He was beautiful.
“Yeah, it’s…nice.”
“Oookay,” Tea said, drawing the word out as they snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf. “Apparently we’re not into shibari, then. Did I misstep?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose with a sigh. “No, you’re fine. It’s just…that’s something Ellison is really into—rope and stuff—and it’s something I can’t do. My weird issues again.”
“Ah, I see,” Tea said with a nod. “Has that been causing problems, then?”
“Only in my own head,” I muttered darkly. “He’s said it’s not something he needs from me, and it’s not like he’s acting disappointed that I’m not doing it or anything. I hate the thought that he’s had to give up something he really likes for me, and I just can’t help but wonder if it’s one of those things that’s, you know, simmering there in the back of his head.”
“River, you have got to stop worrying so much. If he said it’s okay, then you’ve got to trust that it’s really okay. From everything I’ve heard about this guy, he doesn’t sound like he’d shy away from telling you if something was a problem.”
“I know that, but worrying is sort of my thing.” I started dragging my finger down the spines of the books on the shelf in front of me. If only I could suck up knowledge like this through osmosis—maybe then I’d start to understand what was going on in my own kinky psyche. “It’s not like I think he’d lie right to my face. It’s just…getting him to talk about himself is like pulling teeth, and it’s left me with this little nagging doubt, like maybe he’s not as introspective as he expects everyone else to be. Maybe there’s stuff that bothers him that he doesn’t…even—” My finger stopped on a thick yellow spine, my eyes popping wide open as I read the words printed across it. “What the fuck?”
“Oh no, do I even want to know what kind of depravity you just stumbled across?”
I pulled the book off the shelf and stared at the cover, stunned as the words on the cover slid through my mind without really sinking in. I grasped for their meaning, my mouth working uselessly as Tea stepped over to take a look.
“‘Knowing Our Kinks: the Lessons of Sexuality,’ by…Ellison Fitch. That’s so cool—he wrote a book!” Tea said brightly.
I flipped the book over, and there was Ellison’s face smiling back at me from the “About the Author” section, lips upturned in their familiar, knowing curl. Slowly, the words swimming before my eyes began to arrange themselves in sentences I could understand.
“He wrote…two books.”
Tea went quiet, their face falling as they saw mine. “And I’m guessing you didn’t know that.”
“I did not know that.”
With a low whistle, they leaned in to read over my shoulder. “It’s got case studies. That’s ominous.”
“I’m…going to…” I gestured feebly at a couple of armchairs tucked between the bookcases.
They gave me a nod and wandered off to grab a book of their own, leaving me alone with nothing but my own thoughts and Ellison’s stupidly handsome face. I lowered myself cautiously into the chair, halfway convinced jostling the book too much would make it spring open and release a bunch of snakes and streamers. Except the streamers would all have “River Burke, 34, came to me with misconceptions about submission…” written on them.
Which was ridiculous, of course. For one thing, the book had been published two years ago, so unless Ellison was gifted with powers of precognition to go along with his sex-specific telepathy, I couldn’t possibly be immortalized in print until his next book came out.
As I started paging through the book, I recognized Ellison’s voice immediately—that soft-spoken curiosity, the slightly detached, clinical phrasing in every question he posed. I could picture his voice saying the words, reading the text to me while I lounged against him.
The image should have been a comforting one, full of warm togetherness, but instead it made a bitter little thread of resentment pull tight in me. It was distinctly him on the pages of this book, open and true—in a way, everyone who’d bought and read it had a little piece of him.
I’d have been fooling myself if I’d thought I was the only person to see him like that, but the reminder of it still rankled.
The thing was, as much as I wanted to hate it, it was a really good book. He suggested some fascinating theories and explained his conclusions with perfect clarity. I couldn’t help but think that this was the kind of book I’d have loved to read when I was thinking about taking my first baby steps into the world of kink. Not that the material was simplistic or shallow—it was just so meticulous and well-reasoned that I probably would have figured out how to ask myself the right questions just from seeing the shape of his thoughts.
Tea sat down silently next to me, and paged through a couple of magazines for a while while I read the book. There were even supplemental materials on Ellison’s web site that I skimmed on my phone—they weren’t hard to find at all, which only made me a little irritated at myself for not internet stalking him before we started dating.
After a while, Tea gently nudged their way into my fugue. “Well? Are you finding anything bad?”
“Nothing. It’s all so good.” I made strangled noise of frustration, my head falling back against the chair.
“And you sound utterly thrilled about that,” Tea deadpanned.
“Reading this book was supposed to give me some solid rage fuel, but it’s just making me like him more. He’s just…okay, listen to this: ‘Understanding one’s sexuality is a vital key not only to understanding oneself, but to connecting meaningfully with others. The desire for sex is a uniquely unifying experience; it’s a thing we all want that doesn’t fall into the category of basic needs for survival. Just as we all need food, water, and shelter, we all want sex.’”
