Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Nick
Avery’s apartment was a ground floor unit in a garden apartment building.
In the darkness, there were a lot of shadows, but the main path was well lit, as was the interior of the building where the stairs were.
After the long evening he’d had, Nick was glad she didn’t live on the third floor since there was no elevator.
He didn’t feel like walking up all those stairs.
His feet hurt, as they always did at the end of a long night, but he was more energized than usual.
Most nights after shift, he would go home and sit on the couch, unwinding from the long day.
He’d have a meal of broth and bread with a beer to finish it, maybe a cup of tea, then stare blankly at the television until two in the morning, when his body would finally be decompressed enough for him to fall asleep.
Basically, most nights, he had nothing to look forward to.
That wasn’t the case tonight.
Knocking on Avery’s door, he felt an odd mix of anticipation and nerves, but it was the nerves that knocked him off-kilter.
Being around Avery usually made him feel the opposite of nervous.
He hadn’t felt nervous about going on a date with a woman since high school.
It probably had something to do with the folder tucked under his arm.
He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the activities listed on the forms. He’d looked at them again, using red lights and the streetlights to read on the way over.
He hadn’t been able to help himself. Every time he looked at the list, his eye caught something new and intriguing…
or something new and slightly terrifying.
Anal play and sex.
That had been at the top of the list and something he was more than okay with, especially with Avery. She had a gorgeous ass, even in chef pants, and that was saying something. He’d love to get up close and personal with it.
Bondage.
Okay, he’d experimented in his early twenties, tying a girlfriend up.
Didn’t most people? He’d liked it—a lot—but after they broke up, he’d never brought it up with another woman.
“I want to tie you up” sounded too threatening, whereas “I want you to tie me up” had been sexy, and he’d never been able to figure out how to make it sound sexy instead of scary coming from his end.
No other girlfriend had made the same request, so that had been that.
Figging?
No idea what the hell that was.
Fire play? Knife play? Mummification? Piercings? Whippings?
Yeah, he could guess what some of those were, and there was no fucking way.
What if that’s what Avery wants?
The little voice that whispered in his head was not helpful. He knocked on her door, shaking the thought away. Surely, she wouldn’t want to do all those things. He tried to imagine Avery with naughty piercings.
Okay, he didn’t hate that… as long as he didn’t have to be the one to pierce her. He didn’t have a needle phobia, but he also didn’t like the idea of sticking one into someone.
The door opened, and the tension that had been slowly building while he thought about all the options relaxed as Avery peered up at him.
She was now dressed in shorts and one of the tank tops she normally wore under her chef coat, showing off far more of her curves than he normally got to see.
While the tank top was nothing new, the itty-bitty shorts made her legs look miles long.
“Hey.” Her smile was lopsided, a little nervous as she stepped back to let him in.
“Hey.” Aware he smelled like ‘kitchen’—aka sweat and food—whereas her apartment smelled like lavender.
So did she. Nick tried not to let it get him down.
She’d known he was coming straight from work and what the end of shift smelled like.
There was only so much deodorant and a spritz of Febreze in the car could do.
He’d taken off his chef coat, but the t-shirt he’d been wearing underneath it wasn’t exactly a bouquet of flowers.
“Want something to drink?” she asked, heading toward the little galley kitchen he could see off to the right. “I have water, beer, and soda.”
“A beer sounds good.”
“It’s a mango IPA, is that okay?”
“Sounds good.” He liked fruity IPAs.
While she puttered in the kitchen, Nick studied her apartment.
To the very left of the entrance was her living space, with a couch and recliner.
The couch, which would sit three comfortably, was facing a decent-sized television mounted to the wall.
The recliner was right next to him, facing the huge sliding glass door and window that took up most of the far wall, which would give her a good view outside when the blinds were open, and the sun was up.
A view of what, he couldn’t exactly tell since the blinds were closed.
Behind the couch was her dining room setup, with a small table, four chairs, and a little buffet against the wall. To the right of that was a hallway, where the kitchen was located, and he guessed, led back to her bathroom and bedroom.
The only art on the walls were three movie posters of the original Lord of the Rings movies above the buffet.
Raising his eyebrows, Nick moved closer to inspect them, setting the file folder on the dining table as he passed it.
Avery was moving around in the kitchen. He glanced in, but she was behind the door to the fridge, and he couldn’t see what she was doing.
“I didn’t peg you for a Lord of the Rings fan,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked up at the framed posters.
“I like the movies, hated the books. Don’t tell anyone.” Avery came into the dining area behind him, a tray in her hands with his beer, two glasses of water, and a plate full of cheese, sliced meat, and crackers.
His stomach rumbled at the sight.
