Knowing the Ropes

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  But maybe Garth knew something.

  He picked up gingerly.

  And had to hold the phone back from his ear when Garth barked, “Get your ass over here. Selene just talked to Alison.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Selene considered it nothing short of miraculous that she managed to drive to Garth and Alison’s without killing herself or anyone else. Between emotional upheaval and a strange sense of disconnection thanks to the abrupt way the scene—and her night with Nick—ended, she felt like she might as well be driving drunk. She couldn’t focus on anything except that, if things weren’t over between her and Nick, they probably ought to be, between her stupidity and his.

  The longer she was away from him, the more she saw his side of the stupid. What kind of dumb did it take to say you loved someone you obviously didn’t and then call her a cunt and whack her most sensitive bits with a cane to boot?

  But then again, what kind of stupid did you have to be to fall in love with someone who’d made it clear from the beginning that he thought it could never work? Who, if he was in love with anyone, was still hung up on his ex?

  She’d managed not to cry since running out of Nick’s house. But when she walked into the kitchen, the kindness in Alison’s eyes broke something inside her, some last bit of control to which she’d been clinging like a life preserver after the shipwreck the night had become.

  As she started to cry, Alison crossed the few steps between them. Small as she was, she felt bigger than Selene when she folded her in her arms, a strong, loving, comforting presence.

  “Come on upstairs,” she said. “Garth’s wrapping up a poker night. It’ll be quieter in the bedroom.”

  Somehow, through her tears, she managed to make a joke about finally being invited into Alison and Garth’s bedroom.

  She managed to take in airy blue and white accents and solid Mission furniture.

  Then the room swayed.

  No, she swayed, and Alison was right there again, guiding her to an old-fashioned oak rocking chair.

  A rocking chair, she thought dimly. Who’d have thought they’d have something so homey in the bedroom of Kink Central? Then again, you could probably have good sex in the right rocker, and this one was both armless and suspiciously sturdy.

  She winced as her tender bottom made contact with the hard seat.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. No. I’m not sure.” Feeling the damnable tears about to start again, she bit her lower lip. “I’m drained and I’m confused and…and I never got to finish dinner, so that’s part of it. But I just feel weird.”

  “Dropped?” Alison asked. “Were you playing hard before…”

  Selene nodded, cutting her off.

  “Hang on. Let me get you a drink and a snack.”

  Some dim part of Selene’s brain pondered the thought that only Alison and Garth would have a dorm fridge in the bedroom, presumably so they could refuel during particularly crazy scenes, but eccentric as she might have found it at other times, she was immensely grateful for the eccentricity. Alison pressed a cold bottle of sparkling water into one hand, a fruit-and-nut energy bar into the other.

  Selene tried not to consider what kind of people needed to keep energy bars in the bedroom and unfortunately failed.

  A broken heart, she thought, would be much easier if her libido had broken along with it. Unfortunately, the libido still seemed to be in overdrive, as if her body hadn’t figured out yet that Nick wouldn’t be coming back to end the scene properly.

  Water and food helped give her a little perspective.

  So did sitting in the calm, dimly lit room, not even trying to do anything but sit and collect herself.

  Alison knelt next to the chair—not submissively but comfortingly, a quiet but strong presence. Didn’t ask questions, didn’t push, was just there.

  For some reason, that made it easier to talk.

  She started with the end. Might as well get the laughter out of the way. “I pretty much screwed everything up. I safe-worded, for one thing. He was caning me, and he caught my clit…”

  “I damn well hope you’d safe-word that, sweetie. I certainly would. That hurts like a bitch. You need to catch your breath after something like that, and he needs to refocus.”

  “But I…” Something registered. “I thought slaves didn’t have safe words?”

  “Some don’t. Some people drive without their seat belt on. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I’m not going to stop Garth just because I’m not sure I like what he’s doing, but if my hands are going numb or the tip of the singletail has wrapped around one of my rings—and both have happened—he wants to know.”

