“Alex said the living room looked a BDSM porn set.”
“It was just a few toys and some lingerie.” I’m downplaying it, by a lot, but Violet is prone to exaggeration, and those two are pretty vanilla—apart from the costumes she makes for Alex’s penis, anyway.
“Lies. Go wash Darren’s pearl necklace off your chest and get your ass in your car. I need to know exactly how much you’ve been keeping from me so I know how angry I’m supposed to pretend to be when the rest of the girls get here. Oh, and pick me up a dairy-free latte on the way over.” With that she hangs up.
I’m relieved that she doesn’t seem nearly as upset as I expected. I take a quick shower, not because there’s jizz on my chest—although there might be some in my hair—but because there was a lot of sweating between last night and this morning, and I’m a little ripe. I also smell like I bathed in sex perfume.
I put on my dress from yesterday since my bag with extra clothes is still in the car. I have an extra outfit or two in the trunk of my car at all times. And an emergency escape kit, just in case. I think it might be a PTSD thing from the whole fleeing The Ranch when I was a teenager, but I’m not willing to unload it on a therapist, so all I can do is hypothesize.
For years after we left, my mom and I always had a bag of essentials packed: three changes of clothes, hair dye, toiletries, Miss Flopsy (I will love that stuffed bunny forever), five thousand dollars in cash—obviously small bills, a burner phone and new identification, and a few other essentials. Was it overkill? Probably. But then my mom isn’t playing with a full deck. She’s missing pretty much every face card there is. But I still love her.
I’m on my way downstairs when I hear a code being punched into the front door. I freeze on the stairs. It can’t be Darren coming back; he has practice. The front door opens, and the warning alarm beeps.
“Mr. Westinghouse! It’s Gertrude. I am here for the housekeeping!”
I let out a relieved sigh. Gertrude has been Darren’s housekeeper for years. I take the rest of the stairs at a light jog, my calves tight from last night’s awkward, but fun, sex positions. Gertrude appears in the hallway as I reach the bottom of the stairs.
Now here’s something interesting about my relationship with Darren: we don’t have a lot of sleepovers. He’s a light sleeper, and I’m a flailer, so I feel bad when I wake him up with my acrobatics routine in the middle of the night—at least this is the excuse I usually give him.
I mean, I do feel bad when I accidentally elbow him in the face, and once I charlie-horsed him with my knee, but sleeping beside someone else is . . . strange. You really need to trust someone to be unconscious next to them for a lot of hours in a row. Waking up the way I did this morning, with Darren wrapped around me, makes me feel vulnerable, and also protected, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there it is.
“Hey, Trudes!”
Gertrude startles and nearly drops her cleaning gear. “Oh! Miss Hoar! I am sorry to surprise you!” She looks past me, up the stairs. “I can come back later if now is a bad time.”
I wish she would just call me Charlene. She always forgets the H in my last name – Hoar –is silent. “You’re good,” I sigh. “Darren’s at the arena, and I’m on my way out.”
She smiles, looking a little relieved. I don’t think she likes cleaning when Darren’s home. He makes her nervous. He makes a lot of people nervous because he’s so quiet and intense, sometimes even me. But it’s the good kind of nervous.
“I will get started right away then.” She heads for the living room. Two seconds later, she shrieks.
I rush to find out what happened and cringe. The remains of the kinky sex toy wheel of fortune are still scattered around the living room. The dragon dick stands majestically in the middle of it all, right beside the ball gag and the latex body suit. I don’t know what I was thinking when I pulled all that stuff out yesterday, other than I wanted to erase my fear and make Darren happy.
I scramble for a reason all of this stuff to be here. “I’m so sorry! We had a party last night.”
She glances at me with wide, horrified eyes.
“I mean with my girlfriends.”
Now she looks downright disturbed.
“Shite McCockslap,” I mutter. “It was a joke. One of my girlfriends is getting married, and we had one of those bachelorette sex toy parties, but the host brought all this stuff. Crazy, right? I’ll just put it all away for you.” I put my hand on her shoulder and turn her away from the sex prop trainwreck. “You can start in the kitchen.”
