by Lilia Moon
She leans back in her seat and sighs. “I was thinking that this is the first time in a really long time I’ve been happy in a situation where someone else is controlling things.”
Someone else she just called a Dom.
I adjust my mental trim to the new conversational heading and airspeed and keep my body language steady, but my insides threaten to stall for a minute anyhow. She’s giving me something precious and scarred to hold, and I need to not fuck this up. “I’m glad you feel that safe up here.”
“That wasn’t something I ever used to need.” Her words are hesitant and sad.
I relax my hands on the yoke and take a gamble, because this day has gone way beyond trying to steal some kisses on autopilot. “Most pilots get a whole lot more risk averse after they have a close call with the side of a mountain.”
She nods and brings her knees up under her chin, which is something most pilots aren’t nearly flexible enough to pull off. “Yeah.”
I want to hold her close and chase away the sadness, but that’s exactly the wrong answer. Sometimes the best way to bleed off pain is to head straight into it. I lift my plane’s nose above the horizon and start climbing. “Tell me about your mountain, Bright Eyes.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
India
This isn’t an airplane, it’s a yellow metal confessional in the sky.
I don’t know how much of that the guy beside me has engineered, but this flight has turned into a demonstration of the kind of man and Dom he is. One very familiar with risks and managing them. One who asserts utter control even as he pushes the edges. One who knows how to wait and be patient—and when the time for that is done.
My insides can’t disagree with him, even though they want to. “I was a sub. Pretty deep in the lifestyle. A regular at Tangled.” If he’s kinky in Vancouver, he’ll know the club.
He nods. “Adrian’s a good guy.”
The best. It took him three years to stop checking in on me. “I was a brat, kind of like my copper. Tricky to work with and breaking at all the wrong times and poking whoever I was playing with in the eye.”
He glances over at me. “But gorgeous if someone could handle you and shape you into art?”
I turn away and stare out the window, even though I’m not seeing the snow-capped peaks of home anymore. “Something like that, yeah.”
A hand lands on my shoulder, and it somehow blends comfort with the demand of a butane torch.
I swallow. “There’s a place metal gets to when I’m working it and I know if I keep messing with it, it’s going to break.” Or melt, but if you’re a jewelry maker, that’s the same damn difference. Unworkable goop that never quite recovers, even if she puts on a good show. “With a hunk of metal, I know to stop before I’ve gone too far. If it’s me, I don’t see it.”
He’s silent beside me. I hug my knees in a little tighter to my chest, trying to contain all the parts of me that are desperate to be in motion. “I got into a scene. It was a Dom I’d been playing with for about six months, so we knew each other well enough. Private room, heavy restraints, and I agreed to try something I wouldn’t normally do.” I look over at him because I want to make damn sure he hears this part. “I agreed. What happened isn’t his fault. It’s mine.”
He runs a hand gently down the back of my hair. “Consent matters, but it isn’t everything.”
Adrian tried to tell me that too. “As an experienced sub, I have two sources of power. My consent and my safewords. I gave him the first and I didn’t realize I should have used the second until it was way too late.” I tip my forehead into my knees, which are chittering with their need to run. “It was a really intense scene, but I thought I was okay after. We all did. I sat at the bar and ate nachos and tried to help Bill and Francine write their wedding vows.” In kinky iambic pentameter, which is what you get when a poetry professor and a Dom decide to get hitched.
Rafe smiles. “I heard about those when I got back.”
My knees freeze. “You’re a Tangled member?”
“Yes.” He looks over at me. “I wasn’t at the club while you were there. I worked out of Toronto and Montreal for a few years.”
That means he knows the guy I broke. I tip my head back against the seat, close my eyes, and swallow the hot gravel in my throat. “I went by Piccolo at the club. You probably know the story.”
Rafe’s harsh intake of breath cuts off halfway through, like he didn’t want to react, but couldn’t stop himself.
He knows.
I swallow again, but it doesn’t stop the tears from leaking. Or the words, because apparently the pain inside me needs to tell him what he already knows. “Two nights later, we had a public scene. Simple cuff-and-paddle play, and the moment he laid hands on me, I freaked. Total meltdown. I couldn’t stop screaming. It took half the club and Adrian’s really big knife to get me free.”
He makes a quiet sound of ineffable sadness.
If I could crawl into a space smaller than the space between my knees and my heart, I would. “I couldn’t handle being restrained after that. Hair-trigger panic with a side case of full-blown kinky PTSD.”
A long silence where all I can hear is his breath. ”Is that why you left?”
I let the silent tears soak my jeans. “No. I tried to stay and work through it. Adrian would have insisted, even if I’d wanted to leave.”
“Good.”
One short, sharp word that lets me know exactly where he stands—and it’s the wrong side. I glue my face back to the side window, seeking sunlight and the irrepressible beauty of leaves on their way to death. Anything to chase away the memory I need to claw out of my throat next. “There was this news story I saw once. An interview with a driver who hit a little kid. It wasn’t his fault at all—a toddler squirted out between some cars and he had no time to stop. Even the parents didn’t blame him.”
