Chapter 10
MATTHEW
Earlier that day, I watched Troye’s stream for longer than I’d anticipated. And I hadn’t even meant to reach out to him the way I did. But it felt like a sign when I saw him in my pants. It felt like he was still somehow mine, and I’d been unable to stop myself.
The chat in his stream was a busy place, and I think fate was the reason he even saw my comment. I hadn’t planned to ambush him with a dinner invitation, if you could call it that. Reading my message back later, I felt a little like a possessive caveman.
But he’d come, and he looked stunning. No one looked their best when they were travelling, but even so, he’d been cute before. Bedraggled and stressed, but appealing all the same. Even under the layer of anxiety that made him jittery and impulsive, he was irresistible.
Troye folded himself down onto his cushion, and I did the same on the other side of the table. The hostess left us with a couple menus and the promise that our server would be by shortly.
“Have you been here before?” I asked, secretly hating small talk, but a conversation had to start somewhere, and I had a feeling that asking to spank him again would be coming on too strong. I’d have to wait until we got our drinks at least.
“Just once with my friend Charlie for his birthday. Have you been here before?”
I nodded. “A few times. When my brother comes to town, this is where he likes to go.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother. Does he visit often?”
I nodded. “He tries to. He’s an optometrist. He used to live here but got a good opportunity a few hours away.”
“Well, thankfully it was just me growing up.”
Troye suddenly looked very interested in the menu. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about his childhood, which was fair. Not everyone had great ones.
“What should I get?” he asked. “It all sounds great.”
“Everything. If you like spice, I’d get the Chili Paneer.”
“Oh, my idea of spicy food is to wave a chili pepper over the pot. That’s about all the heat I can handle before my eyeballs start to sweat.”
“In that case, I suggest the butter chicken or the sweet fried rice with a mild vegetable Manchurian.. They’re flavorful without the heat of the other dishes.”
Troye nodded, satisfied with my answer, and he flipped his menu closed and set it aside.
Our server came and we ordered drinks. We let the conversation continue with small talk until they returned with our drinks and took our order.
It was only when they left that I realized that I’d gone ahead and ordered for Troye.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He smirked at me and leaned closer. “You spanked me so hard you rearranged my DNA. Don’t be sorry that you ordered for me.”
He straightened back away, and I hated the distance between us. But this was hardly the kind of place where I could do even a fraction of the things that Troye made me want to do to him.
“I don’t know that I’ve had anyone accuse me of rearranging their DNA before.” I must have looked worried because Troye sent me a reassuring smile.
“It’s a good thing, I promise.” A sudden wash of pink colored his cheeks.
“Is that why you left without a word? Because it was good?”
He looked stricken, and maybe I should have gone easier on him, but it had been eating away at me, a decay I couldn’t get rid of.
“I was… overwhelmed, I think. But I didn’t leave because it was bad.”
“Were you hurt?”
Understanding washed over him, and his eyes widened. “No. Not at all. Not even a little. I just panicked. You’ve met me. I’m super rational. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“You did,” I admitted, and then I forgave him for it as if it were a choice I actually made. I’d already forgiven him. I was the one who should be sorry for messing around with someone so new with such little negotiation first. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”
“How did you get into that kind of thing? Like, did you just wake up one day and think gee, I really want to spank someone?”
Troye’s offhand remark nearly made me choke on my drink, and once I got it to go down the right tube, I cleared my throat. “Not exactly.”
He shifted so he was sitting closer to me.
“Because that’s kind of how it felt for me.
After the other night, I went to sleep, and it was like I woke up a different person.
Well, not a different person. But it was like I was the same person I always was, but there was this new thing inside of me.
And I don’t know if you put it there or if it was always there and you just woke it up. ”
“It’s not something someone else can give you. It’s not like a toy or a game. And it’s not as simple as you’re into it or you’re not. Because everyone is different, and some people are into a lot of different things, and other people only like specific things.”
“And how do you find out?”
Troye was trying to kill me with his earnest curiosity and the big, round, hopeful puppy dog eyes.
He wasn’t completely innocent—he was too old for that.
He had the eyes of someone who had been through some shit and some of his innocence had been scratched away.
But then I came along, and it seemed he found this untouched part of himself.
“My college boyfriend and I did a lot of experimenting together. He kind of liked some of the things we did, and he never complained in the moment. He was always just as into it as I was, but he had a tough upbringing. He came from a very religious family, and I think he dealt with a lot of misplaced guilt. When he broke up with me, it was because I’d told him that there were things we did that I truly loved, that I connected with in ways that I never expected. ”
“And he broke up with you for that?” Troye looked as horrified and confused as I’d felt at the time.
