Chapter 5
LINCOLN
After my emotional meltdown over a fish I hadn’t even owned for more than an hour, Silas kissed me on the mouth and convinced me to head out to Rapture.
My best friend’s never-ending affection for me made me want to cry again, but at least those felt more like happy tears.
Silas had gotten so lucky when he ended up with Marshall Covington, an older, smarter, and achingly handsome man who also happened to be perfectly okay with the nature of Silas’s relationship with me.
The two of us had always been physically affectionate with each other, often snuggled, sometimes kissing, occasionally scening, though never fucking.
For as long as I’d known him, I’d only ever looked at Silas as a friend, but that didn’t change the fact we liked to touch each other.
Marshall had been great about the whole thing, not once shying away or encouraging Silas to be different with me after they committed to each other.
I admired the confidence and security that rolled off Marshall in waves and hoped that one day I could find a bit of it for myself.
I’d cornered him in his living room a couple months ago, back when the doubts about my interest in dominance had first set in.
The whole thing came so easily to him and lately, for me, it felt like a struggle.
Not that I didn’t enjoy being dominant, but watching the way Marshall was dominant made me wonder if I’d been faking it the whole time.
He’d told me there was no shame in submission, no harm in switching even.
He told me the strongest man he knew was a submissive, and I knew he meant Silas.
The confession only made me adore Marshall more, not for myself but for Silas.
The two of them were so sickeningly perfect together I knew it was only a matter of time before Marshall stepped into the shoes I wore and slowly—unintentionally—pushed me out of frame.
But I’d let Silas finish getting me dressed, press my car keys into my hand, and tell me where to go.
Submissive my ass, I thought, as I drove us to Club Rapture in Pasadena.
The kinkiest club I’d ever been to, housed in the walls of an abandoned church, and Silas dragged me up the stairs and immediately onto the dance floor.
He obviously didn’t have eyes for anyone else, knowing Marshall was at home waiting for him, and I didn’t want to look for anyone to play with, considering the atrocious state of my mind since Silas moved out.
Instead, we danced for hours until so much sweat poured down the small of my back I didn’t know how I would ever get out of my leather pants.
At the end of the evening, he offered for me to stay at Marshall’s for the night, but I said no, and after getting us both back to my apartment, we said goodnight.
I lingered in the parking lot, tossing my phone from hand to hand, staring absently at nothing in particular.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to find someone to play with, it was just that I didn’t want to find someone to play with at Rapture.
Not like I was so important that I had a reputation to uphold, but all the regulars knew me as a dominant, and I didn’t want to cruise for someone opposite that until I was certain the change was a real thing and not pretend.
Before I could talk myself out of it—patron saint of indecision and all that—I swiped open the One Night Stand app on my phone and scrolled through the profiles of people in the area.
About fourteen people in, one of the faceless torsos stood out from the rest, and I paused, finger hovering over the scroll button.
He was an escort, I realized, which…probably wouldn’t be the worst way to try it out if I was serious about the whole thing.
I could definitely afford to pay whatever his rates were, and that almost made him a professional.
It wasn’t the worst idea, but I also knew it was extremely unsafe to go into that kind of situation without an emergency contact of some kind.
Maybe I could write down my location on a Post-it or something.
If I went missing, Silas would find it eventually.
Groaning over the logistics, I sent a message.
Tonight?
The reply was almost immediate, like he’d been on his phone and waiting.
CEH13
You host?
I can, but my apartment is a closet.
I can. I have closets but don’t live in one.
Snorting, I scrubbed a hand down my face. Great. The faceless torso had jokes.
What did you want to do?
Wanted to play. Maybe some…wanted to try being spanked.
I can spank you.
What else?
Kneeling.
Have you not?
Normally, I’m the one standing.
I see. So, something easy.
I don’t know if I want EASY.
You do.
Are you seriously telling me what I need already?
;)
I think this is a bad idea.
Hey now. It’s just fun, right?
You’re professional. You get it.
So he’d checked my app profile, which had a link to my profile on the website I used to sell my own content. He’d actually…my phone gave a little buzz, and I realized I had a new subscriber with a very familiar looking username.
In reality, it was the best way to go. We were both sex workers, so there weren’t going to be any feelings involved. I could find out what it meant to submit. He would get an easy payday, and that would be the end of it.
Loc?
He sent me his address and asked for thirty minutes to get ready, and also—discreetly—told me the rate for our little adventure.
His apartment was twenty minutes from me, so the time wasn’t an issue.
Not wanting to talk myself out of it, I ran upstairs and fought my way out of my leather pants, showered the sweat of the night off of me—though some people liked it, it didn’t feel appropriate for whatever trouble I was about to get into—got dressed again, and headed back down to my car.
Instead of a Post-it, I typed out a message to Silas and set it to send at six in the morning. That would give me plenty of time to cancel it if I survived and enough time for my body to still be warm if I didn’t.
I swung through the bank on my way to CEH13’s apartment, wishing I knew his name so I didn’t have to think of him by his username, which was clearly initials of some type.
Maybe his name was Chris or Cory or Calvin.
I’d ask when I got there, not that it really mattered what his name was.
He’d probably give me a fake one anyway, which was totally fine.
I spent the drive thinking about Ethan of all people, and the casual ways he’d been dominant without even trying.
Sometimes it had been a firm look or a steady hand, but every time it had been enough to shift the scales just enough to throw me off-balance.
Avoiding him the last time I saw him at Rapture had been hard, but I wasn’t ready to admit to Silas that things just didn’t feel right for me.
I honestly wasn’t sure if it was all about the submission or part that and part the fact I’d lost my best friend and my roommate in one blow.
