Chapter Four
Sai made it exactly as far as the bar before his legs decided that was enough walking.
He climbed onto a stool at the far end, away from the press of bodies, and Amani was in front of him before he'd settled, already reaching for a glass.
He didn't ask what Sai wanted. He poured something amber and small and slid it across, then leaned both forearms on the bar in the hoodie he never used to wear and looked at Sai like he knew exactly how much a person could hurt while still sitting upright.
"He's an idiot," Amani said. "For whatever it's worth. It runs in the family. We're all idiots about the people we want. You should see what I put my own through."
Sai huffed a not quite laugh and turned the glass without drinking from it.
Behind him the club roared on, oblivious, music and laughter and the clink of glasses, so many shifters chasing the thing he'd come here a year ago to chase and never caught.
He didn't want the drink. He didn't want any of it.
He'd never wanted any of it for its own sake.
He'd wanted to become someone who could stand in this room and not feel like a fraud, because that someone might have a chance with the man who'd just told him, gently, to go away and find an easier love.
The thing was, Sai had spent a year being told what he was by people who didn't know him.
Strangers had decided he was a sub before he'd finished his first drink.
Strangers had decided what he could take and how fast. And now the one man who actually knew him, who knew him down to the way his scales flickered when he was nervous, had sat him down in a quiet room and decided the most important thing of all on his behalf.
That he wasn't enough of something. That he should give up and go be small somewhere safe.
He was so tired of other people holding the pen.
He didn't have to watch the hallway. He smelled Kyan before he saw him, warm amber cutting through fifty other musks, and Sai gripped the edge of the bar and did not turn around and did not run, which a year ago he absolutely would have done.
Kyan came up beside him, careful, leaving space. "Sai. I want to—"
"No." Sai turned on the stool and looked at him, and his voice came out level, which surprised them both. "No. This time you listen to me."
Kyan closed his mouth.
"I don't know how kinky I am," Sai said.
"That's the truth. I don't know what I like.
I don't know what my limits are, or even half of what's out there to have limits about.
You're right that I freaked out when you spanked me.
You're right that I'm soft. I'm jumpy. I climb out of bathroom windows at parties.
All of that is true and none of it is the point.
" He heard his own voice climbing and let it.
"The point is that I want to find out. I have spent the last year reading forums until three in the morning.
I have watched videos that made me cover my eyes and then made me uncover them.
I have read every kinky book I could buy without my card statement embarrassing me, and I have come to this club I hate, over and over, and let strangers teach me badly, and gotten hurt, all because I want to know.
Maybe I'll find out I only like one tame thing.
Maybe I'll never own a single piece of leather in my life.
Maybe the most adventurous I ever get is a pair of handcuffs and a blindfold I trust somebody enough to wear.
But that's mine to find out. Mine. Not yours to decide for me from across a table because you've appointed yourself the expert on what I can handle. "
He had to stop to breathe. Kyan was staring at him like he'd never seen him before.
"And here's the part that's going to sting," Sai went on, quieter now, which was harder than the shouting.
"Maybe you and I don't end up back together.
Maybe that's gone, and I broke it, and I have to live with that.
But even if it is, I still want to know this part of myself.
In my own small way, on my own terms, somewhere I actually feel safe.
And right now the only person I'd feel safe learning it from is standing here telling me I'm not allowed to learn it at all.
" He shook his head. "You don't get to be the one who knows me best and also the one who won't show me anything. Pick one."
Neither of them moved. Somewhere down the bar a man laughed at something else entirely.
When Kyan spoke, his voice had dropped so low Sai had to lean in to catch it over the music. "Not here," he said. "I'm not having this with the whole room watching. Come back to the room. Please. Not to send you home this time. To do it right."
Sai searched his face for the trap in it and didn't find one. He set the untouched drink down, slid off the stool, and let Kyan take his hand.
Amani watched them go, trying very hard not to look hopeful and failing. Past him, at the end of the bar, Nero’s dark gaze followed their progress as far as the hallway, then went back to watching the room.
The door of room two closed behind them and dropped the music back down to a pulse in the wall. Kyan didn't go to the table this time, didn't put the careful distance between them. He stood close and ran a hand through his hair and looked, for the first time all night, like a man with no plan left.
"You're right," he said. "About all of it.
I've been so busy protecting you from me that I never once asked what you actually wanted.
That's not love. That's just control wearing love's coat.
So. If we're doing this, we're doing it properly.
From the ground up. The way you should have been brought into it a year ago by someone who gave a damn. "
Relief went through Sai like warm water. He sat on the couch, and this time he didn't pull his legs up small. "Okay. Teach me. Where do we start?"
"We start with the floor under everything." Kyan sat beside him, turned to face him, close but not crowding. "Before any of the fun, before a single thing happens, you need a safe word. We talked about it earlier. Now you're getting one for real."
