by Chloe Liese
“Long term isn’t in the cards for me, Nairne. You and I have good chemistry. I think we’ll fuck like pros. I like your intelligence and your body, and you piss me off, but not in ways that make me want to forego all the good stuff. That enough for you?”
She stared at me, ball in her lap, analyzing each sentence I’d given her. “Fine. Then we form an agreement. Clear boundaries. Expectations. And an end date. A contract of sorts.”
That was all she needed? I could kick myself. I’d been coming at it all wrong, treating her like women in my past—appealing to her emotions, trying to ply her sexually, overwhelming her with what she wanted, so she wouldn’t overthink what she didn’t.
Nairne was practical to a fault and smarter than all that. She’d signed a contract before, as a professional athlete. She wanted terms and clauses. I could do that.
“That’s it?” I asked.
Her hair looked mahogany tonight, wet with sweat and shining in the streetlights. Her head tipped to the side. Then her eyes trained over my shoulder.
A new voice startled me. “You mean to miss that last one?”
My head whipped around. Teo. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Wow.” Teo smiled at Nairne and I wanted to throttle him. “Where’d she come from?”
“Nairne, this is my soon-to-be-dead baby brother, Teo. Teo, this is Nairne MacGregor.” My body tensed while Nairne smiled and offered her hand.
Teo took it and held it two seconds too long.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
Teo smiled wider. “Same here.”
I cleared my throat. “Back to what the hell you’re doing here?”
Teo grinned at Nairne and back to me. “I went for a run, just ended up—”
“In the middle of residential Brookline, Theodore?”
He shrugged, stole the ball off Nairne, and took a shot. “I might have followed you.”
“God help me.” I scrubbed my face.
Nairne laughed and took a pass from Teo at around the three-point distance, dribbled, and shot. She made it and Teo whistled.
“You could teach Zed a thing or two,” he quipped. “All his talent got stuck in his feet.”
“All right.” I clapped my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. I was two inches south of him, but my biceps were double his. “Time for you to leave.”
“Fuck, Zed.” He spun out of my grip. “You’re gonna snap my clavicles one of these days.”
Nairne glanced between us and smiled. “I could watch you two all night.”
“I thought we were having dinner,” Teo said from behind me.
I turned slowly toward him. “She and I were. You were leaving.”
“Actually, we weren’t, because I beat you,” Nairne said as she grinned at Teo. “But I’ll make an exception, provided he comes along.”
Teo pointed her way. “I like her.”
“Fuck both of you.”
Nairne laughed and that smoky sound made my whole body ache. “I’m going to go freshen up,” she said. “Give me twenty minutes.”
Nairne went inside and Teo put an arm around my shoulder. “Number one, holy hotness.” I swatted him upside the head, and he grinned like it was nothing. “Number two, where are we going to eat?”
“Teo,” I said, “I don’t really care where we eat, but I need you to understand something.”
“Yes, fratu.”
“If you ruin this for me, I will beat you to within an inch of your life.”
Teo scooped up the ball from the driveway and dribbled toward the net. “Empty threats like that don’t scare me, Zed.” He made the layup and turned to face me. “But I’ll admit, I had no plans on making it harder for you.” He did a reverse layup and smiled at me as he caught the ball. “In fact, I was thinking just the opposite.”
I caught the outline of Nairne’s silhouette as her bathroom light flicked on. Her shadow was long and dramatic, stretched by the distortion of darkness. I sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you were gonna say.”
Eighteen
Zed
“What?” Nairne blinked at me while she chewed.
She had a massive bite of sacrilegiously overcooked cheeseburger filling her cheeks. I wanted to grab her face in one hand and kiss the hell out of her.
“Never seen you eat like this.”
Her eyebrows quirked as she set the burger down and dusted crumbs off her fingers. “You’ve never seen me exercise, really. I could eat a bloody horse after a match.”
I took a bite of my own burger. “Fair.”
Teo slurped the last of his milkshake and stared between us. “So, how’d you two meet?”
Nairne drank from her own Styrofoam cup. “I’m on the board until end of spring semester, facilitating planning for the health clinics they’re trying to establish.” She glanced at me and smiled. “He’s kept me rather secret, hasn’t he?”
Teo nodded. “Which is what tipped me off,” he said around a huge wad of burger in his mouth.
“To what?” she asked. She picked up her burger, paused, and licked a dollop of ketchup off her finger. I almost came in my pants as she sucked that digit.
Teo grinned at me and helped himself to my milkshake. “That he really likes you.”
I shook my head. “This is hell, for the record. Pure, unadulterated hell.”
Nairne knocked knees with me under the table. “I like him, too. We just drive each other a little crazy, I’m afraid. And I’ve one sad foot out the door.”
“Oh?”
“I’m returning to the UK after graduation,” said Nairne. “In time for whatever fellowship I can land.”
I froze mid-chew. Swallowed that sentence and my food whole. “This spring?”
“I told you no falling in love.” She looked at me. “Did you not think why?”
My burger hit my plate with a splat. I sat back, folded my arms. “I assumed it was dispositional. Inability. You’re a virtual loner, obsessed with your work. About as repressed as they come. Not exactly a recipe for romance.”
