KNOW - Mattie & Milo (Fettered Book 4)

by Lilia Moon

  She smiles. “And you guys have some serious chemistry.”

  That too. “He turns my insides to goo. He barely touches me and I get all melty, not just as a woman, but as a sub.” Which is easily the most painful part of this. “It’s not fair. That shouldn’t happen when he’s totally not the guy who wants to be my Dom.”

  “That’s not true.” Ari shakes her head and hands me tissues. “He wants to be your Dom very badly. No way he would have agreed to that scene otherwise.”

  I sigh and blow and try to deal with the mess on my face instead of the one in my life. “But it still didn’t work. When Manny shifted us into the twenty strokes after warm-up was done, Milo was all there and connected and ready—and then he disappeared.” I hold up a hand to stop her arrow before she lets it fly. “He didn’t drop me. He stayed and he finished the scene and he tried his hardest to give me what I needed, but his heart wasn’t in it. It wasn’t a bad scene. I’m not over here crying because he screwed up as a Dom, so you don’t need to go stab him for the sub sisterhood.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “I get to decide that. Keep going.”

  I blow again and head straight for the bottom line, suddenly out of tears and energy and everything else. “One of us would have to change too much. I can’t ask it of him and I’m sitting over here hiding under a blanket so that I don’t ask it of me.”

  For a long time, Ari just sits there and watches me as I mop up snot and drown in the sadness.

  Then she reaches for my hand, and her eyes are snapping with some kind of warrior lightning I’ve never seen before. “Come with me. I have things to say and you need to hear them too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Milo

  It feels like half the Doms at the club are squeezed into Damon’s office, but that’s probably not true. Just the ones who want to yell at me. And who aren’t taking my attempts to blow them off at all well.

  Which has basically resulted in the classic stare-down standoff—until we hear footsteps in the hall.

  Harlan sticks his head out the door and pulls it back in, and I can’t read a thing from the look on his face. Which doesn’t matter for long, because the waters part and Ari chugs through them, dragging Mattie in her wake. She pushes Mattie down on the chair beside me, and I’ve never felt more like I just landed in the principal’s office.

  Ari leans against the front of Damon’s desk and raises an eyebrow at me. “I yelled at you once already over this, but apparently I’m not done.”

  I can hear Mattie’s small noise of surprise. I want to touch her, but I don’t—I have a sister to deal with first. “You were right then. I am a Dom, and I was being stupid about that. But I’m not Mattie’s Dom, and we both know that. Back off, Ari. I know you love us both, but this isn’t okay.”

  “I’m not here because I love you. I’m here because this place that I love and helped make is lying to the two of you, and it needs to stop, right now.”

  I stare, because I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the intensity is radiating off of her. Whatever’s going on, Ari’s as deeply invested as I’ve ever seen her.

  Harlan takes a step toward her and then backs away, hands up, when her eyes fire lasers at his balls. She catches the whole room in her next glare. “I don’t need help, I don’t need support, and I don’t need to be stopped. I need to be loved, but you all got straight on that a long time ago. Right now, I just need to be heard.”

  She swings her gaze to me and the woman sitting frozen beside me. “I need you two to listen. To me, and to what your hearts both know and your kinky parts are trying to deny.”

  I’ve always thought my heart was my most important kinky part, but there’s no way I’m getting in the way of whatever is blazing out of my little sister right now. It’s hot enough to fry eggs—but at the core of it, there’s pain. Deep, flowing rivers of it.

  She crouches down and puts a hand on each of our knees. “You two maybe belong together, and you’re giving up on that way too easily. I can’t let you do that. I won’t.”

  “Fuck that,” says Mattie, so quietly I barely hear her. “We’ve been trying, and we just tried again, and nobody gets to judge how that worked except the two of us.”

  Ari’s eyes soften. “I taught you that line.”

  “You did.” Mattie’s voice is still quiet, but it’s fierce. “And you taught me to know who I am, deep down into my core, and to never give that up, not for anyone or anything.”

  “I know.” Ari swallows. “And I still mean every word. But the way we live here and the stories we feed and water—they’ve convinced you that impact play is something that lives in the core of you, and that you’ll be less if you give it up.”

  I don’t know what quicksand we’re in, but everything in me needs to get us all out. “I would never ask that of her.” It violates everything I am to even think about it. I turn to look at Mattie. “Never.”

  She just looks back at me, sad and perplexed.

  “Idiots.” Ari scoots back to sit on Damon’s desk, her legs kicking free and her eyes full of affection. She decides to pick on me first. “You think you’re the only one who maybe needs to change your preferences list here? Mattie wants a baby, and after seeing you with Gabby’s granddaughters, I’m thinking maybe that’s something you want in the foreseeable future too.”

  It’s definitely strip-Milo-naked day at the office. “Maybe.”

  Ari rolls her eyes. “You think you can edge someone for two hours while the baby’s sleeping in the next room? Or Mattie can do the mommy thing and still get flogged three times a week?”

  My head’s going to explode. Any minute.

