Chapter 30
THIRTY
ev
“So…” I should’ve just dealt with this over text. The group chat was preferable to in-person, where I had everyone staring at me unblinkingly while I proved to be the biggest mess around. “Is it okay if I become a member again?”
“About time,” Sergio all but yelled before turning to Abel. He didn’t speak loud enough to catch it, but it was something about I told you so, followed by more rambling that Abel quelled by squeezing him to his side.
“Yeah, what was that about, anyway?” Cece asked.
They were in the club, too, with the three people who were a part of their pack.
Vi, Dixie, and Rox didn’t always come in, even when they were all in town.
It made me more anxious. Cece had told me I was being weird when I asked them if Vi or Rox felt weird about me dressing more fem or being into it as a kink.
They had also promised that they had no problem with it and just said more power to him when they begrudgingly asked.
Still. I didn’t want to hurt anyone or make things worse for people who were already oppressed just because something felt good for me.
Or because toning it down made me feel way less inclined to leave the house or let anyone see me.
It made sense in my head.
Sometimes.
“Uh…” It had been bad enough to explain it the first time, so I glanced up at Erika for help. She didn’t always come to people’s rescue, but…maybe? She was the one who had talked sense into Sergio when he was trying to keep me as a member. “I can go through the vetting process from scratch again?”
It hadn’t been that bad the first time around. Erika had just had lots of questions about how I was planning to keep my identity safe and away from the kind of backlash that would affect both me and the club.
“No need.” Erika shook her head. “But what’s changed?”
“I just want to contribute.” I rubbed my hands over my arms. Santos had stayed home to catch up with someone from his unit that didn’t completely despise him, whatever that meant, but that meant I had no protection when Erika stared at me like she could figure out something I hadn’t yet.
“I know I’m still welcome here because one of you will always vouch for me, but it feels like leeching off when I can cover the fees and everything else, no problem. ”
In a way, it felt like I was looking in from the outside, too.
It didn’t make sense, but I’d carved a home of sorts here.
A found family that felt real, and not something that appeared on TV shows and movies.
A place where I wasn’t pretending and afraid of my own shadow or taking the wrong step.
Where I’d started learning not to make myself small, and feeling comfortable with what that meant.
I wasn’t the most talkative, but I could give a few comebacks, and I was ninety percent confident that Sergio really meant it when he laughed and said he liked my sense of humor.
So… Yeah. I’d been deep in my head and feeling sorry for myself, but even those questions and wonderings were better than feeling like I was losing access to that.
“Sure.” Erika nodded along. I didn’t know if it was a good sign or not coming from her. “But, just so we’re clear, things are good? You’re not about to throw yourself at a dozen Doms the second you have unrestricted access to the club?”
“No.” I frowned. Had I done that in the past? Maybe. Was I planning on doing it now? Hard pass. “I told you in the group I’m with Santos. We’re good.”
“They were sexting while we were on our milkshake date, too,” Sergio interjected. “Very rude, mind you.”
When Erika glanced at him, he just grinned wider. Abel rolled his eyes. I fought very hard not to be emotional because this was part of what I’d been missing.
It wasn’t even the whole group, but this kind of bantering didn’t happen so out in the open when we were in a café or somewhere we had to be mindful of other people, or not everyone was in the right headspace.
Sergio was basically in Little space 24/7, but most people weren’t, so the banter wasn’t the same.
Or the unspoken threats to put him on one of the spanking benches he loved complaining about.
Vi raised her hand while I was thinking it was probably a good thing that Santos hadn’t come. He hadn’t said it, but Sergio lowkey scared him, and he was at his loudest while in the club.
“If the club is struggling, I can contribute, too. But have I met Santos yet? I’m terrible with names, and there are lots of you. Sorry.”
“You’re not contributing, love,” Erika said right away.
“What she said,” Rox added.
It made sense. Vi was an adult content creator.
She wasn’t broke, but no one wanted her to feel pressured to make more content.
Something about her own relationship with sex work that I guessed Erika and Eli would understand better than I could, since Eli had a channel themselves, and Erika used to moonlight as a proDomme.
I understood why the two Dommes would join forces against the idea of Vi paying a membership fee.