Tea scoffed. “Sounds like rage fuel to me. It completely dismisses the experiences of asexuals.”
I snapped the book shut, shaking my head. “No, because apparently he got called out on it—there’s a correction and retraction on his web site, and there’s going to be a revised edition coming out. Which only makes me like him more because a) he’s not perfect after all, and b) he’s willing to admit when he’s wrong.”
“That is a problem,” they said with a sage nod. “You really are screwed, aren’t you?”
“So fucking screwed. You could stick me in a wall and hang a picture on me.” With a defeated sigh, I scrubbed my hands down my face. “Now I’m just mad that I’m not mad at him.”
“I know nobody ever wants to hear these words, but: let me just play devil’s advocate for a minute here.” I gave Tea a sidelong glare. “I know, I know. But is this something you should get mad about? Did he actually do anything wrong?”
“You’re my friend; you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side. That’s why I’m trying to make sure you’re on the right one.”
“Your pragmatism vexes me.”
Tea tapped thoughtfully at their chin. “Believe it or not, that’s not the first time someone’s said that to me.”
“I don’t know if I should be mad.” I chewed on my lip for a minute, drumming my fingers on my chest as I stared at the store’s ceiling. “It’s not like he outright lied to me or anything, but when I asked him what he did for a living, that would have been a great time to say, ‘Teaching and writing books about my kinky adventures that you’re a part of.’”
“Is he writing about his own experiences? I would probably find that pretty nerve-wracking too.”
“It’s really hard to say,” I admitted. “All the, you know, names have been changed and details stripped out and everything. I did see someone in here who might be Mariah, but I’d never have guessed if she didn’t constantly overshare about what she puts in her vagina.”
Tea stifled a laugh with their hand. “Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot to talk about on your date tonight.”
“Probably not tonight,” I said,
frowning at the ceiling. “I kind of want to read both books first and spend some time gathering my thoughts so I’m not just flailing at him uselessly.”
“You’re allowed to talk to him before you have a persuasive essay and bullet point slideshow to accompany it.”
“Allowed to, sure. But this power dynamic between us makes it so hard to just talk about stuff on equal footing, even dumb inconsequential stuff. It’s like my brain just forgets how to do the whole ‘give and take’ thing, and I end up stepping back and taking all my cues from him, just like I do when we’re…you know.”
“Fucking?” Tea offered amicably.
“Yeah, that.” I sighed. “And even then, there’s these times when I just want to do things like…reach out and touch him, or put my arm around his waist while we’re walking, or just climb into his lap and kiss him because I’m feeling frisky. Little intimacy things that I feel like I have to ask permission to do, because some part of me is convinced he’ll be angry or disappointed if I’m not submissive to him every minute of every day. And if I don’t even feel like I’m emotionally equipped to give him a hug, then talking about this—” I waved the book in the air. “—before I’ve considered all the angles is just going to be a disaster.”
Tea made a thoughtful humming sound. “Do you want to change the terms of your relationship? Maybe pull back from the Dom/sub thing a little?”
“Not really,” I said with a frown. “I just want a little more…closeness? Affection? I just don’t know how to tell him that without looking too clingy.”
“River,” Tea said, voice flat, “just because Dan freaked out when you had feelings at him, that doesn’t mean Ellison is going to do the same thing.”
I turned my head to give them a puzzled look. “How did you know that? I never talked to you about Dan.”
“You didn’t need to. That’s what’s happened with every single person he’s ever dated, including me.”
“You dated Dan?” My jaw dropped. How on earth had he never mentioned that he’d dated someone with blue hair named Tea? That sounded like exactly the sort of casually hip life experience he would casually toss out there, leaving me to wonder for the rest of the night if he didn’t want to have sex with me because I wasn’t interesting enough for him.
Not that I was bitter, of course.
“Why do you think I had such a reaction when Mariah said you used to date him? Nobody deserves that.”
I let out a soft laugh. “Thanks, I appreciate the support.”
“Anyway,” Tea said, waving their hand in the air as if to brush the topic away, “talking to him about that and about the books are things you’re totally able and allowed to do. You can’t let past fears keep you from doing the things you love in life. And yes, by ‘the things you love,’ I mean Ellison.”
“I don’t love him,” I said automatically. It was way too early to be throwing around the L-bomb.
“Gosh, that sounded awfully defensive.” Tea batted their eyelashes in mock innocence, and I shot them a glare. “Relax, I don’t mean literally—you love spending time with him, right? That counts.”
“Well, I’m still going to read the books before I talk to him. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
They shrugged. “I’d probably do the same. Just as long as you are going to talk to him.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to let it sit and stew forever.”
I heard a quiet rumble, and Tea patted their stomach. “Mmm, stew. You promised me books and lunch—can we move on to stage two of that plan? You can keep crucifying yourself with self-doubt while we do it.”
“I resent your accurate assessment of my thought processes,” I said with a sigh. Tucking the book under my arm, I heaved myself to my feet. “I’ll go pay for this, and see if they have any nails I can borrow.”
