Not Safe For Work

by L. A. Witt

  I followed him inside. “Find it? It hasn’t been that long.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t sure how badly your job had eaten your brain.”

  I chuckled. “And points for not bringing my advanced age into the equation.”

  Rick laughed. “You do recall I’m not that far behind you, right?”

  “Fair point. And hey, zombie or not, it’s kind of hard to forget where this place is, fortunately. And it’s—good God.” I’d been here a handful of times but never really taken the time to drink in my surroundings because I’d been too preoccupied with their owner. Now, though… “This house really is amazing.”

  He laughed quietly as he shut the door behind us. “Thanks.”

  I gazed at our surroundings. Though the exterior was distinctly Tudor, the interior wasn’t. The foyer in which we were standing had clearly been designed with Roman architecture in mind, from the meticulously tiled archways to the intricate mosaic on the floor.

  “Did you design this?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” He snorted. “If I could design something like this, I wouldn’t be pouring money into Mitchell & Forsythe.”

  “Well, we do the technical side of it, but you could have—”

  “Trust me. I can’t.” He gazed around. “No, this was designed by an old friend before he retired. I couldn’t settle on one style for the whole thing, so I basically told him what styles I did and didn’t like, and let him go to town on it. Every room is different, but he made sure the styles segue into each other, or at least they have fairly plain hallways in between so nothing clashes.” He paused. “I’d finally give you the tour, but I just put dinner in the oven. In fact, I should probably check on it.”

  “Sure.”

  We moved into the kitchen, where something savory was cooking. The air was warm and filled with the smells of spices and a touch of garlic.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said. “And your kitchen is spotless. What the hell?”

  Rick laughed. “That’s because I hate doing dishes, and if I don’t do them as I go, they’ll never get done.”

  “Smart.”

  He checked on the food—which smelled even more amazing when he opened the oven—and set the timer for another half hour. While the food cooked, he poured us each a glass of wine, and we moved into his living room.

  “I’ll give you a tour eventually,” he said. “Promise. But you look like you could stand to relax for a while.”

  “I won’t argue with that.” As we sank onto the huge, plush sofa, I said, “So, did you have anything to do with my colleague and me getting booted out of work yesterday?”

  He started to speak but hesitated. “Was that out of line?”

  I rolled it around in my head for a second. In theory, it was more forward than I liked; I didn’t need someone rescuing me from my own workload. On the other hand, though, it meant I was here with him instead of hunched over a miniature hotel and inhaling glue fumes.

  “No, it wasn’t out of line. I’m only your Dom in the bedroom.” I brought my wine to my lips and added, “I’m hardly going to bitch about you getting me a forty-eight-hour vacation.”

  His shoulders relaxed. “Okay. Good. I didn’t do much, really. I just sort of put the bug in Mitchell’s ear that it seemed like the two of you were putting in a lot of hours.” He shrugged. “Made some noise about how the human body could only take so much, and fatigue might lead to shoddy workmanship, and…” He waved a hand. “I guess he got the message.”

  Laughing, I put my wineglass down and wrapped my arms around him. “Damn. I should’ve hooked up with you sooner.”

  “Why?” He smirked. “So I could get you some days off?”

  “Well, you know. Every relationship has its perks, right?”

  “Though it benefits me too.”

  “Still. You got me out of Purgatory.” I kissed his cheek. “I’ll make it worth your while. Promise.”

  “You always do.” He touched my face, and his expression turned a little more serious. “And I know you’re exhausted. I don’t expect anything tonight. I just wanted you out of there. And I wanted to see you.”

  I hooked a finger under his chin, turned him toward me and kissed his lips. “I wanted to see you too.”

  “Can’t promise I’ll be as entertaining as the people you work with. Sounds like you all keep each other on your toes.”

  “You could say that. But I’ll take your brand of entertainment over theirs any day.”

  We both grinned.

