by Lilia Moon
He strokes my hair, which melts all my bones. “How often do you need to do that?”
I listen, but there’s no loading behind his words. No answer he needs. Just honest curiosity. I push myself back up, because I need to see his eyes for this. “I don’t know. I’ve never really been here.”
It takes him a moment. “In a relationship with someone willing to do both parts with you?”
More than one kind of new. “I haven’t even been in very many relationships, really. And they’ve all been with Doms.” I frown, because I need to be careful with my words, but I also need to tell the truth. “You’re not a switch.”
He grins and shifts my ass in closer to his cock. “Are you sure about that, Mistress Bossypants?”
I snort. “I dare you to call Amelia that.”
He rolls his eyes. “No thank you. I saw that thing she was holding, and I’m very sure she knows how to use it.”
He even gives me this—the chance to use levity to breathe space into who we are. To make enough room for all the things I want to pull into the light. “Do you think you’re a switch?”
His head shake is fast and sure, his grimace slower. “My first answer’s no, but that’s probably a dumb thing to say after what just happened.”
This is the truth I need him to hear. “Not dumb at all.” I trace my fingers through the hair on his chest. “Switches are people who need to play with both sides of power exchange. I don’t think you do.”
He’s listening, quiet and thoughtful and not at all ready to agree. “Maybe switches are people who can grow from playing both sides.”
Smart, insightful, interesting man. I sigh and lean back in. “I have this pet theory that almost everyone, kinky or not, switch or not, could benefit from stepping into both roles at least a few times. There are things you learn when you’re trussed up or holding a paddle in your hand that you just can’t learn any other way.”
His chest rumbles as he laughs. “I bet.”
I snort. His cock is waking up underneath me, which probably means someone needs to give him paddle lessons. I will gladly offer my ass to the cause. “But being capable of learning from an experience doesn’t mean you need it. You figured out how to make tonight work for you and you’re digging in to what it gave you, but you did it for me.”
His hands wrap around my shoulders and he sits me back up, firmness in his eyes. “For you, and for us. We’re better if you have a chance to go there. It lights you up, and I don’t ever want to get in the way of that.” He grins. “I might even enjoy some of it.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Jackson
I’m high. I know it and I don’t care, and I don’t think it’s scene leftovers that are doing it. It’s the fumes of what’s happening between us right now. She’s flustered and beautiful and I love that she’s never done this before. I tuck her hair behind her ears, because keeping her flustered and beautiful feels like an awesome goal in life. “So what do you think—fifty-fifty on who’s wearing the cuffs?”
She laughs and pulls my wrist up to her face, planting a kiss on the weaving that I never, ever imagined was going to become something this pivotal in my life.
I run my hands down to her hips. We’re laughing, but this is also deadly serious. “What do you think you need, beautiful?” I have no idea what I’m capable of or where I can go without doing harm to my balance, but I’m willing to try a whole lot of things if it will let us feel this way again.
Her head tilts in that way she has when she’s thinking hard. “Honestly? Maybe not very often.”
That’s somehow not the answer I expected, and the gorilla jumps around in the back of my head, worried that she’s saying it for the wrong reasons.
Her hands rub circles on my chest. Soothing. “You’ve watched me for months. How often do I play as a Domme?”
My brain manages to find enough neurons to catch up with her question. “Not often. But I thought that was maybe lack of opportunity.”
She smiles. “No.”
She doesn’t say anything more about that, and I don’t need her to. It’s the truth of Ari that matters right now, not anything else. I run my hands down her arms. “Sore?” I know what mine can feel like after a drum set.
She smiles and hands me the arnica gel. “In a scene, the people participating pick one way to be together. Life isn’t like that. So I can’t promise my Domme won’t sneak out over breakfast sometimes just like my brat does. And sometimes what I really want is cuddly vanilla sex by the fire.”
My cock is all about that. Which is crazy. He should be exhausted.
Ari grinds down into me and grins. “We need to stop by the grocery store on the way to your place. Your fridge is down to three carrots and a bottle of ketchup.”
I grin and tip my forehead into hers, because that right there just illustrated her point better than anything else. Relationships are living things. They flow, and a lot of things can happen in a river. Including cuff-swapping and emergency grocery runs. “You know it’s midnight, right?”
She laughs. “Okay, carrots dipped in ketchup it is.”
I just keep rubbing her arms. We’ll figure out the food thing just like we’re figuring out everything else. By playing with balance and extremes, with standing up and tipping over, with beats that fall where they should and a few that land somewhere else entirely. We don’t need to be a Dom and a sub or a Dom and a switch or anything other than Ari and Jackson. Who might occasionally squabble over who’s wearing the cuffs.
“You two done yet?” Scorpio sounds oddly amused, which is the first time since I got naked that I really process how many other people are probably listening. “Because if all you have is carrots at home, you might want to get to this food before Harlan and Quint hog it all.”
It takes my eyes a moment to focus on anything beyond Ari’s face. When I do, I have to laugh. Every couch and chair in the club has apparently migrated into the dungeon, and there’s an impromptu buffet of takeout containers laid out on every reasonably flat surface.
