by L. DuBois
“You deserve aftercare too,” she said softly. “And you’re right, what we did was enough to…”
Her words ended with a heavy sigh.
Without touching her, Daniel guided her onto the grounds of the estate, and around the corner of the Sub Rosa court building.
The manicured lawns—which he was fairly certain were fake grass due to California’s perpetual water shortage—started at the edge of the building and extended over large swaths of the grounds. From here they could see the Conclave, the edge of the Iron Court, and even the tops of a few cars in the parking lot at the front of the property. No one would come this way. They had total privacy.
Daniel took off his tie and tie tack, ignoring the way she tensed, and stuffed it into his pocket. With quick, economical movements he unbuttoned and slipped off his dress shirt, laying it on the ground beside the wall.
Autumn looked at it, then at him.
“Won’t you get cold?”
“I’ll be fine.” His undershirt was thin cotton, but he was still far from naked. “I’m more worried about you.”
Autumn turned her back to him and then slipped his jacket on rather than just holding it up. The sleeves hid her hands and it covered her butt. She turned to face him, and he had to quickly school his features.
The jacket was big enough around the waist to overlap, but while he was roughly the same circumference from waist to chest, she was most definitely not, and the jacket gaped, showing off the inner curves of her breasts, which were plumped like an offering because she’d crossed her arms below them.
They both took a minute to stare at her moonlit cleavage.
“At least my nipples are covered,” she pointed out.
“Yes, good thing, because looking at your cold, tight nipples would be…” There wasn’t very much acting involved in letting his voice trail off into a groan.
She grinned at him, and something inside him relaxed. She wasn’t upset anymore. They could talk to one another. That meant he would understand her, and what had gone wrong.
She turned and sat on his shirt, leaning her back against the wall. He dropped down beside her, shivering at the touch of the cold plaster against his back. Stretching his legs out, his glossy shoes an odd contrast to her dusty toes, he settled in to wait.
The silence stretched, but it wasn’t awkward, at least for him. He was happy to wait. He wasn’t sure he would have been this patient with another partner. Something about her was different. Maybe it was because of the game, because the decision to play together had been made for them.
It had been natural and effortless, slipping from conversation to scene. She’d effectively run from him, but it didn’t feel like manipulation.
She hadn’t used her safe word.
For some that would be evidence that she wasn’t really upset, but instead being deliberately bratty or trying to manipulate the scene.
He knew, with a certainty that had no basis in fact or evidence, that there was another explanation.
They sat there long enough that the goosebumps on his arms were starting to feel permanent when she finally sighed, drawing her knees up, hands curled around her shins.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he assured her. And he meant it. He was in control of the scene, and that meant anything that happened was his responsibility.
“You’re only saying that because I haven’t confessed.”
“Confession is good for the soul.” He couldn’t stop the disdain that tainted his words, but hoped she could tell it was for the phrase, not her.
“And spankings are good for people’s emotional health.” She turned to look at him. “That wasn’t sarcasm, by the way. Getting spanked until I cry always makes me feel better.”
A cold, dark realization gripped him, and Daniel bent one knee under so he could twist and face her. “Autumn, if having a belt used brought up past trauma—”
“No, no. It wasn’t that.”
The sick feeling in his stomach subsided. He sometimes forgot that for normal people, having a parent use a belt for punishment was severe. That hadn’t been his experience. A belt would have been a relief.
He let his head drop. “Thank the universe. I looked over your list and thought belts were okay, but if I overlooked something…”
“No, in this scenario I’m not the victim. I’m the asshole.”
Daniel had no idea what to say to that, so he stayed silent.
She tipped her head back, looking up at the stars. “I probably seem nuts, don’t I?”
“No. You seem, you are, lovely and quick-witted.”
“Our witty banter is part of the problem,” she murmured.
He prided himself on being able to understand people, particularly submissives. A solid understanding of who a sub was and what they needed—sometimes that understanding even eclipsing what they were willing to acknowledge of their own needs—allowed him to truly and fully take control in the power exchange. Right now…he was lost.
“Autumn, I hate to say this…but I have no fucking clue what you’re thinking or feeling. What you need.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll tell you what I do know, instead.” He tapped his hand against his knee, gathering his thoughts. “You didn’t run in order to manipulate me or the scene. You aren’t a brat.” He stopped to consider. “I don’t think you tried to initiate a primal play chase either.”
She nodded.
“Those are the things that aren’t happening. But what is happening... I’d love for you to tell me, when you’re ready.”
“Can I ask an odd question, first?”
“Of course.”
She looked pale in the moonlight, almost ethereal, though the aesthetic was spoiled by the too-large suit jacket. “I want to ask you what you think would have happened if we’d met at a bar.”
The question caught him completely off guard. He stared into the middle distance, thinking. What would have happened? He would have noticed her, he was sure of that. Would he have asked if he could buy her a drink? He didn’t know. Not that he wouldn’t have wanted to, but his past made it difficult for him to imagine himself in romantic relationships. He’d had them—it had actually been a girlfriend in his grad school years who’d introduced him to D/s, laying the groundwork for what would become his control outlet.
