Page 20 of Balance

“I should ask you what parts you liked best.”

He shook his head. “I asked you first.”

“Okay, that’s fair. You have to understand that the kink world is broad and deep and vast. There’s a million different ways to like things, and so long as everything is consensual, they’re not wrong.”

Troye lost all the color in his face. “Are you preparing to tell me that you’re into something like… super extra? ‘Cause I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think I’d have fun with the extremes.”

“Actually, I was getting ready to tell you that as far as kinky men go, my interests are fairly tame. I like being in control.”

He snorted. “Duh.”

I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “I like spanking naughty, sassy boys. I like tying them up. Or putting them in chastity. There’s a lot of things I like, but what I like most is finding someone who likes them with me. Someone who needs the things I need, but in a different way.”

“You like being needed.”

At first, I thought Troye had oversimplified things, but then I realized he’d struck to the heart of the matter. I liked being needed. He wasn’t wrong. I’d had play partners before, and the ones I liked best were the ones who had needed me to take that dominant role with them as opposed to the ones who’d merely wanted it.

And yes, there was a difference. Some people played because they liked to play with kink. To them, it was a fun little sex game that they could take or leave. A different way to get their rocks off. For others, it was an escape. An outlet. A pressure release. For some, it was family and safety and community.

“I like being needed,” I confirmed. My answer seemed to satisfy Troye for the moment. At least, I thought it had, and then he looked at me with those dark, sparkling blue eyes of his.

“I didn’t know I needed what you did… until you did it.”

His confession kicked my right in the heart. It made me want to bundle him close and brush his hair out of his face and kiss his forehead. I wanted to protect him from himself and his inability to take a compliment, and I also wanted to protect him from me. From all the big feelings my actions had given him.

“Did you know I needed it?” Troye asked, his gaze unwavering. It was like he was trying to read my thoughts, to know my answer before I said it, so if it was something bad, he could prepare.

“I had a feeling.”

“Based on?”

“Based on experience. And I could’ve been dead wrong. I could have put you over my knee, and you could’ve hated every second. You could have told me to stop and then thrown me out of your hotel room. But you melted into me. You’d been wound tight since the moment I laid eyes on you in that plane, and it was like each time I spanked you, some of those knots started to unravel.”

“That’s how it felt too. Like you were undoing me. It was like I couldn’t hold onto anything. Not my embarrassment for being over your lap in the first place, and not any of the things that led me to that point. Not the plane incident or the whole disaster of a weekend I’d had. It was all there, churning around inside me and then you just… made it stop.” He paused and looked at me, his expression unreadable.

“How do you… how would I… could you?” Troye stopped and put his hands in his lap and took a deep breath. This time when he spoke, he kept his eyes closed, as though it was too hard to look at me and say what he needed to say. “Could we do that again?”

“You want to do it again?” My heart fucking soared, and in that moment I realized how scared I’d been that he’d be like my college boyfriend, who got a taste of something and then ran the other way. Honestly, though, in a way, Troye had. That’s exactly what he’d done.

“If we do, there’s rules. Non-negotiable rules.”

“I wasn’t aware that rules were negotiable.”

“In the lifestyle, most things are negotiable. But not this. If we do this, you don’t get to leave after. Not without telling me. Not without talking to me first. If you do this, I’m not going to let you run away from me again, Troye.”

There was a moment when everything stood still, where neither of us breathed, and I thought maybe I’d gone too far, too hard, been too forceful. And then he nodded, just once.

“Okay. I won’t run,” he said. “I promise.”

CHAPTER 11

TROYE

Making the promise not to run had knocked something loose inside of me. Something I couldn’t describe. It wasn’t that I’d wanted to run, it was that I couldn’t make myself stay. When Matthew looked at me, it was like he was looking right through me. Not in an I don’t see you way but the opposite. I would have sworn he had x-ray vision and saw all parts of me, even parts I didn’t know existed.

Like the part of me that wanted to be taken over his knee again. The part of me that wanted to give him control. I hadn’t known those things about myself until he unearthed them. He took one look at me and was an instant expert, some sort of kinky archaeologist excavating my secrets. And I’d been equal parts aroused and terrified.

“You said rules, surely there’s more than one.” I made myself rejoin the conversation, though all I wanted to do was not talk. I wanted to curl into him and feel the cadence of his voice, the steady thud of his heart. One night with Matthew and I was already a hopeless wreck. Needy and greedy for anything he’d give me.