by Penny Aimes
Content Warning
This is an overall lighthearted and happy story, happily-ever-after guaranteed. However, there are some negative events both on the page and in character backgrounds that may be upsetting:
Both April and Dennis have romantic history involving kink relationships that went wrong, one way or another.
April is targeted for misgendering and transmisogyny by some unpleasant people a few times, and targets herself sometimes also with negative self-talk.
Additionally, Dennis and April have a Dominant/submissive relationship that permeates the book. For more detail on kink activities and other potential triggers, see pennyaimes.com/afcw.
For the Love of April French
Penny Aimes
This book is dedicated to:
My best friend—who, like Jason in this book, showed up with a moving truck when I needed him most.
My wife—who did not let a broken neck get in the way of our HEA.
Contents
Part I: Dennis, April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Part II: April
May
June
July
August
September
October
Part III: Dennis
May
June
July
August
September
October
Part IV: April, Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April
Dennis
April & Dennis
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Sailor Proof by Annabeth Albert
Part I: Dennis, April
Dennis
Dennis Martin looked around the club and decided to at least take off his tie. He had dressed tonight based on his somewhat limited experience in Seattle kink and BDSM clubs, and here in Austin he was feeling distinctly out of place. As a dominant he wanted to project power and confidence, whether in a suit or fetish wear, and by any measure power suits were more his style. He’d unpacked a sober but lightweight black moleskin Armani blazer from his garment bags—but this place was forcing him to consider he might need to relearn how to be a dom in jeans and cowboy boots. Jason had not given him sufficient details. Although maybe a name as simple as Frankie’s should’ve been a tip-off.
On a midweek evening in the middle of May, there were less than a dozen people around. Most of them were white, although there was probably a little more color than in any of his Seattle haunts. Down the scuffed bar-top sat a woman with a cloud of sandy blond hair in a pink leather jacket. A denim-wrapped couple were cozy in one of the horseshoe-shaped booths defining the corners of a makeshift dance floor where a few more people swayed. There was a DJ’s enclosure blocking what would have been a window to the street in a normal bar, but no one was occupying it, and something slow and alt-country was piped in, talking about one big love.
There wasn’t much staff around, either; a pugnacious bouncer on the door who seemed to be puzzling over a ledger between entries, and a pierced, pale and androgynous goth behind the bar. Even the goth gear was on the casual and breezy side. The club he’d attended in Seattle had tighter security and a much stronger dress code, for employees and members both.
He quickly loosened and removed his green silk tie, folding it up and slipping it in his jacket pocket. He hoped it looked casual and intentional, as if he’d come here from somewhere more formal. Then he felt the flicker of imposter syndrome that suggested a real dominant didn’t worry about what other people were thinking. And besides, he added to himself, it’s unlikely anyone had even noticed.
“Your first time here?” said a husky voice, and he turned towards his only companion at the bar.
Looking at her more closely for the first time, he saw a white transgender woman in clothes as casual as the rest of the room; pink faux leather jacket, a grey T-shirt and tight jeans that wrapped around curvy hips and a tight pinch of waist. Her face, though, was fully and skillfully made-up. Almost airbrushed. She could’ve been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five.
She had grey-green eyes that smiled along with her full lips, which were stained to match her jacket and the bobs of her earrings. She had long nails, painted like a cloudy blue sky except for a large yellow crystal inset in the right ring finger. Her T-shirt displayed a molecular structure and the words: “I survived testosterone poisoning.” Cute. Funnier than a Pride pin. He smiled at the slogan, then at her.
“I just moved to Austin,” he confirmed. “I know, I’m overdressed.” As a lesbian couple in full latex arrived and were waved past by the bouncer—they were known here, apparently, from the bouncer’s reaction and from the woman’s quick wave—he quirked his lips and added, “Or under.” Fashions might be different here, but some things are always acceptable in a kink club.
She laughed. “No, I just don’t recognize you. I’m kind of a regular.” She sipped her drink, which looked citrusy. “It’s a Wednesday,” she said, “So things are kinda casual. People just popping in after work.” She gestured vaguely at herself. “I look a lot better on the weekend.”
“You look good now,” he said. It was a tactful first move, and it was true. Good skin. Great hair. The kind of figure he liked, and a face that looked both kind and sensual.
She tossed her mane of honey-colored hair out of her face. “Then imagine how good I look on the weekend,” she said. Her lips curled teasingly.
“Maybe I will,” he said.
She took another sip. “And what are you imagining?”
He paused infinitesimally, thankful he was already lifting his Jack and Coke to take a drink. She was returning his flirtation, inviting his imagination, but she was also calling his bluff. He’d been bantering along automatically, but now he was challenged to actually consider it. And suddenly he found himself very determined to get this right. There was something in those warm green eyes—a welcome, like he was a friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. This felt different from the times he’d been approached since his breakup with Sonia.
