Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Freddy
The second day of the year was going great so far, which made Freddy feel a little hopeful his afternoon meeting wouldn’t be as difficult as he feared.
Lexie had texted him first thing that Mistress Camille had put a membership application through to the clubs, which meant he would definitely be seeing her again. Soon, hopefully.
Since he’d gotten so much done yesterday, his morning flowed smoothly right until lunch time, when he was meeting Morgan. He liked to check in on her at least every other week, if not more, to see how she was doing, especially now that she’d moved in with Master Brian.
Not that it was a romantic relationship.
It wasn’t. It was a bunch of overprotective Dominants deciding she shouldn’t be living on her own.
Yes, Morgan’s past made the Dominants extremely protective of her, but she would have to spread her wings sometime.
She truly might not have been ready yet, though, and her living situation and Master Brian’s living situations happened to be changing right around the same time, so they moved in together platonically and shared Master Brian’s house.
She had her own bedroom and studio for her work, and they were nothing more than friends.
Though the move had caused a bit of consternation around the club.
“Hello, beautiful,” Freddy said, bending down to give Morgan a kiss on the head before sliding into the booth across from her.
As always, she was stunning. Red curls flowed over her shoulders and down her back, and her wide green eyes were expertly emphasized with makeup and the green turtleneck she was wearing.
She looked like Ariel from the Little Mermaid had come on land and decided to set up shop with the regular humans.
Sometimes, Morgan was just as na?ve as Ariel had been, too.
“Hey! Happy New Year!” She beamed at him.
“Happy New Year.”
Morgan’s energy was infectious. She’d changed a lot in the past year, having gone from an unintentionally judgmental and wary woman to someone who was excited and happy about every new discovery in her life. And there were a lot of new discoveries.
“They have corned beef hash on the menu. I always wanted to try corned beef hash.”
“Do you know what corned beef hash is?” Freddy asked. He wouldn’t deter her if that was really what she wanted, but Morgan sometimes had some odd ideas about things.
“No,” she replied happily. “Not really. But they talk about roast hash in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and I figure it’s kind of like that, right?”
Watching Morgan discover and immerse herself in popular culture had been a fascinating social experiment.
“I always assumed they were the same thing,” he confirmed, smiling at her excitement. Being around Morgan made him remember how lucky he was. Sometimes, life got him down, sure, but he’d never had to go through what she had.
“Then that’s what I want.” She put her menu down, folding her hands atop it. “Freddy…” Her voice had an odd note, drawing his full attention. Morgan only sounded like that when she needed life advice.
She’d needed a lot of life advice at first, thanks to being sheltered as a child by parents who homeschooled her, so they could control her.
Then they basically sold her to a Dom, who kept her as a slave with only the barest sense of consent when they needed money.
Patrick’s cousin had found out about her situation at a play party and rescued her, bringing her to Maryland to get her away from that scene and everyone there who knew her.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to bring the Dom in question up on charges, but he’d been kicked out of the community, which was all they could do.
“What do you need, love?” he asked, reaching his hand across the table to put it atop hers.
“How can you tell if someone is a bad friend?”
Oof. She could never ask the easy questions, could she?
“Hey, y’all, can I get you something to drink?”
Saved by the server gave Freddy some time to think while they put in their orders for both drinks and food since they were ready. Once the server had bustled away again, he met Morgan’s gaze.
“Why do you ask?”
In the beginning, her questions had often been very general, but over time, they’d shifted to become more specific.
She hadn’t had any questions about friendship in a while, not since she’d made her first set.
Granted, they weren’t the friends Freddy might have chosen for her, but they’d done her good in terms of confidence.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Sam and Noelle,” she replied, fiddling with the edges of her napkin.
“I know,” he said, smiling encouragingly and hiding his wince.
Her second set of friends weren’t much better than her first. The majority of her first group of friends were heavily disliked by a lot of the other Stronghold submissives.
