Mutual Release (10 page)

Chapter Nine

“Dude, you have to tell me – you are spanking that sweet ass on a regular basis?” Jack passed him a beer as they sat on the porch of the house they now shared. “And are those tits as nice up close as they are from here?”

Evan glared at Jack Gordon. The man was walking testosterone, attracting men who wanted to be him and women who wanted to do him everywhere he went. But he was utterly unthreatening, in a reversal of what Evan was used to with personalities like that – like Damian’s. He liked Jack. And didn’t care he was a nosy SOB at times. “No, I’m not. And yeah, they are. Better actually, thanks.”

He sipped, quelling the urge to ask Jack to take him to the club like he’d promised. Jack had not offered since they’d taken up residence in the rattletrap excuse for a house not far from campus. Karen camped out in his room most nights, then would get up and make coffee before heading back to her own tiny apartment. They could hardly keep their hands off each other. But it was a whole lot of glorified copping feels, frequent blow jobs for him, since she claimed not to like it “as much” for herself – all in all a bunch of tame sex. He was numb, exhausted in mind and body. And deeply unsatisfied. She sensed it, too – she was a sharp girl and asked him about it once, when they lay in the dark, post vanilla playtime. “Do you ever want to… experiment? I mean… I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be tied up and… stuff.”

His face had flushed, his brain had flamed hot, and he leapt from the bed, yanking on his underwear. She lay back in all her glory, those luscious nipples pointed to the ceiling as the moonlight cast a shaft of light across her smooth skin. Evan bit his lip, ready to show her, give her what she wanted. Then he stopped, went into the bathroom to splash water on his face a few times.

When he returned to bed, he wished she would just leave him to his tangled thoughts as she curled into him. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. I know you wouldn’t do that to me. And I’m happy with us the way we are.”

Her breathing had evened out as he held her, staring at the ceiling and forcing out the images of her lush body, bound, striped from his flogger, those sensitive nipples clamped, and his cock pounding into her from behind. He would never be free of this; he knew it. It was either face it for once and for all and purge it, or live a lie. Because he knew if he kept on his current path he would ask this lovely, if slightly high maintenance, woman to marry him and settle… which was something he’d once promised himself he’d never do.

“Yo, earth to POTUS.” Jack snapped his fingers in front of Evan’s face.

“Don’t fucking call me that.” He stood, stretched, and ambled back inside.

“Why not? It’s apt. I can see how you came pretty naturally to the leadership role – in everything.” Jack stood leaning on the doorway, his dark blue eyes intent. Evan frowned at him.

“Spare me, okay? I’m just a guy. Gonna be a lawyer. Got a great girlfriend with big tits. We have a lot of sex. Lucky me. Now if you will excuse me, I have got to study.”

But Jack moved fast, with the grace of a natural athlete, and blocked him, putting an arm across the door to the kitchen. “You are coming with me tonight. No more excuses. You are like a fucking too-tight tripwire. It’s time we released some of that tension the only way you can – and you know I speak the truth.”

Evan crossed his arms over his chest and studied the other man. Jack had coal-black hair and blue eyes and was at least three inches taller than Evan, who was no small guy himself. He was the quintessential Master Dom, the sort of personality who was in charge all the time, no matter what. And he’d told Evan that, had described how he handled his playtime even now that he had a semi-regular girlfriend. Jenna was a fellow law student too: curvy, vivacious, smart, and, according to Jack, the most natural sub to his Dom he’d ever found.

Something about her rubbed Evan the wrong way, but he never gave it much thought. He was busy getting his law degree, fucking his girlfriend like a missionary, and pondering how he could get out of the rut without crossing the Rubicon again – the one that took him to a place he craved and which terrified him at the same time.

“No. Thanks. I… can’t. It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand, Mr. Perfect.”

