Ellison watched me for a long moment, his brow furrowing, and I shifted under his gaze. Maybe it was the subject matter, or maybe it was just the fact that an attractive guy was looking at me and weighing whether or not he wanted to fuck me, but I felt myself getting half-hard at the attention.
After a long pause, Ellison finally said, “Why not.” He didn’t actually shrug, but I could hear it in his voice.
Wow. That was some seriously unrestrained passion right there. Way to make a guy feel special, El.
“Okay.” Damn it, I was still going to do it. To be fair, it made sense that he’d have a lukewarm reaction after my own less-than-certain enthusiasm. This would probably be a disaster for all parties involved, but hey—at least I’d get to spend an evening with someone hot. That counted for something. “Okay, so…well, my phone’s in the bucket, so I can’t get your number, but maybe there’s some paper around…”
“I’ll get your number from Mariah,” he said, an amused glint in his eye.
“Okay. Cool.”
We lapsed into silence again. I’d been kind of expecting him to launch into another flurry of questions, asking me about what I’d want to do on our future date (play date, my brain helpfully offered—thanks a lot, Mariah), but he only grabbed the book from the bookshelf again and went back to reading. I couldn’t figure out if that was better or worse than just staring at me like a lunatic.
After an agonizing minute or two, the door opened again and Ravi came in with Deirdre on his arm. They were both a little damp and wrapped in towels—apparently showers were a thing here—and Deirdre had a dreamy expression on her face that was nothing like what I’d seen when she was swinging from the ceiling. Ravi arranged a couple of cushions on the ground and sat down, and Deirdre stretched out with her head in his lap and made a low, contented noise as she burrowed into his towel-wrapped thigh.
I felt something un-knot a little in my chest at the sight of it. This wasn’t acceptance, it wasn’t someone simply coping—it was someone luxuriating in a pleasurable experience.
“Hi there,” Ravi said with a smile. “I heard you were a little unsettled by our scene.”
“Unsettled” sure was a diplomatic way of putting it. Kudos to Ravi.
“Yeah, I freaked out a little,” I said, trying to pluck at some fuzz on my pants, but my nails weren’t nearly long enough to catch it. “Sorry, I’m still pretty new at this.”
“No need to apologize—we were all new once. The first time I whipped someone, I had a full-on panic attack.”
My eyes widened. “Really? That’s hard to believe.”
“Believe it,” he said, chuckling. “I had no idea what I was doing, thought I could just figure it out as I went. I responded to a personal ad and went to this guy’s house having never met him before—which should give you an idea of how well I thought this through—and when he handed me this huge-ass bullwhip, I didn’t want to look like an amateur, so I just took it and started swinging it around. I ended up huddled in a ball on the floor of his living room, sobbing about what a monster I was. We’re both lucky I didn’t do any permanent damage to him. Or myself.”
“Wow.” I rubbed the back of my head, swishing my hand up to the top as unobtrusively as I could. “It never occurred to me to think that it might be just as scary being on the other side of the whip.”
“Oh yeah, topping can mess you the fuck up,” Ravi said. “The thing is, your body doesn’t always understand that this stuff isn’t real. You can know full well that it’s all consensual up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “But your muscles are still doing the work, you’re still seeing the reactions, and so your body says, ‘What the fuck, I’m hurting another human being.’ Unless you’re a total sociopath, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And that all applies to watching, too,” Deirdre chimed in, her voice clear, sweet, and utterly relaxed. “Like, you can know that I’ve got a safe word and asked for everything Ravi did, but people are wired to feel uncomfortable when they, y’know, see other people getting hurt. Not everyone can turn that off, and that’s okay.”
“It’s not so much that I’m wired that way as it is that I’ve got some very specific hangups related to men—” I just barely managed to stop myself before “abusing” crossed my lips. “—hitting women. My dad was kind of a piece of shit,” I said with a rueful laugh.
Thankfully, they seemed to take my laugh as a sign I didn’t want pity or sympathy over it. Ravi just nodded. “Yeah, that’ll definitely give a person some triggers. Sorry we inadvertently tripped them.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” I said, blowing out a sigh. “It’s something I’m going to have to face eventually if I want to be involved in this scene—at least now I know what I’ve got to work on.”
Ellison glanced over at me. “I might be able to recommend a couple of books for you, if you’re interested.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” The sudden reminder that Ellison was in the room was like a splash of cold water to the face. Just great—more shit for him to psychoanalyze. “I’ve got to, um, go find the bathroom.”
“Up the stairs and to the right,” Deirdre said with a languid wave of her hand, and I slipped out the door, trying not to look like a scared rabbit bolting for the bushes.
The bathroom surprised me again with its normalcy—bath mat and matching towels all in order, the usual array of soaps and lotions across the counter, toothbrushes neatly placed in their holder. Not a single magazine in the rack next to the toilet had a person in ropes or chains on the cover. There was an artistic photograph of a vulva on the wall that may or may not have been Taya’s—and I couldn’t figure out which of those options would have been weirder—but other than that it was just like any bathroom in any other house, despite the faint moaning sounds I heard rattling up from the heating vent.
