Vulnerable

  Eva was selective, choosey.

  Not in a bad way, but Eva wasn’t the kind to randomly pick up a guy and take him home, either.

  Especially not with Laurel there.

  Look at how easily she’d dumped Mark over a comment.

  Okay, admittedly the guy sounded like a jerk, but wasn’t she deliberately setting herself up for failure by going out with a guy like that in the first place?

  Giving herself every reason to stop trying?

  It was difficult for him to step back and let go, to not point all this out to her. During their marriage Eva had frequently looked to him for counsel and advice. With his dominant personality, it was easy for him to step in and “fix” things for her.

  As the counselor had reminded him, he’d given up that ability the day he decided he needed to move out and file for divorce. Being her friend wasn’t going to be an option for now because it would be too easy for him to step back into that “fixer” role with her, as well as making it harder for her to become independent without him to rely on. So that couldn’t happen anymore. Not until Eva had moved on and found a goodly chunk of healing herself first.

  Then, maybe, they could be “friends.”

  Leo had hopes that, maybe one day, he and whoever he settled down with, and Eva and her future man, could have family dinners with Laurel, no tensions, able to discuss their jobs and lives with no jealousy or animosity.

  Pie-in-the-sky hopes, sure, but a guy could dream, right?

  Especially when it seemed maybe he was on his way down the right path, the painful life course correction finally bearing fruit.

  Eh, no pun intended.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon doing a few minor repairs and chores around the house that needed to be done, giving Eva fewer excuses for calling him later.

  The fact that she hadn’t told him about them—things that before she never would have hesitated to mention—meant that he’d derailed her plans to hold them in reserve.

  And the look of defeat on her face when he asked her for more of those kinds of tasks only proved to him how right he’d been.

  If he let her, she would drag out things like that, carefully spacing them. A lingering stay one night when dropping Laurel off or picking her up to do something. Calling him on a weekend to come over and fix something else. Or could he get something down from the attic—or put something up there for her?

  Forever.

  He got it, but it wasn’t healthy. Not for her, not for Laurel, and not for him.

  By the time he’d grabbed his shower and changed, he sensed Eva wanting to speak up, ask him again to stay, but he cut her off at the pass with an end-run by using Laurel.

  Scooping her up into his arms, he gave her a hug and a kiss. “You have fun with Mommy tonight, okay? Girls-only night. Right?”

  Laurel nodded with a smile. “Right. No boys allowed. Right, Mommy?”

  Eva’s smile looked forced. “Right. No boys allowed.”

  Breathing a silent sigh of relief, he gathered his things. At least he was dressed casually, not in slacks or a dress shirt that might have clued Eva in that the evening was about more than just friends getting together to hang out.

  “Thanks for doing my laundry. You didn’t have to do that, but I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  He had his bag slung over his shoulder and the basket of clean laundry in his arms already, so the perfect excuse to get out of there without a hug.

  It wasn’t until he was in the car and backing out of the driveway that he finally let the audible sigh of relief escape him. Eva hadn’t even stepped out onto the porch to watch him drive away like she usually did.

  As he headed toward Sigalo’s, he tried to focus on the night ahead of him.

  On Jesse.

  And on what the future might have in store for him.

  Chapter Eight

  Jesse was already waiting at Sigalo’s when Keith arrived alone.

  “Noel still sick?”

  “She insisted she was okay, but she bolted for the toilet earlier today. I’d rather make her wait a few more days.”

  “Bet she’s not happy about that.”

  He smiled. “No, she’s not. She got mouthy with me about it and earned a couple of strokes added to the mental tally I’m keeping for later on when I can spank her ass again.”

  Jesse nervously glanced around. “You think he’ll show up?”

  “He’s a man of his word, from what I know of him.” He turned to Jesse. “Keep in mind, I only know the business side of him. Just because I know him, it doesn’t mean I’m intimately familiar with him. You still need to use common sense. My overall impression of him is he’s a good guy, but who knows how people are in private.”

  “Got it.”

  “I wish Tilly was going to be here tonight. We’ll have to settle for June and Eliza. Oh, there’s Scrye and June now.”

  Tilly was the group’s default bullshit detector. If someone couldn’t pass muster with her, they usually didn’t get too close to the “inner circle” of the Suncoast Society munch group. Sure, most people could come to the munches and coffee times, but the core group of trusted people who were invited to the private house parties, that was different.

  Anyone Tilly wouldn’t sign off on never got invited to the private parties.

  But with Tilly now spending so much of her time out in LA helping Leigh, Lucas, and Nick run their production company, June and Eliza had to pick up the slack there.

  Granted, they were more worried about predatory male Doms abusing female submissives, but they’d keyed in on batcrap crazy female submissives before and kept them at arm’s length.

  After what Jesse had gone through with Mario, he damn sure wasn’t going to ignore any of his friends if they gave side-eye to a prospective Dom or Top for him. He was done trying to figure shit out on his own.

  He needed help from his friends. They hadn’t let him down, and they had his trust.