“He would have blamed himself,” says Rafe very quietly to the back of my head.
“He did.” I try to breathe, but the oxygen doesn’t make it to the parts of me that are screaming for air. “The interview I saw was twenty-five years later and he still looked haunted. He had that little boy’s picture up on his fridge and he looked at it every day and felt like a monster.”
A brush of fingers on my thigh, like he understands just how fragile I am.
The leaves out the window blur. “Randy’s eyes looked just like that every time he watched me try to play. I left the club because I couldn’t handle seeing the eyes of the man I broke.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rafe
I want to break things into really small pieces with a war hammer and then set them on fire.
She’s chosen to take on so much more of this than she ever should have—and a whole community of people I love let her do it. Sometimes adults do stupid things, and kinky adults have more extreme versions of that than most. But she’s carrying way more scars than she needs to. Way more weight. “His eyes looked that way because he fucked up, Bright Eyes.”
She swivels her head toward me, instantly ready to breathe fire, even if her face is still wet with snot and tears.
I hold up a hand. “You hold some responsibility too. You both got in too far, and you didn’t feel it happen and neither did he.”
“Really, you diagnosed all that from a few things you heard?” Her words are hurled rocks from the volcanic deep. “You weren’t there, Rafe. You don’t know how clueless I was. I didn’t know I’d gone past my own boundaries. I didn’t give him any signs to read.”
“Yeah, you did.” I sigh and flip on the autopilot, and then I look over and find her lava-spewing eyes. “When I got back to Vancouver, Adrian assigned me to work with a guy who’d lost his nerve. I’ve been listening to the other side of this story for seven years.”
Her breath leaks out in a shocked, dazed whimper.
I want to touch her, but I can see how tightly she’s wound right now. Just like her copper, ready to snap. I try to find a handy pa
n of water and a reliable pair of pliers. “There’s no way Matteo knows. He’s never met Randy. This is just one great big freaking cosmic setup.”
She clears her throat, a grating, awful sound. Her fingernails curl into the leather of her seat hard enough to leave permanent marks. “Is he okay? Mostly?”
Of course that’s her first question. “He is.” And I know he would give me unhesitating permission to say what I’m about to say next. “He’s a much better Dom than he was. He pays huge attention to his sub’s cues and tracks her edges as well as any top I know.”
Her hiss is the one of a torch about to flame. “It wasn’t his fault.”
That might be the hill she wants to die on, but she damn well isn’t going to do it in my plane. “It was. He asked for an intense scene. He was riding the high of his skills and the kink chemistry between the two of you, and he didn’t stop and think long enough to really take in how much more responsibility a Dom has in a scene like that.” I hold up a hand, which will do sweet fuck-all if she decides to release her fire, and use it to capture her chin. “Lots of subs lose their words and their sense of boundaries in really big scenes. It their Dom’s job to figure that out when they can’t.”
She glares at me, and I can feel my skin start to crackle. “Bullshit. Don’t take away my power like that.”
I let go of her chin, but I don’t let go of her eyes. “I’m not. You give it away when you agree to do a scene. I know the cool, modern version of BDSM doesn’t look that square in the eyes, and that’s fine for the kind of play that most people get into. But anyone who heads deeper than that runs the risk of a sub who can’t find her safewords or a Dom who can’t hear them. That’s not about taking anyone’s power away. It’s just what happens when we tap into the really primal stuff that doesn’t always respect the rules.”
Almost, I lose my eyebrows to fire.
I say the rest of it. “Which is why no one should ever go there without people outside the scene to act as their safety net.”
Her eyes close as shame washes over her face. A volcano turning her heat on herself. “I know. We went into a private room without a monitor.”
An act for which Adrian still kicks himself daily. “You did. You violated club rules and basic common sense, and both of you are on the hook for that bad decision.”
She blinks, clearly surprised I agree with her.
I put my fingers back under her chin, because if only one sentence I say today gets through, it needs to be the next one. “And that’s where your guilt for what happened needs to end. You both fucked up going into that room. What you did next is exactly what your Dom asked of you. He wasn’t ready to handle it. That’s on him.”
The flames are back in her eyes. “I won’t let you blame him. He’s a good guy.”
I nod. “He is. I’m only telling you exactly what he says himself and what he’s spent the last seven years learning how to do better.”
“He stayed.” Something that looks very much like relief crosses her face.
“Yes. He stayed and healed.” I turn forward to check in on my instruments, because autopilot isn’t foolproof, and because I want to give her what little space I can. “You didn’t.”
She huffs out, a sharp, painful venting. “Adrian kept asking me to come back.”
My lips quirk. Adrian doesn’t ask. “He’s a persistent bastard.”
I feel the eyes on me. “You swear he didn’t send you?”
He would have if he’d known. “I swear.”
She sinks a little lower into her seat, letting the rumble of the plane bleed off some of what’s erupted inside her.