I did my business and spent a couple minutes sitting on the edge of the bathtub and thumbing through a back issue of Time while I tried to decide what to do next. Mariah had told me before we got here that I was welcome to wander anywhere in the house and watch anything I wanted—nobody came to these parties for privacy—but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being an utter stranger in a very confusing new land, and I figured I’d rather wait for Mariah to finish degrading Worm so she could continue being my overly-enthusiastic tour guide.
When I got back to the chill-out room, there were far more people than had been there before, and the couch and both beanbag chairs were fully occupied. Ruby Red and Deirdre were talking about fire cupping, while Dennis gave one of the collared guys I’d seen before a shoulder rub that looked like it could positively liquefy knots. I found myself briefly hoping that this was a kink of his that he’d be interested in working out on me, because damn, could my neck ever use it. Ellison was still in his spot at the end of the couch, listening in at the periphery of the conversation.
A few eyes turned my way, and I did my best not to look like I was paralyzed with terror as I carefully weighed how much of an asshole I would look like if I just turned around and left the room without saying a word. A huge one, I was pretty sure. Fine, I could make this work.
I squared my shoulders and grabbed a cushion off the pile in the corner. Nobody was looking at me now that I wasn’t just standing there like a deer in the headlights, so that was an improvement.
Some stubborn little scrap of courage flared up in me, and I tossed the cushion on the floor by Ellison’s feet with a loud flumph, like I was just daring him to say anything about it. He looked up at me with a mildly curious expression, and I shrugged as if to say, “Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing either.”
I sat down on the cushion, because that was a thing people liked to do, right? Sit on a cushion at their Dom’s feet and gaze up adoringly at him? Sure, why not. I got myself more or less comfortable, and tried to listen in on the cupping conversation while my heart hammered like the drum line of a speed metal song as I felt the weight of Ellison’s eyes on
my back. Or the imagined weight, anyway—for all I knew he wasn’t paying a bit of attention to me, and I wasn’t about to crane my neck around to look.
A flash of movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned to see Ellison’s hand patting his thigh as if in invitation. Swallowing, I glanced up at him, and he smiled, nodding toward his leg. I went all cold and shivery inside and then flushed hot, my lungs going tight for no particular reason I could put my finger on.
Slowly, feeling like I was about to make a gigantic fool of myself, I lowered my head to his thigh. Oh fuck, please don’t let me be misinterpreting this.
Ellison’s leg radiated heat under my cheek, the fabric of his perfectly-pressed slacks soft against my skin. For a moment I just kind of…pressed my head against him awkwardly, but as a few seconds passed and he didn’t jerk away or ask me what the hell I was doing, I managed to relax enough to settle down to something that could be considered “resting.” I shifted my position a little, hitched my head up so I could relax my neck, and slowly let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
This was…pretty nice, actually.
I felt his fingers brush the short fuzz on the side of my head, and I reached up to touch my hair before I realized I’d done it. I tried to play it off like I had an itch and snapped my hand back down into my lap, jamming my fingers between my legs so they couldn’t run off like that again.
Ellison continued stroking my head, driving me into this half-mad state that surged and ebbed as I fought to control my body’s automatic response. It was a gentle touch, a soothing touch—he was trying to convey warmth and comfort, and remind me that I was right where I was supposed to be. I liked that, I really did.
And hell, maybe he was touching me just because he wanted to touch me, and I liked that even more.
But every stroke made me aware of the length of my hair as I felt it move under his fingers, and I pinched my eyes shut, trying to focus in on the sounds of conversation and the heat of his skin and the way he shifted his leg slightly so I could pillow my head on it a little more comfortably. It wasn’t enough, though. My neck prickled and my fingers twitched between my legs.
Don’t be weird, River. Don’t be weird.
Something snapped—I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I reached up and brushed my fingers across the top of my head, feeling the soft strands all right where they were supposed to be. My cheeks burned as I dropped my hand again, swallowing hard and hoping to god he hadn’t noticed.
Ellison’s fingers stilled. Fuck, he’d noticed.
As I struggled to find the words to explain that no, I really did want him to touch me, I was just a basket-case and needed him to not touch my hair like that, my thoughts got derailed as I felt his fingertips stroking from my temple to behind my ear once more. Any second now, the prickling was going to start again.
But then Ellison’s fingers slid to the back of my head and moved forward up the middle, all the way to the top. He buried his fingers in the longer hair there, shifting it gently so I could feel it move, feel that it was still there and that everything was as it should be. I let out a quiet breath of relief, and he slid his hand back to my temple and repeated the motion, slow and deliberate.
“Better?” he murmured softly, voice only barely carrying to my ears.
“Yeah.” I swallowed to wet my dry throat, jerking my head in an awkward nod against his thigh. “Much better.”
It was easy then, to let myself relax against him as I listened to the educational and slightly horrifying discourse on suction and preferred jars and favorite places to leave marks. It wasn’t something I was particularly interested in—the more I heard, the more I was sure of that—so I just let the low murmur of voices wash over me, drifting sweetly as Ellison stroked my head with sure fingers.
