Lee looked at his feet. “I’m sorry, Master. Sometimes I can’t help myself.”
He rubbed his hand across the top of her head. “I know, Pet. No one can behave all the time. I’m glad you’re here, even if only for two weeks.”
Before sunscreen lotion was a thing, I’m told shapeshifters had to change every couple of days in the summer. A wolf who only changed on the full moon would lose an entire month’s worth of tan, which was hard to explain. I went to put sunscreen on Kitty, but she waved me away. “I want to absorb the sunshine. Besides, I’m going to Brooke’s in a few days. I know she said I didn’t have to, since...” She let that hang, not wanting to mention Brooke feeding from us the night of Mike’s execution in front of the others. “But she didn’t get much so I insisted I come again. We still need to plan to take her out, too.”
She sat near the front, clearly looking forward to her first boat ride, and I kissed her forehead and walked back to Magnum. “Talk me through what it takes to drive this thing. I watched you before, and it seems to me the biggest challenge is the lack of brakes.”
“Biggest challenge is knowing the underwater topography, so you don’t hit a stump, or go to ground on shallows.” He looked at Kitty and smiled. “There are life vests under the seats. Law says there has to be one for every person on board, but you don’t have to wear it. I’m assuming you can swim?”
She nodded, and he continued. “Stay seated when we’re moving fast. You’re in front of the windscreen, so you’ll get some spray and a lot of wind. When I slow down, you can change seats if you want. Otherwise, you’re stuck there. If I think you’re about to freak, I’ll stop, but you can yell for me to stop if you need me to.”
“I’ll let you know if she’s not dealing well, but she’ll be fine.” I hadn’t told my brothers we could speak telepathically, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It felt private. But we’d be able to check in with each other in our heads, no matter how loud the engine and wind noise got.
Kahn sat in the seat opposite Kitty’s, to her right, and Lee remained kneeling on the floor between them. He draped her leash over his knee, loose, and leaned in to say something to her. She handed him the cloth around her wrists and looped her arms around his bicep. As Magnum said, we all knew he’d make sure she was safe and secure. We trusted him with our club submissives, and I trusted him not to hurt the women who came to him of their own accord.
Kitty
Riding in a boat was everything I’d hoped it would be. The sun, the wind, the water, the smells. We rode fast for a while, the wind in our faces, and then Magnum pulled into an inlet and backed off the accelerator. Or whatever it is on a boat. Eventually, he shut the engine off and we coasted. I let my tiger rise to the surface enough to see the wildlife — birds, turtles, squirrels, and other small mammals that live near the water’s edge. I scented deer, raccoons, rats, lizards, snakes, and too many other animals to mention.
Magnum was explaining how to spot where the water is shallower, watching the way it moves and the change in color, but I was focused on the forest on three sides of us, and the life it encompassed.
I felt Khan looking at me, and I turned to him.
“If you want to cool off, we can swim here. It isn’t a good idea in the main channel, but it’s safe enough in the smaller slews.”
I looked around. “Slew? That’s what this is?”
“Yeah. I’m assuming you’re a strong swimmer. If you aren’t, you should grab a life vest.”
I shook my head and stood. “I’m a tiger. Swimming comes naturally in both my forms.”
Khan unhooked the leash from Lee’s collar and stowed it in a little compartment to the side of where he was sitting. I hadn’t noticed it before, and now I noted there were skis inside it. He pulled one out and walked it to the back of the boat.
“Kitty and I are going to swim a little and cool off,” he told Magnum and Squatch. “Lee’s going to sit back here with Freckles.” He looked at Lee. “You have permission to sit on the seat in the back while I’m skiing. If you need something, you have permission to let someone in the boat know.” He looked at me. “She’ll feel the most comfortable talking to you. Can I depend on you to see to it the others know of her needs, if she tells you?”
I nodded and looked to Lee. “We can sit on the back seat together and watch him ski. I’ve heard of people waterskiing, but I’ve only seen pictures. I’m looking forward to this.”