  “But Natalie…”

  She fell silent, considering the source of the counterarguments. Let’s see, who should she trust, the sane woman or Sister Mary Fruitbat? Easy one there.

  “See, not so bad,” Alison said. “It always feels weird if you’re really into a scene and need to stop, like you’ve been jerked into another dimension. Nick wasn’t a dick about it, was he? Because he knows better.”

  “No. He was pretty sweet. I think he felt bad for missing like that. But the rest of the night…”

  And haltingly, she told the story, from her stupid jealousy of Natalie to Nick’s annoyance to the wild, boundary-pushing (but, she admitted, hot as well as startling) scene.

  Unfortunately, Alison was too smart for Selene’s good. “Is that the whole story? It takes a lot to get Nick mad. Especially mad enough to be quite that dumb. What are you leaving out?”

  “I don’t know,” Selene admitted. “He must really hate jealous women. He got to the point where he tried to convince me he loved me, just to get me to shut up. As if. He’s told me a dozen times that love and kink don’t mix for him. I don’t know. Maybe I should go back to Lodi for a while, lick my wounds.”

  Alison shook her head. “You two—so smart and yet so dumb! You need something stronger than water.” She darted to the fridge, returned with what proved to be a bottle of Pinot Grigio, poured Selene a glass and left the bottle sitting next to her on the floor, oblivious to the condensation dripping off it onto the hardwood floor—which, Selene thought vaguely, showed just how concerned she was. “I need to consult with a higher power. Be right back.”

  As Selene drank her wine a bit too fast, she wondered whether she was on to something with the idea of going back home. She could blow off Monday’s classes and maybe Tuesday’s too, and she was between contract gigs. Not ideal, but the idea of sitting on Molly’s porch, looking out over Seneca Lake while the kids ran around the yard like little hellions, or helping her dad and brother out with the grape harvest, far away from love troubles, not to mention having to worry about crazy stuff like whether you were a “true slave” or not, sounded reassuringly normal and sane. It would give her time to sort things out.

  The wine, hitting her hard after too much agitation and not enough food—not to mention the fact she was gulping it like iced tea and was already considering a refill—wasn’t helping her thinking processes.

  Maybe she wasn’t ready to live in Nick’s world. Maybe she never would be.

  That didn’t make her a bad person, she assured herself.

  But it did make her a sad one.

  Nick violated not just local laws but laws of physics getting to Garth and Alison’s. He pulled into the last parking spot on the street with a squeal of tires that caused lights to flip on in an upstairs room of the dark home he parked in front of.

  Ran again, ran as if he hadn’t spent a good chunk of the evening in futile pursuit.

  This time, at least, he knew his quarry was there.

  And never mind that he was going to have to run a gauntlet of protective friends. Nothing he didn’t deserve. He’d want them to help Selene keep away from bad doms and clueless asshats, and he’d acted like both tonight.

  He crashed through the gate, pelted into the house, through the kitchen, peeled around the corner, skidding like a declawed cat on
the hardwood floor of the hall and up the stairs. He knew they’d be in the master bedroom or maybe the upstairs office for privacy. Nothing was going to stop him.

  Except Garth, that was.

  Tearing around the corner at the top of the stairs, he crashed into Garth.

  Suddenly he felt like a teenager caught trying to sneak in way past curfew.

  Damn, he’d forgotten how effectively Garth could loom.

  “Why did you tell Selene that you’d dumped Natalie because you were falling in love with her and that love would ruin a perfectly good dom-sub relationship?”

  Nick tried to answer, but between sheer astonishment and being out of breath, he barely managed to get out, “Wha…” before he gave up and resorted to gaping like a fish out of water.

  “Yeah, I thought it was pretty crazy too, considering how many nights you spent over here nursing your broken heart.”

  Nick flashed to a couple of times Selene and Natalie had been curled up side by side on the couch, deep in conversation.

