Chapter 5 #4
He pulls out his phone, which is the latest model smartphone, only the best for Edz since he started earning more than enough to keep himself fed, and thumbs over to the sketches I sent him after our last appointment.
His pick is my second favorite of the four I sent.
I liked the more subtle shading of one of the others better, but Edz is anything but subtle, so maybe the brighter colors and high contrast of the one he’s picked suit him better.
“This one but can you add some of the orange from the tiger on my trap?”
Only Edz would call his shoulder a trap. I bet his personal trainer has a set of exercises to get him “trap” definition, too. Vain ass.
“Sure.” I take out my own phone, flip to the sketch he’s picked, send it to the thermal-fax, and grab the stencil before I lead Edz back to my station. He strips off and settles into the chair out of long familiarity and sighs as I start prepping his skin.
“You look tired, Bren,” he says.
“I am. I was up all night with Cappa.” Edz has met Cappa several times over the years.
If they’ve scened or slept together, which is likely given the two of them, neither has shoved it in my face.
“Some asshole ignored his safe word, ripped him up, and then used him as a punching bag for daring to tap out.”
“Anyone we know?” Edz asks.
We don’t move in the same circles anymore, me and Edz. He’s strictly underground clubs while I’ve gone as close to legit with Blunts as a sex club can get. Still, the kink community isn’t that large, even in the Big Apple, so we know a lot of the same players.
“Cappa says no, but I’m not sure I believe him.”
“Because?”
“Because it’s Cappa and he’d protect freaking Ted Bundy if he had a crush on him.”
Edz snorts. “True, that. You get a name, send it to me and I’ll put the word out. Ignoring a safe word is never okay.”
To be fair, Edz never ignored my safe word, so I can’t give him shit about that.
Plenty of other things he did to sabotage our relationship—not that he ever called it a relationship—but it’s all very old news and not worth giving him shit about, either.
Not when I can so easily get under his skin with other things.
“Dude, it’s time to start waxing back here,” I say as I shave the peach fuzz from his lower back. There are definitely some longer, darker hairs that weren’t here the last time I made a close inspection of his ass.
“Fuck off. My new bitch plucks me clean back there with her teeth.”
Mac didn’t call me a bitch, and I have the sense that he wouldn’t because he’d think it was disrespectful. That makes me smile as I toss the disposable razor and wipe Edz down again.
“Well, either she’s gap-toothed or she missed a spot,” I say, just to keep digging. “Do I know the new girl?”
“Uh-uh,” Edz mutters, before he tells me all about her.
She’s more than me. She’s the best, of course, because Edz always has to have the best. When we were together—not that we ever were together, because exclusivity is for vanillas, as Edz told me a million times—that was what Edz always wanted from me.
To be the best-dressed woman in the room. The best dancer. The best submissive.
I pause in setting out the ink caps to run my gloved hand over my face.
I parted ways with Edz more than six years ago.
I stopped trying to be the best and just started being myself.
Is that where I fell down? If I’d been the best would Ten have collared me?
Would Rob? Would Mac have stayed, or at least called today?
I shake myself. No one tells me what I am.
For the past five years, I’ve lived strictly on my own terms. I’ve turned my skin into something I’m comfortable inhabiting every day.
No one, least of all a blue-eyed silver fox who called me goddess for a scene and then disappeared, gets to tell me what that skin should be.
I pick up my machine and start on the line work and if anger fuels my artistry, then Edz will get a fierce fucking tattoo today.
When I close, I discover Edz has sent me a hundred-dollar tip, which makes me laugh.
He’s such an asshole. A loveable asshole at times, but still an asshole.
I split the hundred between me and Nicky, since Fareena called off again and it’s beginning to annoy me, and splurge on an Uber back to Logan and Emily’s instead of walking.
It’s only six blocks, but they’re long fucking blocks when my ass is dragging this hard.
Emily greets me at the door with very red eyes. She holds her hands out for my clothes and I strip down to Mac’s T-shirt. She hands me a pair of her fuzzy socks and after I pull them on, I sling my arm around her shoulders.