Scorpio grins. “Indian food. Extra spicy.”
I’ve eaten with Scorpio before. If she ordered, nobody in here is going to be able to taste anything tomorrow.
Ari hops off my lap. “Back in a jiffy. Don’t move. I’ll load us up some plates.”
I start to clamber to my feet to head after her, and then I realize why she’s really offered. Because there are eyes on me from all over the dungeon—and she trusts me to handle them on my own.
I hide a grin. Apparently it took a turn at being her sub to get rid of her lingering fears that I might be fragile.
I keep my body relaxed, which isn’t hard, because the gorilla still has me pretty well pinned. I look around, meeting all the eyes I can see. I’m not naive. I’ve heard the chatter in the training classes. Quint and Ari sandblast it with quiet, thorough explanations, but there will still be some who don’t understand what I did or why. Which I could just shrug off, but I know about villages and the proper sweeping of them. Some things shouldn’t get left lying around underfoot.
I see a few faces that have doubts. Some are Dommes from the demo, but I can also see Amelia’s eyes tracking ahead of mine, assembling a line-up of who needs to learn to respect submission. Quint is busy multitasking his sub and a takeout container, but Harlan is standing against the side wall, his eyes moving just like Amelia’s.
There are lots of people here who understand how to sweep a village.
Tank’s eyes just make me want to laugh. The big guy has a look of honest curiosity, and the sub in his lap looks as daunted as I’ve ever seen her. Ari meets my eyes over Eva’s head and grins. Apparently we’ve started something—and it might be contagious.
I’m good with that. Really good.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Ari
I shake my head at Harlan as I steal food from his container. “Could you be more obvious?”
He raises a confused eyebrow. “What?”
“You’re making a list of all the Doms who think a guy might be weak for letting his sub tie him up.”
He snorts. “Damn straight. They’re idiots, and we do something about that around here.”
Yes we do, and I’m usually leading the charge. Tonight, a guy fresh out of training class led it instead. But I know Harlan, and I have no plans to get in his way. I will, however, steal his food and mess with his head. “Scorpio might like tying you up. That would make a pretty clear point.”
He shakes his head and grins. “Good try. I already offered and she said no, end of story.”
Damn. I missed that one. “There are some others who are curious. I hope you’re making that list too.”
He rolls his eyes. “Do I look like I just got here yesterday? Go feed your guy. He’s let people stare at him long enough.”
The eyes in the back of my head know that Jackson is just fine. I’m making this tour for me—and in service of us. I balance two plates that are already well loaded and head for Amelia. She just raises an eyebrow and dares me to stick my chopsticks in her takeout container.
I grin. “Sorry for completely ballsing up your demo.”
She chuckles. “You do realize how many switches this is going to pull out of the woodwork, right?”
I shrug casually. “If you want to try being tied up, I’m sure I can find someone who would be gentle with you.”
Amelia does lethal better than anyone, but her eyes are way too amused to pull it off. “You’ve found a good one. Enjoy him.”
There are tops who don’t respect subs. She’s one of the hardest on hers—but she honors what they give her right down to the ground. “Thank you for teaching me how to do it right.”
She smiles—and hands me her container. “Go. He’s watching you.”
I turn, and I can’t keep the dopey, stupid grin off my face. I waltz back over and plop in Jackson’s lap, and I manage it all without tripping over my suddenly lazy feet or dumping food on either of us.
He laughs and kisses my temple as he takes the plates out of my grip. Then he leans down and casually unzips my boots. “You’re drunk, beautiful.”
I am. On exactly what he thinks I am. I’m sitting in his lap in my latex pants and my bare feet, surrounded by my tribe. He’s naked as a jaybird, his grin is almost as dopey as mine, and he sees every inch of who I am. I’m done holding back and we both know it.
I’ve found my person.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Epilogue - Jackson
A lot of things in my life have taken a sharp turn into amazing, but this is one of my favorites. I’ve been awake for almost half an hour, breathing in the magic of a sunny winter morning in Seattle, stroking the hair of the woman curled up next to me.
I’m sorely tempted to do a lot more than touch her hair, but I’ve learned from experience that Ari sleeps like the dead. Teasing her awake involves body armor, blunt instruments, and a coffee intravenous drip, not necessarily in that order. Which means I get a lot of mornings like this one, spent in sleepy, cuddly, Ari-appreciating meditation. Quiet time to soak in the epic goodness of having someone in my life who wants to snuggle in this close and stay there.
I know it’s only been a few weeks, but I see in Ari what I see in myself. Some of our journeys are long and slow, some are fast and full of lightning—but they’re all deep. The measure of what lives between us isn’t in the time it’s taken to get here.
I kiss her forehead and grin. She’s still way deep under, and I don’t want to leave this morning without seeing her beautiful blue eyes, even if all she does after that is roll back over and go to sleep. Ari and the crack of dawn do not have a friendly relationship. I’m trying to show her the joys of a good afternoon nap instead, but all that’s doing is increasing the amount of time we spend horizontal. Which is not a complaint. At all. Horizontal with Ari is way up at the top of my favorite ways to spend time.
