A slight tinge of pink touched her cheeks. “Thanks, Brynn.”
I narrowed the people in my life down from acquaintances to inner circle. There were several levels between. I’d decided long ago that life was far too short to waste time on people who had no interest in being real, loyal, and who didn’t give a shit about me or my life. So while I shared a part of myself with everyone, only the people who truly cared about me would get to see me completely. My inner circle was my tribe. The people I could be one hundred percent myself with who supported me, cheered me on, and weren’t afraid to call me on bullshit. It was a small group, full of the best people I’d ever met, and I was fine with the fact that not many individuals were included in that number. I was happy Syd, and now Courtney, were both part of my tribe.
Our appetizers arrived and we all grabbed a plate, trying different things.
“So...” Syd said, turning her shrewd gaze on me. I immediately wanted to shrink back. I knew that look, and wasn’t excited about her next statement. “Cade said you had a good time on your date.”
I nodded and looked down, intently interested in the stuffed mushrooms on my plate. “We did.”
“Are you seeing him again?”
I wrinkled my nose and sighed. “Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I haven’t really decided which.” Syd’s eyes were the size of saucers, and Court’s were almost as big. “Hey! It’s not like I’ve never dated a guy more than once,” I huffed.
“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Syd said.
“I date guys repeatedly all the time,” I defended. “I have a list.”
“Of booty calls, and friends with benefits,” Syd said, spearing a piece of pasta. “Not guys you actually date, date.”
I frowned. “Cade was being difficult. I’ll continue to date him until he’s not.”
“Difficult in what way?” Syd asked.
“In a way that involved him not removing his pants.”
Syd’s eyes sparked with amusement and she grinned. “He knew exactly what to do to keep your interest.”
I glared and considered throwing my mushroom at her nose. “Probably with a lot of help from you.” The irritation was evident in my tone.
Syd held up her hands. “I didn’t say a thing about that. Cade’s an intelligent, perceptive guy. He must have picked up on it.”
“Clearly,” I said.
“So what’s the game plan going forward?” Court asked.
I pressed my lips into a line. “He made a proposal.”
Syd and Court’s eyebrows both rose with interest.
I poked at some sort of meat on my plate. “He thinks I use sex to deflect. I can’t say he’s wrong. He says he won’t enable me, and we have to date before we get naked.”
Syd’s mouth dropped open. “You agreed to that?”
“For now,” I said, biting the corner of my lip and narrowing my eyes. “You know I don’t like to say no to things. I might end up surprised. I’ll keep seeing him for now, and see what happens.”
Syd’s mouth slid up, amused. “I love Cade.”
“I don’t,” I grumbled. “He thinks he can hold out and not have sex. I don’t think that will last long. As soon as we have sex, he’ll be off my to-do list, and I can move on.”
“To-do list,” Court said with a giggle. “I love Mistress A.”
My heart instantly felt like it had stopped. Dammit! I’d said something Mistress A would say without even thinking about it! I gave myself a mental shake as a reminder to be more careful. I needed to compartmentalize my Brynn and Mistress A personas better in my mind so they didn’t seep into each other and give me away.
Syd laughed, shaking her head. “I think you’ll have a harder time getting rid of him than that. He knows what he wants and goes after it. He got you on the date in the first place, a pretty impressive feat if you ask me. Then he got you to agree to multiple dates. A cease-fire in a war zone would be no less impressive. I’m interested to see where this goes.”
“Me too,” I said on a frustrated sigh. I hoped wherever it was, we were getting there soon. “Me too.”
We dropped Courtney off at her place, and then went back to the house. I expected Syd to leave me so she could spend the night with Jax, but instead she pulled into the driveway, cut the engine, and got out of the car.
“You’re coming in?” I asked.
She nodded. “We need to talk.”
I gave her a suspicious look as we walked into the house. Syd and I rarely declared that “we needed to talk,” and if we did, it was because something was amiss.
“Okaaay,” I said, lowering myself onto the soft couch and crossing my legs.
She sat next to me. “About Mistress A.”
My breath caught in my throat and I did my best not to let my reaction show. Syd was excellent at reading body language in general, and even better at reading it with me because we’d known each other for so long.
She folded her hands in her lap and looked right at me. “I know it’s you.”
I gasped, my eyes bulging. My voice was stuck in my throat for several seconds as my mind tried to figure out the best course of action. Should I deny it? That would be a total lie and miscarriage of trust. I’d omitted things up to this point, but I hadn’t told her an untruth. No, I wouldn’t lie. Even if having someone else know would put me at risk, she’d confronted me point-blank, and I’d own it. I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. “How did you know?”
“A lot of things,” she said, releasing a breath of her own. Her shoulders sank into the couch and her neck relaxed like a weight she’d been holding was gone. “Nothing that anyone else would notice. I don’t think any other person knows you well enough, but there were things I saw. You and Mistress A are both similar in your opinions and attitudes, so I noticed that. Sometimes you’d repeat things that she’d said, like tonight when you mentioned your ‘To-Do List’.” Dammit! I was hoping Syd hadn’t caught that.