“Hm.” He studied her a bit more, and she returned his regard, smiling. Her figure was lush on the bottom, but lighter on top, or at least a bit small for her frame. He could see she was a bit curled up on herself within the depths of her cropped jacket; she had broad shoulders that she was perhaps trying to minimize. Combined with her hips and waist, it gave her a classic hourglass shape, despite her slighter bust.
He licked his lips and tasted the sweetness of the cola. Tried to conjure something that wasn’t just generically fetish, but specific to the woman in front of him, the woman whose interest he suddenly wanted very much to capture. “Leather, or maybe PVC. Up to your throat. Sleeveless. Short skirt.”
&
nbsp; “Like a skater dress,” she mused. He nodded.
“Stockings, of course.” That was purely for him. He wished he’d noticed her shoes; would she be sensitive about heels? She was sitting, but he suspected she was almost as tall as himself. “Court shoes. No collar. Unless I missed something?” A critical question. Maybe she had a regular dom and just liked to flirt.
“No collar,” she confirmed, her smile widening to show white, even teeth.
“But maybe cuffs,” he said, trying a slightly more insinuating voice. He let his eyes linger on her boldly, and she colored and looked away, smile still in place. “How did I do?” he asked.
“Depends,” she said, and now her voice, too, was changed. Lower; quieter. “Was that supposed to be a guess or a wish?”
“I don’t know what’s in your closet,” he admitted. “Just what I’d like to see you in. Did you like the picture?”
“Yes,” she almost whispered. There was an unspoken Sir after it that fired his nerves and took him from partially aroused by the visualization to almost painfully hard. It would be a huge red flag if she actually said that now, just like it would’ve been inappropriate for him to suggest he’d collar her, but the silent subtext was there and charged the air. Most of his self-consciousness evaporated as the dynamic clicked into place. Thank God she wasn’t a dressed-down domme!
She let her eyes drop to her drink as she stirred it, sending dark fluctuations through the sunshine. “What color, though?”
“You seem to like pink,” he tossed off.
“That,” she said wryly, “would be a lot of pink.” She gestured to indicate, apparently, the amount of pink it would take to wrap her frame. Her hands were graceful, expressive.
“Black is always acceptable,” he allowed, “but I like you in pink.”
She colored even more—more pink—and signaled the bartender for another drink. He relaxed a little; he’d passed the test. And that suddenly, unexpectedly, mattered very much to him. For the first time in a good while, he was feeling true desire, uncomplicated by shadows of the past. He wanted her.
April
April French was having what she considered to be a good night. She was lonely and she was horny, but the lovely thing about Frankie’s, even on a Wednesday, was that she was probably not the only one. And the welcome wagon gambit was working. New doms always responded well to a little attention. She wondered how many of the hookups in her limited sexual history it accounted for—post-transition, of course. Her sexual history pre-transition was not only limited but singular.
On second thought, that was a depressing thing to contemplate. She decided to steer her mind back to the present, because her present was damn good-looking. He was Black, looked to be about her age, dark-skinned and tall, with narrow hips and shoulders that were probably narrower than hers, too.
There were clear hints of lean muscle under his suit, and the suit looked expensive. She didn’t really care about the name brand, but she had to admit the cost was reflected in how well it draped his body. He had short-cropped, wiry hair and that sexy kind of two-day stubble thing happening. A reassuring bass voice and an unreadable calm that made his face a handsome mask. The tightly wound dominants were almost always the most fun to see come unraveled with desire.
“So. You can flirt,” she said, trying to keep her voice even despite the smile tugging the corners of her mouth. It wouldn’t do to tip her hand just yet about how attractive he was. “And you wear nice suits. What else should I know about you?”
“Well, I just moved here,” he said. “Which you also knew. My name is Dennis. I came here from Seattle.”
She nodded, as Aerith set down a new Painkiller in front of her. “I’m April. Grow up out there?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Illinois, actually. Little tiny town.”
“Oh hey,” she said, her smile shifting to be a little less flirtatious and a lot more genuine. It was always a treat to meet someone from the same basic context; someone she could count on to get it. Not that she expected to spend much time talking about growing up in the Midwest, but it was still a nice bonus. “Ohio. I went to school out East, though, and worked there for a while.”
He laughed. “So a lot like me, but in the opposite direction. UC Santa Barbara.”
She bobbed her head. “Wesleyan.”
They exchanged graduation years; she guessed he was probably thirty-five or thirty-four to her thirty-two. “What took you out there?” he asked.
“It was as far away as I could get without driving into the ocean,” she said with a laugh. “And they had good financial aid. You?”