  “Seriously, though.” I gestured around the room. “This place versus a room full of tables and computers? Fuck yeah.”

  “I kind of prefer it over my office too, believe me.” He sipped his wine. “Especially when I’ve been spending too much time there.” He looked around. “It’s funny. This place is definitely home now, but I never imagined living in a place like this. It’s, um, a bit different from where I started, that’s for sure.”

  “Is it?”

  Rick nodded. “One of the ways I knew I’d really made it was when I was able to buy my mom a new house so she could move out of the double-wide she raised us in.”

  “Oh wow. So you really moved up in the world.”

  He nodded. “Nothing motivates a kid to find a good living like spending his childhood hearing about what trailer trash he is.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It is what it is.” He shrugged. “My mom worked hard, and she bought what she could afford. Anything more than that would’ve meant working three jobs instead of two, and she didn’t want to spend less time with us than she already did. Even then, most of what she made went into just keeping that damned roof over our heads. Kind of ironic when the price of your living space is killing you.”

  “That explains why you’re pushing so hard for low-rent housing and office space.”

  He nodded. “Exactly. I’ve seen what it’s like for someone to struggle just to make ends meet. I didn’t make a fuckload of money just so I could sit up on a hill and watch people kill themselves for minimum wage and still not be able to make rent.” He paused. “As it is, I think this place is a bit much. I might downsize at some point, but with as busy as I am with the company, it’s a lot of headache and paperwork that I’d just as soon not deal with at the moment.”

  “That makes sense. It’s a gorgeous place, though. In your shoes, I’d probably hang on to it.”

  “Oh, I love it. But, I mean, the sad thing is, I only use probably three or four rooms. There’s two on the third floor that are completely empty and have been since the place was built. Seems a shame for one person to take up this much space, but…ugh. Moving. Pain in the ass.”

  “Yeah, it is. But why have something so big if you’re not going to use it?”

  “I’ve asked myself that millions of times.” He scowled at our surroundings. “The house was fine when I built it because there were two of us. My ex liked having a lot of space, and we definitely needed space between us sometimes.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  Rick quirked his lips and then shrugged. “Not at first. He’s one of those guys who needs his space, and I didn’t mind giving it to him. We had other shit that split us up.”

  “And he left you with the house.”

  “Well, it was in my name. I offered to buy out his half, but…” Rick rolled his eyes. “He wasn’t having that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, he didn’t like the idea of taking money from me. I tried to explain to him that the house was a joint investment, and we could sell it and split the proceeds.” He waved his hand. “He was more interested in making it sound like I was trying to buy his love, or that giving him half the money from our house somehow cheapened our relationship.” Sighing, he shook his head. “Trying to make sense of it was exhausting. So he left and I stayed.”

  “I guess that’s…marginally better than battling it out over divvying up every cent and scrap of property?”

  Rick shrugged
and took a deep swallow of wine. “Probably. I was just ready for the whole thing to be over.” He paused, eyes distant, and then met my gaze. “Like, if you’re going to leave, just leave so I can start getting over it.”

  I studied him for a second. “Tough split?”

  “For me more than him, yeah.” Rick shook himself and broke eye contact. “We’d been stringing each other along for ages, and I thought we were trying to make it work, but apparently he was just putting in the work so he’d have some security.”

  I cocked my head. “I thought you said he didn’t like the idea of being bought.”

  “Oh, I think he liked the idea right up until it became clear we weren’t going to make it. Then he was suddenly too noble to even discuss money.” Laughing bitterly, he rolled his eyes. “Anyway. It’s in the past. Thank God.”

  I raised my wine. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  He clinked his glass against mine. “Been there?”

  “Well, not with shitloads of money involved, but I have my share of relationships in my past, and they’re welcome to stay there.”

  “Here, here.” He sipped his wine. “Seems like you and your ex-wife are on good terms, though.”