  Just as Scrye and June walked up, Jesse spotted Eliza and Rusty’s car pulling into the parking lot, soon followed by Ross and Loren, Tony and Shayla, and others. They all went in to get their table while Keith remained outside with Jesse.

  “Ah, that’s him,” Keith said.

  Sure enough, the car pulled into a parking spot and the man got out.

  Jesse’s heart raced when he laid eyes on the man again, not a good sign, he knew.

  Well, a good sign, but bad that he felt so eager this soon. It wasn’t cautious. It wasn’t methodical.

  Not when he’d dreamed all night about the things the man might be able to do to him, in the dungeon as well as in bed.

  Leo walked over, looking good in jeans and a long-sleeved black button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. And he smelled fresh out of the shower, too, his hair a little damp in places.

  Jesse smiled up at him. “Hi.”

  Leo’s smile thickened Jesse’s cock. “Hi.”

  Keith stepped in, saving Jesse from trying to figure out something to say other than, “Let’s go back to my place right now.”

  “Let’s go grab our seats,” Keith said. “Most everyone else is already here.” He led the way inside, with Jesse walking next to Leo.

  Looking up, his cock stiffened even more. Leo was the perfect height compared to him. It was a struggle not to let his mind get lost in sexually charged fantasies.

  Once they were seated, with Leo between Jesse and Keith, and directly across from June and Eliza, the inquisition—eh, dinner—got underway.

  Jesse’s first instinct was to jump in and try to buffer his well-meaning friends so they didn’t overwhelm Leo, but he soon pulled himself back when he realized Leo was doing just fine on his own.

  And if he’s going to be a Dom, he’ll have to be able to handle himself anyway.

  But it was damned hard not to jump in. Not when he really wanted this to work out.

  Yes, it was soon. Very soon.

  Too damn soo
n.

  He knew that. Every ounce of common sense he had screamed that at him.

  Something about Leo pulled at him. He was a nice guy. He wasn’t jaded or cocky or arrogant. He simply…was.

  Jesse’d had his fill of domly Doms who didn’t give a shit about what their submissive wanted. He’d been there, done that with Mario and realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

  Did he want a Dominant and a Master? Yes. But he wanted one who saw him as a valuable person and a partner, not merely as a possession he could use as he saw fit.

  Or share.

  During a lull in the conversation, while Eliza and June and the other women had all left en masse to go to the bathroom—no, not at all suspicious—Jesse reached over and touched Leo’s arm to get his attention.

  “I should mention something else right now,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not interested in sharing someone, or being shared. I’m not poly. I’m monogamous, and I expect anyone I’m partners with to be monogamous, too. If that’s a deal-breaker, we should get that cleared up right now.”

  Leo smiled. “I don’t like to share,” he said. “And I’m a…” He frowned, then laughed. “Well, up until my divorce I would have said I’m a one-woman man. I guess I’m a one-man man.”

  Relief filled Jesse. “Good.”

  Leo’s smile faded. “Did the guy you broke up with try to share you?”

  Jesse nodded. “Yeah. That was the final straw.”

  Leo’s gaze searched his face. “That’s not ever something you’d have to worry about with me.”

  “Okay.”

  * * * *

  While they’d talked a lot over dinner at Keith’s house, Jesse hadn’t gotten into all the gory details about how his last relationship had ended.

  If the man had tried to share Jesse against his will…

  Protective anger welled up inside Leo. No, no way in hell would he ever do something like that to anyone. And again, while he didn’t have anything against Keith or the others he’d met that night who were poly, it just wasn’t his thing. He didn’t have the time or energy to juggle multiple partners. It wouldn’t be fair to any of them.

  The relief he spotted in Jesse’s gaze twisted his heart. It was like…

  It was almost like being able to read Eva’s moods and thoughts.

  If this was part of being a Dominant, okay, maybe he’d been one all along and never realized it. He’d own that. Kinky fantasies aside, he always managed to step into an authoritative role. He ran his business. Eva seemed to cede power and decisions to him from when they’d first started dating. It’d been like pulling teeth sometimes to get her to make a decision when he wanted her input.

  Toward the end, when he knew he had to leave the marriage, when he’d tried to get Eva to step up and take a more active role in things to prepare her for being on her own again, he suspected she deliberately forced him to make decisions just so she could later abdicate responsibility and lay blame on him.

  It was something she’d done a lot over the course of their relationship. He’d never called her out on it before, knowing with the dysfunction in her family it was probably how her parents had done things.

  Even Eva admitted her parents should have divorced years ago. She and her two sisters, one older and one younger, couldn’t understand why her parents were still married. And from what Leo knew, it would have been best for everyone had they divorced early on.

  Especially for Eva.

  Another thing Leo couldn’t help but notice—everyone at the table seemed relatively…normal. They could be any average Joe or Jane, ranging from middle class to wealthy. They blended in with anyone else in the restaurant. Tilly’s husband and other partner, Landry and Cris, were in attendance. Another case of a gay man with a woman partner. No judgment from Leo, but his days of trying to fake his way through sex with a woman were done. It wasn’t fair to Eva and hadn’t been for years, even though she didn’t know it at the time.

