Page 29 of Regal Feather
I needed someone like that. Someone like Sir Ismael.
“Okay.” He nodded. “How come?”
“W-what do you mean?”
My skin itched the longer he stared at me. We didn’t have heart-to-hearts like this. It wasn’t a thing. I wasn’t comfortable just baring all my wounds to him when he had already seen the worst of it.
“León falls under the strict category,” he pointed out. “He didn’t let me wear his collar until I could answer that question.”
“O-okay.”
“So, how come you want a strict partner?” He pushed. “You know most people in this century would run away from that adjective.”
“Not me.”
“Not me either.” Danny shrugged. “But why?”
Words stuck to my throat. Words I couldn’t even put together in my head. I just knew that I needed someone strict. I needed someone to lay the law, to mold me into the sub I wanted to be.
“Why do you?”
Danny played with his piercing some more. He wasn’t one to say the first thing that got through his mind, so I didn’t think much of the lapse in time.
“Because it turns me the fuck on when I’m put underneath someone,” Danny snorted. “Because I get off the hardest when I feel like I have no say in the matter.”
I frowned. “So it’s all sexual.”
“It wasn’t at first,” he admitted, “hence why León wouldn’t collar me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed. “You can’t search for a Dom to be your therapist, Ev. Or to fill any other role that’s not the one of your partner. Spice things up, sure, but at the end of the day? Your Dom is your Dom, your therapist is your therapist, and…y’know. That.”
I did not know.
“I don’t need therapy,” I said instead.
“I do.” Danny shrugged again. “I wasn’t implying you did, therapist is the first thing that came to mind.”
“Okay.”
It was not okay.
What else could I say, though?
TEN
santos
“What is he saying about it?”
“I don’t know.” Ever grunted. I knew he wasn’t annoyed at me per se, but it was hard to compartmentalize and rationalize shit when I just wanted to find that son of a bitch and do the kind of harm that not even my family’s connections would keep me out of trouble for. “I’m sorry, I ruined everything.”
“You haven’t done a thing,” I promised.
I had to say, I’d been weirded out ever since Carlos asked if he could ride with me to pick up Danny. Lunch had already been awkward when it became clear that I wasn’t ready to talk bout what had led to my discharge, and his experience was so starkly different from mine. The ride consisted of him telling me what Danny had told him, which wasn’t a lot, and trying to make it sound like we weren’t both on edge. By the time we had gone through the gates, I’d almost forgotten to keep the door open for him while I barreled through it.
I still didn’t know what to think. Danny had shared what he’d put together from the call and what Ever had shared about the punishment or whatever it was that he’d needed help recording.Through it all, Ever had just burrowed himself into me. I bet they had to be thinking shit about him, but I didn’t care.