“Holy crap, you read my mind.” Sliding into the chair closest to him, Nick grabbed one of the knives on the tray and sliced off some cheese for himself, placing it on a cracker, along with some of the meat. A little smile curved Avery’s lips as she sat in one of the chairs next to him.
“I figured you’d be hungry at the end of shift. I always am.”
“Thank you for thinking of it.” Belatedly, he remembered his manners. Hunger made him forget them sometimes.
“Of course.” She watched him shove the cracker in his mouth. Hopefully, that wasn’t a complete turnoff.
Avery
Holy crap, Nick was in her house, eating her food, looking both tired and sexy after a long day of work, and ready to talk about kink. She felt like pinching herself, except she knew this was real.
“Have you had a chance to look over all of that?” she asked, nodding at the folder as she picked up her own cracker, cheese, and pastrami.
While she hadn’t planned on having a late-night snack, it was weird sitting and watching him eat alone.
She nibbled hers since she wasn’t all that hungry after dinner at Marquis.
Behind her, her phone chimed from its position on her kitchen counter. Probably Domi or Rae texting her back. She’d let them know as soon as Nick arrived. She ignored it. They wouldn’t expect her to answer until after he left… if he left.
Awareness of his presence in her apartment buzzed through her again. She was used to being here alone, and Nick seemed to take up so much more space beyond his physical body.
“Most of it,” he said, after using some beer as a chaser for his food. “I need your help, though. What’s with the hard limits list? I just pick and choose what I want to do, and they’ll teach me in class?” Skepticism threaded through his voice, and Avery laughed.
“Not exactly. Everyone has limits and things they don’t want to do.
A soft limit means it’s something you’re unsure about or aren’t really interested in but might do with the right partner.
A hard limit means it’s an absolute no, something you will not do.
Honestly, most people think of them as pertaining to the submissives, but Doms have them, too.
” It felt a little odd to be talking about this so openly with someone who wasn’t in the ‘know,’ but Avery thought it was a pretty good explanation.
“My understanding of the Dominants class is anything you’d be interested in doing with a submissive, you have to experience yourself in the class. ”
Nick’s eyebrows rose practically to his hairline. “Does that mean you’ll be doing it to me?”
“Oh, no.” Avery shook her head vehemently.
Though the image that popped up into her head of a class where the submissives got to show the Doms exactly how some things felt…
Okay, that was kind of funny, but she didn’t think the reality would be.
Avery had absolutely no desire to be dominant in the bedroom and have someone else rely on her to make all the decisions.
She enjoyed being dominated and wasn’t interested in switching.
“I’m sure there’ll be other Dominants going through it with you.
Experienced ones. I’ll be your practice dummy.
” He snorted laughter at her description, but Avery had a feeling it was pretty apt.
She’d find out more once she signed up, but she was only doing that if Nick did.
“Okay, so, help me figure out what my hard limits are.”
Nick
Going through the list of kinks with Avery was fun and something of a relief. It turned out they had quite a few hard limits in common.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all fun and games.
Fire play and knife play, two things that should have appealed to him as a chef, sounded more dangerous than sexy.
He ended up putting them down as ‘maybes,’ so they were a soft limit rather than a hard one because he could tell Avery was interested.
Thankfully, she wasn’t into the mummification, bodily fluids, or needles.
“So, that’s okay?” he asked, marking them down as hard limits.
“Absolutely. The only rule will be not to kink shame,” she said, nodding her head.
Nick looked up from where he was crossing them off the list, raising his eyebrows.
She grinned back at him impishly. “No yucking other peoples’ yum.
It’s fine to say something’s not for you, but not say it’s disgusting, gross, or anything like that. ”
“Makes sense.” Even if that was what he thought about some of it.
Just looking at the word ‘mummification’ made him shudder.
On the other hand, if it made someone else feel good, he wouldn’t hassle them.
He and his brother had gotten a lot of flak for being Star Wars nerds growing up, and he’d never understood why people couldn’t let them enjoy what they enjoyed without being insulting about it.
Same thing here. Different strokes for different folks. He could adhere to that… easily.
At least, he hoped so.
It was harder when dealing with things like ‘Consenting Non-Con’ and ‘blood play’ than with a preference for movies.
The ‘Consenting’ part was what he had to focus on.
He might not get why someone wanted to do something, but as long as it’s what they wanted, he would do his best to honor that.
Or at least, ignore what they were doing and let them have their fun.
There were a few things he was less sure about.
“Whipping? What does that entail? Is that like flogging?” He could hear the uncertainty in his voice, which he hated, but Avery had been so enthusiastic about flogging, he didn’t want to come at her with judgment in his voice on this one.
Flogging hadn’t sounded too bad, once she’d explained, but whipping?
All he could think of was Indiana Jones and that bullwhip. That had looked fucking painful.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to whip anyone. Spanking was going to be hard enough.