She slapped her hands on the table and leaned forward. “I could love if I wanted, thank you very much. I just don’t choose to right now. It’s not the right time. I’m young. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”
“Well,” Teo interjected, “conveniently, Zed’s heading to Europe, too.”
Nairne glared at me. “What?”
“We’re very proud. He’s destined for soccer greatness.”
My gaze snapped to his. “I’m not going anywhere, and you know it.”
Nairne’s eyes darted between us.
“The fuck you aren’t,” Teo grumbled.
“Drop it, Teo.”
“Jesus, you’re stubborn.”
“What—” Nairne sighed. “What the fuck are you two talking about?” She looked at me pointedly. “Zed?”
I rubbed my face. “Teo wants me to go to Europe to play. Doesn’t mean I will, or that I can.”
“Why can’t you?”
I looked around. “That is a conversation for another night and a much less public space.”
Teo sighed. “He’s in denial, Nairne. I’ve made it my personal mission to get his sad ass to that side of the Atlantic within the year.”
Nairne smiled but stared at me curiously as she took another bite of her food.
Teo was a conversationalist and his chatty ways often irritated me. But at the moment, they helped smooth over the rough patch that he’d created. “So, Nairne, may I ask why you aren’t staying stateside?”
She shook her head sadly. “On the one hand, I want to stay and try to fix what’s broken in terms of this country’s public health policy. Here, you hemorrhage money when you have my medical needs. You’re fucked up, the lot of you. Impoverishing people because they were born into difficult circumstance, because they weren’t lucky to live free of disease or debilitating injury.”
It was her passion—the intersection of social conscience and public health, and
I could listen to her talk about it all day. She wrote better about it than our tool bag grant writer. Because she spoke as much from her heart as from her head.
“On the other hand,” she continued, “I need to be practical about my own needs. European healthcare is better for me. I can take care of myself better in the UK while trying to solve public health challenges than I could in the States.”
She was right. This place wasn’t a good fit for her. Europe had better healthcare, and fantastic opportunities for her research interests. And I wanted that for her, more than I could want her for myself.
Even though I knew it would never happen, I fantasized about what having her might be like. How I’d wrap myself around her and shield her from the shit of the world. Keep her safe. Possess her body, draw the lines and contours of a life that would make hers effortless. I had let my mind wander plenty lately, to the dream world where I left the States and we somehow managed to live in the same country. She’d study, research mutated microbes, and solve world hunger. I’d play with peers, never looking over my shoulder. I’d be free.
It was a fucking pipe dream.
Even if I somehow got out of the life one day, I couldn’t love someone who fought my protective impulsive so powerfully, forced me to leave them exposed to the elements of the world. That’s how regular relationships looked to me, like leaving an exotic flower out in the snow and saying, well, if it’s meant to be, she’ll make it. Nairne wasn’t delicate, and she wasn’t helpless, but she was vulnerable. The universe was capricious and ripped away innocent life. Especially given the horrible mess I waded through daily. If something happened to someone I loved and I hadn’t died trying to stop it, I couldn’t live with myself.
Teo sighed. “Yeah, you’re not wrong. I’m looking into the medical field, and when I think about how American private interests capitalize off of illness and pharmacopeia, it pisses me off. Europe’s got it right. Universal healthcare.”
Nairne smiled faintly, then shoved her foot at me under the table. “Zed.”
“Mm?” I snapped out of my thoughts and stared at her.
“What is it?
“Nothing.” I turned toward Teo. “Can you give us a minute?”
He laughed and stood. “Yeah, yeah. I have to take a leak anyway.”
I watched him walk off, then turned to Nairne. “I want you to consider something.” I set a standard dom/sub contract in front of her.
“Where the hell did that come from?” She fell back against the bench and looked at me warily.
I’d had Bruno print a copy and run it by while Teo and I waited for Nairne. But she didn’t need to know that, because it made me look desperate and a little crazy. Which I was. She didn’t need to know that either.
“It’s a general agreement between two consenting adults who want to do power play, essentially. There’s a lot of shit in there that at face value might freak you out, but if you let me explain them…” She ripped the papers her way and I watched her eyes scan them rapidly. Left. Right. Left. Right. I raked a hand through my hair. “You can ask me anything. And you can redline things. It’s a starting point for discussion.”
Her cheeks darkened when she got to nipple play. I could read it upside down. I had the thing memorized. When she flipped the page and read about spanking, flogging, and caning, she squirmed in her seat and exhaled unsteadily.
The thing was, plenty of those things, I didn’t need. As Nella said, pain wasn’t my kink. Those items were for me to know what would get my partner off. I didn’t love a woman sitting at my feet like a pet, resting her head on my lap, and awaiting my pleasure. But if it made her calm, freed her, aroused her, I could make a scene of that just fine.
Next page. All things anal. “Uh-uh.” She flipped it. I’d known that already. Then came lifestyle. Whereabouts. Directives. Availability. I’d take her where and when I wanted. Submission.