Thankfully, there was no reason for anyone to argue against me doing it, since my paycheck—which was the more fiscally friendly way of giving me my monthly allowance—covered more than I’d ever know what to do with.
“I could pay your fee,” I piped in.
Hoarding had never been my thing, and even though I was a fully fledged adult, being royalty in Spain meant too many headaches from accountants and family that held too many rules and opinions on how to spend one’s money.
I had no idea how I hadn’t heard anything about the membership to Plumas.
They either decided to believe it was some sort of VIP society thing, which they’d approve of, or they had no fucking clue how to broach it with me.
It could go either way.
My mother had never said a thing about where I donated or didn’t, and my father pretended he didn’t see a thing.
It was everyone else I had to contend with, which made it worse.
The second they started going on and on about money, and what I could and couldn’t do, I was back to being a child in a family dinner getting scolded because I’d run too fast, or I was swaying my hips the wrong way.
“You could?” Vi lit up.
She was cute, with pink hair and pink pretty much everything. Maybe one day I could ask her for fashion advice. My style was still awful. I only survived because of all the matching sets I’d grabbed, but I wanted to experiment, too, without fear that I’d look…wrong.
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
It wouldn’t be much of a transgression, but now that I’d put the thought out there, I lit up at the idea. About testing how much I could spend on kink before someone dared to bring it up.
Well, I could have Santos with me. It wouldn’t be that bad if I wasn’t alone. It was never that bad when he was there.
“Sweet.”
“Are you sure?” Cece asked. “I know it’s hard to say no to that face, but you can.”
I huffed. “I know I can.”
I might’ve grown more confident around the group, but not confident enough that I could quip about how I had so much money it was burning in my pockets.
It seemed enough to placate the pack, though. Maybe I’d text Cece later, before anything was misinterpreted.
“Is Santos going to join, too?” Jaime asked. He had been searching through all the wardrobes in the different-themed rooms for a specific cereal bar he’d had once during aftercare. Apparently, it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. “Since you’re official now.”
“Uh, no. I mean, he hasn’t said.”
He knew I was here telling them about this because he’d been the one to suggest it.
He’d used more words, but it had made sense.
It was a bit embarrassing that I’d only lasted a couple of months in my resolution to work through my stuff before I considered being a member of the club again, but I supposed it was better to go through this rather than mope for a couple more months for no reason at all.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t set my head straight while I was a member.
The semantics of it had helped when I was going through withdrawal, but I had a clearer head now.
When I wasn’t freaking out about Santos and wanting to make things better for him without pushing too much, or that I wasn’t at all what he thought, and he needed someone completely different. Someone who could never be me.
I wouldn’t consider changing for him. I had been the one who showed up at the airport with my new clothes, when he had never seen me wearing more than clear lip gloss. It would hurt a lot if him healing changed things for us.
It terrified me more than half of the time, but maybe that was another reason to rejoin Plumas. To have a more solid net to fall on if it was needed.
“But you’re kinky.”
“Yeah.” It sucked that alcohol wasn’t a thing here—and that I’d never been a fan of liquid courage. This was the sort of situation where someone else would have said a drink would help. “We are, it’s just not as…high protocol.”
“If it works for you, it works for you,” Erika said.
“For sure,” Rox agreed. Rox and Erika kept teaming up lately. I wondered what that was about, or how much I’d missed. “Most people play with kink much more casually than we do here.”
“That’s true,” Abel said. He didn’t speak up a lot when we were in a big group, so I twisted my whole body to listen to him.
He was the biggest Daddy here. Age play wasn’t for me, but there was something about his caregiver energy that held a certain allure.
“Don’t let them carry you away if that’s not your speed right now. ”
It was, and it wasn’t. I got what he was saying, though. It kind of made me want to go to him and get one of the hugs Sergio enthused about.
The thought just made me think back to Santos’s taunt when he’d first arrived. He’d asked if my new friends knew how touch-starved I was, and I’d shrugged it away. I didn’t consider myself touch-starved. I just liked physical touch when it was Santos. It was familiar. The way it had always been.
Maybe, though…
Maybe.
Today had been enough steps for a bit.