  The person trying to make it blow isn’t nearly done. “Kinks evolve, but so do lives, and sometimes kink has to bend so that lives can grow the way they need to.” She folds her arms and glances at the guy who’s supposed to be our boss, and then at the one who’s supposed to be our club manager. “Ask them if they’re still the Doms they were when Emily and Scorpio showed up. If they still get off on the same kinks they used to chase.”

  Two of the toughest guys I know look at each other and then back at her, a united wall of silence.

  Ari raises an eyebrow. “Don’t make me go get your subs.”

  Harlan actually blushes. “Fine. Yeah, it’s different. My favorite thing we do these days is eat pizza naked.”

  That’s totally not a kink—but the gone look in his eyes says that doesn’t matter at all.

  Damon sighs. “My sub wears sundresses that match her coffee cups and I think it’s pretty much the hottest thing ever. Trust me, shit can change, and change hard, with the right person.”

  Ari crouches again and takes my hands in hers. “You have a chance, Milo. A real chance, with someone who’s attracted to you and who has the skill and experience to maybe let you be exactly who you need be. Don’t walk away from that. Just don’t.”

  I hear my wise sister talking. And under that—I hear her pain. The reason why she’s kicking us around the block and back.

  I have a chance. She’s still waiting for hers.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Mattie

  I don’t know what to do to help Ari or Milo or any of us.

  But I know I can’t sit here in this chair and not touch anyone anymore. I slide off, onto the floor, and sit with my head leaning in to Ari’s knees. She promptly sits down with me—and Milo’s there a second later. I don’t see the hands that move the chairs out of the way, or the shuffling as a circle forms around us, but I feel it anyhow.

  So much love in this room—and we still can’t find our way out.

  I reach for Ari’s hand. Somehow I can’t deal with Milo yet. I need to deal with the woman who just asked me to somehow give up my core kink without giving up me. “I don’t understand.”

  She smiles, and it’s a little sad and a lot proud. “I know. And I’ll try to explain, but first I need you to hear that I’m totally not asking you to give up who you are.�
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  I nod, even though she’s not making sense. I believe her, and that’s what matters.

  “You guys have these stories you carry. Stories this place and this community have helped you write. You’ve defined who you are and who you aren’t here in this club.” She swallows and reaches for both of us. “You’re scared that if you give up those needs or let them change, something core to who you are will die. We fight so hard here to make space for who we are. But those stories don’t make enough room for who we can maybe become.”

  She puts my hand in Milo’s, and I can feel the energy radiating through both of us.

  Ari wraps her hands around our joined ones. “Hearts are core to who we are. Love.” She points her chin at Daniel. “He used to be the best guy in town with a flogger. I bet he hasn’t come within ten miles of Gabby with one.”

  She shakes her head at Gabby, who I didn’t even know was in the room. “And don’t you dare apologize, because he’s the happiest guy in all of Seattle, and you’re the reason.”

  She aims her chin at Damon next. “Our workaholic boss? He leaves here three nights a week to go home to Emily, and he smiles when he does it. Harlan over there stands in the corner and drools while Scorpio sings, and she lets him. She lets someone adore her, out loud, in public, and if you don’t think that involved letting go of something really big about who she thought she was then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  I was there the first time Scorpio sang at the club. I saw her eyes. I know.

  But the eyes holding me right now are the ones of the friend right in front of me. The friend spilling out all of who she is on Damon’s floor because it might make a difference. She’s bleeding for me, and whatever else I do, I won’t look away. Not from this kind of love.

  She nods slowly, her eyes never leaving mine. “You can hold on to those stories, the ones about your need to be paddled and his need to put the paddle down, and you can decide they’re more important to who you are than having a heart that wants to be loved.” She swallows hard. “Some things aren’t worth giving up, and I sleep alone because I know that right down deep when it matters.”

  She lays a closed fist over her heart, and her next words are barely a whisper. “But when the guy comes along who deserves my heart? Everything else will be negotiable. Everything.”

  Chapter Forty

  Milo

  I set down the router and brush the sawdust off the decorative grooves I’m adding to the cherry leg to replace the one that broke. Which is hardly the most important thing I need to deal with right now, but when everything else in my life is a mess, power tools are generally a good answer.

  I run my finger along the fresh groove in the wood. Appreciating the tight fit of it, the comfort. Kink is like that. We figure out the kinks that satisfy us and then we do them over and over and lay down grooves in who we are. Ari nailed that part.

  Mattie’s grooves are all about impact play, which is the main highway in kink. There have always been lots of people willing to deepen those grooves for her.

  I let my fingers slide up and out of the groove. There’s a reason I build equipment where everything meets neatly and joins tightly and holds people exactly where they need to be. I’m not comfortable in a world without grooves—and neither is the woman who’s holding my interest and my heart.

  I asked her to help me find new grooves. To maybe see if she had some of her own.

  I asked.

  Which is just not how the whole Dom thing works. I let go of the wrong part of my story.

  Mattie’s never had her grooves pushed on. Never needed to seriously consider whether any of the other kink roads would work for her, because she’s always had the highway. And right here, right now, with me, that’s getting in the way. Not just in my way, but in hers too.

  Her grooves are keeping her from getting what she needs.