“Fuck that shit, Adams. I am hardly perfect. Doing this thing, acting on my gut need to control, pleasing my sub by putting her in a place she needs to go… just because I can? It’s a total goddamn buzz. But it’s more than that. It’s something I need, I have to do. I’ve fucked my fair share of women. But this?” He ran his free hand down his face. “This is different. Better. And you are no different. You owe it to yourself to…”

Evan shoved Jack’s arm down and stomped into the kitchen, put his shaking hands on the sink, and stared out onto the parking lot that passed as a backyard. “Fine! Jesus, Gordon, if you’ll shut up about it, I’ll go.” He had to close his eyes to keep the images at bay. Finally, he was going back. And it would be safe. He could do this without turning into a monster – he hoped. “But I am not taking Karen.”

“Suit yourself.” Jack shrugged and grabbed another beer from their nearly empty fridge. “Jenna’s out of town anyway this weekend. We’ll go without them. That way you can see this scene is not as threatening as you seem to think.”

Evan stared at him. Jack and Jenna were as much an accepted couple as he and Karen. And here they stood, talking about leaving their girlfriends behind to go out for a night on the town – to a club where they would tease women to orgasm, women who were not their girlfriends. Until they could each stand it no longer and would fuck the strange women, hard, bringing tears, most likely. Then they’d part ways, in some cases never even having seen the women’s faces, drink a beer, and go home. Sick. “This is sick,” he whispered, staring at Jack’s retreating back.

“No, it’s not. It’s an honest acknowledgement of what we are. Jenna knows I do it, and she’s okay with it. You should tell Karen, though, so there are no secrets that could bite you in the ass relationship-wise. You know?” Jack flopped in the chair on the porch and grabbed his book, preparing to study.

Evan stared at him another minute, then jumped in the shower, forcing thoughts of rough, raw, barely controlled sex out of his head.

* * * *

“Hey.” Evan rolled over and answered his phone, still amazed at the technology that had allowed them to go from landlines and long phone calls to small devices and typed out conversations. He sat, wincing at the soreness in his abs and the small stripes on his forearms from the kickback of the flogger. “Uh, Karen? That you?”

“Yes. It is. Where the hell are you? I thought we were having breakfast. It’s our anniversary, remember?”

“Oh, fuck.” Stumbling out of bed, Evan glanced at the calendar on his dresser. “I’m sorry, babe, I… Ow, shit!” He jumped around like an idiot, biting back more curses, when his toe connected with the corner of the trunk he’d bought to keep all his new toys. Toys he had yet to share with the woman he still claimed as his girlfriend and with whom he continued to engage in very tame sexual activity. Even now, a solid year after resuming his newfound secret life as a Dom, who’d just been promoted to Master, which had done nothing but force him to compartmentalize ever further with Karen. “I am so, so sorry.”

He saw Jack out of the corner of his eye, headed down the hall to the bathroom. Last night’s intensity rolled through him, making him shudder. The club’s owner, a fifty-something Domme with long red hair and an attitude a mile wide, was ecstatic with them. Between him and Jack, she’d nearly doubled her weekend take, as tales of their prowess grew along the underground BDSM gossip chain.
Surreal
was the best word Evan could come up with as he dropped into a chair, head in his hands, trying to shove all his lives back into their proper cubbyholes.

Karen’s voice faded, becoming not unlike those adult voices on the “Peanuts” cartoons. The energy it took to maintain daily life – year three of law school, part-time job at a local brewery, thoughtful and gentle boyfriend to Karen by day, half of a pair of “dream Doms” by many nights – was taking its toll. Gordon seemed no worse for wear, but he didn’t work during the school year. He made enough every summer working his ass off for his father’s construction company to glide him through his off-season. But he did pay two-thirds of the rent, leaving Evan with the remainder, at his insistence.

Just last night Evan had nearly lost himself between the thighs of a hot older blond woman, so like Caroline he had ended up falling asleep holding her after their bondage and wax play, calming her like he had once done for the woman who’d been the first to show him his real power. Yvonne, the redheaded club owner, had whispered in his ear and pointed him towards the woman the second she was led in, bound and nude but for a corset and high heels. Then found him still wrapped in her arms at five this morning and had hustled them both out. The woman wouldn’t meet his eyes even when he told her to, and he’d felt like six tons of shit all the way home. And now he’d managed to piss off his girlfriend on top of everything else?