  “My first wife, yes. Both of my marriages and divorces were about as different as they could get. With Karen, we just drifted apart. At some point, we realized we didn’t even know each other anymore. When we tried to get to know each other again, we realized we had virtually nothing in common except the kids. So we split up, but we’ve always stayed friends. My second wife, though.” I whistled. “That whole fiasco was a mistake on so many levels.”

  “How so?”

  I thumbed the stem of my wineglass. “I honestly can’t even tell you what we were thinking. She wanted kids, and I didn’t want more. We…well, we just didn’t see eye to eye on much of anything. Really, the only thing we got right was the sex.”

  “Which doesn’t carry a relationship very far.”

  “No, it does not. So that went downhill fast, and the divorce got nasty.”

  “As they do.”

  “As they do.” I absently swirled my wine. “The third time I almost got married…” I swallowed.

  He slipped his hand into mine. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, it’s…it’s okay.” I watched our hands clasped together. “We had a fifteen-year age gap, which in itself was fine. But there was a generation gap of sorts.” I met Rick’s gaze. “On one side of that gap was me. On the other, a kid who didn’t want to be with a closet case.”

  Rick’s eyebrows flicked up, but then he nodded. “I had the same problem with my ex, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Literally everything was fine except for that. He did not like me being closeted, and as he put it, ‘Either you come out of the closet, or I walk out the front door.’”

  “That’s more or less the conversation we had. In not so many words.” I picked up the bottle off the coffee table and topped off both our glasses. Then I twisted toward him, pulling my knee up so I could rest my glass on it. “So your ex was…older or younger?”

  “Younger. When we split up, he was thirty and I was forty-one.” Rick sighed. “You wouldn’t think eleven years would make that much of a difference, but I guess times are changing pretty fast.”

  “Tell me about it. My kids may as well be on a different planet than the one I grew up on.”

  “Do they know you’re… Are you bi or gay?”

  “Bi. And yes, they do.” I laughed softly. “It’s kind of crazy how it played out, actually. I wasn’t going to tell the kids until they were older because I was afraid they wouldn’t understand, or they’d be ostracized by other kids. But then when the twins were about twelve, my younger daughter started behaving horribly. She acted out every chance she got, she was falling behind in school even though she’s ridiculously smart. Her brother and her older sister were doing fine, and we didn’t think it was the divorce since that had happened a long time ago, but she was just…” I shook my head. “We didn’t know what to do, so Karen took her to a counselor. And one day the counselor said Brooke wanted Karen to join her for an appointment. That there was something she needed to talk about.”

  Rick sipped his wine but kept his gaze fixed on me.

  I went on. “Brooke explained that she’d been depressed and distracted because she’d figured out she was a lesbian, but was scared because a friend of our older daughter’s had been kicked out of his house for being gay. So she was afraid to tell anyone—especially me—and just started acting out because she was angry all the time. All the time.”

  “My God.” Rick shuddered. “That poor kid.”

  “Seriously. I knew how she felt too.”

  “Yeah. Ditto. So what happened?”

  “Karen promised her I wouldn’t be upset, and when the three of us sat down to talk, and my daughter was so—” I paused, the memory still choking me up even after all this time. “She was so nervous and scared. This was a kid who didn’t cry for anything, and she was just bawling when she tried to tell me. And I thought, my God, I’ve completely failed these kids if they’re afraid to come to me about this. What kind of parent am I if my kids are genuinely afraid they’ll be kicked out on the street if they come out to me?” I exhaled hard. “Man, you’ve never seen a kid look as shocked as she did when I said, ‘It’s okay. I’m gay too.’” I cleared my throat. “Once she’d calmed down, I explained that I was bisexual, so I understood, and that I’d been afraid to come out at her age for the same reasons, but that she had nothing to be afraid of. And it was like this huge weight came off her shoulders. I mean, you could see it. One conversation, and my kid was back to the way she’d been a year before.”

  Rick whistled. “Wow. Poor kid.”

