Chapter 33 #2
“Roughly,” Hudson said with a shrug. “But yeah, our lives are honestly fine, when put in a greater context. I’m still going to complain, though.”
“Me too.”
Delilah arrived home, and Inara greeted her with several meows.
“I’m employed!” she announced.
Hudson and I cheered, rushing to give her congratulatory hugs.
“It only took eight months! And one-hundred-and-seventy applications! And my studio apartment! And my self-esteem and mental health and self-worth! And I’ll be doing something entirely unrelated to my only passion in life!
But I will now have my own money again and stop being a financial burden on my parents! So… yay!”
“Yay!” I said.
“Yay!” Hudson agreed.
I lifted the grass-fed beef into the air. “Tonight, we eat like kings!”
On the way home from a comedy show, Wes called me. I was already buzzing with good energy, my money worries swept away after an hour of laughter.
“I’m taking you to Third House when I get back,” he said. “I want you to meet my chosen family.”
My heart warmed. “Okay, but only if you pick me up at my place first so you can meet mine.”
“Deal. Pleasure doing business with you.”
I watched as a driver yelled at a biker who was yelling at a pedestrian in the bike lane. Ah, the circle of life. I loved New York.
“Where are you?” Wes asked.
Something about the question turned me on, and I wondered if that was toxic of me.
I shrugged to myself. Oh, well.
“Park Slope. Decided to take a shortcut and walk to the Fulton G.”
“I’ll stay on the phone with you until you get there,” he said softly.
I smiled, but my heart panged, knowing where his protectiveness came from. “I finished The Story of O.”
“And?”
“The ending was rough. Until I found out there was an even rougher ending they cut,” I said, referencing the alternate ending in which O tells her Master she would take her own life if he ended things with her, and he said he was cool with that, so she did.
“Say more.”
“I hated René,” I said. “He was a fake Dom.”
Wes laughed.
“I know the central theme was about the lengths O was willing to go for love, and I know it was more of a dark erotic fantasy than anywhere close to a romance, but… yeah, fuck René. He pawned O off like she meant nothing to him. And the branding and genital piercing part was an intense read.”
“Hard limits?”
“I’d say so. Maybe a tattoo.”
“You would let a Dom tattoo you?” Wes asked, a dark edge in his voice.
I blushed. “Maybe. But only after, like, ten years of marriage.”
He chuckled. “That’s reasonable. So you hated René for giving O to Sir Stephen.”
“Yeah, I think all the sharing in general turned me off,” I said. “But it was beautifully written. And of course, some parts were very hot. I’m honestly shocked it was released in the fifties, but I guess the French have always been thought leaders in the freak community.”
“It was hugely controversial and faced a lot of censorship, as you can imagine.” He paused. “I’m not a fan of sharing either, Nova.”
I swallowed, a current of satisfaction rolling through my body as I crossed the street.
“What were the parts that were very hot?”
I took a deep breath. “Oh, you know, ownership, as a concept. O’s body being open for her Master’s pleasure at all times—free use, I believe is the term from your reading list.” My heart pounded. “Pain, to an extent.”
Wes’s silence was deafening, even as the world around me was alight with energy and movement. All I could focus on was his long pause.
Had I said too much? Had he been rethinking his decision to try domming again after he’d sworn it off forever? Was he going to tell me the distance had sobered him, that we needed to stop? Did he—
“I wish I was with you right now,” Wes said, strained. “Fuck, Nova.”
I exhaled. I reached a busy intersection, turning up my volume all the way so I didn’t miss a single word.
“You have no idea, do you?” he asked me. “How fucking insane you make me.”
“I thought we decided you were already crazy before we met.”
He chuckled darkly. “Which should make my current state even more alarming.”
“So… those things are hot to you too?” I asked, still desperate for reassurance. My head was floaty from excitement, anticipation, and the sound of Wes unraveling. The sound of me making Wes unravel.
I knew there was an important reason for his emphasis on my desires over his own, given our power dynamic and the discrepancy in our experience levels, but I wanted more of Wes. I’d wanted more of him since the beginning.
“Yes, Nova, the idea of owning someone—their body mine to flood with both pleasure and pain whenever I please—is hot to me.”
I could hear the tension in his low, gravelly voice, as if he were on the verge of breaking.
“God, if I were with you right now, I would bite the shit out of you,” he said.
“Like a vampire?” My core pulsed, my voice failing to convey my teasing tone. I sounded breathless instead.
“Like a man who wants every other man who looks at you to see his bite mark on your skin.”
“Oh. Yes. Like that,” I said, rubbing my tingling neck as if I could feel Wes’s lips and teeth there from across the country. “Only if I can bite you back.”
“That can be arranged.”