“Would it have been a meet-cute moment?” she went on. “I buy you a drink, you come over to say thank you, maybe make a cute comment about how usually you’re the one to buy the drinks.”
She pressed her lips together, and though he wanted to comment, he stayed quiet, sensing that she needed to get through this without being interrupted.
“But I’m not going to ask that, because that wouldn’t really be fair, would it? Maybe you’re married or seeing someone and coming here is part of your open relationship. If that’s the case, you don’t talk to strange women in bars.”
“I’m not married, or in a romantic relationship,” he said quietly.
“Oh.” She glanced at him, then away. “I guess my point is that in this imaginary situation where we were both out at the bar because we were single and ready to mingle…”
She turned her face, laying her cheek on her knee so she was huddled into a tight ball. Her face was half in shadow, her nose, chin, and lower lip gilded by silvery light.
“…I would have bought you a drink, or let you buy me one. We would have spent the night talking. You have to admit our banter was immediately on-point.”
“No argument here. We have chemistry.”
She winced and though he didn’t know what about that comment had hurt her, he wished he hadn’t spoken.
“Yeah…and that’s the problem. I’m attracted to you, and not just like a sub who thinks she’s met a Dom she can scene well with. I like you. I’d want to date you, if we had met at that imaginary bar.”
Daniel made sure his surprise didn’t show. The
last thing he wanted was to hurt her feelings, and he was sure acting surprised would do exactly that.
And honestly, what she said wasn’t surprising. Everything she said was true. They had good chemistry, their conversations had flowed easily since the first word. She was funny, sexy, and gorgeous. She was probably smart and successful too, if she was a member of Las Palmas.
It wasn’t what she’d said that was surprising, but the fact that she’d said it at all.
There was an unspoken rule that members didn’t use the club as a dating pool. This wasn’t a place to come and find a like-minded individual in order to form a long term relationship. It happened, but due to organic formation of relationships, not because someone set out to deliberately find a romantic partner.
The other side of that was that if a member married or began a serious relationship, how they planned to explain their membership to their partner had to be disclosed to the overseers. And if two married members got divorced, well…he’d heard the stories about Master Hadrian and Cleo’s divorce, though he’d never met Hadrian.
“Autumn, are you saying…you want to go on a date before we scene?” He understood what she was saying, but so far nothing she’d said explained why she’d reacted the way she had.
Autumn took a breath and sat up, staring out across the grounds rather than looking at him. “The men I date don’t know I’m a sexual submissive.”
“You haven’t dated anyone for long enough that you’re comfortable telling them?”
“It’s not a time issue. I was with someone, someone I’d been dating for a year and a half when I first joined. We broke up not long after, but for a while I was doing both—scening here on the weekends, and still dating him during the week.”
“You didn’t think he’d be interested in any sort of kink or D/s?” Daniel frowned. “Or were you thinking he might have been a submissive and you weren’t interested in being a switch?”
“Nothing to do with him. This is all about my own fucked-up-ness.”
“You’re not fucked up,” Daniel countered, voice hard with conviction.
“Oh just wait. I didn’t tell him…because I didn’t trust him.”
Daniel felt his protective instincts rear up. “Did he hurt you?”
“I never gave him the chance.” Autumn swallowed so hard that even in the shadows he could see her throat working.
“If he knew I was a sexual submissive, he wouldn’t respect me anymore.”
Daniel started to call her ex a rude name, but stopped, confused. How did she know how he’d react if she never told him?
“He would think I was stupid and incapable of handling my own life. He would think less of me, and treat me differently.”
“Anyone who would do that, think that—”
She held up a hand, cutting him off. “Every man I’ve ever been with…could ever be with…is the same. I can never tell them I’m a sexual submissive because as soon as they know they’ll think less of me. Treat me with disdain.”
“Where the fuck are you finding these assholes?” Daniel demanded.
Autumn laughed, but it was a sad sound, a little watery, as if she was holding back tears.
Daniel shifted and ducked his head so he could see her face. Something still wasn’t adding up, because she wasn’t just talking about her past. She’d said everyone she could ever be with.
Tears shimmered on her lower lashes, but her face was dry. The muscles at the corners of her mouth trembled, as if she was fighting the urge to let her lips twist into a sob.
“It’s me,” she whispered.
“No.” He shook his head, kept his gaze on her face. “It’s not you—”
“It is, because you see I’m the asshole.” She raised luminous eyes to his. “I can’t bear for men I like, men I might want to date or, worse, might fall in love with, to know I’m a sexual submissive.”
She pressed her lips together, then forced herself to smile. “Because deep down I think all submissives, including myself, are weak.”
She forced her smile to widen. It was a broken expression. “I hate being a submissive.”
Chapter 7
Denial. Anger. Confusion. Those were the emotions she was expecting to see on Daniel’s face.
