by M. A. Innes
Secrets In The Dark
M.A. Innes
Published by M.A. Innes, 2016
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SECRETS IN THE DARK
First edition. September 2016.
Copyright 2016 M.A. Innes
Written by M.A. Innes
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
CHAPTER 1
“You can’t say no. You don’t have a choice; I need you to do this.”
“Huh?” Shooting up in bed, Mason didn’t even realize he had his phone in his hand until Maddy screeched again.
“MASON!”
“Maddy?”
“Are you listening to me?” The volume of her screech told Mason she’d been trying to get his attention for a while. When had he answered the phone? Mason had been up all night finishing a coding project that had a tight deadline. Looking over at the clock on his nightstand, he stretched and noticed that it was almost five o’clock in the evening.
“No, sorry. I was asleep. What’s up?”
“I need you to come down to Midnight. We had a cancellation at the last minute and I need someone else so we have an even number.”
Midnight? He knew that should ring a bell but his brain was too fuzzy. “Midnight?”
“Lord, Mason. Are you paying attention?”
If he said no, she was going to totally lose her shit. It would almost be worth it, because when Maddy was losing her marbles it was fabulous to watch. Unfortunately, he wasn’t up for one of her DEFCON 5 explosions right now. “I was up all night working. Remind me.”
Maddy had been his best friend since college when they’d been in the same dorm. While they didn’t have much in common on the surface, they complimented each other really well. He didn’t mind that she was crazy and she didn’t mind that he was…well, unique.
“Midnight. The restaurant where we’re having the Dating in the Dark event. Ringing any bells?”
“Oh, yeah the mixer thing with the dark restaurant. What did you need me for again?”
Maddy worked for a dating service that connected people by arranging group dates and mixers in unconventional locations. This time, they were having a dinner at a new restaurant downtown where you had to eat in complete darkness. It was supposed to be intimate and completely different from anything else out there, at least, according to the morning talk shows and Maddy’s endless rants.
“I had a last minute drop out. The guy evidently eloped to Vegas last night.”
“Still not seeing why you need me.” The pounding in his head felt like he’d partied all night long. No more all-nighters, he was getting too old for it. It sucked that at twenty-four he was feeling so ancient.
“I need an even number for the party. This is our first gay event and I have thirty-nine bachelors where I should have forty. Are you catching on now?”
“Hell, no, Maddy. You’re not making me hang out for hours with stuffy upper-crust business types.” Mason worked hard and was successful but he would never be the perfect guy for someone like that. Mason was a freelance computer programmer and he did really well for himself but those types of guys wanted preppy and perfect. Not unique and slightly nerdy.
“Oh, yes, I am. I need a live body and you happen to be gay, single, successful, and handy. You’re it; now get your ass out of bed and down here.”
Stumbling out of bed, he looked down at his clothes: boxer briefs, and a T-shirt. “Damn it, Maddy. What do I have to wear? How fancy is this? Hell, where is this restaurant again?”
“Nice, but not crazy extravagant. It’s going to be in the dark unless you stick around for the cocktails after. And it’s downtown in one hour.”
“Maddy, it would take me almost an hour to get there on a good day.” He was well outside the city and normally that wouldn’t be a problem. He wasn’t a big partier anyway. Even if it were only Wednesday, the traffic would be crazy.
“I can stall if you’re a couple of minutes late but I need you to hurry. I can’t have someone eating by himself and there is no way to cancel on any of these men.”
“Prissy types who’ll pitch a fit, huh?”
“No, try top businessmen who don’t want to be told no.”
“Even worse.”
“Definitely.”
“Okay, text me the address. You’re going to owe me.”
“Not a chance. Hurry up. I can’t have you crazy late.” With that, she disconnected the call.
Walking into the bathroom, Mason turned on the shower and jumped in. The blast of cold water woke him up better than anything else would have. He hated being roped into stupid.
Hopefully, whoever he got stuck with wouldn’t be too obnoxious. It was only for an hour or so; he could deal with it even if the guy was boring, or worse—crazy judgmental and a loudmouth. He grinned; he’d do it just so Maddy would owe him. Because no matter what she said, she was going to owe him big time.
Most gay guys he knew would have jumped at this kind of chance. A room full of eligible, successful bachelors who were looking for serious relationships. Heaven to most guys. Mason wasn’t under any illusions that he would find Mr. Right there tonight. No, the chances of his perfect guy at an event like that were astronomical.
Mr. Sexy-for-a-quickie maybe, but that wasn’t what Mason wanted and Maddy would kill him if he made one of her clients angry. Mason liked to get laid as much as the next guy but the kind of man he really needed wasn’t going to be at a vanilla singles mixer. Mason was looking for someone a little more unique.
Mason’s fantasy guy was take charge in and out of the bedroom. Strong, sexy, and dominant…that’s what Mason desired in a man. If that were it, though, it wouldn’t be too hard to find.
