Page 55 of Regal Feather
He shared another secret smile with me when I poured the melted cheese with veggies underneath over his boiled baby potatoes. I did not go weak at the knees. The squirming was simply…the plug.
Yeah. I was blaming the plug for all and any reactions.
I also had to agree that he’d been right. Wearing a plug to survive a family meal was unconventional at best. I bet everyone in the group chat would have lots of thoughts about it, and Iwouldn’t dare to say most of them were positive. It helped dull out the edges, though. With the sharp awareness of the toy there, of the way it tugged every time I leaned in one direction or another without thinking, I didn’t have the bandwidth to study every micro expression. Every time my parents would lock their gazes on me and stare. Every time they put on their public function smile while they included me in the conversation.
Those things were all in the background. They weren’t good. They hurt. But they were manageable.
EIGHTEEN
ev
“Thank you.”
Santos spooned me against his chest, his nose buried into my hair. I’d quickly stopped teasing him for it. “What for?”
“You helped. Today.”
It went beyond the plug, and his hand on my body, and him redirecting conversations and taking most of the heat, even when I knew he didn’t want the spotlight, either.
“Of course.”
“You just…” I sighed. I wanted to keep the words in—I’d been on the business of blurting out everything to him since we arrived, and I didn’t like it—but everything spilled regardless as I turned around to face him. “You took over. I mean, you always do, but… Thanks.”
Santos tucked my hair behind my ear. It was dark in the room, only a red lamp providing any lighting, but it was enough to see him staring at me. To see a softness that I didn’t know I was worthy of.
“You wanted to say I took over like a Dom, didn’t you?”
“Uh…” Did red light hide furious blushing? I sure hoped it did. “I mean…”
I was human, and my brain was in the gutter more often than not. I hadn’t planned on saying it, though. Things were flimsy, and he had said he wasn’t a Dom, and I’d said I didn’t think I could be in a D/s dynamic, so it made sense not to take the conversation there.
Unless it was Santos who took it there? He had better ideas than I did most of the time. Following his lead had always come naturally, so it made sense that it did tonight, right? Even if I still remembered that he might be avoiding some darker stuff, and it shouldn’t take away from everything I’d told Sir Ismael and Erika and everyone else at Plumas.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
I gulped. “You have?”
“Remember how I told you I’m not a Dom?”
“Yeah?”
Obviously. I used it every time I felt like punishing myself.
“I mean, I still don’t…” He licked his lips before continuing, as if the move didn’t make it that much harder to concentrate on the actual words coming out of his mouth. “I don’t want the whole yes, Sir, no, Sir stuff. But I was thinking, it really got me off when we were fucking for your Dom, and I called you names, and I went rougher on you, and all that, you know?”
“Yeah?”
My throat was dry. It was both the topic and the fact that I’d been beating myself, convincing myself that he had pushed himself to do all that for me. That he didn’t actually like it beyond being with me and wanting to make me feel good.
“Yeah.” He chuckled in that way some people did when they were embarrassed, but not so embarrassed that it stopped them in their tracks. “I liked today, too, coming up with the idea, and sticking that plug up your ass, and knowing that you had it in you the entire time.”
Fuck.
I wanted to behave. I wanted to not turn into the wanton slut I became where kink was concerned. He was saying all the right things, though. All the things I’d been secretly dying to hear.
“I think maybe that makes me a service top? Or something like that, I don’t care.” Santos kept talking, and he kept touching me, and pulling me closer. I’d just hold on for another minute, and then it would be okay when I returned to default, kinky settings, right? “But maybe we could try? A no-pressure thing, with none of the protocol and titles and things, but where I’m…taking over?”
I didn’t know if I reached a minute, but a whimper spilled out regardless.
