Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
ev
“Tony says he could stop by this week. If you’re okay with it.”
I didn’t drop the dish I was setting on the dishwasher, but it was a close thing. “I didn’t know you had Tony’s number.”
It was cool, obviously. Tony was cool. Was I intimidated by him and probably always would be?
Yeah.
That wasn’t the point.
The point was that, yeah, I’d noticed Santos talk a bit with him during the munch while Sergio and Jaime failed at being subtle while getting information out of me.
I’d just assumed it was because Jaime was Tony’s sub, and the two of them had been the odd men out.
I didn’t think they’d be bonding or planning out hangouts.
“But yeah, sure,” I remembered to say.
Shock aside, being supportive had to be important. It would be hypocritical of me not to, anyway, after all the times I’d run my mouth with my insecurities about him making plans on his own.
Did I keep track of those times and berate myself for them all night? Obviously.
Whatever.
“Great. I’ll text him, then.” He nodded from where he was sitting on the breakfast bar. I knew it was killing him that I was cleaning up instead of him, but I felt bad enough about how he was the one cooking all the time. “When are you free?”
“What do you mean?” I frowned. “This is your place, too. I don’t have to be here.”
My frown deepened. Was it the wrong thing to say?
I knew Santos leaned on me more when we went out or did something that involved restaurants or more people or whatever.
I didn’t dislike it, exactly, once I got over the anxiety that came with it at times.
But maybe I shouldn’t be pointing it out?
Maybe it was bad form or something. A reminder of the stuff he was struggling with.
I hated it.
I didn’t know if he noticed, but he got this faraway look on his face every time.
“You kind of do,” he said. That faraway look wasn’t there, but I still held my breath as I waited for him to elaborate. “So, I reached out to him about kink stuff.”
“Uh.” Did brains actually freeze? Was that a thing? “Wait, what?”
Santos stood up right away. “Did you not want me to? I can just tell him to forget about it. I didn’t mean to—”
Fuck up.
I grimaced. It wasn’t the first time he’d hinted at a level of deep-seated insecurity that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him in person.
Or maybe it had been there, but I had completely missed it because I hadn’t been digging deep enough.
“It’s cool.” Other than how mortifying it was that I’d never felt able to reach out to Tony about anything kink, even though I knew he was a great teacher, and Santos had just done it without breaking a sweat. “What kind of stuff?”
“I overheard him the other day with Danny and his boyfriends,” Santos explained, “about doing workshops and showing newbies the ropes, and stuff. And I noticed if you have a crush on anyone there, it would be on him and León, but León seems like a step too far. More advanced level. Right?”
Oh, fuck.
“Uh…” Okay, I wasn’t going to finish setting up the dishwasher this morning; that was for certain. “I don’t know where to start.”
Tony and León both ran a bunch of workshops—after being cajoled by Erika because both were good with newbies in their own ways, and everyone respected them.
And…yeah, I’d had a crush on basically every strict Dom at Plumas, which included them.
“I thought we could try stuff out.”
“Try what?”
Ugh.
I understood why Santos looked as nervous as he did, but I didn’t have experience with how to cope with an anxious Santos. Not like this. It wasn’t helping my own anxiety, either.
I fidgeted with the hem of the new hoodie I’d stolen.
I had a pair of lace panties underneath and nothing else.
It hadn’t taken long to find out that fancy women’s clothing wasn’t the most comfortable to lounge around the house, but the combination of lingerie and Santos’s clothes settled the something in me that had needed to renew my entire wardrobe.
“Kink.” He shrugged it off as if it wasn’t the big deal it was. As if it didn’t leave me this close to whiplash every time he brought it up. “I want you to be really into what we do, and I think I can give you more, but I don’t want to accidentally fuck up and hurt you, you know?”
I stood in front of him. He wasn’t taller by a whole lot, but I still had to look up at him.
Usually, the size difference between us—especially now that I could feel the difference in his muscles and his frame after years of service—made me shiver.
I relished it. Today, it annoyed me that I couldn’t reach him as easily.
“Didn’t I already tell you?” I pursed my mouth. Maybe I didn’t. I’d never claim an award for best communicator. “You don’t have to push yourself just because. I love you. I love how you are with me. How we are together.”
“But you’ve got fantasies, and know a lot more about shit than I do,” Santos argued.
