Chapter 6 #3
“That’s not how I do things. Some people do. That’s fine. They like to keep the dynamic going when they aren’t having sex. I don’t.”
I don’t tell her it’s because my interaction with submissives is so minimal outside of sex that it’s never turned into that. I don’t tell her it’s because I’ve never kept a submissive as my own.
I can certainly see the appeal. Playing games like she did today.
Doing the housework naked, waiting for me to come take her.
I can see where we could get to a point where we change things up sometimes.
Where sometimes I take her and tie her up, but sometimes I fuck her right there on the floor.
With no discussion. But that would be a different kind of relationship. The kind I simply don’t have.
I tie her robe for her and she looks up at me, expectant and lovely.
I want to kiss her. I don’t do that.
“You did well,” I say. A shiver of satisfaction goes through her body, and it’s like I can feel it in my own. “Let’s go downstairs.”
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I always make sure my submissives are comfortable after sex and sometimes they stay the night, though they do it in this bedroom without me.
It’s why it’s outfitted with soft, comfortable things.
Why there’s a nice bathroom adjoining it.
If Avery thinks I have all these things so I can have dinner and a cozy movie with those women, she’s wrong.
And I could tell her that, but I decide not to.
We go downstairs, and she sits at the table. I push her chair in while I go to the crockpot where there’s roast with vegetables simmering away.
I get out a bowl, and dish her a generous portion. Then I see to myself before getting her a water and myself a beer.
She stares at the water. “I can have a beer,” she says.
“You need to drink water first,” I say.
“He says to me after making it clear he doesn’t do Dom shit out of the bedroom.”
I shrugged. “I am who I am.”
She looks down at the bowl of food, then back up at me. I take my seat across from her.
“When did you discover that you were… This?”
“You first. What made you discover it?”
Her face turns scarlet and she looks down.
“What is it?”
“I don’t like the answer to the question.”
“Then I really want it.”
She takes a sharp breath. “When I was eighteen. And I went to set your barn on fire. And you… Stopped me. It was very physical and…”
I stare at her, my cock going hard in my jeans, in spite of what we just did. “That did it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I mean, not entirely. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know why started fantasizing about being held down and… Restrained.”
“Avery Carmichael,” I say, fighting the urge to smile and then giving up on fighting it altogether. “Do you have a crush on me?”
“No. I fucking hate you. That’s what makes it so confusing. That’s what makes it so… It’s so confusing. I’m supposed to hate you. But you did something to me.”
I know exactly what she’s talking about.
I fucking felt it. I knew that I wanted her then.
But she was way too young. She’s still too young.
And it’s one thing for me to take the lead in teaching her about responsible BDSM – hell, I can consider that a service.
I can consider that keeping her safe. But it’s quite another entertaining the idea of keeping her, even remotely.
“But you had no idea that I was a Dom?”
“None,” she says. “I thought it was just my own twisted, weird fantasies, and then I started… Digging around. Trying to find out if anybody else felt the same way I do. I mean, Fifty Shades is a thing. It’s not like BDSM isn’t in the mainstream.
But I was still… It took a while for me to figure out that’s what it was.
And when I did, I was in a relationship with somebody that I could never share that with. ”
“Why not?”
“We had a different dynamic.”
Yeah. I had a pretty good sense for what that dynamic was. She likes to be in control in her everyday life.
“He made you top,” I say.
She sputters a laugh. “Nothing that kinky. Though, in many ways, yes. I was in charge of frequency, and initiating, and all of that. It’s like he couldn’t quite figure himself out. It was my job to do it.”
“I can’t think of anything less interesting to a woman like you.”
“He was just another project. That’s what it comes down to. He just ended up being another project, and I couldn’t make myself enjoy that. I told myself it wasn’t a good reason to break up with somebody. Sex. But then I discovered the Club app. And I found your profile.”
“You broke up with him around the time we made contact, didn’t you? I seem to remember your dad mentioning that.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I did. Two weeks after I first made contact with you. I didn’t know was you. I swear. I had no idea.”
“Oh, I believe you. Because if you had known, you certainly wouldn’t have looked the way that you did when you heard the app chime.”
“No. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
She told me everything. And I suppose I’ll her my story. Even though it’s not one I ever share. But this is different. No matter how much I might like to pretend it’s not, it is.
“You know I was in foster care, right?”
“I heard something about that,” she says.
“Yep. Bounced around constantly, no permanent home. Partly my own fault. I was an unpleasant shithead. And I basically pushed everyone away who tried. Before I was taken away from my mom, I was living in total squalor. My mom was a hoarder. She had everything she ever bought stacked up in our one-bedroom apartment. It was horrible. There was no control there. Nothing.”
I’m so aware that I’m sitting in my minimalist house that is kept ruthlessly clean, and that it says a lot about my psyche. Maybe a whole lot more than I want anyone to see.
“I got removed from her care, which…” I sit there, the silence around us like an oppressive bubble. “It was just a different kind of not having control. In some ways, I would’ve traded everything to go back to her. To go back to all that mess. Because at least… She was there.”
And as an adult I have so much compassion for my mother.
Compassion that I can never give to her, because she took her own life shortly after losing custody of me.
All I see is on dealt with trauma, which for her was expressed through holding on all those things.
The state failed us. And I never had a say in any of it.
“So after that, I just made everyone’s life hell because it was the control that I had. But I have a lot of issues forming attachments to people. For obvious reasons.”
“How did you… How did you get rich, though?”
“The internet,” I say. “Fucking seriously. I ran a campaign doing trading up, have you ever heard of that? Where you start small and trade for progressively bigger things. My campaign for that went mildly viral on a platform that’s defunct now.
