Another way (19 page)

“My parents… well, I think they’ll be okay when I tell them I’m with you. They’ve probably figured it out already, but they’re the sort of people who would let me come out in my own time.”

“You’ll tell them about me, then?”

“Yeah, I will,” he said seriously. “I would like for you to meet them, when you’re ready, of course.”

“No homophobic assholes in your family telling you you’re an abomination of nature?” I teased.

“No, not that I know of. And, well, homosexuality in the animal kingdom is still being investigated,” Will said. “But there’s research to suggest that it happens across many species of mammals and birds.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And the best reason that behaviorologists have come up with is population density. In areas where there is too many of a particular species in a small space of land, the likelyhood of homosexuality increases. So, in humans, well you know how many people there are on the planet. It’s increased by about a third in the past hundred years alone. In terms of evolution, gay animals can’t breed. So when there’s a stretch on food and resources, an animal which can’t breed is beneficial to the group.”

“So we’re… what? A product of too many people on the planet?”

“Some people have suggested that we’re of a higher evolutionary development than straight people,” he laughed, nipping at my jaw.

“I don’t know if I want to be a part of some kind of evolutionary experiment,” I mumbled.

“You’re not getting it,” Will said, pulling me so we were facing each other. “All of the people saying that what we are is unnatural—they’re wrong. Fate or God or science made us this way for a reason. We’re as natural as carrots growing in the dirt. We were meant to be.”

I laughed at his analogy and shifted our positions so I was the one holding him. “Carrots, huh?”

“If you like. You can be a cabbage, if you prefer?”

“Carrots are good.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Check the fridge. They go great in my stir-fry too.”

Chapter Fourteen

A
S
THE
front door slammed closed behind me, I sighed in deep contentment. I’d had one of those insane days at work where everyone had a problem and they all seemed to think that they needed me to resolve it for them. I didn’t mind helping my colleagues, the opposite in fact, but I felt like I was managing a group of kindergarteners rather than grown men and women. I was still in a light mood when I got home though. I had plans to drive down to my favorite Chinese take-out place for dinner, and the thought of good barbeque pork was keeping me happy.

I collected the mail from the table in the hallway and flipped absently through it, whistling under my breath as I walked back to the kitchen. Then I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. Something that shouldn’t have been in my living room.

Walking back a few paces, I stopped whistling and tried to ignore the sickness in my belly.

Yup.

Kneeling, submissive, and naked in the corner of the room, was a very pale girl with curly blonde hair piled up on the top of her head. She didn’t look up at me; her eyes were lowered and her hands were held behind her neck with her elbows pointing out. Tellingly, she had a leather collar around her neck.

I was confused. And annoyed. And hurt, and scared, but mostly confused.

Leaving the girl where she was, I walked through to the kitchen.

“Will?”

“In here,” he called.

He was sitting at the counter scribbling something on a yellow legal pad. He was wearing his glasses and looked yummy. I went over and leaned in for a kiss.

“Will.”

“Hmm?” He looked up at me.

“There’s a naked girl in our living room.”

“I know.” He sounded amused. “I put her there.”

I let the cupboards bang as I grabbed a mug and set the kettle on to boil for coffee. I held my mug up in question, and he shook his head. Once I had coffee and a cookie, I sat down opposite him.

“Will,
why
is there a naked girl in our living room?”

“Her name is Maddie.”

“Lovely. Why?”

“Well, Laura wants a sub again.”

“Right. I still don’t understand.” I took a sip of my coffee and tried to be calm.

“I said I’d evaluate her,” he said, gesturing to his notepad. “Put her through her paces, you know, see how well she does with the basics. Laura and I work pretty similarly. If Maddie works out well for me, then chances are she’ll work well with Laura too.”

I nodded and ate my cookie and tried to be calm and rational. “What did you do so far?”

Will was writing again in his elegant scrawl, making notes, I guessed, from whatever session they’d just been through.

“Oh, basic obedience. Pain thresholds, positioning, that sort of thing.”

“Did you take her up to the playroom?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem, Jesse?” He asked nicely, but my heart was thumping harder than normal, pushing the hurt and anger around my body.

“Apparently not. I’ll be in my room.”

He grabbed my wrist and looked pissed off as I stood, cradling my mug to my chest.

“If you have something to say, then say it.”

“That’s just the thing, Will. I’ve got nothing to say at all. You need to deal with your submissive right now. She looked like she was in pretty deep.”

I turned and left.

I didn’t want to go to our bedroom, where the sheets would smell of him and his shit would be all over the place. My room was
mine.

There was no way Will would leave the girl to chase after me, he had too much respect for the power that he held, and for her for letting him take that position of power over her. He
couldn’t
leave her now; even I could see from a few moments of watching her that she was deep into her subspace. Neither Will nor I had the right to jerk her out of that because of some confusion or misunderstanding.

I hoped that I was misunderstanding something, but pacing in my room, I couldn’t see how or where. He’d brought someone else into our house—my home, for fuck’s sake—and even if she wasn’t his collared sub like I was, she was wearing a fucking collar and
not
wearing any fucking clothes.

Didn’t our relationship mean more to him than that?

It was nearly an hour before there was a light knock on my door. I was really fucking hungry, but I hadn’t wanted to walk back through the house and possibly see my Master in session with someone else. With a fucking
girl
.

“Come in,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm.

He kept his head down as he came in and shut the door behind him, then he leaned back against it with his hands pressed firmly against the wood.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately.