What I did know was I didn’t want him to feel bad about falling in love, so I wasn’t going to say anything to him one way or another until I figured it out.
A few minutes late, I parked in a guest spot at a very affluent-looking high-rise in Santa Monica, thankful that I’d made the decision to go inside and change out of my leathers.
In addition to the address, the guy from the app had also given me the code to get into the front door, so I let myself in and rode up to the fourteenth floor.
The hallways of the building were bright and sterile, which made the walk to the end of the floor feel a lot like a trip to the doctor’s office to get my dick swabbed or something.
But when I reached the apartment, the front door was cracked open, the light streaming out of the unit a much softer glow than the bright fluorescents in the hallway.
I knocked on the door anyway, it swung open, and I was met with not just the torso from the app, but the gorgeous face that went with it.
“Hey,” I croaked, clearing my throat. “Are you…”
I still didn’t know his name.
“Ethan,” he said, and I groaned, clearly not hiding the way my face contorted because he laughed and said, “Is that bad?”
“I know an Ethan is all.”
He stepped out of the way and ushered me into his apartment.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s my middle name.”
I chuckled, shoving my hair back from my face. “A small one. I’m Jay, also a middle name. Or, rather, middle initial.”
Ethan’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “Fair enough. Did you want a drink or anything?
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Straight to it then?” he asked, and I nodded.
“I don’t want to talk myself out of this.”
“I’m not a fan of being with people who don’t really want to be with me,” he said, aimlessly dragging his hand up and down the exposed length of his stomach. The man had to live in a gym to have abs and biceps like that.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. Trust and believe I very much want to get a taste of whatever you’re selling. It’s the rest of it that has me on edge,” I told him.
“Do you not enjoy submission?” he asked.
“Never tried it.”
Ethan arched a brow. “Not ever?”
“Kind of once on accident,” I explained, “which is why I think I might want to try it again.”
He smiled at me, and heat rushed through my veins like molten lava, melting me down into a pile of nothing.
“We can try it again,” he murmured, reaching for me, crooking his fingers until I stepped close enough for him to touch.
I walked into his arms, groaning at how warm his body was, how sturdy, how tall.
Ethan was gorgeous by anyone’s standards, at least six foot tall, somewhere around two hundred pounds if you counted the muscle.
He had brown hair that fell in soft waves around his face, almost reaching his shoulders but not quite, and penetrating eyes that looked like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to be rum or whiskey.
He smoothed his hands down the outsides of my arms. His fingers were so fucking soft and delicate, long bones and slender digits, and fuck this man was gorgeous. If I looked as good as him, I’d ask to get paid too.
“I want to know your limits, Jay. Your wants…but first, can we get the logistics out of the way?”
His breath was hot against the shell of my ear, and I lost myself for a second until embarrassment flooded my cheeks.
“Right.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out four hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t check them and he didn’t count, he simply smiled at me and slid them into the pocket of his obscenely low slung sweatpants.
“Let’s go into the bedroom and talk, Jay. How does that sound?”
It sounded perfect, even as I tried to ignore the way it was another man giving me a command.
My body responded with all the interest I hoped it wouldn’t, but I nodded my approval and trailed after him down a short hallway and into a sprawling bedroom.
The whole apartment was amazingly decorated, with a black leather couch, dark jewel tone pillows, and a noticeable amount of plants on shelves and hooks around the living room.
The bedroom was far more plain, and I knew without asking it had to be a guest room or a secondary.
The bed was low to the floor with a minimal headboard but dark and comfortable-looking bedding.
Throw pillows against the wall matched the ones in the living room, and to either side of the bed were matching nightstands with matching lamps.
They were both on, the amber glow from the bulbs the only light in the room besides the sparkling brightness of the city that reflected in through the windows.
“I get the impression you’d prefer it dark,” he murmured, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He patted the space beside him, and I sat down with an oomph.
“Dark is good.”
He nodded. “Tell me your hard and fast limits, Jay.”
My lashes fluttered, and I licked my lips, pulling them between my teeth and biting down hard enough that it hurt. I needed the spark of pain to ground me in the moment, in the quest of what I was after.
I realized, in hindsight maybe, that submission wasn’t about pain.
It was something I’d known all along, but when I ran through the checklist in my head of limits, I found I wasn’t entirely sure if the impact parts of play were what I was truly after.
I was certain I wouldn’t hate it, and I didn’t want to waste my money on something as simple as kneeling, but…
No.
It wasn’t simple at all, was it?
“You with me?” Ethan asked, gently setting his hand on my thigh. “Is this okay? Did you want to change your mind?”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “This is fine. The question was loaded. That’s all.”
“Loaded how?” he asked.
“Respectfully, I’m not trying to use my hour as a therapy session.”
He huffed out a laugh, then drummed his fingers against the top of my leg. “Limits, then.”
“Just spanking. I don’t want any other impact play,” I told him and he nodded along. “No blindfolds or gags, no real bondage—”
“What’s real?”
“Not intense,” I corrected.
“That’s subjective,” he said.
“Let’s just go with no bondage,” I said, and he nodded again, not looking miffed in the slightest that I was wishy-washy as a sponge covered in dish soap.
“That’s fine and doable,” Ethan said, giving my leg a squeeze before standing up. He turned to face me and, on instinct, I leaned back to stare up at him. With me on my ass, he towered over me, looking as casually dominant as ever.
I wondered briefly if this was how Silas felt with Marshall.
“That’s not what you really want, though, is it?” He cocked his head to the side, and his hair finally brushed across his bare shoulder. “You really just want to submit, don’t you?”