I was already shaking my head. “That kind of pain isn’t your thing. We both know that. I’d rather do without it than push you into it.”
“But you are doing without it, and you’re obviously not happy.”
I pressed my lips together, dropping my gaze again.
We were silent for a long moment. Then Will said, “What if we bring in someone else?”
I looked at him. “How would that work, though? Because I don’t want to add someone to our relationship to save it. That never works.”
“No, and I’m not suggesting anything poly. But we can bring someone into the bedroom.” He played with the straw in his iced tea. “If there’s something you need that I can’t give you, and there’s someone who can give it to you…” He shrugged. “Then I’m happy to bring in someone else so you can be happy.”
My throat tightened. For all I worried myself sick that this could spell the end of our marriage, Will had always been the type to offer up whatever it took to make things work. “How do we do that, though? Because it’s fine and good if we find me a sadist, but would you really want to share me with another Dom?”
The subtle tightness of Will’s lips answered clearly enough, but he said, “If I have to choose between letting you submit to someone else, and having you be unhappy with—”
“But you shouldn’t have to make that choice. I mean, I’m fine with bringing other people in. The threesomes we’ve had in the past…” I shivered at the memories. “But another Dom? You’re not going to magically be okay with that any more than you’re going to magically be okay with hurting me like I need to be hurt.”
Will squirmed a little. “You have any ideas?”
I thought about it, then laughed humorlessly as I picked up my coffee cup. “What do you think the odds are of finding a sadist who’s also a sub?”
Will met my gaze. “I mean…it’s possible.”
I blinked. “I was joking.”
“I know, but the sky’s the limit with kink, you know? We knew that one Dom who was a total masochist. There’s no reason we can’t find a submissive who’s a sadist.”
“Isn’t sadism a control thing, though? A power thing?”
“It can be. But for some people it’s just about the pain itself.” He sipped his iced tea. “Why not?”
Well, damn. Now that he’d mentioned it, it made a lot of sense. When we’d lived in Chicago, there’d been a Dom at our dungeon who’d loved pain, but didn’t have a submissive bone in his body. We’d been part of the kink community long enough to know that people didn’t fit into neat little boxes. Hell, there were people who were surprised at how often I topped Will. Just because he was a Dom didn’t mean he didn’t like getting fucked. I was the subbiest sub who’d ever subbed, and I was more than happy to ride his gorgeous ass into the mattress when he told me to.
So who was to say a submissive couldn’t also be a sadist?
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “In fact… Damn, that actually sounds kind of hot.”
Will’s eyes lit up. “Does it?”
“Oh yeah. Someone beating the hell out of me because you told him to?” I squirmed. “Fuck, dude.”
“Oh. Shit. When you put it like that…” He bit his lip. We exchanged grins, and he ran his toe up the inside of my calf.
I pressed my leg against his foot. “And you’re really sure about this? Watching someone give me that much pain?”
Will nodded. “I’m willing to give it a try. Maybe it won’t work, and maybe we’ll need to find a different solution, but as it stands right now? Yeah. I’m in.”
“Thanks,” I whispered. “And you’ll… I mean, if it’s not working for you, you’ll tell me, right?”
“Of course.” He slid his hand over the top of mine. “I’ll put up the ad on Kinkbook when I get home. Then I guess we’ll see.”
“Yeah. I guess we will.”
Two
Kelly
September
Pulling into the familiar driveway made my chest tight. The fence running along either side was a little more worn than the last time I’d been here. The wooden portions of the house were a slightly different shade of freshly-painted beige. The brick sections had obviously been pressure-washed and stripped of the decades-old ivy and moss. The highest peaks of the roof didn’t stand out quite as dramatically because the evergreens had grown taller, and the other trees—all thick with lush green leaves now that summer was in full swing—cast long shadows over the house and the sprawling yard.
It was different, but this was definitely the house where I’d visited my grandparents throughout my childhood and, after he’d inherited it in my teens, my dad. I hadn’t been here in years, though. There hadn’t been time. Medical school hadn’t left time for much of anything, never mind coming all the way to Laurelsburg for a visit.
Then medical school had stopped being an issue, but I still hadn’t wanted to come here and Dad hadn’t wanted me to. For seven long years, there’d been too much shame, resentment, and disappointment, and then suddenly there hadn’t been any time left at all.
As I eased to a stop in front of the three-car garage, I had to fight back the sting of tears. It wasn’t that I regretted all the visits I hadn’t made. It just hurt that there wouldn’t be any more opportunities to smooth things over. After things had gone sour, I hadn’t felt like my dad’s son, and I’d been at a loss for how to fix that, and now he was gone.
Had there ever been any chance of us being close the way he was with my other siblings? A slim one, maybe. Whatever chance had been there was gone now. Gone forever. More than anything, that was what I’d been grieving since the call had come in.
I cleared my throat and swiped at my eyes. Time to go inside and have a look around this familiar, alien place that was my home now. My responsibility, if nothing else—I didn’t have to live here, but I owned the house, and my father had been emphatic that the property was not to be sold.
I got out of the car, pulled my laptop case out of the back, and slung it onto my shoulder. I was halfway up the front walk before I realized I should probably bring in a suitcase. Would I really want to come back out later? Doubtful. And anyway, doubling back let me put off the inevitable for another, like, two minutes.
With my suitcase rolling behind me this time, I made it all the way to the front porch. I took the key out of my pocket, and I stared down at it, turning it between my fingers.
I looked at the door, and damn if I wasn’t getting that same sick-to-my-stomach “I don’t want to be here” feeling I’d had every time I’d shown up to my clinicals during my third-year rotations. I’d always had my game face on by the time attendings and residents—and, obviously, patients—could see me, but a day hadn’t gone by that I didn’t stop in the parking garage and ask myself what the fuck I was even doing. There hadn’t been a single day where I didn’t consider, however briefly, just driving away and never coming back.