I wait to see if she starts any of the little grunts and wiggles that are the precursors to her waking up in the next hour. I have a rope-bondage lesson with the only other kinky guy in town who gets up before noon on a Saturday, and given how the first one went, I need caffeine on board before I get there. The knots aren’t any more complicated than the ones needed to make a drum, but knowing when and where and how and why to use them is, and Matteo is adamant that I learn all of those things before I accost some sub with a rope.
He knows as well as I do that there’s only one sub I want to tie up, but I’m trying to keep that a secret, which is why this lesson is going to be happening while all the rest of the kinky people are still snug in their beds. Ari’s birthday is in three months, and I have plans.
My gorgeous sloth is definitely not waking up. I start the process of trying to extract myself from underneath her, which my cock totally misunderstands. I chuckle quietly. He’s not at all deprived these days, but he’s still really unimpressed with the idea of leaving warm, soft, naked woman.
He’s got a point.
I grin. I have an idea that might wake her up. One I got consent for long enough ago that she’s probably forgotten. I shoot a look down my belly in the direction of my cock. If this backfires, he’s going to need to run for cover.
I ease Ari onto her belly and pull her outer knee up. The better to protect my balls.
I reach for the coconut oil that’s rapidly replaced lube at my place, and the small, curvy stainless steel toy I stashed in the nether regions of my bedside table for exactly this purpose.
Ari doesn’t even twitch when I slide fingers slick with oil over her pussy. I grin again. She might be comatose, but her pussy isn’t. It’s greeting my fingers with cheerful, wet abandon. I let the slick of her and the oil blend, my fingers traveling her folds, finding all the nerve endings she likes best, giving a happy morning welcome to her clit.
I smile and nuzzle into the woman who still looks sound asleep. Her head might be, but her ass is waking up, with slow, languorous movements that push in the general direction of my hand.
I take my fingers away long enough to grab the vibrator, and then, because I’m a Dom, and one who has to leave in less than an hour, I apply it directly to her clit on maximum power.
Ari doesn’t actually manage to shoot off the bed as she wakes up, because I’m smart enough to be lying on top of her, but the sound that comes out of her is a whacked blend of unfiltered fury and high holy pleasure.
I hang on tight, one hand holding her neck down on the bed, the other holding the vibe to her clit. She comes a second time sharply on the heels of the first, her whole body shaking as lightning hits the same place twice.
I toss the vibe away and line up my cock as she finally finds her words.
Her single, whispered word. “Fuck.”
Really happy to oblige. I keep my hand on her neck, because I’ve learned that Ari stays where I put her head, and ram myself into her balls deep.
She lets out a hot, low moan, still heavy with sleep, and I nearly come. Her ass starts to wiggle and plead and I pull almost all the way out before I plunge inside her again.
Ari convulses, another orgasm lashing her hard.
I’m taking notes. She’s responsive as fuck when she’s half awake.
I lay all my weight on top of her again, holding her down, giving her nowhere to run. Riding the storm with her. Then I reach out for the vibe I threw away and slide it underneath us.
Another short, intense thrust and I stay deep, buried inside her, and land the vibe on her clit. On low this time, but it doesn’t matter. She wails into the bright morning sun, the out-of-control cry of a sub who wasn’t awake enough to pull her resistance together. She hurtles over the edge she never got to stand on and choose, and I can hear the wild quaking of that inside the storm of her pleasure.
I keep the vibe right where it is. For the first time ever, I’m not asking for her surrender.
I’m taking it.
Her fists clench and she tries to push up, to resist, to move away from the
devilish finger of steel assaulting her clit.
I hold firm. I’ve got her and she knows it and it’s time she knows I can take away the last of her shields too.
She melts. There’s no other word for it, even as another orgasm crashes over her and pulls me with it. We’re riding the crazy arm of the hurricane and she’s just gone ragdoll soft underneath me.
I toss the vibe and wrap her as tightly as I can with arms and legs and love and let us shake.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Epilogue - Ari
Only a truly evil Dom would try to make me like mornings.
I manage to drag one eye open, and the first thing I see is the innocent looking oblong hunk of metal that just blitzed my clit. I give it the best glare I can manage before noon. “I’m totally figuring out how to take the batteries out of that thing.”
The dead weight on top of me chuckles. “If you do, I’ll show you its bigger cousin.”
I bury my head in my pillow. Jackson rarely makes threats, but they’re never idle. “Sorry, Sir. I’ll be very good, I promise.”
He swats my hip. “Way too late for that. Pillow under your belly, ass up.”
That requires way more energy than I have, especially with a couple hundred pounds of Dom lying on top of me. “Are you sure we can’t just lie here and have a nap?” It’s a good bribe. He likes naps.
“Nope.” He swats me harder this time, and squarely on my ass, which means I no longer have hot guy plastered all over me. “I have to go soon, but first I’m going to lick you until you scream.”
Dammit, he knows how to use his carrots and sticks. The man has a really talented tongue.
I reach up a hand and grab a pillow, but that’s about as far as I get before there’s a strong arm under my hips, dragging me down until my legs are off the end of the bed.