  I hold this idea like it’s the most fragile crystal, because I’m not at all convinced I’m right. It’s totally possible I just poured Dom arrogance and my own selfish needs into a pot and cooked up some utter bullshit.

  Or maybe I’m onto something. Maybe, for her own sake, Mattie needs to ditch the security blanket and give the back roads a real try. Not for me, and not even for us, but for herself—and because she’s a sub right down to her bones, she needs a Dom to hold the container for her while she tries.

  I realize I’m pacing the four walls of my workshop and I don’t even know when I started moving. But I can feel the pieces now. The fit when instincts and experience agree on something and slide into place like there’s only one way for them to join.

  Mattie needs to know she can be just fine without her grooves. Because it will expand who she can be as a sub, and as a woman, and as a mom.

  I laugh, because I’ve been so fucking blind.

  She wants a baby. That’s so far beyond the grooves of either of our current lives that I can’t even fathom what it would mean, but maybe my funk and her frustration have been trying to tell us something. Trying to help us get ready for the lives we want next.

  Maybe we’re not lost or weak or messy at all. We’re just getting ready for a totally new world.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Mattie

  I look at the things I’ve gathered and wonder if I’ve gone nuts—or if I’m finally seeing the light.

  Ari’s words are still rattling in every crevice of my brain, but one thing that really grabbed me and won’t let go was her line about how I can’t be a mom and get flogged three times a week. She’s so right. Forget whether Milo would be willing use a flogger on me or not. This isn’t about him—it’s about me and how the heck I might fit a need for impact play in with a newborn baby or a curious toddler or a life with really limited time and crazy demands.

  All I’ve been thinking about is holding on to who I am. I haven’t thought nearly enough about how that will need to change if there’s a child in my life.

  I resisted changing for Milo. Ari just told me to do it for me.

  Which might end up having the same result.

  I finger the feather collection I’ve assembled on my impromptu hunt-and-gather through Fettered’s storage shelves. Most of the feathers are Ari’s. I’ve never had the patience for this kind of play, but she’s right—I’ve never really had a good reason to get patient, either. I pick up a lime-green candle. Low melting point and easy to aim. Fettered’s standard-issue candles for wax play, because Harlan has a thing about subs getting burned by accident. Some other bits and pieces with texture, and a few interesting candidates from the club’s lube stash. I left the edgier stuff on the shelves. I’ve never been an explorer into the less-traveled caverns of kink, and this doesn’t feel like the time to try.

  Heck, even the usual caverns have some issues. I try to imagine being pregnant and getting tied up, or having toddlers around and needing to be quiet. Jules has some pretty funny stories about trying to have sex in the same house with Evie and Tash, and kinky sex isn’t exactly going to make that easier.

  I don’t need a more complicated sex life. I need the core. One that’s simple and good and true and helps me clear my head of the mess so that I can be who I need to be out in the rest of my life.

  Maybe not everyone needs to be spanked to be a good mom, but I do. Although judging from what I see at the parks sometimes, it might help quite a few other parents too. I’m totally against hitting a kid for any reason, but there’s something about a warm-and-tingling ass as a consenting adult that seems pretty essential to keeping my sanity once babies arrive.

  I put the candle down and chuckle. I don’t think I’ve had a bare-handed spanking in years. Too many toys, too little time. But Milo’s got talented hands, ones my body really likes and responds to. And we know lots of people who would take a baby for a walk to give Mommy and Daddy a little play time—or a night at Fettered when shit’s getting really real.

  I cover my cheeks with my hands. They’re warm, embarrassed by how vividly I can suddenly s
ee this. A life. With Milo and with babies and with kink in the nooks and crannies and a trip to subspace when I need one.

  Because really—that’s the thing I can’t let go of. Ari’s right. I got way too fixated on paddles and who might or might not use them on me. What I really want is the very heart of what it means to be Dom and sub. A place to surrender, to let go of everything in me that doesn’t need to be there and then to come back up again, strong and good and clean and me.

  Milo knows how to do that. He’s got some shit to work through, but he knows how to catch me, and I’ve known that ever since he touched a paintbrush to my skin. I need to let him catch me in the ways he loves and knows best and stop assuming it won’t work, because if I’d paid any attention to our times together so far, it already has.

  It already has.

  I pick up a feather and stroke it across my palm. So not what I’m used to—and maybe that can be okay. With the right Dom. For the right reasons.

  My phone pings again, and I shake my head. My friends are all busybodies, but it’s making me feel well loved. Ari’s throw-down wasn’t any kind of planned scene, but smart kinky people don’t let that kind of emotional energy land without a whole lot of checkins afterward, and I know some of the smartest kinky people there are.

  I look at my screen and pause mid-grin. It’s not Emily or Harlan or Quint this time. Which is good, because I’m fine and they need to be taking care of Ari. It’s Milo—and he’s not asking how I am. He’s asking if he can come visit.

  I ponder. I’m at the club, and for all I know, he might be too, but I don’t want to meet him here. Ari’s words sank in way too deep for that. It’s time to take this thing, whatever it is, out of our place of stories and safety and into one that’s uncertain and scary and real.

  I reply with my home address, and then I scoop up my little collection of toys. Time to go play with what just might be my future.