  He wouldn’t put someone else through that.

  He wasn’t even sure he could get it up for a woman now that he’d fully embraced the truth. Despite not having warm and fuzzy feelings about his two encounters with guys so far, it had cemented the fact that yes, he wanted—needed—a male partner.

  Life was too short to settle.

  And it was only getting shorter.

  Another thing he noticed, that everyone seemed to welcome him into their group. He didn’t feel self-conscious in the least. They didn’t care that he was gay. They didn’t care that he was a fledgling kinkster. As his questions begat more questions of them, they answered him as best they could, without making him feel stupid for asking.

  It did feel like a family, in a way.

  One he actually wanted to be a part of.

  As dinner drew to a close, he also realized he could sit there all night talking to everyone. The conversation had flowed easily, without any hesitation.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just gotten together with a group of people and felt so at ease. When he and Eva were with friends, he always felt like he’d had to buffer her with their friends. She had a tendency to withdraw when she felt overwhelmed, and he frequently found himself carrying conversational weight while she smiled and nodded next to him.

  It’d been tiring.

  More tiring than he’d ever realized.

  Especially when talking with Jesse felt more like an effortless dance, easy, free-flowing…

  Fun.

  When was the last time he’d had fun with Eva? At least, when it’d been fun for him and not just for her?

  The sad thing was, unless it’d involved doing something with Laurel, he couldn’t remember. Eva had always professed her happiness, even when he’d look at things and be miserable.

  After their checks were paid, they headed out to the parking lot as a group. Keith leaned in. “Loren just told me you passed.”

  “Passed what?”

  “That was the earlier mass exodus,” he joked. “When they all went to the bathroom? They were discussing you. The general consensus is that they like you.”

  “Well, I’m glad about that.”

  “You should be. They’re very hard to impress sometimes. I’ve seen a flock of them metaphorically pick the bones clean of the most uber-Dom in a matter of minutes. Especially when Tilly’s leading the pack.”

  “She sounds…vicious.”

  “She can be,” Jesse said. “But only in the good ways.”

  Chapter Nine

  Driving away from the restaurant, Jesse knew the grin on his face looked as silly as it felt and he didn’t give a shit who saw it.

  Leo had passed the first barrier—winning over his friends. He had asked intelligent, thoughtful questions about the BDSM lifestyle all throughout dinner, questions that showed he was serious about learning more, about taking his time, about doing things the right way.

  It didn’t hurt that Leo admitted he wasn’t poly.

  Maybe it would have been different if Mario had wanted a loving kind of poly dynamic, but that was not what he’d wanted.

  He’d wanted full control over Jesse and who he slept and played with—including ordering him to sleep or play with someone—and Mario had the right to do whatever—and whoever—the hell he’d wanted.

  Fortunately, things had ended before Mario could order Jesse to sleep with someone else. Not that Jesse would have done it. He’d honestly thought Mario had been joking about making him play with others if he ordered it. A loyalty test. One of Jesse’s hard limits was control over who he played and slept with, being able to safeword.

  Apparently, Mario thought otherwise, believing the collar around Jesse’s neck superseded any hard limit.

  Maybe in some dynamics that was the case, and okay, if the participants agreed to that, more power to them.

  He’d specifically told Mario before accepting the collar that his hard limits, for now, were still in place.

  He’d tho
ught Mario had agreed to that. At least, that’s what Mario had said at the time.

  Mario had said a lot of things, it turned out.

  Hence why Jesse honestly thought Mario was only mind-fucking him that night at the club. Mario loved mind fucks, and Jesse loved being played like that.

  But not for realsies.

  No way was someone he didn’t know and trust going to take an implement to his ass, much less control who had access to it.

  Although if Leo wanted to try a few things on him tonight at the club, Jesse wouldn’t have any problems letting him learn on him. Especially with Keith’s watchful eye there to help guide the man.

  Yes, it certainly could lead to a potentially messy emotional entanglement if Leo decided this wasn’t for him. Jesse knew he needed a kinky partner. He also knew how easy it’d be for him to fall for a guy if he liked how he played.

  Which was why he now only played with Tilly.

  He reached the club before Leo did. Instead of parking by his apartment, he parked around the other side in front of the club and stood outside the office door, waiting. Just in case, he’d brought a small backpack with him. In it, the leather play collar and wrist and ankle cuffs he wore when Tilly topped him, as well as a leather jock he wore when playing with her. And his own blindfold and ball gag.

  He was a little squicky about that. He preferred to have his own stuff.

  Landry and Cris pulled in and walked up. “By the way,” Landry drawled. “Tilly said if Eliza and June have signed off on him playing with you, she does, too. As long as Keith is chaperoning tonight. Which apparently he is, because she just got off the phone with him a few minutes ago.”

  One more barrier…passed. “Thanks for looking out for me, guys. And please tell her I appreciate it.”

  “Our pleasure. Besides, it’s cheaper than paying her bail were something to go wrong and she felt the need to extract vengeance.” Landry patted Jesse on the shoulder before heading inside with Cris.