Ended up making a lot of money and revenue on that, plus got my first building.
Made a big show out of turning it into a hotel.
And it was famous. So I was successful. I kept building up from there.
And made a shitload of money, because it turns out I’m good at this. ”
“And…”
“The being a Dom? I don’t think I’m a Dom because of all my control issues. But you can’t prove it. I don’t find anything hotter than having all the power. I might’ve felt that way anyway. Who’s to say?”
But maybe not. Doesn’t matter. I like what I like. My life is the way that it is. And there’s a perfect fit for what I like. What does it matter?
“I’m really sorry about your mom,” she says. “Mine just left. I’m really difficult. Apparently. She was never happy after I was born.”
“Oh, that doesn’t have anything to do with you,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Because it doesn’t. Because parents are just a collection of their own issues.
Which is something I wish I would’ve understood a lot younger.
I used to be fucking furious with my mom.
For not being able to get the house clean.
For not being able to hold on to me. For quitting on me when I needed her.
Because I thought of her suicide as another way she abandoned me.
But that was childish stuff. She was just a person.
Just like me. And I sure as fuck don’t have everything worked out.
Not only that, she was a woman with… I think a lot of mental health issues.
No one around to give her support. No one to give a fuck. She did the best she could.”
“Well, maybe the best my mom could do was leaving. But the end result is the same. My dad’s a mess because he can’t cope without her, and I’m left to pick up all the pieces.”
“Your dad could pick up some of his own fucking pieces, Avery. It shouldn’t be you. It’s not your mom’s job to raise him. Though, it was her job to raise you. And you’re right about that. She should’ve stuck with you. But… There are things people can’t do. We’re all just trying.”
“Well it’s heavy,” she says. “Everything feels so heavy.”
“That’s why we fit,” I say. “Because when you’re with me you don’t have any responsibilities.”
She looks down. “Don’t be offended by this. But I have a hard time with that. With what it says about me that I need a man to… Take my power away from me.”
“That’s not what you want. You don’t want your power taken away from you. You just want to not carry everything for a little bit. And there’s nothing weird about that. There’s nothing fucked up about it. You’re tired. And in your position who wouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know. I love my dad. He needs me and…”
“And you need him. But he’s not stepping up in the way that he should. And hell, I don’t even know who my dad is, so I guess your dad is a lot better than that.”
“You have more sympathy for my mom.”
“I think I have more sympathy for others in general. Just based on my own experience.”
She seems to consider that. “That makes sense. I guess.” We finished eating in relative silence. “I… No one ever talks about your mom.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, people do talk about you. I did know that you were in foster care. I did know that you had done some internet thing. I… I didn’t know that you were Dom. And I didn’t know about how you lost your mother.”
“It’s one of those things people whisper about.
But they don’t talk about it. Because there’s so much stigma around all that stuff.
And it’s not fair. I’ve come to a place where I really believe that she did her best. Where I really believe that she thought I would be better off, that everyone would be better off if she wasn’t here.
And the thing that makes me really sad about that is I wish I had been able to make her see that wasn’t true.
But we were both just products of a system that didn’t function as well as it should.
I don’t actually blame anyone for that. There were plenty of people who did their best.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s really awful.”
I nod slowly. “It is.”
Silence lapses between us. “I was twenty-five when I first tried BDSM.”
“Older than me,” she says.
“Fuck. Thanks for that.”
She laughs. “Sorry. I didn’t know that was a sore spot. I thought men liked an age gap.”
“I’ve never given one much thought either way.
” It was a lie. I’ve given a hell of a lot of thought to our age gap.
I don’t like it. It’s not right. It’s one of the reasons I should’ve stayed away from her.
I’ve had sex with subs that were younger than me, subs that were older than me.
In the context of the app and scenes, it doesn’t really matter.
A lot of times we are on equal footing. I’ve had subs that were very experienced in their mid-twenties.
And inexperienced subs in their forties.
That’s typically how I gauge things. But with her it’s different. Because I do know her.
Have known her for a while.
And I know all the circumstances of her life, the way that her dad is frittering away their money. It makes me want to offer things that I can’t. Makes me want to give more. More than I have.
So yeah, it was true in every case except with her.
“All right,” she says. “Tell me the story.”
“I knew I was interested. Like you I had full access to the internet.”
“And you’re so scathing of me.”
“I found a club, and I first learned by having a woman dominate me.”
Something flared in her dark eyes. “Oh.”
“It’s a safe way to learn,” I say.
“But you… You’re not into that.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not. But again, it gave me a safe way to experience it, and to understand what a submissive is going through. I’m a hands-on learner.”
She looks jealous. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what her expression indicates.
“You’re not topping me,” I say.
“I don’t want to,” she says.
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I’m just… Shocked. It just doesn’t seem like something you would even be capable of doing.”
“I wasn’t good at it,” I say. “But I had the experience and then started training. After that, I had experiences with submissives who knew what they were doing.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“No. Do you think this is like a virginity loss story? Where you feel all these things and then cry after?”
“Is that how losing your virginity was?”
I lean back in my chair. “No.”
“Me either. I was just tired of being a virgin. I was twenty, and it seemed stupid. So I had sex with John and then after that we were in a relationship. I didn’t cry. It wasn’t good enough to cry.”
He laughs. “Scathing.”
“But I’ll remember your name. After this.”
I look at her, something tightening in my chest. “I’ll remember yours too.”
I don’t know how else to tell her that she special. I shouldn’t tell her any other way. She smiles at me and then goes back to eating her dinner. After she leaves, the house feels too quiet. And I find that really fucking irritating.