“Tell me,” I say.
“Daddy punished Cappa for lying but he still won’t tell Daddy the truth.”
Damn. I know Logan’s a responsible Dom with a deep understanding of a masochist’s needs, but punishing Cappa the day after he was beaten so bad he needed sixteen stitches doesn’t seem like a good idea.
And Cappa worships the ground Logan walks on, even if Logan doesn’t see it and Cappa won’t ever admit it to the man, so if Logan can’t get the truth out of him, I have no chance.
I squeeze her shoulders, not sure what to say.
I expect Logan and Cappa to be in the great room when we walk through, but the room’s empty. They don’t appear while I eat the late dinner Emily’s kept warm for me, and fuck if chicken chasseur with homemade, sourdough bread isn’t my new favorite thing. Finally, I ask.
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs. Daddy’s helping Cappa take a sponge bath without messing up his dressings.”
Good, that’s one less thing I’ll have to do before bed.
“Did you talk to your Daddy about your worries?” I ask.
Emily nods. “A little. I didn’t want to distract him from Cappa, but Daddy said we’ll have Knee Time tomorrow night and can talk it through for as long as I want.”
“Good.”
Emily’s told me about Knee Time. She kneels at Logan’s feet, they each share one thing they’re happy about and one thing they’re worried about, and then Logan can ask her anything and she has to be completely truthful and forthcoming in answering him.
The idea of Knee Time both attracts and terrifies me.
Complete honesty and full disclosure about anything a Dom wanted to ask me?
Hell to the no. But I’ve seen how much trust Emily and Logan have.
Does that come from baring your soul to your Dom on command?
From knowing you have no secrets from each other?
The people I’ve been closest to in my life—Bebe J, Ruby, Nicky, Edz, Ten, Rob—I’ve loved them all, but there’s no way I’d let them peer into my damn soul.
And yet it stings that none of the Doms who have topped me have ever demanded, or, hell, even offered, something like Knee Time.
I shake off that thought as I help Emily clear up and do the dishes. It’s after eleven already and Logan’s really, really strict about Emily’s bedtime. He’s not going to bend his rules just because Cappa’s having a crisis.
I’m not looking forward to another night in Logan and Emily’s guest bed, particularly because I’m going to be in it with Cappa instead of Mac—who still hasn’t called or sent a single text since his lame-ass thumbs up in the middle of the night—but I figure I’m so tired that I’ll just crash out.
That plan’s shot to shit when Cappa curls up against me, wanting to talk.
I hug him and listen as my eyelids get heavier and heavier.
Instead of telling me the truth about last night, he tells me about how Logan has been taking care of him all day, including making him wear clothespins on his tongue for an hour after refusing to answer questions about his abuser.
Should I let him down gently? Of course, I should. But it’s after midnight, and that’s just not me, even when I’m not so tired I’m propping my eyelids open with toothpicks.
“Cap, you can yell at me in the morning for being an asshole, but you have to stop fixating on Master Logan. He’s never going to be your Dom, man. He and Emily are soul mates. He’d never fucking cheat on her and you wouldn’t want him if he did.”
“Master Logan’s topping Lucy outside the club,” Cappa says in a small voice.
He is? Fuck that noise. And why didn’t Emily tell me?
“All the more reason to move on, Cap. Logan’s topping Lucy but he’s not topping you. How much clearer could he make it?”
“Maybe he just doesn’t know? Maybe Lucy asked him to top her and all I have to do is ask?”
“He’s a Dom. He knows. He doesn’t feel the same way.”
“But, Bren—”
“No buts. I’m sorry if I’m being an asshole when you’re already hurting, Cap, but you have to let this go.
Take it from me. Crushing on Ten and Rob got me nowhere but hurt and lonely.
Loving someone who can’t love you back? It’s shit.
Having Logan top you when he’s in love with someone else is going to fuck with you endlessly. Don’t go there.”
