by Lilia Moon
She looks down, but not before I see understanding land. And nerves. She takes in a deep, shaky breath. “Do you think we maybe have a chance?”
Chapter Twenty
Mattie
I can’t believe I just asked him that. The guy just told me he’s not even sure he’s a Dom, and the thing inside me that keeps leaning his way still wants to freaking lean.
Milo slides a little closer on the couch. “Maybe. I don’t know, but I wanted to talk about that when we’re not at the club playing brat and Dom.”
I pick my eyes up off his knees. “Okay. Talk.”
His lips quirk. “I like you. I like your directness and your loyalty and your sense of humor and the way you roll with things. And in the club context, I’ve never taken it any further than that, because nothing about the way we play suggests we would overlap very well.”
That makes me sadder than it should. “That’s what I thought too. Except then you painted on me and that did work and I didn’t know what to think.”
He exhales long and slow and hard. “Yeah. That surprised me too.” He looks at me, and it’s a long time before he asks the question I can see in his eyes. “When I was teasing you will the plastic wrench—it felt like you were reaching for more serious impact play.”
I nod slowly. “It’s the kind of sub I am. It’s why I do this.” And why I’m still confused. I bite my lip. “I’ve tried the other stuff, and it’s okay for variety, but I’m kind of like those boring vanilla people who stick with missionary position.” I shrug, feeling weirdly defensive.
He takes my hands. “Keep going.”
I didn’t realize I had more to say, but I do. “I know what works for me. A good session with a paddle or a flogger chases all the crap out of me that builds up when Tonio yells or someone complains about their soup or it’s raining for the eleventh day in a row and I’m mad at the sun. Regular life stuff, and I know some people do yoga to handle it or eat greens or adopt a cat. Me, I need someone to make my ass red.”
“And I’m not a guy who gets his kicks from doing that.”
I feel the disappointment land in my gut. “I know. I guess I keep hoping that a new day will make the answer different somehow.” I look at him and let him see. All of it. “Because I still feel this pull, and I wish it could go somewhere good.”
He takes a deep breath. “Maybe it can.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“You think you’re a sub who needs lots of impact play. I’m a guy who thinks he’s not into that, but I’m also a guy who needs to totally relearn what makes him happy as a Dom. I’d like to play with you, Mattie. To check all of our assumptions about who we are at the door and to honor the pull between us and see what we find.”
I stare at him, stunned by what I’m hearing. This is so not a conversation I’ve had with a Dom ever—but his words have started an interesting quiver in my belly and I’m not willing to ignore it. “So you’re saying that even though we look like our kinks aren’t compatible on paper, we should just throw out the paper and see what happens?”
He makes a wry face. “Something like that, yeah.” He sighs. “Which is why I invited you here instead of having the talk at the club, because this probably breaks every rule in the Fettered member contract.”
I swallow, because he’s giving me an opening and I need to take it. “Some of what I want doesn’t fit very well there either.”
His eyes shift somewhere warmer and more certain. “You want a baby.”
I can feel the tears rising up—and the need to say the words and give them oxygen. “I do. I know that sounds silly, but I know it as deeply as I know my own name. Part of who I want to be in the world is a mom, and when I’m around little kids, it’s like I can feel them speaking to something inside me. I want to help them be who they’re meant to be, you know? And I think that will help me be who I’m meant to be.” I sniffle, because I’m sounding obsessed, even to me. “I guess I’m a pretty classic case of a biological clock that’s ticking too loud.”
“Hey.” It’s not Dom voice, but it’s really clear he wants me to listen. His fingers reach for my chin and then stop.
I sniffle some more and pull his hand to my face. “First thing on the new paper we’re not sure we’re writing yet—I like touch.”
He chuckles and rubs his knuckles on my cheek. “Kink is all about it being okay to want whatever you want. I don’t figure that rule changes even if what you want is a baby. The vanilla world might need you to explain why. I don’t. I can see it shining in your eyes when you talk about it. That’s all I need to know.”
It’s not all I need to know—and his stilted, stumbling honesty of today has made me brave. “Are babies something you want?”
He leans his head on the back of the couch, his eyes never leaving mine. “I’ve been stuck in this whole place of thinking I had to rebuild my life from scratch, so I wasn’t really thinking about anything else. But at Gabby and Daniel’s party, I watched how Tash and Evie changed everything. How every single person in the room was better because those two little girls were there. How it felt when Tash crawled into my lap because it was a safe place to be shy and quiet and somehow she knew that.” His smile wobbles a little. “I felt like a superhero when she did that.”
He would know how to honor a deep and quiet heart. I take some of Ari’s words and hold them out to him like a gift. “You like to be a container. One strong enough so that other people can be amazing. Tash totally knew that.”
“Thank you.” He looks down at his knees and then back up at me. “I could see myself as a dad that night. First time.”
His fingers have somehow tangled themselves in mine. “I could see it in you too.”
He grins. “The vanilla world would frown on that motivation for you suddenly wanting in my pants.”
I stick out my tongue at him. “Good thing we’re not vanilla.”
He laughs, and it eases something between us.