She nods mutely, lids fluttering as she fans her face with her feather duster. I snap a photo of the living room before I put everything away. Darren has more than one special trunk in his walk-in closet, complete with padlocks, where we store all the toys for exactly this reason.
Gertrude is in the kitchen with her cell phone plastered to her ear, speaking in German, since that happens to be her mother tongue. I lean casually against the doorjamb, don an icy smile, and clear my throat. She startles, again, and drops her phone on the floor.
“Oh! Miss Hoar! I did not realize you were still here.” She bends to pick up the phone, says something into the receiver, and ends the call.
“I’m on my way out now.” I tip my head to the side, exactly the way Darren does when he’s measuring his words. “I think now might be a good time to remind you of the NDA you’ve signed and how it pertains to all facets of Darren’s life within these walls.”
Her eyes flare until I fear she’ll be unable to blink ever again. “Of course, Miss Hoar. I will not breathe a word of your sex party to anyone.”
“Bachelorette party. Have a lovely day, Trudes.”
I spin on my heel and sashay to the garage, where my car is parked. I waffle for a moment over what I should do about the Trudes situation.
I don’t typically text Darren directly after a sleepover. I don’t ever want to appear clingy, so I try to wait until he messages me, but it isn’t easy. By the twenty-four-hour mark, my anxiety gets pretty bad, and no amount of marble rolling seems to calm it down.
I decide it’s in my best interest to let Darren know what Trudes saw this morning. I send him the picture of the living room pre-cleanup, along with a message to check his voicemail. Then I leave him a voicemail and fill him in on Gertrude, suggesting he call and remind her of the NDA himself, because he’s a fuckton scarier than I am.
I stop on the way over to Violet’s, pick up coffees for us, and order myself a breakfast sandwich, which I scarf down in less than a minute. I’m always super hungry after a night with Darren. It’s better than a boot camp workout, that’s for sure.
I pull into Violet’s driveway and take a deep breath, aware that I’m walking into a conversation that’s going to be awkward, especially with Violet.
The door opens before I can even knock. “Took you long enough. Did you have to free yourself from Darren’s elaborate restraint system to get here?”
I pass her the dairy-free latte. “Haha. There was a line at Starfucks.”
She checks the label before she takes a sip, since there have been occasions when they’ve gotten the order wrong and Violet has paid the price for consuming dairy. She arches a brow at me over the lip of her cup, moaning her latte love.
“Thanks for this. Now get in here and give me some details.”
I follow her down the hall to the kitchen, where a pile of takeout bags sit unopened on the counter. Violet doesn’t cook, which is a good thing because she’s horrible at it. She and Alex would starve to death if she were in charge of meals.
She plunks down on a chair and slaps the counter. “Well?”
“Well what?” I’m not going to make this easy for her.
Darren suggested I tell the girls whatever I damn well please, but I don’t know how much I want to share. I’ve enjoyed how private our relationship has been up until now. Darren definitely has a commanding presence, so it’s not hard to imagine that extending beyond his performance on the ic
e.
“Alex said there was a ball gag, and some weird latex stuff, and a fucked-up giant dildo, or butt plug—he wasn’t sure. I hope you’re happy with yourself because thanks to you, Alex spent an hour on some online sex toy shop and asked me fifty times if I wanted an anal training set.” She taps the counter with her manicured nails.
“You’re going to need a hell of a lot more than an anal training set to get that dick in your ass,” I scoff.
I’ve accidentally seen Alex’s hard-on—through the barrier of boxer shorts, but still. It was enough to know Violet isn’t exaggerating his size. Darren is well-endowed, above the national average for sure, but Alex’s dick is terrifying. I have no idea how Violet walks without crying most days.
“No shit.” Violet wrinkles her nose. “Anyway, Alex’s Area 51 mission aside, I’m kind of pissed at you. I can’t believe you’ve kept this from me all this time.”
I sigh. This is what I was worried about. “There really isn’t anything to tell.”