"I've seen people use red."
"Red works fine in a lot of places. It's the generic default, the one the apps and the books all teach, and there's nothing wrong with it.
" Kyan's mouth tilted, and for a moment the weight of the night lifted off it.
"But you're not in a lot of places. You're in my aunt's house.
And in this building, the word is Lioness. "
Sai blinked. "Lioness."
"Lioness." Kyan said it like it had a capital letter.
"My aunt built this whole place out of nothing because the world wanted her to be small, quiet, and decorative, and she decided the world could go hang.
She put one word at the center of it, hers, so that anyone who ever came down that elevator would have something nobody could argue them out of.
Every person who works this floor knows it.
Every regular is supposed to learn it the first night they walk in.
" For a moment the easy teaching voice went hard.
"You should have had it a year ago. Someone should’ve put it in your hands the very first time, before they put anything else on you.
They didn't. So I'm giving it to you now, and I need you to actually take it, because it only works if you believe it works.
You say Lioness, and everything stops. Not slows down.
Not eases off. Stops. Lights up, hands off, scene over, no matter who you're with or how far in we are or how good it's going.
Saying it will never once make you a disappointment. Do you understand me?"
Sai's eyes had gone hot again, and this time he didn't fight it.
A word. One word, his to keep, that no scene could argue around.
A few days ago he'd had a stranger's hand on his face and no way to make stop mean stop, and here was Kyan handing him the thing that would have ended it before it started, the thing the whole building had been quietly built around, the thing nobody had thought he was worth handing.
The scales came up along his cheekbones, both sides, gold and unhidden, and for once he let them stay.
"Lioness," he repeated, and his voice cracked on it, and he didn't care.
"Lioness." Kyan reached up and brushed his thumb under Sai's eye, catching the wet before it could fall. "It's yours now. Nobody can take it back."
Sai nodded, and held onto the word like a coin pressed into his palm, and then made himself keep going, because if he stopped to feel all of it he was going to cry in front of Kyan for an hour, and he wasn't ready for that yet. "Okay. What else. You said limits."
"Limits." Kyan settled back, giving him room, his voice steadying into something Sai realized he'd been starving for without knowing it, the sound of a person who knew the path explaining it patiently to someone who didn't. "Hard limits are the things that are off the table completely.
Not tonight, not ever, not even if you're curious in the moment.
You don't have to know all of yours yet.
Most people figure them out over years. But you've got more than you think, because you've already been hurt, and hurt teaches fast. So.
Tell me. What do you already know you never want? "
Sai thought about it. Really thought, instead of guessing at the answer a stranger wanted.
"No sharing," he said slowly. "I don't want to be passed around.
I'm not a thing that gets handed to the next guy.
" He watched Kyan's face go briefly murderous at the implication that anyone had ever suggested it, and went on.
"No being left alone. Tied up and just left somewhere, like a coat on a hook.
No." His voice dropped. "And no pictures.
Ever. I don't want to find a piece of myself on some site I never agreed to.
A blindfold, maybe, someday, but only with someone I'd trust with my whole life, because I have to be able to not see and still feel safe, and I'm not there with anyone. "
"Those," Kyan said, and the pride in it was unmistakable, "are exactly the right answers.
Those are the limits of a man who's actually been paying attention.
Thank you for telling me." He said it formally, like it mattered, like Sai had handed him something valuable and he intended to be careful with it.
"What about yours?" Sai asked. "You don't get to just be the teacher. I want to know what you won't do."
Kyan considered, and Sai got the sense he didn't get asked this often, that men assumed a lion had no lines.
"Blood," he said finally. "Knives, needles, anything that breaks the skin.
I'm a predator, I know what I look like, but I don't want any of that and I never have.
Somebody brings out a blade, I'm done, scene over, I leave.
That's mine." He met Sai's eyes. "And sharing.
Same as yours, from the other side. I have never once in my life wanted to watch someone else touch what's mine, and I'm not about to start. "
Sai went warm all over at what's mine, at the easy certainty of it, at how much he wanted to still be inside that word. He'd spent a year trying to belong to a world. He'd only ever wanted to belong to one person in it.
They sat with it, the two of them, in the quiet room, and Sai understood that the ground had been laid.
Not the fun part. Not yet. Something better than the fun part, the part nobody had ever bothered to give him: a word that was his, a set of lines that were his, and a man who'd asked instead of assumed.
Whatever happened next, he would walk into it knowing how to walk out.
"Okay," Sai said softly, and found he was smiling, wet-eyed and ridiculous and steadier than he'd felt in a year. "Okay. I've got my word and my limits and yours. Now what?"
Kyan looked at him for a long moment, and the heat came back into his eyes, banked and patient and certain.
"Now," he said, "we find out what you actually like."