“Or like the night I mentioned snow sex and temperature play, and you told me to use clean snow—that was the same line Mistress A had used in her post. Then you mentioned you were happy people were learning from Mistress A. The way you worded your answer made it seem like you were taking ownership of the posts. Also, in general, you’re pretty vocal about all things sex-related, but anytime Mistress A was brought up, you often became more quiet than usual. Then there was you quitting your job. You’ve had that job for years and loved it. It was flexible and worked well with your school and volunteer schedule. You’ve always been concerned about money, so I couldn’t figure out why you’d quit in your first year of grad school with so many bills to pay. You had to be getting money from somewhere else.” She paused, looking at me from the side, “I briefly considered that you’d become an escort—”
I threw one of the couch pillows at her. “You did not!”
“You’re right, I know you better than that. But an escort, or foray into the world of sugar babies, were two of the only explanations I could come up with for the money you seemed to have without working.”
“I told you I’d saved money up.” That wasn’t a lie. I had saved some money before Mistress A started, and a lot more after.
She picked up the pillow I’d thrown, holding it on her lap as she shifted to lean back against the arm of the couch. “There’s no way it would have covered everything, especially living expenses, or the new clothes and Coach bags you were buying.”
I scrunched up my nose at that. I knew buying things could give me away, so I’d been careful, but I had rewarded myself with a Coach bag only because I was certain most people wouldn’t even notice, and if anyone did—Syd included—they’d likely assume I got it on sale at a Coach outlet.
She kicked a leg out onto the coffee table. “So I started watching you and noticed you were spending a lot more time on your laptop, tablet, and phone than usual. Not only that, but you were writing a lot. Judging by how quickly you shut your devices off every time I walked in while you were
working on something, I decided it was probably something you didn’t want me to see, and not another paper for school.”
She had me there. I had been pretty careful about what I wrote, and who saw me writing it, regardless of whether I was at school, in a coffee shop, or at home. If I was writing in public, I usually only did it at a booth or a table that allowed me to shield my screen from anyone walking by. I wrote most of my posts in Google docs before pasting them into my site, and I rarely updated my site from anywhere but my house.
“But,” she said, giving me a look, “the thing that made me certain of the connection between you and Mistress A was the Kitty Fisher story.”
I looked at her with total disbelief. “That’s what tipped you off?”
She grinned. “I’ve never heard another soul mention that story, but you’ve used it with me for years to justify the history of going commando. When it showed up in Mistress A’s blog, that along with everything else I’d noticed, made me put two-and-two together. I made a guess, and guessed right.”
I pursed my lips, annoyed that I’d dropped any hints, but especially one so glaring. It made me question everything I’d done…again. Aside from the initial slipup that made people guess Mistress A was from the Winchester area, I thought I’d been diligent and taken all precautions possible. Apparently I hadn’t. It’s a good thing it was just Syd, and I was certain I’d never relayed the Kitty Fisher story to anyone else. “All of your evidence was completely circumstantial,” I argued.
Her lips pulled up slightly. “But I was right.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Good guess, Prosecutor.”
She shrugged. “It’s what I’m trained for—to find threads and make connections.”
I scrunched up my nose, annoyed. “I kind of hate lawyers.”
She flashed a too-sweet smile. “But not me.”
“Not you,” I agreed. “Dammit, though! I thought I’d been so vigilant!”
“You were!” she assured me. “There’s no one else who knows you as well as I do. No one else will make the connections.” She grabbed some candy from the dish on our coffee table and popped one in her mouth. “I’m amazed you were able to keep the secret!”
“Me too,” I admitted, feeling relieved that I had someone I could discuss it with now. “It wasn’t easy.”
“I can’t figure out how you’re stopping people from finding out it’s you, though. Everything is tracked nowadays.” Syd said, genuinely confused. “You can’t even buy groceries without the items being linked to your credit card.”
I got up from the couch and went to the kitchen to grab a water bottle, and brought one back for Syd too. “I had some help from a friend who owed me a favor. He kept my name off things. I also have some advisors who told me the best way to handle the business side. I opened a company and everything runs through it.”
She unscrewed her water bottle and took a drink. “But even companies have to be tied to an actual person.”
I shook my head. “Not in Wyoming, they don’t. You can set up an anonymous business with a point of contact, like an attorney, instead of having it tied to your own name.”
Syd looked at me like I’d grown another head. “You did a lot of research for this.”
I nodded. “I didn’t want to screw this up. It could affect my whole life.”
Syd looked sightlessly at the wall, taking it all in. I couldn’t tell exactly what she was thinking, and hoped she wasn’t judging me. I didn’t think she was, but people were weird when it came to sex and money. Finally her lips slid up and she looked back at me. “You’re like a sex superhero!” she said. “Secret identity and everything!”
I laughed, thinking that was a superhero movie I’d like to see!
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her face falling and her tone soft. I didn’t want to hurt her, but knew keeping a secret like this would.
I gave her an apologetic look. “I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I wanted to. More times than I can even tell you. There’s been so much going on that I could have used your advice for. I wanted to talk to you about it at least once a day. But the more people who know, the more the probability increases that someone will find out my identity. It could put me at risk everywhere. School…they could take away my scholarships, or maybe even kick me out,” though the scholarship issue didn’t really matter anymore considering the money I was making from my site. “It could affect my future job and whether I have clients.”