“Uh, pretty sure that’s a lie with all the freaky deaky Alex saw. Clearly there’s a lot more to it than Darren jizzing on your chest and getting into your Access Denied hole.”
“I promised Darren I wouldn’t say anything.”
She frowns. “But I’m your best friend. Those promises don’t apply to me.”
I give her an apologetic smile. It’s not fair to use Darren as a copout. “Darren is private about this kind of thing, and so am I.”
“But we always talked about boyfriend stuff before Darren.”
“Before Darren it was different. I didn’t want to risk him getting asked questions by anyone, so . . .”
“I wouldn’t have said anything if you’d told me not to.”
I give her a look. “Not even Alex?”
She starts to speak but makes a face. “Okay, you have a point. I’d probably tell Alex because husbands fit under the same cone. Alex was pretty freaked out last night. I mean, those guys have been besties for as long as you and I have been besties, and he had no clue Darren was such a kinky fucker. We thought you might be a little off-side, but not all the way out in left field.”
“It looked a lot more extreme than it is,” I offer. “Most of it is the stuff my mom sends me from all her dominatrix conventions, and the majority of it I haven’t even considered trying out. I guess I went a little overboard yesterday.”
“Well, that’s going to take all the fun out of the kink inquisition.”
“Kink inquisition?”
“Yeah, the girls are freaking out over this. They started a group chat last night asking me all sorts of questions. I didn’t pull you in because I figured you didn’t want to be bombarded with text messages, and you were probably busy with Darren, doing whatever.” She crosses over to the fridge and produces a couple of bottles. She holds out the champagne. “Pre-inquisition mimosa?”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
“I figured.”
She hands me a glass and pours herself some sparkling grape juice since she and Alex are actively trying to get her knocked up, and she doesn’t want to drink until or unless she gets her period. Then the doorbell chimes. I exhale a nervous breath. This is probably going to be uncomfortable, but if I can deal with wearing a butt plug for several hours, I’m pretty sure I can handle a few questions and dispel some misconceptions.
Sunny, Lily, and Poppy appear in the kitchen a minute later. It’s awkward times a million. Especially since the first thing out of my mouth is, “Sorry all your significant others saw me naked yesterday.”
“Everyone except Lance has heard me come,” Violet says, because she’s my best friend and is happy to offset my humiliation with her own.
“Um, Lance has heard you come, Violet, and so have the rest of us,” Poppy, Lance’s fiancée, says quietly.
Her face turns the color of her name. She’s so stinking cute. It’s amazing that someone so sweet could end up with one of the most volatile players in the league, who was also dubbed a notorious womanizer—although the media likes to twist things around. And from what I know, Lance is actually a little broken, kind of like me and Darren both seem to be. His childhood wasn’t the best either.
Violet looks confused. “Since when?”
“When we went to the cottage over winter break and you and Alex had sex in the outdoor shower,” Lily replies when Poppy doesn’t respond right away.
“Ooooh, right. Lesson learned on that one, I guess.”
“And only Darren and Miller haven’t seen me naked, so don’t feel too bad.” Lily gives me a side hug.
“Wait, what?” Poppy suddenly looks like she’s ready to go a round. As sweet as she is, she’s a massage therapist, so she’s strong, and dating Lance means she has to have a backbone of steel. She also has a fiery personality to match her hair.
“It was an accident. Randy came home from an away series, and I answered the door wearing a bow like a necklace. I didn’t know Lance was with him until it was too late,” Lily explains.
“And Alex saw her naked when she was six, so that doesn’t really count,” Violet adds.
“Oh. Right.” That seems to calm Poppy down.
“My boob popped out when I was breastfeeding Logan at a team BBQ last summer.” Sunny pats her little baby bump. “But only Miller saw, so I guess that’s not the same.”
“It’s a good one, though.” Violet claps her hands. “Okay. Who needs a drink before the sex-quisition?”
“The what?” Sunny asks.
“The sex-quisition. The sex inquisition. I’m sure everyone has questions for Charlene after last night. I figured nothing goes better with uncomfortable questions about our sex lives than booze! Sunny, I have dealcoholized champagne for us. It basically tastes like fizzy grape juice, but we can drink it out of fun glasses and pretend we’re getting drunk, too.”
