Chapter 2
Thandie~
To say that Kelly McKenna was driving me crazy was an understatement.
While I loved the woman, this wedding was turning her into a lunatic, and she was taking the rest of us down with her.
Now, it wasn’t that she was exactly a bridezilla, because she wasn’t.
Kelly was more like just being picky, and her need for everything to be perfect was weighing heavily on the rest of us.
Luckily for me, my parents, Kenneth and Rosemary Ames, had raised me in the church, and patience had been preached about often.
Of course, all virtues had been praised regularly, and since my father had been and still was one of my hometown’s pastors, I’d heard my fair share of sermons.
In addition to having a pastor for a father, my mother also worked for the church as one of their youth counselors, and so I understood patience.
My appreciation for patience had also helped me when I’d chosen criminal law as my profession, knowing that I’d be going to school for decades to achieve my dreams, but I’d done it, and at thirty-three-years old, I had a very successful career under my belt, and the law firm that I worked for had made it possible for me to be a homeowner at a rather young age, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
In fact, that was how I’d met Kelly McKenna.
I’d been looking for my first home, and Kelly had been and still was a real estate agent, the chance of luck pairing us together when I’d chosen her agency to help me with looking for a house.
We had immediately hit it off, and when she wasn’t driving me crazy with wedding plans, Kelly was the best person on the planet.
While we had a lot in common, it was our mutual love of Yahtzee that really bonded us in a way that nothing else could.
Of course, with our busy schedules, we weren’t always able to get together for a do or die game of Yahtzee, but whenever we did, it was a cut-throat all-nighter, and the loser always had to pay for pedicures.
Honestly, it wasn’t for the weak, so Kelly and I never invited anyone else to play with us.
I could recall the first and only time that her fiancé, Brodrick, had watched us play a game, and it’d been enough for him to never want to do it again.
However, credit to him, he hadn’t broken up with Kelly after seeing that dark side of her, and so, since then, I’d been Team Brodrick, happy that they’re finally getting married.
Granted, juggling work, home, and Kelly’s wedding wasn’t an easy thing to do.
Luckily for her, I was used to long days and nights, and after four years of college, law school, and internships, sleep was often a myth in my life, though that wasn’t a complaint.
Thanks to my dedication and patience, I had the career that I’d always wanted, and my life was a good one.
Yeah, my love life kind of sucked, but I was okay with that for the time being.
With that patience working again, I’d rather wait for the right guy than settle with someone that I was going to end up smothering to death in his sleep.
That thought had me automatically thinking about Kelly’s older brother, Beck McKenna, and even though it was pointless, there were worse things to think about than a man with the looks and career that Beck had.
Not only was the man smart, dedicated, and ambitious, but it was obvious to anyone who knew him that he loved his family, and it was hard not to admire that kind of sweetness.
Now, when Kelly had first introduced me to her brother, she had listed his accolades like the poor man had been on an auction block.
It’d been sweet, funny, if a tad awkward.
Beck McKenna was an oncologist, worked around the clock, and he had a great reputation among the medical community, his name often referred when a family was facing the worst.
Apart from his professional credentials, there was also the fact that Beck was hot as freakin’ hell.
He was around six-foot-two, had blonde hair, blue eyes, and having seen that man in just a pair of swim shorts before, it was very obvious that he believed in his physical health, that six-pack of his a temptation to women everywhere.
Honestly, he kind of reminded me of Matthew Noszka, and while my dating history was riddled with mostly Black men, I didn’t have a preference and could appreciate men of all ethnicities.
Still, I wasn’t sure if the same could be said for Beck.
While I was positive that the McKenna family didn’t have a racist bone in their bodies, if Beck ever had a date with him, she usually fit the profile.
At any rate, Beck McKenna’s love life was none of my business, and truth be told, it was probably time for me to get back out there.
I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d been on a date, and I wasn’t trying to become a cliché at Kelly’s wedding.