I know what she needs to bleed off the rest. I just have no idea if she’ll agree.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rafe
I cross the deck of the ferry, the stiff wind doing a very good job of trying to yank the lunch I’m carrying right out of my hands. I hold on tight. The menu didn’t run to anything fancier than hotdogs, but the soup we ate before we went flying feels like it happened a week ago, and I know better than to let my fuel sources run dry when I’m in the middle of a big scene. That’s not exactly what this is, but it’s close enough, and I suspect we aren’t done navigating mountains yet.
I sling my arms over the railing next to the windblown woman with the faraway eyes. “Hey. You hungry?”
All I get is a wry eyebrow, but it’s on the amused end of the scale. She’s got her fire and thorns tamped down, at least for the time being.
I lift the hot dogs one at a time. “Fully loaded, or lean and mean?”
Her lips quirk.
I try the innocent look that never fools my mother. “I can do either.”
This time I get an audible snicker. “I bet you can.”
I can also do innuendo like only kinky people can, but that would head us into shades-of-gray territory, and what I heard in my plane means we need to stay crystal clear for the time being. Even about hotdogs. I hand her both to hold and reach for the bag slung over my shoulder. “I also have water, orange juice, and some kind of flavored-coffee drink that the nice lady in line behind me swears is better than an orgasm.”
India busts up laughing and looks around the ferry. “Was she about five feet tall and almost as wide, with linebacker lungs?”
I pause, the orange juice half out of the bag. “Yes. Friend of yours?”
She nods and manages to juggle two hot dogs into one hand while she snags the bottle in my hand. “That’s Bee, and she’s really fond of orgasms, so the coffee is probably pretty good. I’ll take the OJ and the naked dog. Mustard is something that should only be fed to people you don’t like.”
I grin and take the loaded hot dog. “I have a mustard collection. About fifteen different kinds.”
She somehow manages to communicate disgust while guzzling orange juice.
I sling my arms over the railing again, intentionally invading her space this time. Walking the dance of bringing our energies alongside each other so we can take a look at what’s there.
She doesn’t move away, but she doesn’t lean in either. She just chomps on her hot dog. Loudly.
I smile into my mustard. A woman who never lets go of all her thorns. “My mom brought me back a jar from her last trip. Or at least she thinks it’s mustard. The label’s in Japanese.”
India snickers. “It’s probably triple-strength wasabi, or some scary shit meant to make your dick stand up and wag when it’s a hundred years old.”
I ignore her comments about my dick. For now. “You have a thing against spicy foods?”
She just snorts. “You’re close with your mom.”
It isn’t phrased as a question. I follow her lead as she guides the casual steps of our dance into something more complicated. “I am.” I pull out my phone, find a recent picture, and hold it out where she can see it, which is probably a dumb thing to do with the lake waiting to catch it. “She travels quite a bit now, but we’re still tight. Always have been.”
She glances at me, puzzled. “She looks just like you. I thought you said you were adopted.”
I smile. That’s a question that never gets old. “Her family is a mix of Portuguese, African, and Greek. I don’t know anything about my birth family, but she’s always said I’m a mongrel, just like her.” And what genes didn’t do, love has. I got my happy eyes from her.
India’s cheeks dimple, and it’s the first sweet, uncomplicated smile I’ve seen from her. “That’s really nice.”
I put my phone away and slide a hand casually around her waist, cuddling her in. Waiting for resistance, and it does something oddly warm to my insides when I don’t get any. “How about you—are you close with your family?”
I feel the tensing. The sadness. The acceptance. “No. My family is here. The people I’ve chosen.”
There’s a story there too. One that adds weight. She lost a lot of things when one disastrous scene blew up a big part of her life. Tangled might be a kink club, but if she was there very long,
they would have been her family, too. One she’s done an admirable job of replacing. “Chosen families are the very best kind.”
She gives me a strange look, and then she makes the connection. “Your mom. She chose you.”
Over and over. It wasn’t until I was an adult and found the box of court documents that I fully understood just how arduous a walk that was for her. “She did.” I take a breath. “She chose me before she even fully knew me. I was just this scruffy little boy with a snotty nose and a hungry belly and really sad eyes.” I tug India a little closer and kiss the top of her head. “Sometimes we just know who our people are.”
She tenses.
I lay my cheek on her hair. “There’s something here, Bright Eyes. Are we going to take it out and look at it, or am I going to step off this ferry and spend the next week staying out of your way?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
India
Damn him.
He knows how to get inside of me, and I can’t even get mad at him because I gave him the fucking keys. Most of them, anyhow. He was born with some, had them even when he was that snotty-nosed boy waiting for someone to love him.
I’m viciously glad someone did. And I’m tempted to head that way, because his mama raised a really good man. I just don’t know if I have it in me to go anywhere near what he’s asking. I take his hand and lead him to the back of the ferry where our words will get blown out over the lake instead of into the waiting ears of whoever happens to be downwind. He comes willingly enough, even though he clearly has no idea why we’re relocating.
I hop up on a big gray box that covers up some kind of ferry innards and sit cross-legged. There’s room for him, and he takes it, mimicking my pose. Making it look easy. A flexible guy, body and soul.
I eye him and deal straight from the top of the deck. “You want to try to be my Dom.”