Page 113 of Regal Feather
It wasn’t about the porn gifs—I was aware of them. I just needed to keep cool, and I couldn’t keep cool if the conversation turned into talking about porn.
Had that been the issue all along? I’d been so focused on all things kink. Maybe I hadn’t allowed space for him, for us, for everything that was going on beneath the lust and the chemistry and the labels and rules and rigidity that I’d grown used to.
“I’ll go to therapy with you,” I swallowed. It was hard to remember he’d asked a question, but I would hate everything even more if he thought I wasn’t listening to him. If he thought I didn’t see him just because focusing could be hard at times, andthere were too many thoughts scrambling around my head at any given time. “I’ll do anything, okay? I swear.”
Santos sighed. “I don’t want you to do anything. I just want to…understand, I guess.”
“Understand what?”
He just shook his head. “Did you want to go to bed? That had been my plan before I heard you walk in.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I could spot a rejection when I saw one. I could also go through the notions of losing the sweatpants and hoodie, and ignore the attire I had underneath. The corset and the rubber skirt and the fishnets. It probably bordered on gaudy, but I’d felt so many of the good tingles when I’d tried it on home. When Santos said I looked hot, and he pressed me against his chest, and I felt his hard on against my ass. I’d gathered all my courage to wear it, to expose myself more than anyone at the club had seen, and they had seen a lot.
“Come here, Ever.”
“Uh, why?”
I was struggling to take off the corset, but that was normal. It had nothing to do with this, or a case of trembling fingers. It was just the fact that my arms weren’t the most flexible part of my body, and reaching my back where the laces were was hard.
“Let me do this for you,” he said. He didn’t give me an option to object, either, moving closer and starting to undo the lacing of the corset with the same care he’d shown when he’d helped me tie it up earlier in the afternoon. “Will you wear the same thing when you reschedule?”
“I don’t know.” That would mean I felt just as confident as I had felt earlier, and I didn’t think that was going to happen when everything felt so wrong between us. “Do you…want me to?”
Santos rested his chin against my shoulder. He had to be bending weird to manage, but I didn’t care. I cared even less when he shifted to kiss my shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Uh, w-why?”
Instead of answering right away, he made a soft sound. A hint of a laugh. I didn’t understand. It was all giving me whiplash.
“Because you’re hot?” Santos teased. “Because I like the idea of others seeing what a good, slutty girl you are.”
“Okay, stop.” I breathed heavy, aware of each heartbeat. “What’s going on right now?”
Stop wasn’t a safeword, but Santos acted as if it was, taking a step back and his hands off me. His mouth off me.
I allowed myself to mourn the loss for all of two seconds before I faced him. Before I forced myself to think clearly, to convince myself that maybe the whiplash was, mostly, my own doing, but I had a right to bring it up. To address the way it stung and left me feeling like I’d been sucker punched, not knowing which way was up.
“I…” With his eyes widened, he looked almost as out of sorts as I had to. Only I hadn’t been the one initiating anything. I’d been the one pretending that I wasn’t hurt, and that it was fine if my best friend rejected me because of whatever was going on. Whatever he wasn’t telling me. Whatever I was doing or not doing that was creating a drift between the two of us. “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t think you’d be back.”
I frowned. “But I am.”
“Yeah.” Santos glanced around. Focusing more on him, he was trembling. It wasn’t like when I did it because I was too overwhelmed and scared, but there was a faint tremor to his body. “And you…didn’t come back because you wanted to…”
Fuck.
It was both how he wanted to end that sentence, and the one word I could think of saying.
“No.”
Santos nodded. I stood still. It would probably be bad if I made any brusque movement.
“And you don’t… And it’s fine if we don’t…”
“Yeah.” I breathed out. There was a difference between feeling a pit in my stomach because he was rejecting me or pushing me away, and feeling it because he thought I’d feel entitled to an action he didn’t want to take. “It’s fine. Always will be.”