I find the rest of my brave. “And it’s not sudden. It’s just feeling bigger.” Yesterday I let my sexual need out of the bag and everyone saw it, but it’s been there for a long time. I just assumed it had nowhere to go. Two veterans who knew better than to let chemistry push us into bad choices.
This feels awkward and uncertain and strange, but it doesn’t feel bad at all.
“It is bigger.” His eyes are studying my face. “A year ago, the guys of Fettered were this force of hot, freewheeling, and single. Then Emily fell into Damon’s life, and Harlan started getting this goopy look on his face when he talked about hanging out naked and eating pizza with Scorpio, and Gabby shows up these days with cookies and rosy cheeks and the whole damn place melts.”
His thumb is tracing circles on my palm, and I’m not even sure he knows it. But I’m not missing his words. He wants more than babies. “You want what they have.”
“I didn’t realize it for a while. I thought it was just me breaking.” He nods slowly. “But yeah, I think I do. I want to hold containers that aren’t so temporary. And to have people hold them for me.”
We are so far from the Fettered rulebook now—and it feels amazing. I grin. “Maybe it’s a virus. Or something in the water.”
“Maybe.” He’s smiling back, but also thinking. “So are we going to try this? The experimenting thing? Because I’m pretty sure that babies and naked pizza isn’t where this gets sticky for us.”
His last sentence makes me all warm and fuzzy inside for reasons I don’t want to think about too hard. Not when I need to seriously consider what might be the strangest Dom invitation of all time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Milo
I’ve just asked her to scene with me pretty much totally blind. To play with a Dom who admittedly doesn’t know what the fuck he wants. With both of our much bigger hopes and dreams swirling in the background waiting to see if we can get it right. Rulebook or not, I can feel how potent that is—and how many different ways it could go wrong
. Which means I need to pull it together and get the rest right. “I’ve been doing some thinking about how this would work. When you scene with a baby Dom, you and Quint have some extra hand signals worked out, right?”
She nods slowly. “He trusts me to handle myself, but he wants that extra layer. Mostly for feedback. Things like whether I’m being pushed at all or how good the technique feels, that kind of thing.”
Priceless information from an experienced sub. “He’s giving you a way to participate both as sub and trainer.” Making her part of the container.
She wrinkles her nose. “Sure, but what does that have to do with us?”
I like that last word a whole lot. Maybe too much. “In a regular scene, you generally only have one choice once the scene starts. One thing you can communicate.”
She nods quickly. “Yes or no. Sometimes a yellow light.”
I jump off the cliff of everything I know. “I’d like to give us more communication options than stop or slow down. I know it’s my job to read your other feedback, but I’m going to be feeling my way and trying to pay attention to my own needs as well as yours, and I want to give you more freedom to share how the scene is working for you.”
Her lips quirk. “More responsibility, you mean. Like I have in a baby-Dom scene.”
The ones where she rarely gets what she needs. Damn. Maybe I’m still not getting this right. “Maybe that’s an unfair request.”
She holds up a hand, and then looks astonished that she’s done it. “Let me decide that, okay? I know what I’m walking into when I take on one of Quint’s greenies. This is different, but let me wrap my head around what you’re asking before you make my decisions for me.”
I wince. “Shit. Sorry.”
She grins. “You apologize an awful lot for a Dom.”
Most of us don’t apologize nearly enough. “That’s probably not going to change for a while. I feel like I’m walking around in shoes that are three sizes too big and pants that are a size too small.”
She laughs. “You should take the pants off. At least then your balls won’t get seam rash.”
I don’t think she has any idea how much her laughter settles me, even as it makes my cock hard. How much her acceptance of my bumbling uncertainty makes it possible to take the next steps. “So our goal with this is learning, right? Holding a container together and seeing if we can build something that’s big enough for both of us to comfortably stay in.”
She nods slowly—and I see something I haven’t seen before. Pride.
This time I’m not tentative when I reach for her chin. “I couldn’t do this with very many people, Mattie. I like you a lot, and that will make this more fun, but this is also about my respect for your skills. I’m basically asking for you to let me go back to being a fumbling baby Dom, and that’s not a walk most subs could take with me. I’m not kidding when I say this is a container we would both be holding.”
She shrugs, and it’s a little shy. “It’s something I like to do. Ari helped me to understand the container-holding stuff when I first started helping with the trainees. She does it easily because she’s a switch. It was a new thing for me, but when it works right, the baby Dom gets more confident and he can start holding the space for me.”
“And then you get what you need.”
She shrugs, and this time she looks amused. “Sometimes. They’re kind of a work in progress.”
I try not to grimace. “I’ll try to at least be bumbling and fast.”
She laughs. I hear nerves—and the edge of something else. “I hear you’re really good at slow.”
Sometimes a reputation is a double-edged sword. “I guess that’s one of the assumptions we need to check at the door.” I want her to understand just how deep into the dark I want to go. “I want to let go of everything, even my ideas about what I’m good at.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mattie
This shouldn’t be working for me—all this soft tenderness and a Dom who’s clearly confused and vulnerable and not sure where we’re going.
