, are often exactly what they sound like.”
“Just making sure.” On screen, a white winged creature with a horse’s body and a reptilian head took flight, making straight for a tentacled pteranodon that was dive-bombing a seaside tourist town. “This really doesn’t seem like something you’d be into.”
He set the phone aside. “I have many secrets, David.”
I laughed. “I’d noticed, David.”
He gazed at me sideways, and I had just enough time to see a tiny smirk before he grabbed me and pulled me over his lap. I grunted and struggled, and he rubbed one giant hand over my ass. “You’re wearing ridiculous jeans again.” He hooked a finger in my back pocket and tugged. When I glanced up, Pegasaurus had taken a chunk out of Pteranosquid’s wing.
“Take ’em off, why don’t you?” I squirmed as he rubbed. My cock was already hard, and my jeans were ridiculous, I agreed. Tight enough to be a second skin, and keeping me from feeling the warmth of his palm. They needed to come off.
“No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think I will.” He slid his hand over the curve of my ass and down between my legs, where he grabbed my balls through the denim. I bit my lip and rocked against his hand. “Be still now. I’m trying to enjoy my movie.”
I was not still. He swatted me hard three times. I flexed my thighs and curled my toes and panted through the sting. He went back to rubbing circles on the denim, and I went back to trying to push my cock against his thigh. He held me down with one arm, and let the other hand alternate between rubbing my ass, rubbing my dick, and spanking me.
By the time Pegasaurus was killed by a jet missile and plummeted, flaming, into the sea, I was a mess. Sweating, breathless, unable to keep my hips still. D’s hand roamed my body, pushing up my shirt, twisting my nipples, tickling my stomach . . . I moaned and spread my legs, silently begging for him to take my jeans off. My one attempt to remove them myself resulted in D resting his arm across my back to keep my upper body in place and then using his other arm to pull my knees forward until my ass stuck straight up. Then he spanked me so hard and so fast I couldn’t do anything but clench my fists and move my mouth wordlessly.
Finally he stopped. The room was silent except for my gasps. “Please?” I whispered, not daring to move. “Please?”
Slowly he pushed his hand under my shirt again. Stroked the sweaty skin between my pecs, then tweaked my nipple again. I flinched, my breath catching, but I didn’t squirm.
“Good,” he said quietly.
I got even harder at the praise.
He undid my fly. It took a few seconds of struggling to get my pants off. I lay in my T-shirt and underwear over his thighs, licking my lips between soft gasps. He slid his hand up my right thigh, under my briefs, and squeezed my ass cheek. My legs trembled. He reached around and stroked my balls, and I jerked, drawing one knee under me.
Finally his hand closed around my cock.
He started slow, then stroked me faster and harder as onscreen the monster screams escalated and something exploded.
“Oh God,” I said between breaths. “Okay, okay . . .” I arched my shoulders upward, and I came, soaking my underwear.
I collapsed. I couldn’t believe it. I’d gotten him to make me come, and all was right with the world.
“Damn it.” He abruptly released my cock.
“What?” I struggled to see what was going on.
“The fucking pegasaurus came back to life. Now it’s killing the pteranosquid, and I’m going to lose twenty bucks.”
Once the movie was over we had a quiet lunch of deli meat and white bread.
I folded a slice of roast beef carefully on my bread. “So do you watch monster movies for the money? Or the love?”
He poured barbeque sauce on his turkey slices. “I suppose there is some love. I am . . .” He paused and sighed. “Attempting to write a screenplay.”
“A screenplay.” I wanted to make sure I’d heard right.
“For a Syfy movie. About a creature called a crocopython—”
“Shut up.”
“—which terrorizes a group of people on a small island designated for scientific research.”
“Oh. My. God. Where is the screenplay?”
“Where you will never find it.”
“You have to show it to me.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“You wouldn’t tell me about it if you didn’t want me to read it,” I pointed out.
“It is simply an exercise in personal betterment. It is not fit for your eyes.” He stood and headed for the counter. I followed, scooting in front of him and going to my knees.
“D. I’ll do anything.”
He looked down and lifted one eyebrow. “Anything?”
I gazed up at him. “Yes, anything. Please? I let you fill my ass with soap. You can let me read your screenplay.”
He tugged my hair. “Hmm. I’ll have to think about this.” He stepped past me and poured himself a whiskey. “Sit at the table and be silent for five minutes. If you can do that, I’ll show you the screenplay.”