When you added in everything else Mason craved, that’s when the eligible bachelor list shrunk considerably. Mason’s sexy, perfect man wouldn’t just take charge. No, he would be kinky too. Because Mason wanted a daddy, not just a boyfriend.
The fantasy started in his early teens. God bless the internet and parents who didn’t understand child-protection software. Realizing he was gay was easy, but figuring out why most guys didn’t appeal to him had been more difficult.
It had been terribly confusing to know that while girls didn’t turn him on at all, most men didn’t really turn him on either. In fact, guys his own age just hadn’t done it for him. They were attractive, yes, but he hadn’t had any desire to date them or do anything past a little bit of flirting.
One day, however, he’d been looking through porn sites and browsing through free online dirty books when he’d stumbled across a blog written by a gay couple detailing their adventures in the age-play lifestyle. Mason had been hooked.
Reading the stories about what they’d done and seeing the pictures where the daddy was holding his boy had been eye-opening, to say the least. Discovering how they lived and what they found erotic had been incredible.
It was something Mason would never have thought of on his own, but he quickly realized it was what he craved. To be someone’s little boy and have a daddy of his own.
It wasn’t conventional. But, when Mason saw the closeness the lifestyle brought and the tenderness that caring for someone inspired, it wa
s what he wanted. To be that loved and cared for.
Maybe it was something left over from childhood. The “if you love me you’ll do everything for me” mentality—the fantasy of someone taking care of him like that was incredibly erotic.
Mason had tried traditional dating over the years, even dated a man who was into BDSM a couple of times but it had never worked. With vanilla guys, he kept wishing they would take charge. And that would have made most of them really uncomfortable.
The guy in college who had been into BDSM wanted completely different things than Mason. Mason didn’t want to kneel at someone’s feet and call him Master. He wanted someone who would take care of him.
Over the years, Mason had refined the fantasy and experimented with different things. Always alone, though. Maddy might have accepted his fantasy as a perfectly reasonable kink, but Mason was realistic enough to know that most people wouldn’t be that open-minded.
Tell a guy you wanted to be spanked and he was all gung ho to try it. But tell a guy you wanted to wear a diaper occasionally and that you had a bottle in the cabinet for when you needed to unwind and they went all wiggy on you. He’d tried mentioning the idea in teasing ways over the years to different boyfriends but the reaction had always been the same. Horrified.
Taking the quickest shower in history, Mason dried off in record time. Looking in the mirror, he shrugged and decided not to bother with shaving. He had a baby face and even after more than twenty-four hours without shaving still didn’t have much of a five o’clock shadow.
He knew he’d appreciate his baby face as he got older but now it was just inconvenient. Most men assumed he was younger than he really was and older guys were generally hesitant to approach him. With short, dark hair and even features, he knew he was attractive, but he would have loved to look a little bit older.
If he could walk around without his shirt more often, maybe people would think he was older. Mason knew he had a great body; even if he was a bit slender and on the shorter side, he still had a great six-pack and well-defined muscles.
Within minutes, Mason was running out the door, praying that the traffic wasn’t terrible. He was barely going to make it as it was. It really was too bad Maddy wasn’t doing a kink mixer instead. That would have been so much more fun.
****
He pulled up to the restaurant, only about five minutes late. Maddy had texted him for the last 15 minutes wondering where he was, but he’d done the best he could to get there on time. As he ran toward the restaurant, he threw his keys to the valet and called out an apology.
At the door, he took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart. He hated being late. He also hated blind dates and that’s exactly what this was. One big awkward blind date. In the dark. Maddie was so going to owe him.
Once he’d calmed down enough to be presentable, Mason walked into the restaurant. The doors opened up into a room that looked a little bit like the lobby of a small hotel. Shiny, impersonal, and with seating scattered around the room that tried to mimic a living room. It was the oddest restaurant he’d ever seen.
He watched as Maddie came out of a long hallway in the back right corner of the room.
“You’re late!”
“I’m as early as I could get here and you know it.”
“Whatever.”
“You so owe me.” He wasn’t going to let her forget it.
“You’re getting a free dinner and potential date out of this, so in your dreams.” She tried to make it seem as if she was doing him the favor but they both knew that wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t sure what she was going to owe him, but it would be big.
“Bitch,” he replied, smiling at her.
“And don’t you forget it.”
“You know there’s no way the man of my dreams is in that room and the food is probably overpriced and inedible by real people. So you will owe me big time.”
Maddie didn’t even bother to respond to his teasing. The striking brunette completely ignored it and proceeded to tell him exactly what to do. Basically, what she’d been doing since college.
In college, Maddie had been the one to make him see that what he wanted wasn’t crazy and weird. Telling someone about his fantasies had been the last thing on his mind, but Maddie was curious and nosy by nature.
One afternoon, they had been watching movies online and he’d paused it to run to the restroom. She’d poked through his computer while he was gone because up until that point he had been religious about passwords. Finding the videos and stories that he’d bookmarked, she’d been happily going through his porn when he’d walked back in.