Instead he pursed his lips, seeming to consider what she’d just said. She held her breath, but after a moment, he sat back, settling in beside her, so close their upper arms almost touched.
She’d just confessed something hateful, and he had every right to walk away from her. He’d stayed.
“You know you’re not an asshole, right?” Daniel said after a moment.
“Oh no, I am. I am a massive asshole.”
“Do you respect other subs, even if you think they’re weak?”
“It’s splitting hairs,” she said.
“No. It’s not. Do you respect their right to be sexual submissives?”
“Of course. Everyone has a right to their own shit, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.” She paused. “Or hurting them in a consensual way.”
“While you respect their choices, you think their choices are wrong.”
“Not wrong but…” She’d come this far, she might as well confess all the rest of her sins. “But every time I see Pet I want to shake her. Tell her to get up. To stop being that way.”
Pet was Master Carter’s bonded submissive. And he treated her like a pet—she crawled instead of walked. Wore a leash. And outside of Las Palmas their relationship was the same—a 24/7 Master-slave relationship.
“But you don’t,” Daniel said mildly.
“Of course not.”
“You respect her choice,” he repeated.
“Okay, yes. I see where you’re going with this. I think she is making a stupid choice, but it’s her right to make that choice.”
“And it’s a stupid choice because…?”
“Because I bet that Master Carter doesn’t think of her the same way he thinks of say…Gabriela.” Gabriela was Master Leo’s bonded submissive, and the unofficial head submissive in the club.
“So you think Master Carter probably respects Gabriela, but doesn’t respect Pet, his own submissive. And both of them are weak.”
“I told you I was an asshole.”
“I hate to state the obvious…but I don’t think we’re talking about Pet right now.”
Autumn leaned her head back against the wall. “Yeah, okay. It might not be fully logical. It’s just…I hate that I want to submit. That I need to.”
“But you do need it?”
“Yes. Trust me, I wish I didn’t. I…tried other things.” She swallowed hard, trying not to remember. “Didn’t work. Las Palmas works for me.”
He hummed in quiet acknowledgement, but didn’t say anything, so she kept going.
“I had to separate the two parts of my life. Completely separate them. Submission,” she said, holding up one hand, “and relationships.” She held up the other hand.
“You said you need to submit. How do you handle that with relationships?” He pointed to the hand she’d raised.
“When I am seeing someone, the vanilla sex is always good. I mean I like it, I just need…more.”
“Having needs is not weak,” he said softly.
She ignored that. “The vanilla sex is probably because I can come here on the weekends and scene. Part of the separation is separating relationship sex from submission sex. And most of the time my scenes don’t involve penetrative sex with my top.”
“Makes sense,” he agreed mildly. “BDSM doesn’t have to include sex acts at all.”
She nodded, then adjusted his jacket, pulling it closed. Daniel seemed like an intelligent man. He’d probably put the pieces together, but she needed to be explicit. He deserved that, since she’d run away from their scene, which was at best bad BDSM etiquette, and at worst irresponsible because she’d broken a cardinal rule by failing to communicate with her top.
Autumn cleared her throat and steeled herself. “I only sce
ne with people I can keep firmly on this side.” She waved her BDSM hand.
He raised his eyebrows in a silent request for her to explain.
“I don’t want to bottom for someone I… Someone that makes me feel… Ugh. Are you going to make me say it out loud?” She fought the urge to cover her face. Humiliation and embarrassment bit at her.
“Oh yeah. I want to hear you say it.”
His teasing tone lightened the painful embarrassment. She relaxed, and in a haughty tone said, “Jerk.”
His only reply was a wide grin, flashing his teeth in the moonlight.
She opened her mouth, but embarrassment choked her once more. After another brief silence he took pity on her.
“If we’d met at that hypothetical bar, we might have hit it off,” he summed up. “Might have gone home together for some vanilla sex.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And I would have never told you I was a submissive. Because I’d want you to see me as a partner. An equal.”
“Not weak,” he murmured.
She nodded. “I couldn’t tell you because I’d know that, you couldn’t both know I was a sub and respect me. You couldn’t know I need to be spanked and tied up and hurt and fucked…and respect me.”
If you knew I was a sub, you wouldn’t love me.
Daniel was silent for a long time. Then he nodded once and pushed to his feet. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch him walk away.
He didn’t leave. When he nudged her bare foot, she cracked open one eye and looked up.
He was silvery in the moonlight, the white undershirt clinging so his chest looked like it was carved of pale stone. He held out his hand and she placed hers in his, letting him help her to her feet.
Without a word he led her back to the warmth and light of the Sub Rosa court, her hand in his. She followed him, blinking in the bright-seeming light from the gas torches and landscape lighting that illuminated the space.
The chair they’d been using was still empty, her discarded corset marking the spot. On the way, Daniel stopped and flipped the lid up on a large basket, pulling out two heavy woven blankets. When they reached the chair, he tossed one of the folded blankets onto the ground.