“Do you know what for?” I demanded.

Will sighed. “No, not really.”

“Then what’s the fucking point in apologizing?” I snapped.

“Because I hate this,” he snapped back. “I hate not understanding, and I hate it when you’re mad at me.”

“Can you really not see this from my point of view?” I asked him. “You brought someone else into our home, Will. A
woman
, as well. I’m having enough trouble dealing with the fact that I’m in a gay relationship, and then you throw a woman into the mix.”

“It’s not a sexual thing, it’s a submission thing. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”

“Is this because I fucked up as your sub? By falling for you? Are you punishing me?”

“No!” he exclaimed. “Not at all.”

“Did you fuck
her?
”

“No.”

“Did you make her suck your cock?”

“No.”

“You’re fucking lying to me,” I spat, turning away from him.

“I’m not lying to you,” he insisted, surging forward and pulling on my shoulder to make me face him again. “I have no intentions of being sexually involved with anyone else at all.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“I don’t know. Those are your issues, and I’m happy to discuss them with you, but please don’t try and make me out to be some kind of monster when I’m not.”

“I don’t know how you can’t see where you’re wrong!” I yelled.

“I’ve always done this!” he yelled back. “This is part of who I am. It’s what I do, what I’ve always done in this community! People trust me to take care of new subs.”

“But you’re with me now.”

“I am. And nothing, especially not a new sub, is going to come between us. But, Jesse, I’m not going to let you manipulate my—the way I feel about you so that I only do things that you want me to do.”

I wanted to know what he stopped himself from saying. But I didn’t ask.

“This isn’t about me trying to stop you from doing something,” I started, but he interrupted me.

“Oh, yes it is.”

“I don’t want my fucking
boyfriend
touching naked women, okay?”

“I’m gay!” he yelled. “I couldn’t fuck her if I wanted to! My dick doesn’t work that way!”

I groaned and flopped back onto the couch, covering my face with my hands.

“I want to understand. I just don’t. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

Will slid down the wall and sat on the floor opposite me, wrapping his arms around his knees. His eyes fixed on mine in a steady gaze, but he didn’t offer any further explanations.

Eventually, I spoke, just to break the tension. “I can’t help being jealous, Will.”

“Why couldn’t you have said that in the first place?” he groaned.

“What? That I was jealous? I thought that was fucking obvious.”

“What do you have to be jealous of? Maddie is a
woman
, Jesse! I don’t know how many times I need to keep saying that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe it’s because I’m your sub? That we’ve been together for over a year and a half? And I’m your boyfriend. We go to bed together every night, I sleep in your arms, you make love to me. I don’t want to think about you spanking someone else, turning them on like that. You say sex and submission are different things, and they are, but not for everyone.”

“They’re different things for you, clearly.”

“I don’t know how to even start to fix this,” I said with a long sigh.

“For the first time, neither do I.”

I
LEANED
back again and my stomach rumbled, reminding me of how hungry I was. After a quick pat I determined my wallet was still in my pocket, and leaned down to grab my shoes and pull them on. I hadn’t changed out of my work clothes, and I couldn’t be bothered to take the time to do it now. Plus, I knew from experience there was a certain something about a half dressed, disheveled man in a suit.

“I’m going to get some food,” I announced.

“Okay,” Will agreed from his spot on the floor. I rolled my eyes.

“Are you coming?”

He looked up in surprise. “You want me to?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t offer any more than that.

“Okay,” he said again.

I stood and offered him my hand to pull him to his feet. He took it and lurched forward; I caught him with my hands on his hips, putting us nose to nose.

“Are we going to be okay?” Will asked with a vulnerability I wasn’t used to seeing in him. I gripped his hips tighter and nodded.

“Yeah. We need to figure this out, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

He smiled and I leaned in to fix my lips to his in a soft, reassuring sort of kiss. Still, I was hurt and upset, and it was hard to try and cover that up. Maybe that was why I didn’t take his hand as we walked out to the car, and why he went to the passenger door of my vehicle rather than to the driver’s side of his.

As soon as I’d turned the ignition over, I pushed the button for the CD player, so I had an excuse not to talk to him. Will looked out of the window as I drove, watching the city go by as I threaded through the early evening traffic to the little red restaurant in the heart of Seattle’s International District. This was
my
Seattle; away from the tourist areas in a place where the food was cheap and the people were friendly, where no one made fun of my accent because theirs was even thicker than mine, where the women took me under their wing when I told them that my family was a long, long way away.

I’d never forgotten Yan, or the other friends I had here, but I’d moved on from the scared young boy floundering without his family’s support. Adele had taken her place. Despite this, she rushed out of the restaurant when she saw me and ushered me through to a table, ignoring my protests that I only wanted to order something to take away.

“Sit, sit,” she ordered, forcing me into a chair. “I’ll bring you some tea.”

“Thank you, Yan,” I said. “This is Will.”

She greeted him with a small bow and bustled away.

“I didn’t know you wanted to get a table,” Will said as he fiddled with his chopsticks. “I would have gotten changed.”

“I didn’t want to get a table,” I said with a smile. “Yan’s an old friend. She likes fussing over me. Do you mind?”

“Not really,” he said, sitting back and looking around the tiny dining room.

“We’re pretty informal here,” Yan said as she served two cups of black tea and a couple of tall glasses of ice water. “Do you know what you would like to order?”