  He’d thought it was sweet.

  “Natalie…” Thanks to the shortness of breath, he sounded as growly as he felt.

  Garth shook his head. The look on his face, too damn fatherly for someone who was definitely not his father, cut off Nick’s urge to make melodramatic threats about what he’d do (but wouldn’t, of course) to his lying ex-lover.

  Garth didn’t need to say a word.

  If Nick had told Selene the whole story, plainly, instead of skimming over the embarrassing parts, the parts that hadn’t done either him or Natalie any credit, she wouldn’t have fallen for Natalie’s lies. But it hadn’t seemed important at first, because it was just supposed to be casual play. Once it started looking like it might be important, it had also gotten harder to tell her.

  “I didn’t actually lie,” he said. “But I tried to save my pride and not sound pathetic when I told her and…well, basically I’m an asshole.”

  “Yup,” Garth agreed, a bit too quickly—but hell, it wasn’t like it wasn’t the truth. “Selene’s in our room.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Nick tried to slip past Garth, but the other man turned, blocked his path in the narrow hallway. “Not so fast. How do you feel about her?”

  “Why is that your business?”

  Garth took a deep breath and actually seemed to think about the question for three seconds, which unfortunately wasn’t enough for Nick to weasel past him.

  “Because you’re our friend, and we care about what kind of mess you may be getting into this time, but more because Alison likes Selene, and you know she doesn’t make friends lightly.”

  No, she didn’t. Alison was gracious to everyone, always the perfect hostess, but the number of people she seemed to get close to, other than Garth, was small enough that Nick had always felt honored to be included.

  Nick thought about evading, thought about telling Garth it was none of his goddamn business.

  But the truth was so loud inside him it had to come out. “I love her.”

  “Like you thought you loved Natalie?”

  “I was young and stupid?” he said hopefully, even though it hadn’t been long enough ago that he could pass as older, let alone wiser. Again he asked, because he didn’t think he’d gotten the whole story, “What’s it to you?”

  “I was young and stupid once too, like you’re being this time, not like you were with Natalie. So was Alison. And we almost missed each other on account of it.”

  “You two?” Hard to imagine.

  “Us. And since Selene’s apparently about to run back to New York because she’s nuts about you but thinks you don’t care, I suggest you get into the bedroom right now and start talking fast.”

  He moved aside just soon enough that he was only elbowed instead of bowled over by Nick in his eagerness.

  “And watch out for my slave. I hear the National Weather Service has issued an overprotective redhead warning.”

  Even that wasn’t enough to slow Nick down.

  Although it did make him cup his hand protectively over his balls.

  He knocked, not sure of the protocol of walking into someone else’s bedroom when one, possibly two, righteously angry women were on the other side of the heavy oak door.

  “Alison?” a small voice, so sad and broken he almost didn’t recognize it as Selene’s, asked.

  He sighed with not entirely unreasonable relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with the irate lover’s irate friend as well as the irate lover herself.

  Then he steeled his courage. “Nick.”

  “Why are you… How did you…” A pause during which he could picture her shrugging and sort of settling herself, deciding how she wanted to get through what was likely to be awkward, at best. “What do you want?” She sounded gruff but not convincingly so. He wasn’t quite sure how to put a finger on the difference from those few words, but it sounded like the gruffness was her way of trying to hold it together, not necessarily the way she felt.

  “What do you think?” He sounded just as abrasive as she had, he realized, and for basically the same reason—complicated, in his case, by years of dealing with Natalie, when his apologies made her feel like she’d failed, even if he had a good reason to say he was sorry.

  Sad when you had to force tenderness and regret into your voice when tenderness and regret were what you really felt. He tried again. “I’m sorry, Selene. I’m really, really sorry. Tonight was just one series of mistakes.”

  “Yeah, I know.” The gruffness was gone, replaced by a flatness that just about broke his heart. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I pushed.”