I got to my feet. Went to the table, sat, folded my hands, and waited patiently. He knocked back the whiskey, keeping a wary eye on me.
What? You don’t think I can do this?
I really, really wanted to talk. But not as much as I wanted to read the screenplay.
Eventually he retrieved his laptop. Opened the screenplay and set the computer in front of me. “So you can be still and quiet.” He gave my hair another tug. “I’ll remember that.”
“‘Crocopython,’” I read from the title page.
“If you read it out loud, I will—”
“Oh, I’m reading it out loud. This is not up for discussion.”
He stood there, his arms crossed, sandwich forgotten. “A lot of the early scenes aren’t written yet. Just so you know. It sort of . . . starts in the middle.”
I scrolled to a scene that looked juicy and read: “‘Jon: What is that?’ ‘Tom: A crocopython.’ ‘Alice: It’s huge.’” I glanced up. “D, none of your characters say more than three words at a time.”
He nodded once, a look of supreme peace and satisfaction on his face.
I refocused on the screen. “This is a Syfy movie. There needs to be tons of ridiculous expository dialogue. Like . . . Okay, like, ‘Tom: That snake’s the size of the cement mixer that killed my mother. Back when she built this lab, she swore she’d never try to play God. But now . . . we’ve unleashed hell.”
D gazed over my shoulder at the screen. “That sounds terrible.”
“But that’s how low-budget monster movies work. Also, you can’t name your characters Tom, Alice, and Frank. What is this, See Spot Run? They need crazy names. Who’s the main character?”
“Tom.”
“Okay, he’s now Jake Mandragon. Frank is Tank Kevlar. And Alice is Dr. Brittany Sands. Who’s your wild card?”
“What?”
“The bad boy who never plays by the rules and is going to appear to get eaten but then blasts his way out of the crocopython’s belly at the end.”
“Oh. Jon.”
“He needs a single name that’s not really a name, like Twix. Okay, look, I’m opening a duplicate document, and I’m gonna help you.”
I went to work, changing names and dialogue and reading it aloud to him as I worked. “‘Jake Mandragon: Dr. Sands, head to the back shed, where my uncle kept all his banned firearms back before he died in a freak explosion, leaving me in charge of the lab. Grab the freeze gun. Tank Kevlar, you—’”
“Why would Tank Kevlar’s friend call him by his full name?”
“It doesn’t matter! His name’s Tank Kevlar; you have to say the whole thing. ‘Tank Kevlar, you start the Humvee.’” I turned to an imaginary camera and raised a brow. “‘This Amazonian repto-mutt is about to experience the Ice Age.’” I turned back to D. “See what I did there?”
He sighed again.
“You love these movies! So don’t pretend you’re not grateful to me for turning your screenplay into something that will actually sell.”
“Love is such a strong word.”
“D, come here. Sit with me.”
He pulled up a chair and sat next to me, still holding his empty whiskey glass.
“You don’t have to accept my changes,” I said. “I respect your work as is.”
“Keep going.”
I slumped back, my fingers brushing the floor. “I’ll have to think some more. You should put this in a Google Doc so I can read it as you work.”
He shot me a glare that didn’t look too serious.
I nudged his foot with mine under the table. “When you live in Hollywood, can I come to your penthouse apartment to get spanked in an opulent setting?”
“I will never live in Hollywood.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it would be a good fit for you. But it’s fun to dream, right?”
“I suppose.”
I softened my voice. “What did you want to be as a kid?”
“A park ranger.”
“Aww.”
“But money was tight, and I saw how much my mom struggled. I figured it was best to get a cubicle job.”
“Well, hey. At least you never worked at a mall.”
He toyed with the glass. “I sometimes think, now that I’m older, that I may have let certain opportunities pass me by. There are things I didn’t want ten years ago, and convinced myself I’d never want. But now . . .”
“Dude, it’s not like you’re ancient. You can still go out there and live your life and do whatever you want.”
“I don’t have much interest in ‘going out there.’” He looked up. “I envy what you have with your friends. I don’t have anything like that.”
I felt a pang of sympathy. “What about your monster-movie-betting friend?”
“He’s a good guy. But we don’t have much in common beyond a love of hybrid creatures.”
I hesitated. “Well, if you don’t feel like you have enough friends, you’re welcome to hang out with mine.”
He chuckled. He ought to do that more often—it did great crinkling things to his eyes, and made him look . . . sweet.
“I’m serious. We should all get together.” Possibly this was the worst idea ever. But there was only one way to find out.
He hesitated, the smile slipping from his face.