Carolyn and Marissa were catty and often mean, but Amy was a total sweetheart, so when they’d pulled Morgan into their little group, he’d done his best to counteract Carolyn and Marissa’s influence while encouraging her to spend as much time as possible with Amy.
Lately, she’d been hanging around a lot with Sam and Noelle.
Sam, otherwise known as Mistress Samantha when she was feeling her ‘top’ side—as a switch, she both topped and bottomed—was wonderful, but Noelle…
he was pretty sure Noelle was going to be more bad news.
So far, she’d been on her best behavior at the club, but he could feel tension gathering there like an oncoming storm.
“I don’t think Noelle likes us very much. She does all the things you said a friend is supposed to do, but sometimes…” Morgan sighed. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Freddy replied immediately.
Morgan was showing good instincts, and he wanted her to trust them.
This was definitely growth since she had a tendency to take situations and people exactly as they appeared and not look any deeper.
“You should trust yourself. What does your gut say about Noelle?”
“That she’s not very nice. Which is odd because she’s nicer than Carolyn and Marissa are sometimes.
All the things she says are nice, but…” Morgan made a face.
“It’s… I don’t know. She says the right things, but somehow, sometimes, the way she says it makes it sound like she’s saying something else. I don’t think she likes me very much.”
“Honey, I’m not sure she likes anyone very much,” he said truthfully.
“But Sam likes her. So do Amy, Carolyn, and Marissa.”
Ah, which explained why Morgan was second-guessing herself.
She was still learning a lot about friendships and people, so since all her other friends liked Noelle was making her question her intuition.
What Freddy found fascinating was she had figured out Noelle but still seemed perfectly happy being friends with Carolyn and Marissa.
“So far, she’s been a good friend to them, so there’s no reason not to, I guess.
That or maybe they don’t get the same vibe from her that you do, but that doesn’t mean your vibe is wrong.
” In fact, he was pretty sure Morgan was one hundred percent right in this instance, but he also knew he was biased.
He was friends with Noelle’s old roommate, and while Noelle hadn’t been able to evict Iris, she’d done the next best thing and ended their lease without giving Iris any warning.
From what Freddy had gleaned, Noelle hadn’t liked that Iris had made new friends.
She seemed insecure to the extreme and incredibly selfish.
She was being given a chance at Stronghold, at Iris’ insistence, because Iris was too damn nice.
Freddy often considered himself the protector of the submissives, and he would absolutely protect Noelle from an importuning Dom, but he also wanted to protect the other subs from her.
“She seems very unhappy,” Morgan said after a moment. “It’s sad.”
“You can’t make her happy,” Freddy reminded her gently. “She has to do that on her own.”
“I’ll just hang out with her when the others are there. I don’t have to hang out with her on my own just because we’re part of the same group of friends, right?”
“Right.” The arrival of the drinks caused a minor distraction, then he asked the question he thought he’d be discussing today. “How is it living with Brian?”
“Ma— I mean, Brian,” Morgan quickly corrected herself before calling him ‘Master Brian,’ “has been great. He’s very careful.
Too careful sometimes. I’m not going to fall apart just because he has a preference or asks me to do something around the house.
” Her brow furrowed grumpily as she took a sip of her water.
“Has he asked you to do anything around the house?” He could understand why Brian would want to be careful with that. Morgan had basically been a twenty-four-seven sex slave and housekeeper to her last master, but she also wanted to do some things for herself.
“No.” She huffed the word out, obviously annoyed. “He keeps trying to do things for me. I am not his babygirl. And if I was his babygirl, I should at least be getting some sex out of it.”
“Uh… here you go.” The server had appeared at their table at exactly the wrong time and was blushing hotly. Putting their food in front of them, she quickly fled.
Morgan looked a bit contrite.
“Oops,” she mouthed, giving Freddy a little shrug. He shook with the effort to hold back his laughter.
“We’ll give her a really good tip,” he reassured her, grinning widely.