“He had a lot of religious trauma. It was like he couldn’t be gay and kinky. Like one or the other would be fine, but both was too much.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “I’m not. It sucked in the moment, but by the time he broke up with me, I kind of guessed that we weren’t going to make it.
We’d dialed back the kinky explorations a lot because I could see he was uncomfortable with things.
Never in the moment, but it would come upon him after.
Sometimes weeks later. It was like his religious programming needed a few weeks to break through. ”
“That’s hard. I mean, I wasn’t raised with any kind of belief system. Hell, I was barely raised at all, but I know that some things are harder to shake.”
“I’d really like to ask you what you meant when you said you were barely raised at all.”
Troye looked away and then back at me. And he opened his mouth like he might want to tell me, but then he closed it again as our food was delivered.
“This smells amazing,” Troye said, leaning closer to his plate to get a better whiff. His expression relaxed into something happier, somewhat put at ease by the arrival of food and the break in the conversation.
I took the hint that he didn’t want to discuss that particular remark he’d made.
“So you’ve never been with someone with my particular interests before?” I asked as I watched him dig into his food. He made a cute little hum of approval.
“What exactly are your interests? I mean, besides the super obvious one.” He shifted position and more color washed over his cheeks. “You got me good,” he said with a smile, like he was proud.
“And you took it well.”
Troye stilled at the compliment, again, and ducked his head.
“I should ask you what parts you liked best.”
He shook his head. “I asked you first.”
“Okay, that’s fair. You have to understand that the kink world is broad and deep and vast. There’s a million different ways to like things, and so long as everything is consensual, they’re not wrong.”
Troye lost all the color in his face. “Are you preparing to tell me that you’re into something like… super extra? ‘Cause I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think I’d have fun with the extremes.”
“Actually, I was getting ready to tell you that as far as kinky men go, my interests are fairly tame. I like being in control.”
He snorted. “Duh.”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “I like spanking naughty, sassy boys. I like tying them up. Or putting them in chastity. There’s a lot of things I like, but what I like most is finding someone who likes them with me. Someone who needs the things I need, but in a different way.”
“You like being needed.”
At first, I thought Troye had oversimplified things, but then I realized he’d struck to the heart of the matter.
I liked being needed. He wasn’t wrong. I’d had play partners before, and the ones I liked best were the ones who had needed me to take that dominant role with them as opposed to the ones who’d merely wanted it.
And yes, there was a difference. Some people played because they liked to play with kink.
To them, it was a fun little sex game that they could take or leave.
A different way to get their rocks off. For others, it was an escape.
An outlet. A pressure release. For some, it was family and safety and community.
“I like being needed,” I confirmed. My answer seemed to satisfy Troye for the moment. At least, I thought it had, and then he looked at me with those dark, sparkling blue eyes of his.
“I didn’t know I needed what you did… until you did it.”
His confession kicked my right in the heart.
It made me want to bundle him close and brush his hair out of his face and kiss his forehead.
I wanted to protect him from himself and his inability to take a compliment, and I also wanted to protect him from me.
From all the big feelings my actions had given him.
“Did you know I needed it?” Troye asked, his gaze unwavering. It was like he was trying to read my thoughts, to know my answer before I said it, so if it was something bad, he could prepare.
“I had a feeling.”
“Based on?”
“Based on experience. And I could’ve been dead wrong.
I could have put you over my knee, and you could’ve hated every second.
You could have told me to stop and then thrown me out of your hotel room.
But you melted into me. You’d been wound tight since the moment I laid eyes on you in that plane, and it was like each time I spanked you, some of those knots started to unravel. ”
“That’s how it felt too. Like you were undoing me.
It was like I couldn’t hold onto anything.
Not my embarrassment for being over your lap in the first place, and not any of the things that led me to that point.
Not the plane incident or the whole disaster of a weekend I’d had.
It was all there, churning around inside me and then you just…
made it stop.” He paused and looked at me, his expression unreadable.
“How do you… how would I… could you?” Troye stopped and put his hands in his lap and took a deep breath. This time when he spoke, he kept his eyes closed, as though it was too hard to look at me and say what he needed to say. “Could we do that again?”
“You want to do it again?” My heart fucking soared, and in that moment I realized how scared I’d been that he’d be like my college boyfriend, who got a taste of something and then ran the other way. Honestly, though, in a way, Troye had. That’s exactly what he’d done.
“If we do, there’s rules. Non-negotiable rules.”
“I wasn’t aware that rules were negotiable.”
“In the lifestyle, most things are negotiable. But not this. If we do this, you don’t get to leave after. Not without telling me. Not without talking to me first. If you do this, I’m not going to let you run away from me again, Troye.”
There was a moment when everything stood still, where neither of us breathed, and I thought maybe I’d gone too far, too hard, been too forceful. And then he nodded, just once.
“Okay. I won’t run,” he said. “I promise.”