But it absolutely is.
He’s willing to trust me to be this for him, and it’s like the little candle flame I feel when I work with the trainees suddenly turned into a furnace. I can do this for him—and maybe, just maybe, it will turn into something that can hold me.
I know that’s not likely. I know how few of the baby Doms can handle a full-grown scene with me and maybe this doesn’t have much of a chance either. But I’ve got nothing to lose—and the tenderness in those eyes says that maybe I have a lot to gain. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
He smiles at me. “What exactly are you saying yes to?”
To possibilities. “One day at a time. Either one of us can end it.” This is territory I know. “Standard club safewords, and I’m not checking my hard limits at the door.”
He looks horrified. “Of course not.”
I smile, because we’re doing this weird shifting thing between Dom and sub and two people talking on the couch. “You know it has to be said out loud.”
He touches my cheek, his eyes sheepish. “I do, and thank you. We’re not checking basic precautions at the door, absolutely. Hard limits, safewords, condoms if we get that far.”
I like that he’s not making assumptions. “No sex until I don’t need to be holding the container much anymore.” I can feel my cheeks getting red, which happens exactly never, but it’s important he knows this too. “I don’t mind being a guinea pig for a lot of things, and I don’t mind them being awkward or not working, but I don’t want to have awkward sex with you.” I really want the other kind, but I can’t seem to manage to say that part out loud.
It doesn’t matter. He’s a Dom. He’ll know.
His knuckles brush my cheek again. “I can’t ever make a promise to avoid all the awkward, but I’m hearing that you want me to have my shit together before we add sex to the mix. What about sexual touch, orgasms for you?”
This is standard kink negotiation—but it so doesn’t feel that way. “You’ll want some of that in so you have that territory to explore.”
He smiles slowly and it heats up the air between us. “I want some of that in because I want to play with your nipples and your pussy and listen to the sounds you make when you get off. But I can get the learning I need by playing with your inner elbows, so I need to know what you want. Just for today. We can have this conversation again tomorrow.”
I blink. “Today?”
“That’s the invitation.” I can see him shifting into Dom skin as he speaks. “Play with me right here on this couch. Bring all of who you are and all the needs you have and let me try a few things and we’ll see what happens.”
The sub in me so wants to say yes. I tell her to remember that this is the guy who dropped us in the middle of a scene less than twenty-four hours ago—and today there are no witnesses to glue us back together. “If you need to stop, I need you to safeword instead of leaving.”
His face cloaks in shame. “I’m so sorry that happened. Damn.” He covers his face and sighs. “Maybe this is a really bad idea.”
I find my brave again and layer my hands over his, gently tugging them off his face. “I’m saying yes. I want to try this. I’m just telling you what I need.”
He swallows and cloaks himself in Dom again. “Totally reasonable request. Yellow for slow, red for stop. For either of us. But I need you to know that if I’m using them, it’s probably not because of you.”
I smooth his hands in my lap. My need to touch him is growing by the second. “Sometimes, with the baby Doms who can handle it, Quint adds a couple more traffic lights. Purple so that I can ask for more. Gray if something is feeling pretty blah.”
He looks almost insulted. “If I can’t figure those out, just hit me over the head with that lamp behind you. I’ll totally deserve it.”
It’s somehow reassuring to know he’s got a Dom ego, even if he keeps it well hidden. “I didn’t mean for me to use. I was thinking maybe yo
u could.”
He stares at me like I’m speaking Polish.
I park my good sub manners at the door—they’re not what he needs right now. “You want to figure out what you like, right? Which means you try some things, and some of them will be good for you and some of them won’t be. It would help me to know that. Kind of like an advance warning that you might be shifting gears.”
Comprehension dawns in his eyes. “Which you would totally deserve, because I wouldn’t be shifting to meet your needs—I’d be shifting to meet mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Milo
She’s a total genius, and one who’s just offered me a brilliant gift. “So if I’m enjoying something, and I’m in that place where I’m still pretty focused on my own needs and I want to explore it deeper, I can say purple and give you a chance to choose.”
She nods. “Right. And maybe I can give you a green, yellow, red answer that’s just for that specific thing.”
Setting limits on the fly. We’re totally setting the rule book on fire, but it makes a strange and perfect kind of sense for what I’m asking of her. “Gray if I’m doing something that isn’t working for me.” That’s a traffic light I deeply want to have in my arsenal—I’ve been in the land of gray far too much lately, and it needs to stop. Mattie and I both deserve better.
She nods—and then I see the internal squirming. The classic sign of a sub who wants to say something and doesn’t know if she should.
That needs to stop right now. I put my fingers under her chin. “I want to hear all of your thoughts today, okay? Even if they’re something you usually wouldn’t say to a Dom. Maybe especially then.”
She makes a wry face. “I’m just wondering if I need color answers for after you say gray, too.”
It takes me a minute to catch on. I’m so used to the way this usually works, where I decide and it doesn’t much matter what she thinks. That’s an arrogance I need to check at the door too. “So if I’m not enjoying something, but you are, you want a way to tell me that.”