5
“What are you going to get?” Tea asked as I looked longingly at the list of specialty lattes.
“I should probably be responsible and avoid coffee this late in the day, or I’m going to be up all night,” I said with a sigh. “I’m just going to grab some…uh, tea. Not trying to sound crass here.”
“Oh, I’ve heard much worse,” Tea said with a laugh. “I’m probably going with tea, too, cannibalistic though it may be.”
“I guess I’ve got to ask the obvious question: how did you get a name like that? First dates are where you’re supposed to get most of the awkward conversation out of the way, after all.”
“I legally changed it when I was 20 because I hated my birth name and thought it sounded cute.” They held their hand solemnly over their heart and gazed off into the distance. “Now I wear it as a badge of penance; a reminder to never return to the ways of my misguided youth.”
I laughed, rubbing at the misshapen ladybug on my right arm with my thumb. “That sounds awfully familiar.”
“What about ‘River?’” Tea asked. “Were your parents big fans of River Phoenix?”
“Nah, my mom was just a huge hippie,” I said with a shrug. “My dad kind of hated it, but he wasn’t there when she filled out the form for the birth certificate—you snooze, you lose.”
We got our drinks and found a table by the window, and I took a second as we sat down to straighten out the salt and pepper shakers and push the table tent so it was centered on the table. Tea either didn’t notice or just chalked it up to first date nervousness not worth commenting on; either way I was grateful. Opening right up with discussing my neurotic idiosyncrasies felt like it wouldn’t set a good tone.
“I may as well go with the next obvious question,” I said, rotating my mug slightly so the handle was parallel with the edge of the table. “I always hate starting off with ‘what do you do for a living,’ but it’s pretty safe.”
“Of course. What better way to immediately gauge someone’s socioeconomic status and judge whether they’re worthy of your attention?”
“I didn’t—” I stammered, then I caught sight of the amused crinkle at the corner of Tea’s eyes. “Okay, I hadn’t even thought of that aspect. I guess that’s another reason to hate it.”
“I’m just teasing. Mostly.” Tea flashed me a grin. “Why do you hate starting that way, though? It’s a fairly typical first date question.”
“Well, it doesn’t really tell you much about a person, does it? I know so few people who are working in a field they actively wanted to pursue—most of my friends have jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied in college, and half the people I know can’t stand their jobs. So if you say, ‘I’m a data entry clerk,’ what does that tell me about you other than you’re able to endure tedium for a paycheck? Nobody’s passionate about being a bank teller or a janitor or an assembly line worker—it’s just something they do a few hours a day so they don’t starve.”
“But some people do work in a field they love. If you skip the question, you might miss out on learning about someone’s true passion.”
“That’s a fair point. Fine, I’ll bite—what do you do for a living?”
They took a slow sip of their tea, watching me over the edge of their cup, then they set the cup back down in the saucer and folded their hands primly on the table in front of them. “I’m a teller at Citizen’s Bank.”
“And now I feel like a huge jackass,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “Sorry for, y’know, shitting all over your career.”
Tea laughed. “No, you’re right—I don’t think anyone at my job is truly passionate about banking. But it gets me a paycheck and good benefits, and I never have to work weekends. I would never say ‘bank teller’ when asked to describe myself, but I’m happy enough with the job.”
“There we go,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “That’s a much better question: what words would you use to describe yourself?”
“Hmm,” Tea mused, drumming their fingers on the table. “Genderqueer, cyclist, activist, gamer, anime fan. In roughly that order. What about you?”
“I’m an artist,” I said. “Personally an
d professionally—I’m one of the fortunate people who can say they’re doing what they love.”
“Maybe that’s part of why you don’t like asking other people about their careers. A creeping sense of guilt when you’re talking to that janitor who hates scrubbing floors.”
“Hey now,” I said, narrowing my eyes and pointing warningly at them. “I didn’t come here for insightful observations on my psyche—I’ve had more than enough of those lately.”
Tea laughed. “Okay, then. What sort of art do you do?”
“I do some freelance illustration—diagrams for instructional manuals or textbooks, that kind of thing. But most of my income comes from my webcomic, Boundless Fate.”
Tea’s eyes widened. “Really? I used to read that one. It’s so nice to actually meet the artist.”
“‘Used to?’” I put a hand to my chest in mock offense. “I’m hurt—how could you abandon me?”
“I stopped reading it when it started going deeper into kink territory.” They took a sip of their drink, looking faintly bashful. “Sorry—I loved the art and the writing was great, but BDSM just doesn’t appeal to me.”
I groaned. “It’s not that kinky. Or at least, I never intended it to be.”
Tea raised their eyebrows slightly. “If that’s your definition of ‘not that kinky,’ I can’t imagine what you think qualifies as ‘very kinky.’”
“Fine, I guess it is. A little.” I blew out a sigh. “I really didn’t mean to take it in that direction when I started, but I guess…certain interests started creeping in. At this point I feel like I’ve written myself into a corner. My readership blew up over the last year or two, and now it’s what they all expect. Even if they complain about it nonstop,” I added sourly.
“Do you want to get out of that corner?”
Truth By His Hand Page 5