I’ve had amazing subs and I’ve had amazing girlfriends, and the two go hand in hand absolutely never. Case in point; Claire. Claire was the first girl who ever asked me to tie her up and wrap my hands around her throat. I met Claire working in a bookstore in college. She’d come to the counter and ask my recommendations, acting superior to her giggling friends. After several weeks of receiving her attention, I gathered the nerve to ask her to dinner. We went to a roadside diner at 3 am, threw pennies in a fountain, and fucked in the backseat of my car. I spent the next year following her around like a puppy, worshiping the ground she walked on. She taught me how to satiate her desires and awoke new desires in me. She pushed me to push her. Unbeknownst to me, she was also fucking several of my friends, two older men, and a drug dealer. She never thought she had to tell me, because even though she’d told me she loved me, she didn’t mean it and she “didn’t think we were that serious.” It took several years to realize how selfish and vapid she was. Once I had this realization, I started fucking her again just to see my hands paint her flesh red.
Madison was a different story all together. I had to take her on five dates before she got naked, but I was completely okay with it. We would sit and talk for hours and hours, she’d tell me about all of these grand things she wanted to do, who she wanted to be. She’d talk about the books she’d read and the places she’d been and the art she’d seen. I was enthralled by her, completely absorbed in the idea of giving up the lifestyle I’ve been living and settle into cups on coffee on rainy Sunday mornings, reading the paper together and discussing current events. We would make love soft, and slow, and passionate; I would press myself as deeply as I could, and the sounds of her quiet, breathy moans still haunt me. It’s like being inside of her wasn’t enough, I needed to be somehow closer. I was so unbelievably in love with her. We just meshed. We worked so well together. Until we didn’t.
I don’t remember where the switch flipped. When the boring sex went from deeply emotionally satisfying to just plain boring. But it got tedious, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. It was around the same time that her once lyrical voice became grating and nagging. I stopped hanging on her every word, and began half-listening to her stories. She’d expressed concern that she wasn’t being satisfied, and that she could tell my heart wasn’t in it when I did give in and fuck her. I tried to play it off as if she was making a big deal out of nothing, and that we didn’t have a problem. It retrospect, I should have asked her to leave. There was no reason to continue the relationship. I wasn’t being fulfilled sexually or emotionally, and there was no reason to drag it out like I did. I guess I was just comfortable, and didn’t like the idea of having to start over. I’d already invested too much in this relationship to just throw in the towel. We got an apartment together. We picked out furniture together. Fuck, man.
Fast forward a couple months of lackluster if not essentially non-existent sex, long nights which used to be filled with passionate conversation replaced by staring silently at mediocre television shows and going to bed at separate times, and pleasantries replaced with knock down drag out arguments, and Maddie started having to work late more often than not. I took the hint, and whenever I received one of her frequent “don’t wait up for me, I’ve got a long night at the office,” text messages, I began having long nights in the guest bedroom with Claire. It came as no surprise when Maddie sat me down to admit she’d been sleeping with someone, because she couldn’t bear the guilt any longer. She collected her things and left, with no argument from me.
When Lilly came storming into my life, I was sure that I had my shit figured out enough to not fuck it up. I fucked it up anyway. I fucked it up worse than I have ever fucked up anything in my extensive history of fucking things up. I didn’t fuck it up because I got too attached, I didn’t fuck it up because things got mundane and we fell out of love. I fucked it up because I didn’t have the willpower to keep saying no. I should have. I should have kept Lilly in the back of my mind. I should have told Claire to suck a dick, but been more clear that I didn’t mean mine. I can’t blame my brother, even though he relentlessly begged me to bring her and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I could have kept saying no, and he could have fucked off about it. I can’t blame Claire, although she kept coming onto me and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I didn’t have to give in. I can’t blame the drugs and alcohol; I didn’t have to take them. I knew they would weaken my resolve, and I took them anyway. I can only blame myself, and I blame myself for absolutely fucking everything.
If I’d cancelled that trip, Lilly might be sitting here laughing at some dumb meme she found on the internet. If I’d resisted my brother’s incessant whining about wanting to fuck Claire, Lilly might be laying across my bed, playing that stupid fucking cat game. If I’d stayed sober and left Claire to my brother, Lilly would be safe. If I’d just done things differently, Lilly would be here right now, with no reason to be outside at this time of night. Instead, I’ve had police in and out of my apartment for the past three hours because I saw her get dragged across the parking lot and forced into the trunk of a car.
Acknowledgements
Thank you first and foremost to E.L. James, for starting the discussion about BDSM, and taking away some of the taboo. You paved the way for stories like this one to be told. Lilly’s inner goddess thanks you.
Thank you to my husband, for trying to be supportive, even though I think you still haven’t and probably never will read this in it’s entirety. And gave me shit for months about writing a sex novel instead of my magnum opus. It’s okay. I still love you. Sometimes.
Thank you to Sandra Smith, for re-igniting my passion for writing and inspiring me to put this on the page. Thanks for reminding me that life happening around you isn’t an excuse to stop creating.
Thank you to Taylor Jarvis, without whom many of the scenes in this book would not exist. Thank you for staying up late with me and letting me bounce ideas off of you, and for contributing absolutely amazing ideas when I would get stuck.
Thank you to Sheila Allen, for sitting in my kitchen and listening to me talk about this project for hours on end, even though you would probably rather be talking about literally anything else. Thank you for understanding when I would flake on social outings to stay home and write, even if you thought it was lame as fuck.
Thank you to Jordan Cheek for your honest and critical technical feedback, without it this would be a giant product placement and contain at least 50 percent more fuck words. Could you imagine this with MORE fuck words? No? Thank Jordan.
Thank you to the Vag Pack for keeping me up until 3 am most nights and distracting me from working on this. Also for your undying support and for making me feel like this is better than it probably actually is. Maybe if it’s as good as you think it is I’ll make enough money to buy us a commune because being states away from you all makes me so sad.
Thank you to Shawn Haynes, Kathryn Benz, Summer Mott, Chloe Weasley, Elsy Beath, Briana Jones, and Patience Masters, and probably several others who are going to think I am a bitch for forgetting to list them, who have been cheering me on since the beginning, and anxiously awaiting the next chapter.
Thank you to Hannah Uhl, who began reading this ironically, to laugh at the different euphemisms for penis, and ended up being one of my biggest cheerleaders. Thank you for reading and responding to the book length messages I sent you explaining my dilemmas with how to format, or how to work in particular dialogue, or how to work a scene, and never sending an eyeroll emoji telling me to shut the fuck up. Your feedback has been incredibly valuable to this project. You’ll recognize Hannah from her sexy ass plastered on my cover, to which I also owe her my deepest gratitude. Werk, bitch.
Thank you to Laundry, Love, and Science. This is a multi-faceted acknowledgement. Thank you first for your insight on how to deal with stains acquired while researching this project. For the record: Blue dawn and Peroxide will take blood and semen right out of a white, one hundred percent cotton d
uvet. Secondly, thank you for kicking me out so I could go back to working on this project instead of spending hours upon hours learning all the different off label uses for Windex and judging people’s nasty ass bathrooms. I still don’t know the difference between stripping and deep cleaning. JUST BUY NEW PILLOWS, SHARON.
Last, but certainly not least, thank you to my dear, dear gutterlings. The support that you have shown has been overwhelming, and without it, this project may have never come to fruition. Thank you for the feedback, for sharing the excitement, for pushing me to make this the best version of itself. This book is dedicated to The Gutter. If you don’t know what that it, you can’t sit with us.
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