“Relax.” I was suddenly nervous. “I’m not proposing to you. I just mean group dinner or something.”
He nodded slowly. “If you think they can tolerate me, I’m willing.”
I tried to hide how excited I was about this. No need to scare him.
But then I rested my head on his shoulder, and it totally did scare him. His whole body jerked. He relaxed in gradual increments.
I patted his arm. “Oh, D. Just you wait. We’re gonna have a good time. You, me, and all my friends.”
I met with GK and Kel again at Finer Things. This time it was on their invitation, and this time they didn’t make small talk.
“David.” GK looked tired. “We wanted to discuss your club.”
Well, fuck.
“Club. What club?” I wasn’t sure how far playing dumb would get me. But I had to try. I’d had a feeling this was what they wanted to talk about. Miles, Kamen, Gould, and I had read through over forty applications last week. We were even getting applicants from out of state—and from Canada. And we’d recruited almost every sub we knew from Riddle to join our site.
“The Subs Club.” GK had a giant coffee in front of him. “You’ve heard of it?”
I nodded cautiously. “Heard of it. Sure. Who hasn’t?”
Kel had papers with her. She put an arm over them when I tried to see what they were. “We have reason to believe you’re behind it.”
“Whaaaaaaa . . .?” I trailed off at her glare, looked down, and took a sip of my tea.
“Are you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”
Kel turned to GK. “He totally is.”
“I’m right here,” I said. “And yes, I’m involved with it. Proudly.”
Kel sighed. “It’s really causing some problems within Riddle. We’ve had four people cancel their memberships this month.”
“Doms?” I asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say. But believe me, it’s not just doms you guys are alienating.”
I knew that. Some of the worst comments we got on the blog were from angry subs who shared Anonymous’s opinions.
Just because a dom doesn’t play how you want . . .
You have no right to criticize someone’s style . . .
You’re a sub, but you get mad if a dom tries to take control? Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t belong in the scene . . .
“We’re not trying to alienate anyone,” I said. “We just want to provide honest feedback about local doms.”
“Privacy is a huge concern for people in the scene.”
“The blog is private. You have to be a member to view the site. And it has nothing to do with you or with Riddle.”
Kel rubbed her temple. “Riddle is the scene in this city. I mean, there’s Cobalt, but what does Cobalt have?”
“Just a couple of waterboarding Nazis,” I agreed.
“Maybe the blog is private.” GK turned the giant coffee mug around and around. “But everyone knows about it. And it’s mainly Riddle members who are being reviewed.”
I stared at my tea, wondering why I insisted on drinking this shit outside of work. “Look, we don’t give out emails, addresses, or phone numbers. We use scene names. Or first names.”
“It’s still risky.”
“What’s risky is that there are rapists and abusers posing as doms. And they almost always get away with it, because no one fucking speaks up.”
“I agree with you there,” Kel said. “But I’m not sure this is the best way to go about—”
“How else are we gonna do it?” I looked back and forth between them. “Fetmatch won’t let people talk, and the cops don’t do a damn thing when kink goes awry, as we’ve seen. And you two care more about Bill’s right to heal, or whatever, than ours, so we can’t use Riddle as a safe space.”
“We do not care more about Bill’s rights than yours.”
I played my ace card. “What about Gould? Even if he wanted to come back to Riddle, he couldn’t. Because you chose Bill for your rehabilitation project.”
Oh, I could see it in their eyes—the idea of hurting Gould ripped at their souls. Kel’s jaw was clenched, and even GK looked like he was watching a movie where a dog died trying to save a child.
I continued. “We need a place that’s just ours. And where doms don’t get to tell us we’re wrong for having concerns.”
“Nobody thinks you’re wrong.” Kel’s voice was firm. “But these are concerns we can all talk about together. We have the roundtables for discussions like this.”
“Who comes to the roundtables? The same twelve people every month, telling their ‘One time, at band camp’ stories. The discussions never get heated, and nothing changes.”
Kel looked affronted. “You haven’t come to a discussion in years.”
GK leaned forward. “What happens if someone tries to retaliate? If you end up in a scene with a dom who’s not a fan of your club?”
I raised my eyebrows. “If you have to worry that doms are going to get violent because someone expressed an opinion about them, then we do have a problem.”
Kel shook her head. “Most wouldn’t. Some would.”
“The guys who dropped their Riddle memberships want your head on a platter, that’s for sure,” GK said.
I stared at him evenly. “And what about what they did to earn their bad reviews? Huh?”