“About the same, about the same. Lots of loans, in the end.” She nodded as he went on. “While I was getting my masters, a couple of my friends got a start-up going and brought me in, and we headed up the coast to Seattle.”
“Ooh,” she said. “A techie. I should’ve known.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“Well, most of the folks who come here from the West Coast are,” she said. Especially the ones who could afford that suit.
“You’re right, anyway. I was the support team, not the talent, though. My degree’s in technology management.” He sipped. “Start-up life isn’t for the long haul, so I came here to take a job as CTO for a small firm. What about you?” he asked.
She fidgeted with the little straw in her drink, then drew it out. Chomped a cherry deliberately. “Poli-sci major. I don’t use it, though.”
“Hm.” His eyes watched her mouth. Good. “So weird, isn’t Austin where they have that political particle accelerator?”
He was smirking at his pun, and she snorted. “Queeons and Kingons?” At his blank expression, she added, “You don’t read Terry Pratchett, do you?”
He shook his head. “No, I was just teasing.”
Her smile snatched at the corners of her mouth again. “Teasing’s okay.” She was fighting herself not to relax fully into the moment, to keep up her boundaries until they crossed the preliminary hurdles. This might not be anything, yet. But he was cute, and he was funny, and he was—so far—gentle. She thought she could really like this guy. She knew she liked the way his eyes settled on her, the weight his gaze seemed to have.
“So what do you do?”
“Oh, I work with data,” she said offhandedly. Her job was a definite conversational dead end, simply because it was both hard to explain and deeply boring, even to her.
“Doesn’t everybody, these days?” he asked, and she shrugged. “So how long have you been in Austin?”
“About three years. I got a job after college in New Haven, and then... I transferred from that office after I transitioned.” Time to make sure he knew. She knew he probably knew—people could usually tell just by looking at her—but she liked him so far, and she liked where this seemed to be going, and she didn’t want to be in a situation where he hadn’t figured it out.
(It wasn’t just that, either; it was also making sure that he knew she was cool about it, that it wasn’t a secret taboo topic, that she could just mention it. Making sure her voice was pitched just right, brisk and level and bright, when she mentioned it. It was about projecting comfortable, casual and totally untraumatized, and God, it was exhausting.)
She watched his face, and from his brief nod she unpacked a great deal of information in return. He knew. He was cool. They were cool. She took another drink, letting the relief settle in before she continued.
“Everyone at my company was actually great about it, but there’s just a relief in having co-workers who don’t vividly remember who you used to be. And I’m less client-facing in this role.”
He frowned at the last. “Did people ever—”
“No,” she said quickly, setting down the drink. Not really. “I was just...more comfortable.”
He nodded again. A moment ago, she’d been thinking she like
d his poker face, but right now she wished she could read him better. “I want to make sure I’ve got it right. Trans woman, she/her?”
“Yep. Just...treat me like any other girl.” On the one hand, it felt humiliating to have to specify that. On the other hand, every trans person was different, and the question did indicate he knew something about the topic. She just wished she could download the FAQ into his brain.
Now, please God, if he was just not a chaser. Sometimes it seemed like the band between people who weren’t attracted to trans women and the people who only wanted her because she was a trans woman seemed impossibly narrow. She felt good about this guy, but people she’d felt good about had disappointed her before.
She tried out a smile, but it felt uncomfortable, almost pleading; she crushed it and pivoted quickly to another topic. “So where are you living in Austin?”
“Well, right now I’m staying with my friend,” he admitted. “I bought a house in the same neighborhood, and I’m having it renovated. I was supposed to at least be able to move in, but...”
“Not so much?”
He laughed; it was a good, rich laugh and after the awkward moment it lightened her heart as much as the rum. “Not so much. It turns out that there’s a lot they have to undo from the previous owner before they even start on what I wanted.”
“Oh boy,” she said. “That sounds expensive. What neighborhood?”
“Just south of Oltorf, near Congress.”
“Oh, by St. Edward’s?” she asked, referring to the small private college south of town. “You know what’s really good down there?” she continued, when he nodded.
“No, what?”
She rattled off a few favorites, a fried chicken place and a little Indian restaurant tucked away in a converted house, and spared a moment to mourn a departed Tex-Mex favorite. “And, if you zip over to Lamar on Oltorf, you’re pretty close to the best barbecue in Austin.”
“Hang on,” he said, smiling. “I think I heard of that. The truck, right? I thought it was on the Eastside.”
She paused and raised her hands to gesticulate, forgetting for a moment she was supposed to be a docile submissive. “Okay. So. Technically, technically, that is the best barbecue in Austin, you’re right, but this place on Lamar is so close... I mean, this is the best barbecue in Austin that you don’t have to wait four hours for.” She cocked her head as she corrected herself. “Well, there’s some places south of town that are pretty good, but they’re barely in Austin.”