Khan left the ski on the back seat, stepped over it and onto a platform near the motor, and dove in. His thin, long-limbed body barely made a splash. I followed him, assuming no one would turn the huge engine back on while I was standing right beside it.
The water was colder than I expected, but not shockingly so. I kept my eyes squeezed closed under water, and opened them carefully. Humans can’t swim with contacts, but I don’t have to worry about infections like they do. I just have to make sure they aren’t washed away.
Khan motioned for me to swim towards the bank with him, and I followed. Earlier, I’d wished I dared ask him questions about his lifestyle, and now I wondered if I could pull it off.
When we were a good ways from the boat, he turned to the shore as if he were showing me something and said, “You had something you wanted to ask?”
“Is that a Dom thing? Knowing when women want to ask a question?”
“Maybe. We tend to pay more attention to nonverbal cues. I’m not prepared to answer personal questions, but I’ll talk to you about the lifestyle in general. If there’s something you want to know, ask. Nothing will embarrass me.”
“My therapist tells me that people who are abused as children...” I took a breath and told him what he needed to know to answer the question. “She says people who are basically trained as submissives as teens, rarely grow up to enjoy vanilla sex. It happens, but it isn’t the norm. However, she says the split for whether they are dominant or submissive is close to even, that most people are wired more towards one direction than the other, they just never move far enough from vanilla for it to matter that much. But, for those of us trained to it, we go the direction we’re wired, once we’re given a choice.”
“First, thank you for trusting me with your secret. Second, I have a limited data set, but of the friends in my life who were abused as children, some now choose to Top, some submit, and a few are switches.”
“Yeah, she mentioned that some switch, too. I forgot that part.”
“In my experience, sixty-ish percent are submissive, most of the rest Tops, and a lesser percentage switch. However, I’m guessing there are Tops I’m friends with who were abused and I don’t know it. I don’t tend to sit around and talk about that sort of thing with the other Doms, yet it’s important information for me to have before I play with a sub or switch.”
“You play with switches?”
“Some switches need a relationship where it’s a back-and-forth, turn-about-is-fair-play thing. I don’t play with them. Other switches have some people they Top, and other people they submit to. I have a few of those in my life.”
“I agreed to submit for stuff involving sex, but now Squatch has decided he can punish me for not following instruction about my safety. I’m not sure how to talk to him about that. I keep telling him that if I don’t agree to it, he can’t punish me, but...” I shook my head and looked back to the shoreline. “He’s bigger than me in human form, so he thinks he gets to make the rules. That isn’t the way it works.”
“From a lifestyle perspective, that’s unacceptable, but from a biker-werewolf perspective? I’m not sure you’re going to find a way to work your way around this one. He thought he lost you and he never wants to go through that again. Plus, the biker lifestyle says it’s our responsibility to keep you safe, and that you do as you’re told in exchange for our protection. You’re dealing with more than BDSM here. You might have to pick your battles with this one.”
“I fought hard for my freedom, and I’m not sure I can just roll over and accept this.�
��
“Then write him a letter. Put all of your emotions and issues and anger and sadness into the first draft, and then rewrite it in half as many words. Get it down to one typed page. Print it out, hand it to him, and then go take a shower. If he wants to argue and you don’t think he’s hearing you, hand him your first draft and explain what it is. Go cook something while he reads it. Or dry your hair, or whatever, but don’t sit there and watch. Walk away.”
“Right, because I’m giving it to him to decide what he’s going to do, but I already know what my decision is. If I can’t live with his rules, and he won’t budge, I’ll have to move out.”
“Are you prepared to throw your future life with him away over this?”
I shrugged. “Is he?”
“I don’t know the answer to that, but you need to be careful about making ultimatums. Neither the wolf nor the biker will react in a positive way.”