14
I wanted to spend some time reading the book before our date, but lunch with Tea ran late as usual for reasons of stimulating conversation, and then I had to spend entirely too long stressing out about what to wear to a fancy-but-not-too-fancy dinner. By the time I showed up at Ellison’s place, I was simmering in a broth of low-level nerves.
“You look nice,” he said, reaching out to straighten my collar. It was so incidental, so casually affectionate, that I felt my anxiety ease under the gentle brush of his fingers. My muscles went warm and loose, and I had to fight to keep my eyes from sliding shut.
Just like that, I was ready to go along with anything he wanted.
That thought jolted my brain back online again—or at least, mostly online, because instead of making a graceful transition into a conversation about what was on my mind, I just blurted out, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Ellison did a double-take, his brows raised in confusion. I’d never seen him look quite so off-guard, and I suddenly realized what I’d just said.
“I don’t mean the relationship,” I added hastily, waving my hands kind of uselessly in the air. “No, all I mean is the…the eating out and expensive theatre and all that. I love doing that stuff with you, but I just can’t budget for it as often as we do it, and it’s stressing me out. I’m sorry.”
The relief that passed over Ellison’s face was palpable, and that was almost viscerally satisfying. Not the most mature emotional reaction, maybe, but it was gratifying to see the thought of the relationship ending had scared him. Even though I didn’t want him scared, it was nice to know that if I just up and left, he wouldn’t be entirely unaffected.
It didn’t take long for him to put himself back together, though. “Then let me be the one to pay,” he said with a shrug.
“I wish I could,” I said, and I truly did. It would have been such a simple solution. “I just…issues, you know? I’ve got to cover my own expenses, or I feel like I’ve lost control—in a really bad way. I don’t know, I can try to work on adjusting my budget or something, but maybe for now we could just stay in more? I know it’s not as fun for you, but—”
“If that’s what you really want, then we’ll do that.” He gave me a long, considering look. “But maybe I have another solution.”
“I’m all ears,” I said with a noncommittal shrug.
“What if we made this another situation where you choose to give up control to me? You allot a certain amount of money for our dates already, so what if you simply handed that money over to me each week? Then I’ll choose where and when and what we eat, and it won’t be your concern whether I want to spend more on the meal than you’ve given me. You’ll still have paid your way, and all you need to do is trust that I’ll make decisions that please me. How does that sound?”
“It sounds…” I chewed on my lip, trying to picture what he’d described, how it would feel. Tried to imagine myself entirely in his hands. “Honestly, it sounds incredibly convoluted and like it might not even address the issue.”
He gave me an indulgent smile. “If it makes you uncomfortable, we don’t have to do it. But I enjoy going out with you. I enjoy showing you off, and I enjoy tormenting you where you don’t have any choice but to restrain yourself.” I swallowed, my cock giving a hopeful little twitch as I remembered the last time I’d had to restrain myself, standing on a balcony at the art museum while he whispered in my ear all the awful, deliciously painful things he wanted to do to me. “I can afford a few small luxuries, and I consider it a worthwhile use of my money to share those luxuries with the people I care about.”
A bitter little voice in the pit of my stomach piped up to tell me that of course he could afford it—he was a nationally bestselling author in the field of alternative sexuality, after all. May as well let him spend those royalties on me as…apology, or penance, or something like that. At least until I made up my mind about whether I was upset about them.
I didn’t waste too much time on bitterness, though, because the bigger part of me was busy being kind of giddy and fluttery that he’d referred to me as someone he cared about. Especially as he reached forward to take my hand
in a gesture so carefully tender I could hardly remember what I was supposed to be upset about.
“But if you don’t think it’s a good solution,” he continued with a squeeze of my hand, “then we don’t have to go out tonight. We can stay in and cook, and I can torment you to my heart’s content right here.”
A little wave of liquid heat went up my spine, and I swallowed. “No, we can…yeah, going out tonight is fine. Maybe, um…we can try your plan next week. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m willing to try.”
“Good,” he said with a wicked smirk, “because I had some serious plans for you tonight. Are you ready to begin?”
It only hit me right that moment, as he asked so casually whether I was ready to give myself over to him, that we’d just had an entire conversation as equals—as boyfriends. And it wasn’t like that was a situation I should have found surprising or anything, but…I kind of did anyway. It was surprisingly reassuring to see clear evidence that he could function on that level with me, especially when I’d just agreed to hand over a frankly shocking amount of power in our relationship.
In the context of sex, of course, I’d always been his. Moving a power exchange like that outside the walls of the bedroom seemed like a pretty significant step, one that even a lot of the kinky people I knew didn’t usually take.
Then again, maybe this was just a sex thing for him. He had said he enjoyed paying for my drink on that first date.
Eh, I’d take it either way.
Ellison led me to the bedroom, and when I saw what was in store for me, my cock did a confused little jerk.
Truth By His Hand Page 21