“But he’s already topping Lucy—”
“Maybe, but I guarantee he’s not fucking Lucy, and I know that’s what you really want. Be honest with me and tell me you don’t care that he won’t ever fuck you, that he’ll top you and then he’ll go to bed with Emily. Tell me that doesn’t fuck your head around sideways?”
He blows out a broken breath.
“I think I could deal with him just topping me,” Cappa says in a tiny voice.
“And I’m calling you a liar. You want him to be your Dom and he won’t ever be. He didn’t choose you when he was single and he’s not going to choose you now that he’s not. He chose Emily. He’s collared her. They’re getting married. There is no room for you in their relationship.”
“I know that. I wouldn’t ever try to come between them.”
I groan. “So, what are you getting out of it?”
“Master Logan makes me feel safe,” he whispers.
“And you’d never want more? You’d never want him to kiss you or fuck you or just fucking hold you? You wouldn’t resent every touch he gives Emily? Every look you wish was aimed your way—”
“Now you are being an asshole, Bren.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I am. But I’ve been there and I’m telling you, it doesn’t work. You think you can keep your heart out of it, but I see the way you look at him, the way you’ve always looked at him, and it will never just be topping for you.”
“What if I could?”
“What if the moon was made of cheese, man? Please, Cap, I’m too tired to be diplomatic about this.
Do not ask Logan to top you. It will not go the way you want it to.
And if you think about it when you’re not fucked in the head, you’ll know you deserve more than the scraps of attention he can give you.
” I hug him tight, careful of his injuries.
“We both do. Pinkie pact that neither of us will settle anymore, huh?”
He holds up his pinkie and I hook it with mine.
“You’re giving up on Ten?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I should have done it a long time ago. I should have refused scenes with him. I won’t do any more. Pinkie pact.”
“And Rob?”
I haven’t done a scene with Rob in months.
Since I asked him to Philharmonic in the Park—his thing, not mine—and he told me very gently that it would be a bad idea for us to do anything together outside the club.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from asking me to volunteer at his shelter during their August fundraiser.
But I guess that’s different in his mind.
Anyway, I got his message loud and clear.
“And Rob. No more Doms who are ashamed to be seen with me outside of Blunts.”
“Bren, fuck, I don’t think that’s what it was about.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? Pinkie pact. C’mon.”
He shakes my pinkie. “Pinkie pact. It wasn’t someone from the club. I wasn’t lying about that. But he’s Master Drew’s friend. That’s how we met.”
“You add him to the damn blacklist, and we tell Master Logan and Master Javier about this, Cap. Fuck.”
“They’ll say it’s nothing to do with Blunts.”
“Neither of us know what they’ll say until they say it, but I guarantee you Logan will not let this go. If Drew is introducing house subs to abusers, that’s a club matter.”
Cappa releases my pinkie and cuddles his face into my shoulder. “Thanks, Bren. I know you’re right. It’s just . . . it still hurts that he left.”
“I know.” We all felt more than a little abandoned when Logan turned his role as Master of Training over to Ryan and pulled away from the club for the better part of six months.
I understand now why he did it, and it was probably the right decision because he was not in a good place to be topping anyone, but it still hurt.
“He’s back and he’s not going anywhere. He promised and you know he doesn’t break promises.
So, we’ll deal with this and then we’ll find good Doms for both of us, huh? ”
“Yeah, okay. What about Master Theo? Emily said you guys slept together over the weekend.”
That little girl and I are going to have to have a talk. She didn’t tell me about Lucy but she tells Cappa about Theo?
“We slept in the same place,” I say. “Not really together. And that’s never going anywhere, either.”
Because I can’t trust Theo. Not completely. He and I will always be on opposite sides of an invisible line.
And because Theo’s never once, in any of the scenes we’ve done, made me feel like Mac did in our very first scene.
“Go to sleep, man. You need to get better so we can start the Great Dom Hunt.”
Cappa snorts softly but he doesn’t answer and a few minutes later, he lets out a cute little snore.
Leaving me staring at the shadowed ceiling again, looking for answers it doesn’t have.