“It occurs to me that Squatch brought me out with two of his brothers I haven’t...” I couldn’t bring myself to say fucked out loud to him. I tried again. “Do you think he has an issue with me being around the ones I’ve had sex with?”
“If he does, he’ll need to get past it. Do you have any lifestyle questions? I’d like to be able to honestly tell him you wanted to ask questions about power exchange or kink.”
I sighed. “If there was something that was done to humiliate me when I was younger, but I’ve recently been given an opportunity to humiliate and hurt the asshole who hurt me using that... thing, and now I want Squatch to do it to me, but be nice when he does it, so this thing no longer has power over me...” I shook my head. “Fuck it. It’s enemas, okay? I have to give them to myself when I know I need to be clean inside, and I want them to stop being a reminder of bad times. If I can get him to be nice with them, will that work?”
“That isn’t your question. It’s the first part of it, because he does need to be gentle with you a few times, or at least once. Your question is whether he can ever give you the painful kind, and turn it into orgasms for you. You don’t want him to give them to you gently.”
“How could you know that?”
He smiled. “Observation. Doms learn how to tell when a subject is a turn-on, especially when the submissive isn’t sure she wants it to be a turn-on. Does Squatch know it’s a bad trigger for you?”
“No, but he was with me when I got to turn it around on my abuser.”
“He needs to know. You said you have a therapist? You may want to talk to her about this. Let her help you sort it out in your head. Or, if you’re certain of it, then talk to him. Tell him you want it to be part of sex, part of the scene, part of the power exchange. Many subs like the idea of their Top controlling something so basic. So base.”
Yes. That was it. “Mike controlled it. It’s like he owned me more than Squatch. I need Squatch to take charge of it.”
“Then tell him, but be clear he’s going to have to work you into it.”
“What will you tell Squatch when he wants to know what we talked about?”
“I’ll tell him to ask me again in two weeks, and if you haven’t told him then I will.”
That was as good as I was likely to get, and I was surprised he was offering even this much. I know how close the bikers are, how much loyalty they have.
“Thank you. You’re easy to talk to.”
He smiled. “I try. C’mon. I’ll race you back to the boat.”
I turned and kicked hard, engaged my arms, and sliced through the cool water towards the boat.
I didn’t expect to feel so protective of Lee, but she brought out something I can only describe as a mama-tiger feeling. Freckles was in the front of the boat when I returned, and I wondered if he’d made her nervous, or if she’d made him uncomfortable. Either way, it felt important for me to keep my eye on her while Khan slid across the water on a single ski.
But this was Kahn, so there was more. He went back and forth behind the boat, jumping the v-shaped wave cast off behind us.
Chapter Forty
Squatch
I wasn’t sure what Khan and Kitty had talked about when they swam away from the boat, but I was certain they weren’t talking about the wildlife.
However, I decided against grilling Kitty about it when she returned to the boat. She sat and offered her hand to Lee, who took it and seemed grateful for the contact. I scared the little hawk submissive, and it pissed me the fuck off, but showing her my anger wasn’t going to help, so I stayed in my seat to watch Khan ski. I’d have preferred to sit with Kitty and talk to her, but my brother had asked us to take care of Lee, so it seemed best I stay away from her and try to keep her anxiety levels from going off the charts. Freckles had moved away from her, too.
Khan sat in the back seat when he finally climbed onto the boat, and Lee moved to the floor at his feet. He gave her the tiniest of nods and said, “Lips on my dick, pet.”
He lifted his butt off the seat when she went to pull his trunks down, and she pulled them only far enough to bare his cock.
Kitty looked to me in alarm, and I reached my hand out for her. She came to me, and I pulled her into my arms with her sitting on my lap. Magnum stowed the ski back in the side pocket and then returned his hand to the throttle.
“There are some nesting eagles just north of here,” Magnum told us as he eased the throttle up, so we took off slowly. He avoided other boats’ wakes and kept us on smooth waters so he didn’t interfere with our brother’s blow job.