“From what I understand, they might just as easily have worn chaps that didn’t fit as violated somebody.”
“Oh, please.” I waved him off. “We’re not that bad.”
Kel picked up one of the papers. “‘MidwestMaster’s tits are so big it’s no wonder he can’t swing a flogger properly. All that wobbling must really throw off his aim. And mock necks are for Sunday school teachers and aging queens.’” She set the sheet down. “From your blog.”
“How did you get that?” I demanded.
She ignored me and jabbed at the paper. “This isn’t useful information. It’s cruel.”
“That . . . should have been better moderated,” I admitted. “It’s true, though. You can’t get into subspace if your dom’s man boobs are making little smiles in his preacher turtleneck.”
“You’re undermining your own cause,” GK said. “There is nothing dangerous about a mock neck.”
“I beg to differ.”
He tapped Kel’s papers. “People are going to get hurt through this.”
“No. We’re going to stop people from getting hurt. Some of the people we’re calling out on our site are big shots. Jimmy X, for instance.” Jimmy X regularly participated in Riddle workshops and had even served as DM at play parties. “He told one woman if she was really submissive, she’d let him touch her breasts.”
No response.
“This guy’s a member of Riddle.” I looked at them. “What are you gonna do about it?”
GK shook his head. “I’ve known Jim for years. He doesn’t think like that. Maybe he needs a reminder about respecting limits, sure, but it’s very possible that what he said was acceptable in the context of a scene.”
“‘Very possible?’ That’s what you want to assume—that it was all in good fun? Because she didn’t think it was, and she shredded him in her review.”
“Then she needed to communicate with him that he was going too far.”
“Noooo, dude. He needed to not go too far. End of story.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah, because a man who thinks he can manipulate women into letting him take what he wants—you tell him he shouldn’t do that, and suddenly he’s like, ‘Oh, what an overbearing, misogynistic fool I’ve been . . .’”
Kel put a hand on GK’s arm, but addressed me. “We’re not going to pretend abuse doesn’t happen. But Jesus, David, the media’s been painting our community as a bunch of dangerous freaks since Hal’s death. We have to stick together.”
I could see how hard GK was gripping his coffee cup, could suddenly see what looked like tears in Kel’s eyes.
“Why is this so threatening to you?” I was genuinely confused. “You’re a woman. Most abuse victims in this community are women. Shouldn’t you want—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I ‘should’ want as a woman.”
I took a breath. “I just want to understand why something that’s my project, that has nothing to do with you, bothers you so much.”
“Because!” Kel snapped, her eyes definitely watering now. She dashed the tears away. “Fuck.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and sighed.
GK looked at me wearily. “Because we built Riddle. From the ground up. And we don’t want to lose it.”
Kel nodded, expression almost pleading. “We saved up for years. Did the floor plan. Figured out all the permits we’d need. Decorated, bought the furniture. There were months of legal nightmares. The downstairs neighbors protested, the fucking Family Values Association said we couldn’t put a club like this so close to a Chuck E. Cheese’s . . .”
“That is kind of fucked up,” I agreed.
She crumpled the napkin in her hand. “I just don’t want to see it fall apart.”
I almost pitied her. Almost. “You act like we’re trying to sabotage you. That’s not what we’re doing at all.”
GK let go of his mug. “You’ve seen what’s happening as a result of this club. Doms are hurt, subs are paranoid . . . You’re not bringing people together. You’re creating deeper and more permanent divisions.”
For a second, I almost relented. Almost said, Okay, then let’s talk about how we can work together to fix this.
I remembered going to the roundtables at Riddle each month for the first year I was a member. A group moderator would ask questions, and we’d have a discussion about whatever that month’s topic was. Safe play, aftercare, poly scenes, edge play . . . I remembered how fun it had been, how nerdy I’d gotten about my newfound BDSM knowledge. For someone like me who’d grown up without siblings, with distant parents, Riddle had seemed like a miracle. A place I finally fit.
But all I had to do was think about Hal, and my anger rose again. “You took a place that submissives and bottoms thought was safe, and you let someone die there. And now we can’t trust that it won’t happen again.”
They looked genuinely horrified. Maybe I was going too far, and maybe I didn’t care.
I pushed my chair back and stood. Pointed to Kel’s papers. “And now you’re invading a private space we tried to create. You’re the ones turning this into a confrontation. Not me. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go.”
They watched me struggle to get the lid on my to-go cup. Finally I threw the cup and the lid in the trash, and walked away.