While I was her Maid-of-Honor, I had no intention of getting banged by one of Brodrick’s groomsmen or some drunken cousin that wasn’t going to even remember my name the next day.
If I was going to break my dry spell, then I wanted it to be worth the trouble, not another disappointing regret to add to the list of regrets that I already had.
Yeah, no thanks.
I also didn’t sleep with colleagues, so that also limited my options when looking for a good time.
A woman’s professional career was always more fragile than that of a man’s, and right or wrong, that’s just the way that it was.
Men were able to recover from scandal easier than women were, and so the last thing that I was willing to do was risk my career for some dick.
Plus, I couldn’t lie and say that I didn’t judge men by their profession, and even though it was a million different kinds of wrong, if it was a choice between a lawyer and a mechanic to jump into bed with, I’d pick the mechanic every time.
For whatever reason, clean-cut didn’t do it for me, but I suspected that being raised in the church might have something to do with that.
While I loved and respected my father very much, tamed and safe just didn’t do it for me.
Just then, there was a knock on my office door, and one of the law clerks came skipping into the room with a huge smile on her face. Out of all the clerks at the firm, Ellie was my favorite, and if there was any kind of superhero in my life, it was her.
“What’s that smile for?” I asked as she took a seat in one of the chairs positioned in front of my desk.
“I’ve got three words for you,” she said smugly. “Tie me up.”
That got a choked laugh out of me. “Excuse me?”
Excitedly, she said, “So, I had plans with Victor this past Friday, and I have got to tell you, the man has a way with rope that gets me hot just thinking about it.”
“Rope?” I echoed, though I was pretty sure where this was going. Ellie Tran didn’t have a modest bone in her body, and that’s why she was my hero. If she wanted something, she went after it with no regrets.
“Have you ever been tied up in bed?” she asked, making my eyes immediately dart to my opened office door.
“Uh, should we shut the door for this conversation?” I asked seriously.
“Oh, please...like these people don’t already know me,” she huffed. “Plus, everyone’s at lunch anyway. So, answer the question...have you?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”
“You need to,” she insisted, making me laugh again.
“Oh, do I?”
Ellie nodded. “Victor and I went to dinner, then when we went back to his place, he tied me to his bedposts, and Holy Mary, Mother of God...seriously.”
“That good, huh?” I chuckled.
“You have got to try it, Thandie,” she went on. “It’s the biggest turn on ever.”
I eyed her. “It didn’t make you nervous to have such loss of control?”
“Actually, that’s what turned me on,” she replied.
“I had no choice but to lay there and let him do whatever he wanted to me, and it had felt...it felt kind of freeing not to have to decide anything. By tying me up, I’d been gifted with experiencing nothing but pure pleasure, and I want to do it again. ”
“But that was probably because you trust Victor,” I pointed out. “I mean, to get into something like that, it has to be with someone that you trust, right?”
Ellie gave me a pointed look, but she didn’t disagree. “Look, if that’s the only thing stopping you from trying the sexiest thing ever, then check out The Fantasy Factory. After all, safety is what that place is all about, right?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date, Ellie. I’m not sure if jumping back in the saddle should include BDSM,” I drawled out.”
She gave me a sly smile. “I’m only suggesting the BD part, Thandie. I figure that you can work your way up to the SM later.”
That got another laugh out of me. “I think that your version of baby steps is different from mine.”
“Just think about it,” she said as she stood up from the chair. “I’m giving it a five-star review, and if the headboard of my bed didn’t have slats in it, I would have bought a new bed already.”
I laughed as Ellie skipped back out of my office, and there really was something admirable about someone that wasn’t scared to take chances in life.
Now, while the idea of pleasure-only sex sounded very tempting, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being tied up or tied down, but it was also something that I hadn’t ever really thought about before.
Just then, my phone rang, and since it was my office phone, all thoughts of tied-down-sex vanished, though I made a mental promise to revisit the idea later. After all, I was still a healthy woman with healthy needs, and those needs were in need.