Horrified didn’t begin to describe Mason’s reaction when he found her reading a book about a naughty “boy” in diapers who was getting a spanking. She’d just looked up at him and told him that she was glad he wasn’t as vanilla as he claimed to be.
He’d learned to open up a bit and see that what he wanted wasn’t completely crazy. And their friendship had grown from there. Sometimes he thought she only kept him around to make her own insanity seem more normal.
The full rundown of the evening’s plans wasn’t possible in the short time they had. However, as she led him toward a hallway that seemed to run to the back of the building, she told him briefly what to expect. It was actually a lot simpler than he’d anticipated.
The hallway gradually got darker as they approached the doors at the other end. By the time they reached the doors, he could hardly see his own hand in front of his face.
“In just a minute a waiter is going to come and lead you to your table. One more time, once you get into the dining room, it’s going to be pitch black. Your waiter is Robert and he’s blind so if you need anything you just call out for him. You do not get up from the table by yourself for any reason. Be nice to my clients and pretend that you’re interested in dating. I’m not going to owe you anything if you screw this up.”
Maddie reached up, pushed a button on the wall that looked like a doorbell, and within seconds, a waiter opened the door.
“This is our last client for the evening. Thank you for your patience.” When Maddie turned on the charm, she seemed so sweet. Looks were definitely deceiving.
“It’s not a problem at all Ms. Thompson. Sir?” The waiter tilted his head, clearly listening for Mason’s response.
“Yes.”
“If you would just put your right hand on my right shoulder, I’ll lead the way to your table. A few reminders, sir. No cell phones or any sources of light are allowed inside the dining room. We ask that you not leave your table without an escort for any reason. And if you need anything, all you have to do is speak out my name and I’ll be with you shortly.”
“Thank you, Robert.” Handing Maddie his phone, he turned and stepped closer to the waiter. Putting his hand on the waiter's shoulder, Mason followed the man through the doors and into the darkness.
It was weirder than Mason thought it would be. Most of the time when rooms were dark there was still light coming from somewhere, even if it was just from smoke detectors and emergency lights. The dining room was completely dark. If it weren’t for the low hum of the voices around him, it would have been creepy.
They didn’t walk far before Robert stopped and assisted him in finding his chair. From what Mason could tell, he was at a small table for two sitting on a bench seat against the wall. He could hear other conversations going on around him as Robert was describing the table and how the silverware and glasses were positioned. The date was going to suck if he tipped the glass over. Who thought of this as a fun first date?
Evidently, he hadn’t kept that to himself because a voice across from him seemed to swallow a gasp and laughter bounced around him from the darkness. Definitely creepy not being able to see what was going on.
As soon as the waiter left the table, a voice spoke from across the table. “Hi, I’m Richard. Nice to meet you.”
Friendly, but Mason could hear the censure in his voice. Someone didn’t seem to have
a sense of humor.
“Hi. I’m Mason.” It felt weird not offering to shake Richard’s hand. It was almost as if he wasn’t really there or something. “This is weirder than I expected.”
Way to make a great first impression was all he could think, but Richard and several voices around him just chuckled. Voices from all around him agreed, making him feel a little less ridiculous. The general consensus seemed to be that it was indeed weirder than everyone thought it would be.
Mason’s date seemed to be a very well-mannered, successful accountant. He was talkative while he introduced himself but after that, things slowed down. Once the first course arrived, their conversations mostly revolved around the restaurant and the food. Mason tried to be polite but it wasn’t easy.
Nothing about Richard encouraged Mason to behave. If anything, the courteous, meaningless conversation made Mason want to say something outrageous just to get a reaction. Picturing how Maddie would kill him was the only thing holding him back. It was a close call.
Richard was probably a nice man but everything about him screamed vanilla. The picture in Mason’s head was an attractive guy who would probably blend into the background. Not a dominant bone in his body, much less a kinky one. He pictured Richard running screaming from the fantasies in his mind.
Neither of them were that into sports and they didn’t seem to have that much in common. The voice in his head, which sounded a lot like Maddie, bitched at him for not trying hard enough.
There just wasn’t any chemistry. Richard’s metered tone and bland replies didn’t do anything for him. Maddie was probably going to kill him. But, what did she expect when she sat him across from an accountant?
On the other hand, the voice coming from his right kept pulling at his attention. Something about its deep rumble drew Mason in. With Mason’s luck, the guy was probably five feet tall and looked like a troll, but his voice was sexy and the deliberate, thoughtful way he spoke to his date made Mason hard. By the end of the first course, Mason didn’t care what he looked like.
Mason wanted him.
It was stupid, but the man sounded like every fantasy Mason ever had about a daddy. The fantasies in his head bounced from sweet and tender, to hot and dominant. Mason could easily picture being bent over his fantasy daddy’s lap and spanked, or held and taken care of. Between the hard-on in his pants and his insane imagination, it was incredibly difficult to pay attention to his own date.