Kitty looked around me a couple of times, watching Khan control Lee’s head. Basically, using her like a fleshlight. It sounded wet and sloppy, but there were no gagging sounds. Lee had apparently been well trained. Personally, I like the feel of a throat gagging around my cock sometimes, but I’d never tell Kitty.
When we finally arrived back at Magnum’s house, Kitty and Lee went inside to change back into riding clothes, and I used the opportunity to talk to Khan.
But instead of telling me about their conversation, he crossed his arms and shook his head. “She had some lifestyle questions. Ask me again in two weeks and I’ll give you the entire conversation, but not today. Give her a chance to talk to you first.”
I was speechless. He was honoring his conversation with her over the loyalty of the brotherhood? What the fuck?
He shook his head again. “I hope I’ve earned enough trust for you to understand it’s better if you haven’t rehearsed how to answer her questions. You’re my brother. I’d tell you if you needed to know right now. If she hasn’t talked to you in two weeks, then you’ll need me to tell you. Not now.”
I had to clear the fog of anger away enough to let his words sink in. He wasn’t keeping it from me, just giving us a chance to have the conversation organically. Okay. I could work with that. It still pissed me off, so I had to analyze why.
“Did she ask you not to tell me?”
“No.”
I let a breath out I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. She wasn’t trying to hide something from me. She’d seen someone who might have an insight she could learn from, and she’d asked about something on her mind. Khan seemed to think she’d be talking to me about it, and I trusted his intuition. The man understands submissives.
Kitty
We had nearly an hour ride back to the spa complex that evening, and it gave me a chance to consider what Khan had said. I also realized that Squatch likely knew we’d talked about something, and he’d probably asked Khan, which meant now he was waiting for me to bring it up.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to talk to him about it. I couldn’t see myself opening up and being honest.
So, when we got home, I went to the kitchen, lined a dozen shot glasses up, and grabbed a bottle of the good tequila. I’d puke my guts up if I did this with the cheap stuff.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to tell you something, and I don’t think I can do it sober. I’ll line them up in two groups of six. Can you keep recharging the line for me, u
ntil I’m drunk enough to tell you?”
“You could tell Khan sober, but you have to be drunk to tell me?”
I shook my head. “I just gave him the highlights. Enough he could give me advice. You’re going to get to hear the whole thing.”
I was sitting on the bartender’s side, and I thought he was going to tell me to move, but he sat across from me, took the tequila out of my hand, and poured it in both lines of six.
And, as I asked, by the time I finished the second line of six, he had the next line ready to go.
I don’t know how many times he refilled the lines for me before I put my hand on his to keep him from setting the next line up again. I finished the ones waiting, and wished I had a chair to sit my ass on. The room swam around me, but I needed to get this out before my metabolism burned through the alcohol.
“Mike gave me enemas to prepare me for anal training. It was hell. He was horrible.” My words were slurred. Was sounded more like wush. I took a breath and tried to enunciate better. “He used soap. A lot of soap. So much soap. I cramped and screamed and cried and hated every minute of it, but he fucking made me come before I could release! He put a little butterfly shaped vibrator on my clit while I cramped and hurt, and laughed at my pain and humiliation!
Tears came to my eyes just from remembering, but I was pissed, not sad. “What we did to him was nothing like what he did to us, but it still made me happy that His Majesty... that Nathan chose that method of death.” We were supposed to call him Nathan now unless we were in a formal situation.
“That’s why you told me you’d clean yourself out when I offered to help?”
I nodded and the room swam violently. I held onto the bar to try to stabilize the room. Or me. Or maybe both.
“I feel like he owns that part of me. Like he owns something you don’t. I need you to give me enemas. I need you to take control of it, but no soap, at first. Gentle. Sweet. Eventually, I think you’re going to have to put soap in and make it a control thing, but maybe not. I want you to do it, but the reality may not work.” I took a breath. “And I’m going to need a safeword for this.”
Squatch (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 4) Page 30