“It might help you get clients,” Syd pointed out.
I nodded in agreement. “But maybe not the ones I want.”
She agreed.
“Part of it was also that I wanted to make sure I could keep some level of privacy in my personal life. When you put something out in public like that, it’s no longer yours, and people are free to make assumptions at will. But all of those things aside, the biggest issue with revealing myself to anyone was CARE. What if the families we help were to find out, and then tell Charlie they don’t want me working with them anymore? I’ve seen so many stories of people who have been involved in something sex-related and lost everything for it. Like the woman who wrote erotica novels under a secret pen name. Someone found out about it and the woman lost her job. It’s horrible, and I completely disagree with the reaction. What someone does in the bedroom or in their free time isn’t a reflection of who they are at work. I’m in the same position as that woman, though. I worry it could affect my volunteer position, and I wouldn’t want to do anything that puts CARE, or Charlie, in a bad position.”
Syd nodded sympathetically. “I understand that. I still wish you’d confided in me…we tell each other everything, but I see your point. I won’t tell a soul. Not even Jax. This is between you and me, and that’s it. It’s like attorney/client privilege, only it’s best friend/best friend privilege, which is decidedly more sacred.”
I breathed out a long sigh, relieved to have the information off my chest, and grateful to have someone to share the burden of it with. I mean, I had Master Z to talk to about it, but I didn’t even really know him, and definitely wouldn’t be revealing my identity to him. Syd was my person, and I knew I could go to her to vent and get advice. There wasn’t a more loyal person alive, and I trusted her implicitly.
“Thank you for being there, supporting me, and not judging me.” I meant it sincerely. I didn’t know what I’d do without her in my life.
“You know I’m the person who always will be. No more secrets. Ever.”
I nodded my agreement and gave her a solid hug. I was lucky to have such a wonderful friend.
Before going to bed, I checked my phone, and saw a notification about a new post from Master Z. Curious, I scrolled down and clicked on it. The screen with the shadow-faced hot guy sporting an eight pack and tattoo popped up, followed by his latest post.
Alpha Answers
Everyone fights. If someone tells you they’re in a relationship—any relationship, friendships included—and they don’t fight, they’re lying, or selling something. You can’t agree all of the time, and you won’t. The trick is learning to push through the conflict, truly listen and hear what the other person is saying, and work it out while making the relationship stronger in the process. Some people don’t have this skill. They don’t know how to deal with issues and instead shove them to the side and spend years holding grudges. It’s not a healthy way to deal with problems. You need to work through the disagreement and move on. The difficulty is that different personalities deal with conflict in different ways; in no place is there a more stark delineation on this subject than between men and women. Most men are natural fixers. They hate drama, and want issues resolved immediately so they can move forward and not have to deal with the argument anymore. When women have a problem, they want someone to listen. They often need to vent, and want to know they’ve been heard. If men can learn to listen, understand, and be a partner instead of only trying to fix the problem, women will feel supported. Building trust is difficult, espec
ially if you’ve done something to lose that trust. So, admit when you’re wrong. Apologize. And remember that when you’ve hurt someone—and in life in general—listening is more important than being heard.
I pressed the power button on my phone and settled into bed. As I stared at the ceiling before drifting off to sleep, I thought that maybe Master Z deserved a chance after all.
Tips and Tits: The Word from Mistress A
Don’t Dazzle Me
One day, someone was crafting naked, accidently spilled some glitter and sequins on their who-ha, and said, “Holy vajayjay! That looks AH-mazing! I’m about to be a trendsetter!” Okay, I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it happened, but I can’t think of a more plausible explanation for Vajazzling and Dijazzling. This is the process in which first you have all the hair ripped from your happy places, and then sparkly little crystals are applied to your sensitive, now very unhappy places. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but it has the potential to go south fast, and not in a good way. You don’t want to end up as one of the unfortunate stories on Sex Sent Me to the ER. For the love of your naughty bits, if you’re going to do this, DON’T make it a DIY project! Go to a professional! Aside from the initial pain, let’s talk about the after effects. Great goddesses, the chaffing! The whole point of sex is friction and rubbing. You’re going to end up with blisters at best, and there’s a serious risk of losing some rhinestones in your lady bits. Don’t even try to exercise. Those rhinestones will catch on your Lu-whatever leggings and trust me when I say trying to extract yourself from that sticky situation in the middle of the gym will be an embarrassing endeavor. I’ve dazzled some things in my life…mostly on paper or fabric. Those dazzles have the same amount of sticking force as envelope glue. Meaning they don’t. So, aside from the painful wax, chaffing, and uncomfortable workouts you’ll have to endure, you’re also likely to find tiny little crystals all over your body for weeks. Like glitter herpes. Some women will tell you it’s all about female empowerment. My hat is off to them. I’d do it for female empowerment too if I didn’t have to wait until all the crystals were gone to have sex…I like sex way too much to go that long without it. Take my advice and just say vajazz-no.
Chasing Brynn (A Tempting Novel Book 2) Page 12