He moved until he had his hand on my hip.
I breathed out at the contact. Instantly, my heart rate slowed down.
I could gaze into those blue eyes of his without getting agitated because things were getting out of control.
“And you’re wearing a cage, and horny all the time, and I keep getting ideas around it, and I just wanna know if they make sense. ”
“You can talk about them with me.”
“I plan to.” Slowly but without any of the hesitation I would’ve expected, he framed me against the kitchen counters. The vintage knobs were cold where they hit bare skin. “But I still want to do this. Tony said he’s done it before, helped a couple figure out kink stuff.”
I believed him. It didn’t take the edge off.
“When is he free?”
“He said Mondays would be best, and weekends are out, but other than that, whenever.”
“Monday is good.”
It was still four days away, but I could distract myself until then.
Maybe text Jaime and get something out of them.
It might get us both into trouble because Jaime was a gossip, and there was no way they wouldn’t pester Tony about it if they hadn’t started already, but these were dire circumstances.
Jaime didn’t help. They just got on my nerves checking in that I was comfortable with Tony coming over and threatened me more than a few times with not making shit easy for their Dom.
And now Tony was here, looking like he belonged in a way that didn’t surprise me, given his family name. In a way, I’d never felt like I belonged within the ornate walls.
I envied his confidence so fucking badly.
“Morning, Ev.” Before it could become obvious that I was frozen to the spot, Tony patted my shoulder. Just like that. Like it didn’t make my heart beat that much faster. “Green looks good on you.”
“T-thanks.”
Fuck.
I hadn’t stuttered around him—around anyone in Plumas—in a while. It had been some sort of record.
Tony didn’t mention it. He just gave Santos one of those manly handshakes that had always made me anxious and asked if he could have a glass of water, which got us all moving to the kitchen.
A glass of water was a good idea.
I knew what Tony was doing—getting a lay of the land, and finding a way to get us moving and acting more naturally.
I didn’t know about Santos. I couldn’t read him whenever he’d brought up today and had tried to discuss expectations and boundaries and the kind of things I should’ve paid more attention to.
I could read how clammy my palms were getting just fine, though.
“So, Ev.” I gulped. Of course Tony was going to focus on me first, even though this was technically Santos’s idea. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Huh?”
Sue me, that wasn’t the question I’d expected.
Tony just smirked. “What are you okay with? Do you want us to sit down and talk about kink history? Do you want me to watch and give your man pointers? Do you want me to demonstrate?”
Fuck.
Okay, that was more along the lines of what I’d expected.
Surprising no one, it didn’t exactly help. Glancing Santos’s way didn’t, either. He reminded me of myself when I’d first started attending workshops. Wanting to try out everything at once because everything looked shiny and fun and alluring.
He had said he was cool with Tony having more of a hands-on approach with me, though. I knew he had. I trusted him.
It still took a minute to push the words out.
“You can touch, Sir. Or…demonstrate,” I corrected quickly. Language was important. I didn’t know if the distinction was important here, but I wasn’t going to start us off with a lesson on why I was a mess if I could help it. “I’ll use my colors if I need to.”
“Well, of course you will.” He turned toward Santos then. “Do you use green, yellow, red as safe words?”
Santos exchanged a look with me. “Kind of.”
“Kind of.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to earn any of us any points.
“He knows they’re my safe words, Sir.” The fact that I couldn’t stop fidgeting while I spoke wouldn’t, either. “I just haven’t used them with him.”
“Because you didn’t need to?”
“Right.”
I gulped.
Tony wasn’t mad. I’d seen him when he spotted someone behaving badly at the club.
There was a difference between him testing the waters and him chastising someone.
Repeating that in my head helped somewhat.
It made sense that Tony would cover all the bases.
He knew Santos was new to kink, and I didn’t have the best history.
He’d been there for plenty of those times I could have been more careful.
“Okay.” Tony raised an eyebrow as he leaned over the marble counter, staring me down. “So if I told you to go down on your knees for me, would you do it?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait.” He raised a hand as I began to slide off the stool. “We’ll do that somewhere more comfortable for you, but I have a question first.”
“Oh.”
Tony winked. I was not going to start questioning what my face would be emoting. “You have a cage on, right?”
I nodded. This wasn’t a secret. I had talked about it in front of the others. “Yeah. I only take it out to clean up.”