She smiled back, her shoulders relaxing.
“That’s the other nice thing about going out with you. You don’t insist on paying like I don’t have my own money or something.” She stabbed at her salad with a fork, spearing the lettuce as though she had something against it.
Interesting. Rebellious Morgan was out in full force today, and personally, Freddy was happy to see it.
When Morgan had first joined Stronghold, they’d come up with a ‘cover story’ for her so she could fit in better with the other submissives and because she hadn’t been sure she wanted everyone to know her past. Unfortunately, because she also came with a ton of baggage—not to mention misconceptions about the lifestyle—she’d managed to alienate some of the other submissives.
It hadn’t helped that the Doms were constantly fussing over her and giving her attention the other subs didn’t understand.
Freddy was still annoyed he hadn’t been consulted about that decision.
He could have told the Doms it was a bad idea to have all the Dominants clued in and none of the submissives.
It set Morgan apart right from the beginning.
She’d had some really odd and stereotyped ideas about Doms and subs, thanks to how sheltered she’d been and had been trained to be competitive with other women.
The first time she’d met him and found out he was a sub, she’d assumed he was gay, and when he’d corrected her and told her he was bisexual and preferred women, she’d been utterly confused. It didn’t matter what year it was; in Morgan’s world, women submitted to men.
She’d also made a lot of assumptions about who was what based on their appearances.
Talk about a hot mess. She’d gone along with it because the Doms told her it was the best thing for her.
Much more well-intentioned than the previous assholes she’d been involved with but with disastrous results.
Freddy was still doing clean-up around that, although Morgan was slowly becoming more open about her past with the other submissives.
She wanted to tell them on her own terms, though, which meant there were quite a few who were still in the dark.
“Has Brian been paying for everything?” he asked mildly, doing his best to keep his opinions out of his voice.
“He’s trying to.” Morgan’s eyes glinted and her chin lifted. “I’m going grocery shopping after this. I took the list off the fridge this morning.”
“Good for you. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.” She beamed at him. “So… enough about me. How was your New Year’s Eve?”
She hadn’t been at the Marquis party, none of her group of friends had other than Sam, who had come with Q. Caroline threw a New Year’s Eve party every year with her husband, and Morgan had gone to that instead.
“It was great. I actually met someone.” He grinned as Morgan perked up. Despite everything she’d been through, she still believed in love and happy endings. “She’s a friend of Julie’s, and she’s amazing.”
“Is she a member?”
“No, but I think she’s interested in becoming one. Either way, we exchanged numbers.”
“Oooh, have you called her yet?” Morgan’s interest was partly on his behalf and partly because she was still trying to figure out ‘the rules’ of dating.
“No, it’s too soon. Plus, I tend to try to let the Dominant take the lead for the first call.” He grinned at her.
“So, they get all the control over contact?” she asked thoughtfully.
“No.” Freddy shook his head. “I still get to decide whether I pick up or call them back. If they make me wait too long, I might decide they weren’t worth my time, but I would probably answer to find out why it took them so long to call.”
“How long is too long?”
“As a rule of thumb? I know there are some people who think you’re supposed to wait three days. After three days, I start to feel a little insulted.” He chuckled.
“That’s what I read,” Morgan said, nodding happily.
She’d been reading a lot of romance blogs lately, trying to figure out the ‘rules.’ Freddy kept stressing to her not to take them too seriously, but as long as she was enjoying herself, he wasn’t going to tell her not to read them.
She was probably getting a better idea of what a healthy relationship could look like from the blogs than she had from her parents or her ex.
“I prefer it when people contact me sooner rather than later. If she calls tonight, I’ll be thrilled.” Mentally, he crossed his fingers. With his anticipated afternoon, he would love something nice to end the day, like a call from Mistress Camille.
Even if all she wanted to do was scene again.
They’d been so well matched, he would happily scene with her, though, truthfully, he was already hoping for more.