  “Yeah, I know. It killed me knowing she’d been bottling that up for so long. So the very next night, we sat down with all three kids and explained to them that I’m bisexual, and what that means. I don’t even know when Brooke came out to them. She might’ve told them before that incident. I really don’t know, but they’ve both accepted that their sister is a lesbian and that I sometimes date men, sometimes date women.”

  “Good. Good for them.” He paused. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”

  “I doubt it. Can’t say it’s worked out all that well for me. I mean, I wouldn’t mind—” I caught myself.

  He slid his hand over my thigh. “What?”

  I took a breath. “Someday, I wouldn’t mind putting a collar on someone.” I held his gaze. “A long-term Dom/sub relationship. That kind of commitment. But getting married? Probably not.” I paused. “What about you?”

  “Don’t know. I’ve never been married, and my last relationship blew up in my face. I’m not opposed to it, I guess. It isn’t like I have as many people to come out to anymore.”

  “You’re out?”

  “Well, I’m not as firmly closeted as I used to be. Dion has known for years. Everyone else at the company knows. And Mitchell & Forsythe…” He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure Forsythe doesn’t like it, but they all know.”

  “How’d they find out?”

  “They heard Dion and me talking after my ex left, and I guess they put two and two together.”

  “Ah, gotcha. What about your family? Do they know?”

  “I’m out to my immediate family. My mom says she’s known since I was four. My brother was kind of surprised but didn’t really care. My dad… He wasn’t thrilled. And my stepmother just about hit the roof.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s never really liked me anyway, so go figure.”

  “She didn’t like you? Why not?”

  Rick scowled. “She was just obsessed with the idea that I was going to do something to her daughters. My stepsisters were teenagers when I was in my twenties, so apparently that meant I was—” He grimaced. “You get the idea.”

  I blinked. “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. The fucked-up thing is that it got even w
orse when I came out, because for whatever reason, being gay meant I was more likely to mess with her daughters.” He threw up his hands. “I…I still can’t even fit that into my skull.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered into my wineglass.

  “Yeah. That whole fiasco was a tipping point for my ex, actually. My father specifically requested that I not bring Keith to my stepsister’s wedding, so I went alone. Keith thought it was a slap in the face to him, I thought it would’ve been a slap in the face to my stepsister if I had brought him, and…” He waved his hand.

  “Can’t win, can you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Families. Gotta love ’em.”

  “Yeah, really.”

  Our eyes met. We both set our wineglasses on the table, and when we settled back against the couch, we were sitting closer than before. I put my arm around his shoulders. His hand slid over my thigh.

  “Enough of that bullshit,” he said. “The past is in the past. And I”—he watched his fingertips tracing my inseam—“I want us to enjoy tonight.”

  “Me too.” I put my hand over his. “I guess it’s just refreshing to talk about this shit with someone who gets it.”

  “That’s true. To be honest, I still feel like I barely know you, but it’s really good to find someone on the same wavelength.”

  “It really is. I’m sorry for that interruption in getting to know each other. It went on way too long.”

  “No time like the present to pick up where we left off.”

  “God, yes.” I brought his hand up and pressed my lips to the middle of his palm. Our eyes met again, and whatever I was about to say—I’d been about to say something, hadn’t I?—evaporated. I let the thought go, because I couldn’t resist moving in for a kiss. A kiss that led to another. And another. And a longer one.

  “I’m seeing a trend here,” he said between kisses. “Can’t…can’t be on the same surface as you without—”

  “That’s not a complaint, is it?”

  A shiver pushed him closer to me. “Not a complaint at all.”

  I wasn’t complaining either.

  I could’ve sworn this was supposed to be a casual—if, work permitting, somewhat regular—hookup, but that wasn’t how it felt right then. Here on his sofa, wrapped up in his arms and a long, lazy kiss, it didn’t feel casual at all. Less “I’ve been waiting all week for this” and more “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this”.