Sunny shrugs. “I don’t need to pretend to be drunk, but I like fizzy grape juice.”
Violet serves everyone drinks, and we all head to the living room. This whole thing makes me nervous. I mean, they’re all my friends and we’re all pretty open with each other, but with all the focus on me, I realize that they’re open, while I’ve spent the past two years saying little about my sex life. I wish we could go back to the way it was before all my secrets were spilled out with the dragon-shaped plastic schlong.
I root around in my purse for one of my candies and pop it into my mouth. I need all the calm I can get. I don’t care that the candy is going to make my mimosa taste like crap.
“I have a question.” Lily drops into the chair parallel to mine.
“Oh, I bet you do.” Violet grins.
“Randy wants to know where you go lingerie shopping.”
That seems to break the tension a little. “Depends on what I’m shopping for, but I can give you a list of places.”
“Or maybe we can go together,” Lily says.
Poppy raises her hand. “I would like to go lingerie shopping.”
“I need new maternity lingerie. I don’t think the ones from Logan’s pregnancy are going to fit for much longer.” Sunny blinks a few times and then sniffs.
Lily and Poppy are out of their chairs with tissues and hugs before the first tear falls.
It’s another minute of consoling before Sunny is okay again. “Sorry,” she sniffs. “I’m already showing, and I just found out there’s a baby in there. I can’t imagine how big I’m going to be this time around.”
Lily and Poppy murmur their understanding, even though Lily is the size of my wrist. Poppy is curvier, but being able to see her toes isn’t an issue, and likely won’t be for a while yet. At least I don’t think she’s going to jump on the baby train, but then who knows?
Darren and I have never talked about kids. He held Logan when he was born for, like, a minute and a half or something. He doesn’t seem to have anything against kids, but he’s never mentioned wanting them. Personally, I’m on the fence, mostly because my childhood was seriously fucked up,
and I worry no matter what I do, I’ll mess my own kid up by default.
Darren grew up in a very strict house with a lot of rules about what constituted acceptable behavior, which may account for how private he is and his sometimes commanding presence in and out of the bedroom.
Sunny’s mini-breakdown seems to have shifted the subject away from my unconventional sex life. For a few minutes, anyway.
“Once the playoffs are over, we should plan a trip to the cottage,” Violet says.
“That would be so great! I want them to do well, but it would be nice if they were finished before June so they get a bit more of an off-season and Miller can spend more time with Logan,” Sunny agrees.
“We could roll it right into a birthday celebration for Charlene or something!” Violet flaps her hands excitedly and nearly topples her sparkling grape juice.
“Aren’t there a million black flies up there at the end of May?” I ask.
Once we left The Ranch, my mom and I never made a big deal about birthdays.
“Fine,” Violet says. “We have the party here and plan a weekend at the cottage for later in June.”
I wave off that idea. “I don’t need a party.”
“That’s what you said last year. You’re turning twenty-six. It’s your champagne birthday, so we need to do something fun.” Violet bounces, making her boobs shake and my mimosa slosh perilously. “It should be themed! We can all wear leather chaps!”
“Could you be any more cliché?” I roll my eyes. “Just to be clear, Darren doesn’t own chaps.”
“Just a ball gag and a mask with no eye holes, according to Alex.”
And we’re back to my sex life. I knew I was getting off so easy.
I wonder if Darren is catching this kind of heat today. I seriously doubt it’s worse than what I’m getting since I don’t think his friends are likely to push his buttons, but I’ll have to ask when I speak to him next. I’m not sure when that will be, either. The message I sent about Gertrude was pretty straightforward and doesn’t necessarily require a response. Maybe I should’ve worded it differently.
Sunny raises her hand, like we’re all still in middle school and she’s waiting her turn to speak. “Wouldn’t a mask with no eyeholes be dangerous? You wouldn’t be able to see where you’re going.” Her eyes widen, and she looks around the room. “And what’s a ball gag?”
Pucked Love Page 4