Her hands shook as she stared up at me. I couldn’t read her. Those eyes were dark green and boring into me. Her pupils were dilated. Her cheeks were high with color still. She was aroused, in spite of herself. And she hated me for it.
“This isn’t right.”
“That’s judgmental. People need different things. I don’t do this to a woman who doesn’t want it, Nairne. It’s consensual.”
“Consensual?” she hissed. “Power play, choking, crawling, collars, lying with her arse in the air for you to fuck as you please. You’re telling me there’s a woman who likes that?”
I leaned in, folded my hands, and spoke evenly. “You tell me. Are you wet?”
She grimaced and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I am, it’s the principle—”
“Are. You. Wet.”
She swallowed.
“You’re flushed,” I said. “Your pupils are so dilated I can barely tell what color your eyes are. You started breathing unevenly when you read about nipple play and you wiggled that little ass the moment you thought about me spanking you until you came on my hand, didn’t you?”
She shook her head violently. “Stop it.”
“No,” I seethed. Dropped my voice. “You stop. You’re lying to yourself and to me, and I’m sick of it.”
“Fine.” She extracted a pen from her messy bun that I hadn’t known was there, like a bizarre magic trick. Black ink dragged, line after line. She was emotional. Pissed.
I stilled her hand with mine. “Fragolina, you’re upset. Just—”
“Fucking right,” she snapped and dragged her pen down another page.
“Enough.” I crumpled the papers in my fist and dragged them away. Shoved them in my pocket and put my hands up. “There’s something you don’t understand about this world. It’s about honest, clear communication. It’s about trust and exposure and the intimacy required for two people to give each other release, without shame or judgment.”
I leaned in and dropped my voice to a rough whisper. “I don’t inflict pain on women who don’t derive intense pleasure from it. I learn them. I devote myself to them. My complete focus is orchestrating my time with a partner to make her body fucking sing. Does it involve alternative methods to three-minute missionary or the oh-so-edgy shower fuck? Yes. But that’s what some people need. And admit it or not, Nairne, you’re one of them.
“We’re not freaks,” I continued, “and I’m done having you imply as much. If it isn’t clear to you by now that I’m asking you to consider a deeper exploration of your sexuality, to open yourself to the kind of mind-blowing fucking you and I could have, not cornering you into some sadistic trap to cage and torture you, then you don’t know me, and you have no interest in it.”
I slid out of the bench and threw on my jacket. “Your car’s here. I’m out.”
Shoulder to the door, face-first into a bitch slap of frigid November wind. Exactly what I needed. Teo came out a minute later, hiking his jacket collar up and staring over at me.
“Sooo, that went well.”
My laugh was a blast of hot vapor in the night air. “Yeah, it went exactly how I knew it was going to.”
I started toward my car. Teo jogged and caught up. “Where’re we going?”
“I’m going home. Lacing up my sneakers and running the river. You’re welcome to join, but fair warning, I’m running until I’m too exhausted to be pissed anymore.” About how misunderstood I felt. How disappointed I was in her that she resisted it. She was intelligent. Curious. Fucking feral. She bit and scratched. She’d sucked me off in a public restroom and let me finger her under a restaurant table, and she’d loved it all. Nairne was an unconventional, wildly sexual woman and she couldn’t acknowledge that. It drove me nuts. She was unapologetic about every other aspect of her life. Her nerdiness, her independence. Her ambitious goals and brilliant trajectory. Why couldn’t she see that how we ticked sexually wasn’t something to be sorry for, either?
Fuck that shit. I was done apologizing, spending myself on a woman who didn’t want to challenge her prejudices long enough to embrace her sen
suality.
I had let her crack my armor. I’d softened up. I’d tried to let her in so she could see who I was, which I’d never done before. And as experience demonstrated, there’d been good reason for it. Damn good reason.
Nineteen
Nairne
“Elodie?” I leaned closer to the screen. The video call picture was blurry, but it looked like she was frowning. Why would she be frowning?
“Nairne, you confuse me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You were so judgmental.” She sighed. “He risked himself, told you what he needs, which is not far off from how you are—”
“Were,” I corrected.
She rolled her eyes. “And you told him he’s perverted.”
My cheeks flamed. “I did not call him perverted!”
“Not right is what you told me you called his lifestyle. I know English isn’t my first language, but that’s comparable to perverted. You implied his sexuality was somehow wrong.”
I sat back in my seat and ran a hand along my throat. Had I botched it? I’d looked at those words, all of those degrading acts that at face value lowered a woman to no more than chattel, and I couldn’t stop seeing red. Rage had hit my body. How could a woman want that? Women were strong, intelligent, and powerful, and we’d been oppressed throughout history. Why would any woman desire that kind of subjugation? Why did I?
“It frightened me,” I muttered. “I don’t like what I can’t make sense of.”
Elodie nodded. “Understandable. But you could tell him what happened, explain why you have trouble with the idea, especially now.”
I shook my head as I stared up at the ceiling.
“Why haven’t you told him?” she pressed. “If you did, I’m sure he’d understand. Make some concessions. You could explain what you like—”
“Liked.”
I glanced down to catch her rolling her eyes. “You’re being obtuse.”