  Nick snorted. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he’d bet dollars to donuts that skewed Natalie-logic was involved somehow. “No, love. I pushed. I… Listen, can I come in?”

  “You can. Door’s not locked. Haven’t decided if you may.”

  A trace of the Selene he knew and loved there, although the snark was delivered in a sad monotone.

  “Please. I’m begging you. We need to talk, and we can’t do it through a door.”

  He couldn’t actually hear her sigh, certainly couldn’t see her shrug, but he was sure she did both before she said, “I’m not sure how productive it’ll be, but sure.”

  Nick reached for the doorknob. Pulled his hand back. Considered throwing up his hands and walking away if that was how she felt—with about the same degree of seriousness he might consider moving to Bali to be a beachcomber after a crap day of work.

  Went to open the door again and found Selene had already done it.

  Her eyes were red and puffy, her face blotchy, her mouth set in a hard, determined line. She ushered him in, closed the door, then turned on him, so like an angry cat he could almost see her back arching, her fur standing on end. “What’s this all about, Nick? Masters don’t beg their slaves to listen. Masters don’t apologize. Aren’t I just supposed to take it? I’ve fucked up, and I don’t think I can handle the punishment, so I guess I’d better walk away.”

  “What the…”

  “That’s how this is going to go, isn’t it? I nagged at you, got you mad. Got you so mad you hurt me a lot. And you’re saying you’re sorry, but it’s all going to come down to being my fault, that I asked for it. Classic abuser pattern, by the way, except that it really is my fault, and I really did ask for it—I mean literally asked for it—and I’m not sure I can handle what comes next.”

  He took a deep breath, trying not to fly off the handle at some of her assumptions, because flying off the handle again now would just confirm them in her eyes.

  Maybe even in his.

  He’d crossed the caveman line tonight in a bad way, not a fun, sexy alpha-male-playing-a-game way, and even though she’d been consenting, he felt like an abuser. “Explain to me how my losing my temper is your fault.”

  “I nagged you. I was going on and on about Natalie, and it pissed you off. For God’s sake, you told me you loved me just to get me to shut the he
ll up.”

  Nick banged his head against the wall, not as gently as he’d intended. Then he turned around, put his hands on Selene’s shoulders. She felt soft, warm, more fragile than he usually thought of her, and he wondered how he could have beaten her like he had, even though she’d shown every sign of enjoying it up until the stupid, clumsy end. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “You don’t love me, Nick. I know it. And if you do, that’s not a good thing. You broke up with Natalie…”

  Time to cut off that line of reasoning.

  Make that way past time.

  “She broke up with me, Selene. Left me high and dry. Told me I’d gotten too soft and mushy for her, that she needed a firmer hand.” Despite the gravity of the situation, he smiled as he added, “Of course, being Natalie, she had to ask permission to leave, so you might say I dumped her, but I cared for her, so I couldn’t expect her to stay if she was unhappy. That just proved I wasn’t the right guy for her, because her right guy would make her stay even if it took locking her in the basement until she changed her mind. And never mind I don’t have a basement.”

  “So you…” Selene’s expression changed. A little doubt, a little incredulity, but at the same time a little more hope in her red-rimmed dark eyes. “You’re saying that you and Natalie…but you said…right from the first you’d said that you didn’t think love and BDSM would work together for you because of what happened with Natalie.”

  If the light-bulb-going-on-over-her-head expression had been any more obvious, she’d have grown long, floppy ears and turned into Bugs Bunny. “Duh! The problem was on her end, not yours, but you weren’t ready to try again. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “With what you were looking for, that wouldn’t have come off as a good recommendation. I had a really hot, fun woman who wanted to learn about BDSM and submission without romance or commitment involved. I’d have been an idiot to tell her I’d driven my last submissive away by falling in love too hard and I needed to keep things casual because otherwise I was afraid I’d lose perspective. Right? I mean, from my point of view?”