The Year of Us: March

1. Cory

CHAPTER 1

Cory

“Los Angeles again?” Kale Sheffield took a sip of his obscenely expensive whiskey. His taste was even more high-end than my own. Mind you, he also had a shit ton more money. I was rich, but Kale was wealthy, and he had a prince boyfriend to match. “Weren’t you there last month?”

“And the month before,” I supplied. I couldn’t even think about California without my dick getting hard. Pavlov, eat your heart out. “Can I ask you something?”

Kale raised an eyebrow at me. “About what?”

“There’s a guy in LA I’ve been hooking up with. I’m flying out there again next week.”

“So you said.” Kale leaned back in the chair, a low-slung black leather number, befitting the rest of the decor at The Black Door.

“He’s not a submissive, but he’s submissive to me.”

Kale’s lips twitched up into a smirk. “And that’s a problem for you because?”

“I’m worried I’ll go too far and drive him away.”

Kale laughed and took a sip of his drink. “Cory, if you’re looking for advice on how to not run roughshod over people, you came to the wrong man. Remember how half my friends, and my brother, were pissed at me because I’m a bossy bastard who stick his nose where it shouldn’t go?”

When I didn’t say anything, he sighed.

“Look, Cory. It’s not like you to be anything but ten thousand percent confident in who you are. You’re good at what you do, from what I’ve seen and heard. If this guy doesn’t submit on the regular, but he’s comfortable submitting to you, then let him explore that. If anyone is the right man for that job, it’s you.”

Kale’s reassurance meant a lot to me. We’d met some years ago when I was first getting started as a consultant in my field. He’d hired me and his referrals at the beginning of my career were a large part of the reason I’d had the level of success I achieved. Not that I didn’t earn it on my own merit, but sometimes the right word from the right man was all it took.

“Where’s your little prince?” I asked, in desperate need of a subject change.

“We’re meeting after the ballet.”

Kale’s eyes always sparkled when he talked about Christian, his runaway prince. Jealousy wasn’t an emotion that I was accustomed to, but every so often it flared in me like a hot coal deep in my gut.

It wasn’t Christian I wanted, or Kale, or even what they had. What they had was something unique to them and that’s what I was jealous of. I wanted that one person who’d make my eyes sparkle when I thought of them.

When Kale left ten minutes later, I pulled my phone out and stared at the screen. Communication between Reese and me had started off slowly after I left LA the last time. We’d steered clear of talk about sex and kink by some unspoken agreement and talked mostly about random things. Like my two coffee a day limit and his love of sushi. I’d only had sushi a few times and I’d yet to be impressed. Our last conversation ended with him promising to take me for sushi that he promised I’d love.

It sounded dangerously close to a date. Which wasn’t really what we’d agreed to last month. In February, we’d agreed to more sex when I was in town. Not sushi dates.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I hit the call button, then leaned back with the phone pressed to my ear while I waited for him to pick up. He had a while before he started work.

“Cory? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

Reese exhaled. Was he relieved? Annoyed? I should have video called him so at least I’d have been able to see his face.

“It’s just that you usually text. I worried for a second.”

“Everything is fine. I just wanted to tell you that if you want, we can meet for sushi when I get into town next week. And if you don’t want to, we can get DoorDash. We can play it by ear. I wish I could come sooner.” A month was starting to feel like forever. “I can’t stop thinking about what you look like with your clothes on.”

Reese made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Is that so?”

“I can’t help it.” I let my head rest against the back of the chair. Closing my eyes, I thought of the first moment I saw Reese. I’d noticed his smile right away and the way the creases at the corners of his eyes made him seem just old enough to be interesting.

Maybe I’d finally hit my mid-life crisis. I’d turned forty-two last month, the day after I left LA again. In the past, I hadn’t been one to discriminate based upon the age of my partners. So long as they were old enough to drink, that was good enough for me. But in recent years, I’d found myself drifting. Unsure of exactly what it was I wanted. Or who.

But seeing Reese in that bar made me feel like maybe that had changed now.

“Let me take you out, Reese. I know that’s not what we planned, but I’m dying to see if sushi is really as good as everyone says.”

“Sushi,” Reese said. “You want to take me for sushi. I thought I was on the menu?”

“You are. But as delicious as you are, we’ll need to keep our strength up for everything I plan to do to you.” I didn’t want the conversation to devolve into innuendo, especially when I was in a place where I could whip my cock out and no one would care. A public solo jerk was by far one of the tamer things people would see at The Black Door.

“Is it so hard to believe that I might want to see you outside my hotel room, Reese?”

“And here I thought you just wanted me for my body.” Reese let out a breath. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Let me take you to dinner,” I said, imagining the way he must look. He would get this expression on his face when I told him to do something, like he wanted to listen, and liked that he wanted to listen, but wasn’t sure if he should like that he liked it.

“Okay.”

A smile formed on my lips. “Good boy.”