Page 68 of Regal Feather
“Great. I’ll text him, then.” He nodded from where he was sitting on the breakfast bar. I knew it was killing him that I was cleaning up instead of him, but I felt bad enough about how he was the one cooking all the time. “When are you free?”
“What do you mean?” I frowned. “This is your place, too. I don’t have to be here.”
My frown deepened. Was it the wrong thing to say? I knew Santos leaned on me more when we went out or did something that involved restaurants or more people or whatever. I didn’t dislike it, exactly, once I got over the anxiety that came with it at times. But maybe I shouldn’t be pointing it out? Maybe it was bad form or something. A reminder of the stuff he was struggling with.
I hated it.
I didn’t know if he noticed, but he got this faraway look on his face every time.
“You kind of do,” he said. That faraway look wasn’t there, but I still held my breath as I waited for him to elaborate. “So, I reached out to him about kink stuff.”
“Uh.” Did brains actually freeze? Was that a thing? “Wait, what?”
Santos stood up right away. “Did you not want me to? I can just tell him to forget about it. I didn’t mean to?—”
Fuck up.
I grimaced. It wasn’t the first time he’d hinted at a level of deep-seated insecurity that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him in person.
Or maybe it had been there, but I had completely missed it because I hadn’t been digging deep enough.
“It’s cool.” Other than how mortifying it was that I’d never felt able to reach out to Tony about anything kink, even though I knew he was a great teacher, and Santos had just done it without breaking a sweat. “What kind of stuff?”
“I overheard him the other day with Danny and his boyfriends,” Santos explained, “about doing workshops and showing newbies the ropes, and stuff. And I noticed if you have a crush on anyone there, it would be on him and León, but León seems like a step too far. More advanced level. Right?”
Oh, fuck.
“Uh…” Okay, I wasn’t going to finish setting up the dishwasher this morning; that was for certain. “I don’t know where to start.”
Tony and León both ran a bunch of workshops—after being cajoled by Erika because both were good with newbies in their own ways, and everyone respected them.
And…yeah, I’d had a crush on basically every strict Dom at Plumas, which included them.
“I thought we could try stuff out.”
“Try what?”
Ugh.
I understood why Santos looked as nervous as he did, but I didn’t have experience with how to cope with an anxious Santos. Not like this. It wasn’t helping my own anxiety, either.
I fidgeted with the hem of the new hoodie I’d stolen. I had a pair of lace panties underneath and nothing else. It hadn’t taken long to find out that fancy women’s clothing wasn’t the most comfortable to lounge around the house, but the combination of lingerie and Santos’s clothes settled the something in me that had needed to renew my entire wardrobe.
“Kink.” He shrugged it off as if it wasn’t the big deal it was. As if it didn’t leave me this close to whiplash every time he brought it up. “I want you to be really into what we do, and I think I cangive you more, but I don’t want to accidentally fuck up and hurt you, you know?”
I stood in front of him. He wasn’t taller by a whole lot, but I still had to look up at him. Usually, the size difference between us—especially now that I could feel the difference in his muscles and his frame after years of service—made me shiver. I relished it. Today, it annoyed me that I couldn’t reach him as easily.
“Didn’t I already tell you?” I pursed my mouth. Maybe I didn’t. I’d never claim an award for best communicator. “You don’t have to push yourself just because. I love you. I love how you are with me. How we are together.”
“But you’ve got fantasies, and know a lot more about shit than I do,” Santos argued. He moved until he had his hand on my hip. I breathed out at the contact. Instantly, my heart rate slowed down. I could gaze into those blue eyes of his without getting agitated because things were getting out of control. “And you’re wearing a cage, and horny all the time, and I keep getting ideas around it, and I just wanna know if they make sense.”
“You can talk about them with me.”
“I plan to.” Slowly but without any of the hesitation I would’ve expected, he framed me against the kitchen counters. The vintage knobs were cold where they hit bare skin. “But I still want to do this. Tony said he’s done it before, helped a couple figure out kink stuff.”
I believed him. It didn’t take the edge off.
“When is he free?”