He rubbed his face, hard, forcing some focus. “Okay, okay, stop. I get it, already. I fucked up. What time is it, anyway?” He glanced at his watch, suppressing an inner groan at the one p.m. hour. “I’ll come and get you. Let’s go… do whatever you want.” He was a stuttering mess, unable to force last night’s memories out of his head like he usually could.

Jack and Jenna were on a “break” and so that guy was on a serious tear, ramping up his act by about a thousand. Evan knew the other man was sick in love with the controlling bitch and wished she would just cut him loose before he lost it. He worried about his friend, but had been told once in no uncertain terms that it was none of his fucking business, so he didn’t bring it up again.

“I don’t want to do anything with you, you selfish ass.” Karen’s words snapped him back to the crisis at hand. “I mean it. We are done. You’ve turned into a total stranger to me. And we… we can’t…” Her sobs interrupted, and Evan felt his heart nearly stop.

“No, no, honey, baby, listen, you don’t mean it. Let me come over. I’ll make it up, I pro – ”

“No!” Her shriek ripped through him, tore a hole in the delicate fabric of balance he thought he’d maintained between his two lives. “Stay the fuck away from me. I mean it.”

He stared at the phone gone dead in his hand. Jack’s voice nearly made him jump up and grab the ceiling like a cat. “Nice work,” Jack said, sipping a cup of coffee. “I told you not to hide this from her. That way she can either accept it or not, without there being anything hidden between you.”

“Shut up, you dick. I would hardly call you the relationship expert these days.” Evan refused to meet Jack’s eyes.

“True that. I leave you to mope.”

Evan sighed and leaned back against the chair full of discarded clothing. He was a mess. Behind on at least three assignments, needing to spend some significant hours cleaning his part of the house and doing laundry, and now he was without a girlfriend as well. She was the one thing, he realized, he was clinging to, to make him feel normal. All the control he thought he had was false, bullshit, fakery, or worse. He stood, stretching, feeling his overworked muscles creak and cry out with dismay. The realization he had even perhaps turned into Damian – faking it with a vanilla girlfriend while running wild at night – made him double over.

After a run, he made a decision. He would not stay away from her. He would surprise Karen with flowers, maybe some other gift he could afford, and a great dinner. She lived alone; he’d spent plenty of nights in her small bed with her. And her kitchen was fully equipped, so he had his mental ingredient list made and the romantic scene set in his head when he tossed some laundry in the washer and cranked out two of the missing assignments. He and Jack ignored each other, but in the way of men – without malice, just as a matter of course.

Exhausted, he set his clock to allow himself a two-hour nap, then dropped immediately to sleep on his now clean-sheeted bed. His dreams were a jumbled, horrifying mess, full of Damian’s laugh, his handsome bright white smile, and Olivia’s gaunt face, tears rolling down her cheeks. When he forced himself awake and away from memories he couldn’t handle, he settled back into a fresh one, this time with a row of women all on their knees in front of him, all begging him with Karen’s voice to
please… please… please fuck me
.

He groaned and rolled onto his stomach, the press of a sleep erection making him wide awake. Giving up, he rolled back and gripped himself, closed his eyes, and had Karen, Caroline, and a new, mysterious, and unknown woman all to himself. They surrounded him as he sat on a leather chair, whacking him with his own flogger and dripping wax on his torso before taking turns sucking his cock so hard, he grunted and nearly sat straight up at the force of the orgasm.

Staring up at the ceiling, breathing hard, the scent of his own lust filling his nose, he mentally freshened his pact with himself. He would tell Karen, maybe even introduce her to it. He’d sensed her need for him to be rougher, to take more control of their sexual encounters, but had resisted it, again, with compartmentalization. He needed her, or at least what she represented. Or he knew his fetishist Mr. Hyde would take over his entire personality. And that scared him more than anything.